Advice on new GPU

[Drefsab]

Having recently found out and tried bitcoin mining I am looking at upgrading my GPU, currently I have a Nvidia GTX 460 1GB, not great for mining but plays my games great.

Everything I have read says the 5xxx ATI cards are best for mining so looking around I found the following: (http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Graphics+Cards/ATI/ATI+5800+Series/Gigabyte+ATI+Radeon+HD+5870+Super+Overclock+1GB+GDDR5+PCI-Express+Graphics+Card+?productId=44876).

This comes overclocked at 950mhz on the core out of the box with the ram clocked at 5Ghz, given that this costs £150 which is the same I paid for my 460 not so long ago I was expecting about 6 - 8 times the mining performance. This seams like really good performance for the money far to good almost hence why I wanted to double check before buying (hell someone I know will by my nvidia for £120 so I will only be out by £30).

The other question I wanted to ask is on overclocking what gives the best performance for mining core clock or memory clock? these cards are supposed to have plenty of extra headroom for higher overclocking so I will want to get the most out of it.

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[kokojie]

ram clock has absolutely no effect on mining, as for the core clock, you can do that yourself easily

[steamboat]

http://melanarchy.info/bitcoin/ is a nice list of performance numbers for gpus.

core is more important that memory. AFAIK memory has little effect on your MH/s. there's a thread around here somewhere that says you can actually drop your memory to ~2-300 and reduce your temps and power usage while gaining 5%.

[Drefsab]

Ahh thanks for the advice, thats what I suspected reading reviews people are pushing the clock on those models above 1ghz, the basically are cherry picked and redesigned boards for overclocking so not reference ones, yet still aria had them on pre order deals for £100-150 less than a standard 5870 that may never get any place near that overclock.

[Phlegmsandwich]

Those cards are sold out at that website, and the cards are manufactured anymore.

[Drefsab]

they are on pre-order as in the are getting stock in 2 days time hence why I thought it could be good to snap one up.

[chungenhung]

the best advice is to NOT get a new GPU

[MaGNeT]

A 5870 is a good choice.
If you stop mining you still have a nice VGA card to play games.

[Drefsab]

Well I got the card and its a beast im very happy out of the box it as doing 410Mhash/s, that's using the latest catalyst and SDK etc.

I've played with the over clock a little and pushed the GPU core to 1100Mhz and I've not even had to up its voltage all in all far better than my GTX 460, I've not left it hashing at that clock rate though as I didnt want to leave it at that clock without testing while I went to sleep/work. All in all a very nice buy.