Want legit 7970 testing/benchmarking and tuning for cgminer and Diablominer?

[P4man]

The people are outraged that someone would want a free 7970, but early testing and tuning the Diablominer to it would earn the community a ton of bitcoin in the future if he could make a 7xxx purr like a 5xxx.  I think it's unlikely but he's right, y'know.  Pay the man, he'll pay you later when you buy twenty 7970s from the store for yourself (you greedy little bastards).

Thats the thing; I doubt anyone is planning on buying a farm of 7970s for bitcoin mining. The card is just too expensive and its untapped performance potential almost certainly quite limited. So almost no one has an incentive to pay for a 7970 optimized miner.  Even more so as  Diablo seems no longer the miner app of choice.

Im pretty sure it will be easier to amass donations to, say, port cgminer to that butterfly labs fpga board. Anyone planning on buying those in any quantity may find that a worthwhile donation. If I where diablo, Id offer to do that.

[DiabloD3]

Rasengan added 10 btc to the effort. Thanks man.

Current total: 18.0101976.

[ZedZedNova]

And I don't know about you, but I don't have $500 in cash laying around. I doubt most people do.

You may be right about most people, but I do. But before I give it up I'd be looking to get a reasonable return on my "invested" capital. I also understand that my capital could "magically" disappear. That's the risk. Once the code is developed I don't want the card, it wouldn't do me any good. I'd like my capital and a fair return back so I can move on to the next investment. I don't have enough cash on hand to be an angel investor.

Why don't I want the card after the development is complete? It's because I don't have the hardware and cheap enough power to run a GPU mining rig with a high enough hash rate that can pay for itself in some reasonable amount of time given the current difficulty and payout. Given my base this does not benefit me directly. I'm too late to the Bitcoin mining scene to earn a reasonable return.

This work is going to benefit the community of miners who already have extensive, and hopefully profitable, GPU mining operations and who are looking to upgrade to improve their hash rate enough to offset the costs of buying the new GPU and the power consumption. In fact those are the people I'd be approaching first. Scope all the pools and see which miners have the highest hash rates and see if they are willing to fund you.

- Zed

Woohoo, my first post as a freed noob.

[smickles]

Since I'm out of n00b jail, I'll make my first free man post since my return to this place.
I cannot believe the attitude here.

It's absolutely disturbing.

There's going to be god damn flying 12 monkeys up in the streets in 12 months with food riots and you people are bitching about helping out someone whose work benefits everybody?
Don't give me that investor bullshit. Lead a path to his door? Where do you see these magic droves of customers coming from? If you haven't been paying attention 9/11, the bank failouts, the Breivik shit, and the prospect of either a war banger or a nasty war banger as president, these tragedies of the past, present, and future have sucked the optimism out of most people. We are all mostly burnt out and could use a little spontaneous vitality.

Holy fucking shit.

Just for that I'm donating the .00017760 someone sent me once to DiabloD3. Sorry man, I hardly have any, but I thought I'd pay you the same compliment someone once paid me under my previous account (I no longer have access to that email) a long time ago.

Also, for anyone here still fantasizing about the economy and telling people to get jobs: Are you hiring? If not stop projecting your forced optimism from your own insecurity on someone else.

Also, cocks.

That is some premo 'first post out of noob jail'

[simonk83]

The people are outraged that someone would want a free 7970, but early testing and tuning the Diablominer to it would earn the community a ton of bitcoin in the future if he could make a 7xxx purr like a 5xxx.  I think it's unlikely but he's right, y'know.  Pay the man, he'll pay you later when you buy twenty 7970s from the store for yourself (you greedy little bastards).

Thats the thing; I doubt anyone is planning on buying a farm of 7970s for bitcoin mining. The card is just too expensive and its untapped performance potential almost certainly quite limited. So almost no one has an incentive to pay for a 7970 optimized miner.  Even more so as  Diablo seems no longer the miner app of choice.

Im pretty sure it will be easier to amass donations to, say, port cgminer to that butterfly labs fpga board. Anyone planning on buying those in any quantity may find that a worthwhile donation. If I where diablo, Id offer to do that.

Spot on.  However I believe Luke Jr has already put together some sort of cgminer based BFL software...

[cablepair]

I'm not sure when "toms hardware" became an authority on bitcoin mining but the fact is a 5870 gets 440 mhash easily, consumes much less wattage than a 7970 and cost about $150

I just don't see the plausibility in anyone making any kind of major mining operation based on these cards , there's absolutely no profitability and if we use the direction AMD has taken with their drivers as any kind of indicator they are certainly not making an effort to purposely gear their cards towards mining.

Diablod3 is certainly a well known early adopter and programmer but personally I would much rather donate to a project like a miner that can squeeze more mash out of an fpga board

To me It's almost like investing in oil rigs when there are some kick ass electric cars out there.

[mc_lovin]

Even if he doesn't create a miracle driver, he could add a few handy lines of code that make it into the eventual best miner created by another author.  And the total cost of the hardware isn't too much for the community as a whole.

[rjk]

I'm not sure when "toms hardware" became an authority on bitcoin mining but the fact is a 5870 gets 440 mhash easily, consumes much less wattage than a 7970 and cost about $150

Only if you buy it used and overclock the shit out of it. He is talking about stock numbers here.

[cablepair]

no no no

not overclocking the "shit out of them"

Im talking clocks at 950/180 - with 440mhash  no big deal at all. the 5870 is a superior mining card to the 7000 series we have seen so far

the fact of the matter is AMD is NOT designing their cards with mining in mind and thats a fact we just have to accept.

a 7000 series mining farm will NEVER be profitable unless of course you get free electricity or some other bizarre circumstance

[DeathAndTaxes]

no no no

not overclocking the "shit out of them"

Im talking clocks at 950/180 - with 440mhash  no big deal at all. the 5870 is a superior mining card to the 7000 series we have seen so far

TOMS REVIEWED CARDS @ STOCK.

This isn't a hard concept.  You can't compare one card @ stock to another card overclocked.  950MHz is an 11% overclock.

Look I also think the 7970 is a dud but to compare apples to apples you need to look at stock vs stock.  So throwing out overclocked numbers is worthless.   It looks like the 7970 can overclock 20%+ at stock voltage. 

[cablepair]

your right and your wrong

it depends on the context of why we are comparing

if we are comparing what cards can mine faster at stock clocks then yes the 7xxx wins (according to toms hardware and his dubious unproved claims)

but if we are comparing what is going to be a more profitable card than 5870 wins hands down

so apples to apples - and oranges to oranges - we all need to realize 7xxxx series will never be profitable

and we need to take into consideration that BTC blocks will be getting halved soon

and we need to realize that FPGA is the most realistic next step - for sensible and profitable miners

[TurboK]

no no no

not overclocking the "shit out of them"

Im talking clocks at 950/180 - with 440mhash  no big deal at all. the 5870 is a superior mining card to the 7000 series we have seen so far

the fact of the matter is AMD is NOT designing their cards with mining in mind and thats a fact we just have to accept.

a 7000 series mining farm will NEVER be profitable unless of course you get free electricity or some other bizarre circumstance

If you count the 5870 at 950mhz then you should count the 7970 at 1125mhz (at which it should do close to ~500mhash judging by the numbers). And that's with an unoptimized miner for a barely available card that was released, like, five days ago, smack in between christmas and new years eve celebration seasons.

Assuming that, with an optimized miner, the 7970 can do the same speed PER SHADER as the 5870, then the card could do ~520mhash on stock and ~620mhash overclocked. This is without looking into further enhancements made possible by the new architecture itself, if there are any.

[DiabloD3]

And I don't know about you, but I don't have $500 in cash laying around. I doubt most people do.

You may be right about most people, but I do. But before I give it up I'd be looking to get a reasonable return on my "invested" capital. I also understand that my capital could "magically" disappear. That's the risk. Once the code is developed I don't want the card, it wouldn't do me any good. I'd like my capital and a fair return back so I can move on to the next investment. I don't have enough cash on hand to be an angel investor.

Why don't I want the card after the development is complete? It's because I don't have the hardware and cheap enough power to run a GPU mining rig with a high enough hash rate that can pay for itself in some reasonable amount of time given the current difficulty and payout. Given my base this does not benefit me directly. I'm too late to the Bitcoin mining scene to earn a reasonable return.

This work is going to benefit the community of miners who already have extensive, and hopefully profitable, GPU mining operations and who are looking to upgrade to improve their hash rate enough to offset the costs of buying the new GPU and the power consumption. In fact those are the people I'd be approaching first. Scope all the pools and see which miners have the highest hash rates and see if they are willing to fund you.

- Zed

Woohoo, my first post as a freed noob.

The thing is, there is, what, about a thousand GPU miners who just own a single GPU and alternate between mining and gaming? If even just every other one of them donated just 1 btc to this, I wouldn't have to worry about development costs ever again. One person doesn't need to fund this, a hundred could. 150 btc is a lot to one person, but its not much to a thousand people.

[DiabloD3]

I'm not sure when "toms hardware" became an authority on bitcoin mining but the fact is a 5870 gets 440 mhash easily, consumes much less wattage than a 7970 and cost about $150

I just don't see the plausibility in anyone making any kind of major mining operation based on these cards , there's absolutely no profitability and if we use the direction AMD has taken with their drivers as any kind of indicator they are certainly not making an effort to purposely gear their cards towards mining.

Diablod3 is certainly a well known early adopter and programmer but personally I would much rather donate to a project like a miner that can squeeze more mash out of an fpga board

To me It's almost like investing in oil rigs when there are some kick ass electric cars out there.

I agree with Toms Hardware not being an authority, however, they used stock cards. What damns them is a stock 5870 can get 394 mhash/sec, theirs wasn't even close. They did not perform a useful test, and they didn't even say which miner with which settings.

Also, FPGAs do not seem to be entirely worth it. There is a high buy in cost and a very low resale value. Unless your power is extremely expensive, I don't see the point of owning one unless you're going to buy a 100 or more of them at a time.

Most people who mine own a single GPU, and this sits in their desktop and they sometimes game. This is where the vast majority of hash power comes from, and DiabloMiner serves people like that.

[DiabloD3]

no no no

not overclocking the "shit out of them"

Im talking clocks at 950/180 - with 440mhash  no big deal at all. the 5870 is a superior mining card to the 7000 series we have seen so far

the fact of the matter is AMD is NOT designing their cards with mining in mind and thats a fact we just have to accept.

a 7000 series mining farm will NEVER be profitable unless of course you get free electricity or some other bizarre circumstance

Or I find an absurdly easy optimization that puts 600-700 mhash/sec on stock settings.

[P4man]

What damns them is a stock 5870 can get 394 mhash/sec, theirs wasn't even close.

Neither is mine, nor any 5870 Ive seen here when adjusted for overclock:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

To be clear, stock speed of a 5870 is 850 MHz.

You can get slightly higher speed than what THG got out of a 5870, but it will require, among other things downgrading drivers and OpenCL. They seem to have used something newer even than 11.12 . Experimenting with older drivers on an older card to provide a comparison point for a new card is not something you can reasonably expect them to do.

Its also not reasonable to expect the 7970 will gain more speed than a 5870 using older drivers (it probably doesnt even work), or when using a better miner than what they used (Im guessing they used GUIminer)

As such their numbers are completely reasonable for an apples to apples comparison. There might be room for improvement for either card, but its just not likely that it will change the basic equation.

[DiabloD3]

What damns them is a stock 5870 can get 394 mhash/sec, theirs wasn't even close.

Neither is mine, nor any 5870 Ive seen here when adjusted for overclock:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

To be clear, stock speed of a 5870 is 850 MHz.

You can get slightly higher speed than what THG got out of a 5870, but it will require, among other things downgrading drivers and OpenCL. They seem to have used something newer even than 11.12 . Experimenting with older drivers on an older card to provide a comparison point for a new card is not something you can reasonably expect them to do.

Its also not reasonable to expect the 7970 will gain more speed than a 5870 using older drivers (it probably doesnt even work), or when using a better miner than what they used (Im guessing they used GUIminer)

As such their numbers are completely reasonable for an apples to apples comparison. There might be room for improvement for either card, but its just not likely that it will change the basic equation.

I use SDK 2.1, which is what is recommended to use on 5xxx hardware. If you want strict oranges to oranges numbers, 2.6 is really really bad on 5xxx. On my 5850@960 on 11.12, under 2.1 I get 400, 2.4/2.5 I get 387, under 2.6 using the same settings as 2.1 and 2.4/2.5 I get 357, and under adjusted settings for 2.6 I get 365.

As usual, YMMV.

[P4man]

On my 5850@960 on 11.12, under 2.1 I get 400, 2.4/2.5 I get 387, under 2.6 using the same settings as 2.1 and 2.4/2.5 I get 357, and under adjusted settings for 2.6 I get 365.

So THG is getting substantial better results than you, since its clear they are not using the old SDK 2.1. That might be because of the drivers and SDK they used are better for mining than the available (and terrible) 11.12/2.6, but the point still stands. Their results are entirely reasonable and a fair point of comparison. If anything it shows the 7970 is a bigger dud than you might think looking at the chart, because you can use older drivers to boost 5870 performance, you probably cant use them for the 7970.

[DiabloD3]

On my 5850@960 on 11.12, under 2.1 I get 400, 2.4/2.5 I get 387, under 2.6 using the same settings as 2.1 and 2.4/2.5 I get 357, and under adjusted settings for 2.6 I get 365.

So THG is getting substantial better results than you, since its clear they are not using the old SDK 2.1. That might be because of the drivers and SDK they used are better for mining than the available (and terrible) 11.12/2.6, but the point still stands. Their results are entirely reasonable and a fair point of comparison. If anything it shows the 7970 is a bigger dud than you might think looking at the chart, because you can use older drivers to boost 5870 performance, you probably cant use them for the 7970.

7970 requires at least 11.12 and at least SDK 2.6. It looks like they used 11.11 + SDK 2.5 or similar for these tests (maybe pre-release 11.12 + 2.6?). Also, I'm pretty sure 2.6-fail is a bug and nowhere near the intended behavior, so I'm going to assume their 375 is really supposed to be 380, and their 392 on the 6970 is supposed to be 397. This would mean, completely unoptimized, the 7970 is 420.

Which, really, isn't all that horrendous. 1.68 mhash/watt vs 6970s' 1.58 mhash/watt vs 5870s' 2.02 mhash/watt (or vs 2.09 on SDK 2.1). And thats unoptimized, I'm really thinking 7970s at stock can push 500 mhash which pushes us back up to 2 mhash/watt which brings us back to the glory age of 58xx cards.

The problem with 58xx is *we can't buy them anymore*. Used cards off Ebay is iffy at best, and even the $599 price of a 7970 isn't all that much when you realize 5870 and 6970s were in the same ballpark ($499 and up). If I don't get enough donations for a 7970, I can always buy a 7950, and if I can't get that, I can always wait for the inevitable price drop to drop it down even more.

50 btc at today's prices is still $200. 7950s may eventually drop to that, but I'm not sure if everyone wants to wait that long for support. The donation serves purely as a "does the community want this or not" thing.

[DiabloD3]

Spiccioli just threw in a BTC. Thanks man.

Current total: 19.0101976.