the most powerful mining rig ever contrived

[deslok]

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess workstation cards may be involved.

FirePro, Tesla and Quadro cards are horrible for mining.

A card faster than a 6990 doesn't exist.

the 5870x2 ARES and a custom 6970x2 are roughly as fast as a 6990

So ati(amd) has no equivalent to nvidias quadro plex systems?

[1713524789]

1713524789

[1713524789]

1713524789

[whenhowwho]

5970 black edition

[yetis]

5970 black edition

Well, ... even if you could squeeze 2 Ghash/s out of one card and put 10 of them into one rig x 15 machines = 300 Ghash/s.

A so called machine must be a very big rack where you can put 70 cards in x 15 racks = 1050 cards = (estimated->) 1000 Mhash per card x 1050 = 1050 Ghash/s = 1.05 Thash/s.

for 70k USD? Really? You import them from China/Taiwan?

Well, let me consider the mainboards, cpus, psus ... , cooling solutions, rent, energy consumption, work, time, shipping costs, ...

Even from China/Taiwan you won't get 1050 cards for 70k US$. May be a cards overall import costs only 100$ x 1050 =>>>>>> 105k US$. And this investment still lacks the other equipment. Then you can have a look on your 1Thash investment, but it wouldn't compute you one single Bitmicro...

cul8er.

[joulesbeef]

step one, break into the ati distribution center...

[yetis]

I think he wants to import directly from the manufacturer -> 1000 cards for 75$ each = 75k US$.
Selling each card for about 750$ = 750k US$.
Profit = 750k - 75k = 675k US$.

[Jack of Diamonds]

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess workstation cards may be involved.

FirePro, Tesla and Quadro cards are horrible for mining.

A card faster than a 6990 doesn't exist.

the 5870x2 ARES and a custom 6970x2 are roughly as fast as a 6990

So ati(amd) has no equivalent to nvidias quadro plex systems?

FireMV/FirePro is AMD's equivalent.

Nvidias workstation cards are superior to AMD cards in general distributed computing by an order of magnitude. Nvidia Tesla cards cost fortunes (up to $20,000 dollars) but have up to 9-30x better performance with up to 4100 gigaFLOPS (4 teraFLOPS) per card.

Compare to a radeon 6990 which has 5.2 gigaFLOPS of single precision compute power. They are 2 entirely different markets.

Workstation cards are phenomenally fast, they just happen to be bad for bitcoin mining.

[blackgold]

I think OP maybe needs to go back to his calculator and double check he did not add 1,2 or 3 too many zeros in his calculations...

There is no way you can achieve 1Thash from 15 systems. You do understand that a 6990 outputs about 830Mhash... x 10 is 8.3Ghash... x 10 83Ghash .'. 83/1000 x 100 = 8.3% of 1Thash...

100 x 6990's will give you 8.3% of a Terra-hash 

[Mousepotato]

step one, break into the ati distribution center...

Only to find it completely out of stock of 6990s

[whenhowwho]

lol not using 6990's and as i mentions a few posts back yes i forgot a zero. So it would be 103608 mh/s but i could probably push it to 104,000 mh/s or so. And cards aren't out of stock everywhere you just have to know where to look 

[Chick]

lol not using 6990's and as i mentions a few posts back yes i forgot a zero. So it would be 103608 mh/s but i could probably push it to 104,000 mh/s or so. And cards aren't out of stock everywhere you just have to know where to look 

Sharing is caring! 

[whenhowwho]

I share some pics after everything arrives and i get it put together. Then i can officially retire my laptop from mining with its dismal 163 mh/s.

[Chick]

I share some pics after everything arrives and i get it put together. Then i can officially retire my laptop from mining with its dismal 163 mh/s.

omg, plz tell me where you got the parts...

[whenhowwho]

Maybe i might sell some cards at a little bit of a mar up at some point but that is down the road a ways.

[KKAtan]

Nvidia Tesla cards cost fortunes (up to $20,000 dollars) but have up to 9-30x better performance with up to 4100 gigaFLOPS (4 teraFLOPS) per card.

Okay, this post is full of errors. Their marketing has utterly managed to bullshit you.
The 4 Teraflops you refer to, is not from a single video card. It is a system of 4 video cards.

The S2050 1U rack = 4 TeraFlops
The M2050 card = 1 TeraFlops

Compare to a radeon 6990 which has 5.2 gigaFLOPS of single precision compute power. They are 2 entirely different markets.

The HD6990 card has 5 Teraflops.

Workstation cards are phenomenally fast, they just happen to be bad for bitcoin mining.

You have this wrong in my opinion.
All nvidia does is make non-crippled drivers for workstation cards for workstation usage. And they add a little bit more ram. All of this supposedly justifies 20 000 $ per system...
A better way to look at it is to say that workstation performs normally, while regular consumer desktop graphics are phenomenally slow due to purposely crippled drivers.

But with the introduction of OpenCL, this is about to change. Consumer desktop cards are not crippled for OpenCL. And that is why you will see a single HD 5970 rape entire Tesla systems made of multiple tesla cards.

[grue]

You have this wrong in my opinion.
All nvidia does is make non-crippled drivers for workstation cards for workstation usage. And they add a little bit more ram. All of this supposedly justifies 20 000 $ per system...
A better way to look at it is to say that workstation performs normally, while regular consumer desktop graphics are phenomenally slow due to purposely crippled drivers.

But with the introduction of OpenCL, this is about to change. Consumer desktop cards are not crippled for OpenCL. And that is why you will see a single HD 5970 rape entire Tesla systems made of multiple tesla cards.

proof needed, especially the part about nvidia crippling cards. Right now, it looks like FUD from a troll/fanboi

[KKAtan]

proof needed, especially the part about nvidia crippling cards. Right now, it looks like FUD from a troll/fanboi

Okay, let's step back and get a little perspective.

1. Jack of Diamonds claims that tesla is 30 times faster (!!). You don't think that's suspicious.
2. I claim that HD 5970 is capable of 5 Teraflops. You think this is suspicious...

Who is the fanboi.. Me or you?

Anyhow, I shall oblige. Here. http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ati-radeon-hd-5970,9109.html

especially the part about nvidia crippling cards.

It's called market segmentation.
For workstation, BOTH, nvidia and amd does this. They both cripple openGL performance on their consumer desktop drivers.

That is why I'm saying openCL is a gamechanger. It allows full computing power for desktop cards and threatens to destroy the workstation market.
There is a reason why nvidia is hesitant to embrace OpenCL v1.1. They want to be able to control and cripple desktop cards and keep the high profit workstation market alive.
On the other fence, AMD sees OpenCL as an opportunity to outclass Intel. So they fully embrace OpenCL.
It's politics.  

[grue]

especially the part about nvidia crippling cards.

It's called market segmentation.
For workstation, BOTH, nvidia and amd does this. They both cripple openGL performance on their consumer desktop drivers.

That is why I'm saying openCL is a gamechanger. It allows full computing power for desktop cards and threatens to destroy the workstation market.
There is a reason why nvidia is hesitant to embrace OpenCL v1.1. They want to be able to control and cripple desktop cards and keep the high profit workstation market alive.
On the other fence, AMD sees OpenCL as an opportunity to outclass Intel. So they fully embrace OpenCL.
It's politics. 

that was the part i wanted sources on. if it's just a driver lock, why isn't everyone "unlocking" their drivers

[KKAtan]

Because their drivers are not open source. You're welcome to try to create OpenCL 1.1 drivers for nvidia if you think it's a matter of just "unlocking". Good luck 

[mushy99999]

For a little less that 70k USD I have come up with a way to make a mining farm that has 15 machines and outputs a little over 1th/s. mmmmmmmmm godlike. Now all i need is money 

I guess you buy here? http://unitedbloom.en.made-in-china.com/product/xoinVEaHavcF/China-Video-Graphics-Card-HD5970-2GB-Best-Video-Card.html

[mushy99999]

I just got a quote from the US. If I buy 50 5970's Black Editions it would cost 21,000 USD including shipping which comes to $420 per card. Not bad. If I order just 1 card as a sample it would cost $575 including shipping.

Next I'll get a quote from China and let's compare the difference.