PSA: Malta 7990s are NOT suitable for mining!

[phillyj]

Nope.  You said 1 card costs $2000, and 1 card will use over 500 watts to get the same hash power or it will hash a lot less.  

He said, she said... I hate taking sides but just post the quote where dogie said 1 card cost $2k. I looked at the first page of this thread and did not see that.

dogie probably overreacted. What does "suitable" mean anyway? It's all relative to the buyer. It's not a Nvidia vs AMD mining comparison. It's more of a power-draw vs price vs hashrate suitability discussion.

Edit: changed 1k to 2k typo

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[greaterninja]

Now the new M cards have dual slot coolers, ouch. At stock clocks they were loading just below the 80s, horizontally mounted in an open air, single card system. This was on GPGPU computing. Due to the heatsink design, ZERO air is exhausted and its all left to be removed by the case.  My PC cards heat the case ambient up to 40+ even with 3x250mm, 5x240mm of fans removing heat. You will have to open air, just have to.

Tldr: Mining is doable on the 3 slot PC cards, but will be almost impossible to dual M cards within a case. The M cards are 2 slot and don't exhaust air at all.

WRONG.  mining is quite doable on the dual slot reference cards.  See next quote remarks.

Power delivery:
This is the major problem. My PC cards have 3x8pin for a max of 525W. These new M cards only have 2x8 pins for 375W max. Even with my moderate overclocks (focusing on power consumption rather than MAX POWA), I'm going over/hitting the power delivery limits of the PC cards at about ~400W from the wall per card [1050 core, mem 625 and undervolted]. AnandTech saw this in Furmark, the card was power throttled HEAVILY. Now imagine trying to scypt mine with decent clocks - its not going to happen.

WRONG. ...the M  7990s seems best at scrypt mining and for bitcoin mining they still perform well at 1150-1250mh/s   I believe they can even be pushed to 1300+mh/s  All at ~375 Watts

Tldr: The power delivery on these cards LIMITS the performance of these cards and causes power throttling even on moderate computing load. Hence these cards are not appropriate for mining.

WRONG.  this quote is where dogie is assuming stuff again, it was a good assumption, however 375w is more than enough to power both cores on the new Malta 7990.  AMD has had about 1 year to redesign power consumption of the new 7990.

WHY WOULD I SAY ONE CARD COSTS $2000, are you kidding me. I was always comparing dual cards. I'd ask you to quote me but I know you'll just come up with some excuse again and then lock the thread again.... OH WAIT ITS MY THREAD.

 
Dogie did say it costs $2000, at the time I didn't notice how bad he was trolling so I did not capture the quote.   it seems he had gone back and edited his post because everyone was thinking he was a moron.

So good job dogie, you were really right about nothing.  Next time get both pieces of the hardware, then do a unbiased test of both pieces of hardware in the same environment.   Spouting numbers and assumptions in every 7990 thread solely based on your self-qualified "masters of engineering" experience and not having the hardware has made you look like a jackass.  Sup Troll!?!?!?!

[computerparts]

I gave up arguing with him when I saw I was clearly wasting my time. Maybe now he has a clue as to the significance of higher binned chips.

[dogie]

Now the new M cards have dual slot coolers, ouch. At stock clocks they were loading just below the 80s, horizontally mounted in an open air, single card system. This was on GPGPU computing. Due to the heatsink design, ZERO air is exhausted and its all left to be removed by the case.  My PC cards heat the case ambient up to 40+ even with 3x250mm, 5x240mm of fans removing heat. You will have to open air, just have to.

Tldr: Mining is doable on the 3 slot PC cards, but will be almost impossible to dual M cards within a case. The M cards are 2 slot and don't exhaust air at all.

WRONG.  mining is quite doable on the dual slot reference cards.  See next quote remarks.

Power delivery:
This is the major problem. My PC cards have 3x8pin for a max of 525W. These new M cards only have 2x8 pins for 375W max. Even with my moderate overclocks (focusing on power consumption rather than MAX POWA), I'm going over/hitting the power delivery limits of the PC cards at about ~400W from the wall per card [1050 core, mem 625 and undervolted]. AnandTech saw this in Furmark, the card was power throttled HEAVILY. Now imagine trying to scypt mine with decent clocks - its not going to happen.

WRONG. ...the M  7990s seems best at scrypt mining and for bitcoin mining they still perform well at 1150-1250mh/s   I believe they can even be pushed to 1300+mh/s  All at ~375 Watts

Tldr: The power delivery on these cards LIMITS the performance of these cards and causes power throttling even on moderate computing load. Hence these cards are not appropriate for mining.

WRONG.  this quote is where dogie is assuming stuff again, it was a good assumption, however 375w is more than enough to power both cores on the new Malta 7990.  AMD has had about 1 year to redesign power consumption of the new 7990.

WHY WOULD I SAY ONE CARD COSTS $2000, are you kidding me. I was always comparing dual cards. I'd ask you to quote me but I know you'll just come up with some excuse again and then lock the thread again.... OH WAIT ITS MY THREAD.

 
Dogie did say it costs $2000, at the time I didn't notice how bad he was trolling so I did not capture the quote.   it seems he had gone back and edited his post because everyone was thinking he was a moron.

So good job dogie, you were really right about nothing.  Next time get both pieces of the hardware, then do a unbiased test of both pieces of hardware in the same environment.   Spouting numbers and assumptions in every 7990 thread solely based on your self-qualified "masters of engineering" experience and not having the hardware has made you look like a jackass.  Sup Troll!?!?!?!

So much bullshit in here its not even worth it any more. And I edited my post? That's convenient isn't it, I edited a post that didn't exist

[ecliptic]

They seriously make 2x 8 pin 7990 cards?  That's really cutting it close.

I've got a 3x 8 pin powercooler 7990 on (unpowered) risers running fine @ ~1.08MH/sec, haven't fined tuned it much.  2x would be very ugly

[dogie]

They seriously make 2x 8 pin 7990 cards?  That's really cutting it close.

I've got a 3x 8 pin powercooler 7990 on (unpowered) risers running fine @ ~1.08MH/sec, haven't fined tuned it much.  2x would be very ugly

+1. We both have non malta'ed 7990s and can see the truth.

[notaek]

They seriously make 2x 8 pin 7990 cards?  That's really cutting it close.

I've got a 3x 8 pin powercooler 7990 on (unpowered) risers running fine @ ~1.08MH/sec, haven't fined tuned it much.  2x would be very ugly

Haha the funny thing is that the "very ugly" 2x8pin 7990 malta gets higher hash rates than yours does.  

[relm9]

I picked up one of these for my gaming rig yesterday with no real intention of mining on it (live in AZ and it's way too hot here during the summer) but I tried anyway to get some results.

Ran for 2 hours. With scrypt mining, straight out of the box using the same config I used for 7950s I was getting 1.3 MH/s, this is at 1000 MHz core and 1500 memory, all defaults - 0% PowerTune. Completely stable. I don't know if the pool I use is running better or what but I was getting less than 0.05% rejects on shares which is impressive, my 7950s often hovered around 2%.

Temps were somewhat high, around 86-87 C though bare in mind the room temp was 81 F and I was running it inside of a case.

Interestingly, if I knocked PowerTune down to -20% I still was able to get 1.05 MH/s from the card! This surprised me. With PowerTune at -20% temps hovered around 78C.

I'd imagine these figures would be a lot more reasonable at a lower room temp.

Price-wise, the card isn't a great value, if you sel' the games you're looking at $850 out of pocket, where as you could probably get 2x7970 for around $700 after selling the games, but it is an option if you are low on slots. Also resale value may hold better if AMD's previous dual GPU cards are any indication.

Didn't get to play around with the voltage to see how low I could go, seems MSI Afterburner doesn't support it on these yet?

Pic:

[greaterninja]

mine is voltage unlocked, you have to have the ati.dll to do extreme overclocking...its in another thread.

the dll is atipdlxx.dll  and you ahve to put it in   C:\Program Files (x86)\MSI Afterburner

and you have to modify MSIAfterburner.cfg in that very same folder.   delete everything in the profiles sub-directory.

[relm9]

mine is voltage unlocked, you have to have the ati.dll to do extreme overclocking...its in another thread.

the dll is atipdlxx.dll  and you ahve to put it in   C:\Program Files (x86)\MSI Afterburner

and you have to modify MSIAfterburner.cfg in that very same folder.   delete everything in the profiles sub-directory.

Ah thanks, I'll try this

[greaterninja]

mine is voltage unlocked, you have to have the ati.dll to do extreme overclocking...its in another thread.

the dll is atipdlxx.dll  and you ahve to put it in   C:\Program Files (x86)\MSI Afterburner

and you have to modify MSIAfterburner.cfg in that very same folder.   delete everything in the profiles sub-directory.

Ah thanks, I'll try this

at stock clock 1000mhz gpu and 1500mhz ram, 0% volt i hit 1370+ khash/sec, 20k+ thread concurrency, 20 aggression.


i found it best to turn aggression or thread concurrency down a bit; the card runs nice and cool ~1200khash/sec

Right now its hard to say if I want to mine BTC or LTC...I've figured out how to mine BTC in the 70C range doing easily 1200+mh/s;  undervolted -20%.

[Miner99er]

So three of these could fit on an 890FXA-GD70 with space between each so they don't cook themselves. Sounds like a done deal, and much easier to setup/configure/route cables with 6 individual cards.

not that I'm done with buying Single GPU cards, I'm not having density issues yet.

[BBQKorv]

Very nice results. This card seems very impressive in comparison to the 3-slot 7990s. It's nearly unbelievable they managed to get the cooling to work that well on it.

Do you have any VRM noises at any clocks or volts?

[greaterninja]

Very nice results. This card seems very impressive in comparison to the 3-slot 7990s. It's nearly unbelievable they managed to get the cooling to work that well on it.

Do you have any VRM noises at any clocks or volts?

Yep dogie was a complete moron for not physically comparing both cards.  He rather created a thread based on speculation of the old 7990 hardware that is 1+ year old and now he looks like a jackass.  Now hes mad to the point that he is trolling people's threads like a degenerate.   (degens gonna degen.)

As of this post the Sapphire 7990 Malta seems to be the most stable card as far as temps, clock, power usage, etc.

I can get 1260mhash/sec stable; even up to 1300+mh/sec while bitcoin mining; using msi afterburner; stock cooling only.
ROI on this card is 5-6.2 months.

I'm sure I can sell it for a pretty penny after mining a bit of btc as well.

With it all said the 7870 tahiti LE, 7950, 7970, 5870 5970 cards seem to be the best for ROI; this card does OK in that realm.

[notaek]

Do the fans look that pink in person, or just on camera?

[relm9]

Do the fans look that pink in person, or just on camera?

Not as bright, more of a light-red. Camera flash oversaturated it.

I haven't heard any VRM noises or coil whine, the card is whisper quiet until >50 % fan speed, only really gets loud at 70 % or above and even then it's not bad compared to other cards I've owned.

[ISAWHIM]

The "extra" pins are both ground... (-12v). They are there for "legal reasons", no other real reason. 6-pin = 3x+12, 3x-12 [8-pin = 3x+12, 5x-12v] The "theory", is that if you don't have a 6+2 pin connection, then your PSU MAY not be designed to handle the power. The reality is, connectors has nothing to do with "available power". Some PSU's have 25A, some have only 14A, some have up to 75A available on those same pins, or more, or less.

You also have to "know" what your computer draws, before adding the card to the system. When the CPU and RAM is "loaded" by 80%, as that is what will give you the "base-line" to subtract from your "wall wattage" of a "running and loaded" video-card. (You can't just "not use the card", because if it is plugged-in, it is consuming power, and that is NOT the baseline. If you subtract that value from the loaded GPU tests, you will wrongly be measuring the GPU consumption.)

Also, your wall-wattage is the consumption of the whole system, including all inefficiencies. Unless you have a "platinum 95%" running on 240v, then assume you are showing 20-30% more power use at the wall, than the system is actually using inside. Most PSU's are about 75-85%, at best, running on a 120v power line. Even platinum-95's.

But I digress... saying it is NOT good, "in your crappy setup", should be elaborated to state...

"In my crappy closed-case, poorly vented, poorly exhausted, under-powered, and horrible unmanaged card-setup settings... The card was not good for mining."

Yes, the design of the card requires special care, as you mentioned. It is power-hungry... but you never even stated a power/hash rate, nor did you mention any actual adjustments to "control power", you just poured-in what your PSU fed it. You failed to mention PSU model, rail-power, or your system-consumption... Thus, I assume you have a shoddy PSU and severely way over-powered CPU that is sucking up a good 100w when it runs. (My whole system uses 34W max, running at 100% load, but mining, it runs below 20% and 18W total.)

As for the card... did you even TRY mining? Did you even try scrypt? Or are you just guessing, based off some useless stats that someone spouted-off?

I can run 3x 7970 cards, easily off 550w @ 1.5Ghps, and 650w @ 1.9GHs, and 720w @ 2.1Ghs (My 750w PSU doesn't even crank-up the fan. But my GPU's run about 50%-80% fan-speed, respectively.) Of those wattages, 18w is the system, and about 20-25% is the losses from the PSU itself.

You say 1 runs at 450w... that is like two 7970's running at 225w each... so you are obviously underpowered, and it is having to slow-down to keep a "constant voltage", or has to slow-down due to your crappy venting of heat. You do realize that 2x 7970's would consume 4-slots, and the 7990 consumes only 2.5 (Which is a GAIN of 1.5 slots.)

Running 4x 7990's as opposed to 8x 7970's (Which is impossible), is better in more ways than you imagine. However, the price needs to drop to $800, to make it even remotely viable to use for mining. $1000-$1300 for a 7990 is NOT reasonable for getting the power of 2x of a $400 7970 card. That, I will agree with...

P.S. They all come with 4 free games now. If you don't get them, it is because someone took the cards for themselves, and sold them.

[ssateneth]

"The "extra" pins are both ground... (-12v)."

Wrong. Ground is 0v. -12v is used in old RS232 connectors, AKA Serial ports.

I didn't read whatever else you typed, because I assumed it would be just as wrong too.

[dogie]

Very nice results. This card seems very impressive in comparison to the 3-slot 7990s. It's nearly unbelievable they managed to get the cooling to work that well on it.

Do you have any VRM noises at any clocks or volts?

Yep dogie was a complete moron for not physically comparing both cards.  He rather created a thread based on speculation of the old 7990 hardware that is 1+ year old and now he looks like a jackass.  Now hes mad to the point that he is trolling people's threads like a degenerate.   (degens gonna degen.)

As of this post the Sapphire 7990 Malta seems to be the most stable card as far as temps, clock, power usage, etc.

I can get 1260mhash/sec stable; even up to 1300+mh/sec while bitcoin mining; using msi afterburner; stock cooling only.
ROI on this card is 5-6.2 months.

I'm sure I can sell it for a pretty penny after mining a bit of btc as well.

With it all said the 7870 tahiti LE, 7950, 7970, 5870 5970 cards seem to be the best for ROI; this card does OK in that realm.

What are you talking about? No one took you up on your shit blade off because... it was shit.

[greaterninja]

Very nice results. This card seems very impressive in comparison to the 3-slot 7990s. It's nearly unbelievable they managed to get the cooling to work that well on it.

Do you have any VRM noises at any clocks or volts?

Yep dogie was a complete moron for not physically comparing both cards.  He rather created a thread based on speculation of the old 7990 hardware that is 1+ year old and now he looks like a jackass.  Now hes mad to the point that he is trolling people's threads like a degenerate.   (degens gonna degen.)

As of this post the Sapphire 7990 Malta seems to be the most stable card as far as temps, clock, power usage, etc.

I can get 1260mhash/sec stable; even up to 1300+mh/sec while bitcoin mining; using msi afterburner; stock cooling only.
ROI on this card is 5-6.2 months.

I'm sure I can sell it for a pretty penny after mining a bit of btc as well.

With it all said the 7870 tahiti LE, 7950, 7970, 5870 5970 cards seem to be the best for ROI; this card does OK in that realm.

What are you talking about? No one took you up on your shit blade off because... it was shit.

Lol, the thing you do not get in your head is you keep failing when you keep assuming stuff.   The 7990 Malta thread that you created = Fail because you never had the hardware.  You still do not have the 7990 Malta hardware.  Imagine how much of a dumbass people think you are now that they are posting real  7990 Malta results that put your assumptions to shame?   Trolling on my asicminer group buy threads = Fail.  I have ~750 BTC of interest.  Why do you even try?

The thing i don't get is why you go through such depths to say nothing useful on people's threads.  In fact you would rather troll, be negative and contribute nothing productive or useful to the community.
If you do this in real life you will not be very successful.  

dogie gonna degen and degens gonna degen.