Opinion on using this 480 over a 390 for Eth

[OverEasy]

Working on 3rd rig now. I have been using 390's so far but found this great sale https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814137049&cm_re=480-_-14-137-049-_-Product
Anyone have any experience with this on Eth / XMR ? My 390's do 30 on Eth with no oc. My 390's have 512 bit 8 gb ram. This little 480 has 4gb ram and 256 bit so I dont expect it to equal the 390 but am curious what I could expect from it. I can get 3 for the price of 2 390's.

Thanks

[dagarair]

your 390's also eat twice the power.  Efficiency and decent hash get RX if you don't care about power get 390.  that card looks very turdy though.

[zombijs]

Like dagarair said. 480 is much better buy unless you get free electricity.

[OverEasy]

I've done some more reading and a lot of folks claim with a simple tweak using a OC tool this 4gb 480 can do about 27 on Eth. That combined with the reduced cost of electricity has convinced me. So rig 3 will run with 4 of these cards. (or maybe 5 since I am consuming less watts).

[Eyedol-X]

The 390 also generate more heat for using that extra power so depending on environment, it may require additional cooling.

The issue is to get the RX470/480 to really shine you have to bios mod yourself or get someone elses mod and load it.

Then depending on your OS, there may be other issues.

So even though the 390 uses more power and generates more heat, it may be easier for you to manage.

I'm about to be working on my first 7 GPU rig with 470's and I plan on modding the BIOS and use Windows 10. I expect many challenges.

The GPU's modded should do about 28MH on ETH

[Redrose]

All depends on the power price in your area. If it is something cheaper than 0,05$/KWh, the two options remain possibilities, but as this price increase, you can forget more and more about the 390. I would personally recommend you the 470, these are the ones I have, but this is up to you !

[meeow]

basic bios modding is trivial and takes about 10 mins if all cards are the same
for rx470 and 480 4GB:
1. dl latest gpu-z, atiflash 2.74, latest polaris bios editor
2. get vbios using gpu-z
3. load vbios into polaris bios editor
4. paste 1500 mhz hex into 1625-2000mhz fields and save the rom in the directory of atiflash, or 1625 into 1750-2000 if you have samsung ram
5. use an admin command prompt, cd to directory of atiflash, then run 'atiflash.exe -f -p %d <modded_rom_filename>.rom' where %d = slot of gpu you want to flash

*do not flash a bios from different memory vendor, check to make sure using hwinfo or gpuz, you will at least soft brick your card
*do not flash a different pcb, like asus strix vs amd reference are almost certainly not compatible, different power phases and voltage controller
*it's easy to unbrick a card most of the time, just use a functional card to boot into windows and use steps 2-5 again on the bricked card
*disable ulps, or else you may have an unsuccessful flash due to the card not responding, generally it is harmless but annoying
*different cards have different oc limits by luck, use hwinfo to monitor memory errors as you increase memclk

my hynix 470s get 26.5-28mhs, some can go only to 1810, others to 1900
my elpida 470s get 28+mhs

it's probably more cost effective to get 470s, especially if you can verify they are samsung or elpida

[fr4nkthetank]

The MSI armor is actually a good choice.  The fans are double ball bearing, so they should last a bit.  You cant really overclock them that much, but I have a few that run at 0.89v easy.  power consumption is really low (i have 470s).  I made a review here:  http://www.cryptominingtalk.com/msi-armor-470-4g-review/

You should check out the sapphire nitro fury on newegg, sometimes its a really good sale.  Could be a worthwhile alternative to the 390 if you want to go that way (more hashing power per rig).
edit:  the last rx470 msi armor 4g i got had samsung memory.  all the others hynix.

[ogre9000]

The MSI armor is actually a good choice.  The fans are double ball bearing, so they should last a bit.  You cant really overclock them that much, but I have a few that run at 0.89v easy.  power consumption is really low (i have 470s).  I made a review here:  http://www.cryptominingtalk.com/msi-armor-470-4g-review/

You should check out the sapphire nitro fury on newegg, sometimes its a really good sale.  Could be a worthwhile alternative to the 390 if you want to go that way (more hashing power per rig).
edit:  the last rx470 msi armor 4g i got had samsung memory.  all the others hynix.

Did you have much luck with the samsung card?

I just got my first armor card. had my fingers crossed for samsung.. which I got but, not too sure so far, 990mv just to get it to stop throwing hw errors at 2040mem 1750strap..
Have a feeling it's gonna drive me nuts like my first hynix card did 

nm.. still slow errors, bah.

[fr4nkthetank]

The MSI armor is actually a good choice.  The fans are double ball bearing, so they should last a bit.  You cant really overclock them that much, but I have a few that run at 0.89v easy.  power consumption is really low (i have 470s).  I made a review here:  http://www.cryptominingtalk.com/msi-armor-470-4g-review/

You should check out the sapphire nitro fury on newegg, sometimes its a really good sale.  Could be a worthwhile alternative to the 390 if you want to go that way (more hashing power per rig).
edit:  the last rx470 msi armor 4g i got had samsung memory.  all the others hynix.

Did you have much luck with the samsung card?

I just got my first armor card. had my fingers crossed for samsung.. which I got but, not too sure so far, 990mv just to get it to stop throwing hw errors at 2040mem 1750strap..
Have a feeling it's gonna drive me nuts like my first hynix card did 

nm.. still slow errors, bah.

Yeah for some reason, I like hynix better.  But - meh I just lazily brought down the mem clock until those HW go away.  Some cards are 2050, some cards are 2025, and the samsung is 2000.

[OverEasy]

I made a new post about this

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1775845.0

Move any discussion over there