HD5970 new in stock newegg 499$ !

[abracadabra]

I agree on the no OC. Thank you to those that responded. I tried the suggestions to use Trixx to down clock the memory and OC the GPU. It worked but it only lasts a few hours before the temp causes the card to throttle down. The memory down clock only shaves a few degrees off the temp. Maybe water cooling would work.

lowering the ambient room temperature will help immensely. More than anything else you can do.

[MajorMiner]

deal at newegg is gone.  buy.com has them f0r $597 with a $10 coupon

The original place still has them as well http://www.unityelectronics.com/products/6475/ATI_Radeon_HD_5970_PCI_E_PCI_Express_x16_2GB_GDDR5_2560x1600_Video_Card_Dual_DVI_Mini_Display_Port_102C0000300_New I ordered 3 more.

[jjiimm_64]

deal at newegg is gone.  buy.com has them f0r $597 with a $10 coupon

The original place still has them as well http://www.unityelectronics.com/products/6475/ATI_Radeon_HD_5970_PCI_E_PCI_Express_x16_2GB_GDDR5_2560x1600_Video_Card_Dual_DVI_Mini_Display_Port_102C0000300_New I ordered 3 more.

amazon still has them too!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005ISV72Y

[d.james]

damn these are pretty good deals, but i'm running out of slots.

[Mousepotato]

Ok I'm getting 420 MH/s per core now.  But the 2nd core gets too hot even with the fan at 100%.  Dialed both cores back to 411 MH/s and the 2nd core is at 86C.  I guess I can live with that.

[Sabi]

I got both of mine from NewEgg yesterday.  No dents, in perfect condition with the extra goodies delivered as well.  They both run fine at 850/450, 1.162 volts.  Temps around 82C, getting about 360 Mhash/s per GPU, or a bit over 1.4 Ghash/sec total.

[deslok]

Ok I'm getting 420 MH/s per core now.  But the 2nd core gets too hot even with the fan at 100%.  Dialed both cores back to 411 MH/s and the 2nd core is at 86C.  I guess I can live with that.

Add a fan similar to the one I linked a picture of earlier in front of the vents it'll help pool hot air out of the card and give you a little more room.

[mikethebodacious]

I got both of mine from NewEgg yesterday.  No dents, in perfect condition with the extra goodies delivered as well.  They both run fine at 850/450, 1.162 volts.  Temps around 82C, getting about 360 Mhash/s per GPU, or a bit over 1.4 Ghash/sec total.

Lower your memory to 250, if you have a good card it should lower temps by a couple degrees more so you can turn the fan speed down 5% with MSI Afterburner.  Just close Afterburner and restart it to lower even more.  At 850 clock you should be getting 380 Mhash/s with the proper drivers.  I am using Catalyst 11.6 with SDK 2.4, phoenix miner with -phatk mod.  Just set your agression to 12 and up, with fastloop=false your stale shares on this card are an amazingly low .5% (best stale rate I've got)!

[Pipesnake]

They both run fine at 850/450, 1.162 volts.  Temps around 82C, getting about 360 Mhash/s per GPU,

That's way low.  You should be closer to 400mh/s

phatk is optimized for cypress core so if you're not using it you need to switch asap.

[Pipesnake]

ambient room temperature will help immensely. More than anything else you can do.

Agreed.  And no case.  Temps will go down significantly.

[fcmatt]

ambient room temperature will help immensely. More than anything else you can do.

Agreed.  And no case.  Temps will go down significantly.

So, are the people buying 500 dollars cards happy with their purchase when the trend for the BTC
price seems to be pointing in only one direction? As in down...

(And please do not mention solidcoins... I am going to guess that is not profitable as it was).

Basically my point is.. are you doing this for fun and giggles or to make some money in a reasonable
amount of time? Because the ROI on this card is getting out there. 4.5 months (143 days) lets say with a btc
price of 8-8.50 and free electricity/time/cooling. If you have to pay for electricity is gets a lot worse.
.08 kWh, lets say, which is cheap, stretches out the pay off date to 200 days.. so after a year of mining
it with no downtime or screw ups you can make 176 bucks.. and that is still cutting off details like exchange
fees, cooling, hardware failure, internet failure, etc..

I am not being a prick. I actually thought about buying a couple of these but the math is just not making
sense. Too many assumptions have to be made.

What say you?

[CanaryInTheMine]

ambient room temperature will help immensely. More than anything else you can do.

Agreed.  And no case.  Temps will go down significantly.

So, are the people buying 500 dollars cards happy with their purchase when the trend for the BTC
price seems to be pointing in only one direction? As in down...

(And please do not mention solidcoins... I am going to guess that is not profitable as it was).

Basically my point is.. are you doing this for fun and giggles or to make some money in a reasonable
amount of time? Because the ROI on this card is getting out there. 4.5 months (143 days) lets say with a btc
price of 8-8.50 and free electricity/time/cooling. If you have to pay for electricity is gets a lot worse.
.08 kWh, lets say, which is cheap, stretches out the pay off date to 200 days.. so after a year of mining
it with no downtime or screw ups you can make 176 bucks.. and that is still cutting off details like exchange
fees, cooling, hardware failure, internet failure, etc..

I am not being a prick. I actually thought about buying a couple of these but the math is just not making
sense. Too many assumptions have to be made.

What say you?

if you think you can mine for a profit, then you shouldn't mine.
it's too early and all depends on whether bitcoin is adopted and becomes mainstream.
instead, buy bitcoins and hold.  maybe you make some money, maybe you won't

mining is still pretty much for fun and something to do with all those spare parts.

the reason i got these cards is to get pretty close to the hashing rate of 6990s and i'm selling back then 6990s to get back $230.  that's the reason.

[CanaryInTheMine]

so, i have mixed experience so far with these cards... got 4.  3 seem to be working OK but not

it seems one of them will not change the stock setting from 725 clock on one of the GPUs (the second responds).  msiab  says 840/300 (what I set it to) but GPU-Z shows stock.
and hashing rate supports stock clock settings...

also, have strange artifacts on one of the cards... going to RMA it.

Question, is it really possible to run 850/300 @ stock voltage on these?

[Sabi]

So, are the people buying 500 dollars cards happy with their purchase when the trend for the BTC
price seems to be pointing in only one direction? As in down...

(And please do not mention solidcoins... I am going to guess that is not profitable as it was).

Basically my point is.. are you doing this for fun and giggles or to make some money in a reasonable
amount of time? Because the ROI on this card is getting out there. 4.5 months (143 days) lets say with a btc
price of 8-8.50 and free electricity/time/cooling. If you have to pay for electricity is gets a lot worse.
.08 kWh, lets say, which is cheap, stretches out the pay off date to 200 days.. so after a year of mining
it with no downtime or screw ups you can make 176 bucks.. and that is still cutting off details like exchange
fees, cooling, hardware failure, internet failure, etc..

I am not being a prick. I actually thought about buying a couple of these but the math is just not making
sense. Too many assumptions have to be made.

What say you?

I have to heat an addition to my home that I have to heat this winter that I usually use a 3000W space heater for.  I figured 2 5970s would suffice instead (the heater cycles on and off, the pc will stay on all the time and put out about 800W of heat).  In essence, my electricity is free since I would have used the power anyway to heat the space.  The cold months here last from Sept to March, so I figured in that time the cards would pay for themselves, and I would have 2 nice cards to game with, continue bitcoin mining, or sell afterwards.

[Sabi]

Lower your memory to 250, if you have a good card it should lower temps by a couple degrees more so you can turn the fan speed down 5% with MSI Afterburner.  Just close Afterburner and restart it to lower even more.  At 850 clock you should be getting 380 Mhash/s with the proper drivers.  I am using Catalyst 11.6 with SDK 2.4, phoenix miner with -phatk mod.  Just set your agression to 12 and up, with fastloop=false your stale shares on this card are an amazingly low .5% (best stale rate I've got)!

Thanks for the tip, I'll try it!

[Sabi]

Okay I did some testing.

1) Dropping the memory down (from 500 to 300) did not change much.  Maybe 1C if that.  Power draw on my current system (need to buy a bigger power supply than my current 750W to run both 5970s) with one 5970 from the wall is the same - 550W, measured from my Kill-O-Watt meter.  Didn't help, but didn't hurt, so I'll keep it there.

2) Bumping the speed up to 900 was not a problem.  Maybe a 1C increase.  Nice and steady and a nice bump in returns.

3) I tried the Phoenix phatk mod, and to be honest, I got better results with OpenCL.  Pix attached:

http://img163.imagevenue.com/loc463/th_149170387_OpenCL_122_463lo.jpg http://img140.imagevenue.com/loc147/th_917039586_Phoenix_122_147lo.jpg

Thanks for the tips though, I am always open for ANY suggestions!     

[CanaryInTheMine]

Okay I did some testing.

1) Dropping the memory down (from 500 to 300) did not change much.  Maybe 1C if that.  Power draw on my current system (need to buy a bigger power supply than my current 750W to run both 5970s) with one 5970 from the wall is the same - 550W, measured from my Kill-O-Watt meter.  Didn't help, but didn't hurt, so I'll keep it there.

2) Bumping the speed up to 900 was not a problem.  Maybe a 1C increase.  Nice and steady and a nice bump in returns.

3) I tried the Phoenix phatk mod, and to be honest, I got better results with OpenCL.  Pix attached:



Thanks for the tips though, I am always open for ANY suggestions!     

Thanks!!

I've tried 1149 v and have no problems running 930/300 900/300 900/300 920/300 setting on 2 cards in 1 system.  temps are in low 80s with a closed case (but I'll play with airflow some more).  Hashing rates are superb too!!  better overall performance than on my previous 6990s.

[Pipesnake]

Question, is it really possible to run 850/300 @ stock voltage on these?

On the better units it's *possible* but you're right at the edge.  If you can stay up for a week like that you have a really, really good one.  My best card can run for a while at 840 but something will eventually trip it up and will need a reboot.

[CanaryInTheMine]

Question, is it really possible to run 850/300 @ stock voltage on these?

On the better units it's *possible* but you're right at the edge.  If you can stay up for a week like that you have a really, really good one.  My best card can run for a while at 840 but something will eventually trip it up and will need a reboot.

I see... thanks for info.  What do you think about 1149 V instead of stock?  what kind of damage will it do and in how much time? or is it as always about keeping temps at reasonable levels?

[Pipesnake]

I see... thanks for info.  What do you think about 1149 V instead of stock?  what kind of damage will it do and in how much time? or is it as always about keeping temps at reasonable levels?

Well 5870s run at 1175 so I think 1149 should be fine.  If you're going to run prolonged like that, though, you'll definitely need to keep an eye on both the 'hot' gpu temp and the vrm temps.  As long as hot gpu doesnt go over 90 and vrm over 115 (or so) you *should* be safe.

However, in the interest of full disclosure, I run mine at stock voltage.  More so because of current increase than anything else.

Edit: Once I get my 220v line wired in I'm going to run them overvolted.  Probably around 1149.