Best Current Mining Cards for multi-GPU rig?

[TurboK]

Isn't the 5970 the best mining card, due to the highest amount of shaders for lowest power drain?

[kelp]

Isn't the 5970 the best mining card, due to the highest amount of shaders for lowest power drain?

That seems to be the consensus, but they are not that easy to find right now for a reasonable price.

[Dervish]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/motherboards/2010/04/27/msi-890fxa-gd70-motherboard-review/1

Could somebody explain to me what does "Expansion slots Four 16x PCI-E 2.0 slots (two 16x or four 8x)" means according to mining? Does it means that if I will use four HD 5870 then they will work on only half of their performance?

[JayC]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/motherboards/2010/04/27/msi-890fxa-gd70-motherboard-review/1

Could somebody explain to me what does "Expansion slots Four 16x PCI-E 2.0 slots (two 16x or four 8x)" means according to mining? Does it means that if I will use four HD 5870 then they will work on only half of their performance?

It has no impact on bitcoin mining...  Just on playing video games

[nster]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/motherboards/2010/04/27/msi-890fxa-gd70-motherboard-review/1

Could somebody explain to me what does "Expansion slots Four 16x PCI-E 2.0 slots (two 16x or four 8x)" means according to mining? Does it means that if I will use four HD 5870 then they will work on only half of their performance?

It has no impact on bitcoin mining...  Just on playing video games

x16 to x8 doesnt even have an impact in games

[ryepdx]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/motherboards/2010/04/27/msi-890fxa-gd70-motherboard-review/1

That's a good motherboard. Currently using it for my fan-cooled dual 6990 rig. I plan on adding more cards and will probably only end up hitting a wall due to my power supply and the amount of heat I can dissipate. You could run your cards in a PCI-E 1x slot and your Mh/s wouldn't be affected one way or the other. All the 1x/8x/16x denotes is amount of bandwidth available. Mining is computationally expensive, but very inexpensive in terms of bandwidth.

[Dervish]

Mining is computationally expensive, but very inexpensive in terms of bandwidth.

Thank you. Now it's clear.

[n4l3hp]

Difference between 4x 5870 and 2x 5970, power consumption. Almost 200w difference, even if the 5970's core will be OC to 5870 core speed the difference is still big. If your planning 4 cards on 1 motherboard, you should consider water cooling the cards.

at the price of WC the cards, you could build another miner...

Watercooling IS NOT cost-effective.

With PCI-E extenders and DIY frame to hold everything together, no need for WC.   

[grod]

Look at some of the products on cablesaurus.  He's even got a *pci* to *pcie* adapter, which can then be used with the pcie extenders.  8 total GPUs even on a cheap motherboard is doable.  Also found this: http://www.amfeltec.com/products/flexible-pci-to-pcie-adapter.php

As far as case, $250?  Really?  Just get some aluminum L-angles from home depot for $16/8 feet, $5 for a bag of 100 bolts and nuts and a drill.  Assemble a cage from the L-angles to bolt the cards and optionally PSU to, put the motherboard on a non-static foam pad, use a $12 dual PSU adapter to get a ~1300 watts for less than a quality 1000 watt PSU.

[nebiki]

get 12x 4U rigs, a 48U rack and cool your 16kW with an a/c. expected cost: around 30k eur without a/c. 3x 5990/6990 per rig, 1.5kW PSU (enermax has a 80+ gold 1.5kW PSU), random board/ram/cpu. you'll need 4x 32Amps for the rack and another one for your a/c. very space efficient.