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

[DeathAndTaxes]

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.

That is hardly a problem.  The prices are so discounted <$150 for 5870 and $300 for 5970 that hell if one in 5 fails you still come out way ahead.  Ebay has a 30 day buyer protection.  Of 13 5970s I bought on ebay.  1 I returned (no issue) because its second core seemed very unstable in first two weeks.  The other 12 are running fine 9 months later all purchased at a >50% discount to new price.  The failure rate after 30 days seems to relatively low (note it doesn't need to be 0% because cards are massively discounted).  So far I had one card "fail" when a fan went bad.  Some cleaning, and replacement fan and it is back in operation.

Comparing the price of a card released 3 years ago is dubious.  Moore's law marches on.  The issue in price isn't nominal $ but MH/$.  So say optimized you could get 500 MH/s from a 7970 for $550.  It still would be garbage compared to used 5970 pushing 730+ MH/s for $300.

[DiabloD3]

thogar threw in 1 btc.

Current total: 20.0101976.

[gat3way]

Releasing a GCN-optimized miner would be a HUGE mistake.

Really, efforts should monetize. Just stop it before it's too late - you are turning the bitcoin mining community into an even more fucked up version of the SL3 one for yet another generation of GPU chips. Be responsible

[Starlightbreaker]

Releasing a GCN-optimized miner would be a HUGE mistake.

what?

[rjk]

Releasing a GCN-optimized miner would be a HUGE mistake.

what?

Just another raving lunatic.

[DiabloD3]

I have added a much easier way of donating to this. I have added a donation mode to DiabloMiner, download the most recent binary and use the -b flag.

[chungenhung]

problem is.... this card cannot be bought anywhere yet.

[DiabloD3]

problem is.... this card cannot be bought anywhere yet.

Yet, but soon. We already know its going to be between $400 and $600. Donations do not happen over night.

[newguy05]

i will be pretty upset if the 7xxx comes out only marginally better for mining. Because i just sold both 5970 at $300 a pop on ebay getting ready for the 7xxx series. Miner is down right now waiting for the new card to release.

[Starlightbreaker]

you...

...you sold 5970 based on a rumor and news on 79xx?

[DeathAndTaxes]

i will be pretty upset if the 7xxx comes out only marginally better for mining. Because i just sold both 5970 at $300 a pop on ebay getting ready for the 7xxx series. Miner is down right now waiting for the new card to release.

Why would you do that?  The discussion has been for months that GCN architecture may not be mining friendly.  

Your sold 5970s deliver 1.4 to 1.5GH.  You do realize that it is a pipe dream to think the 7970 will be ANYWHERE near that.  Worse at launch the card is likely going to sell at $549 and even then availability may be difficult. 

Disablo may be able to pull some respectable performance out of the card (eventually) but your sale was downright foolish.  If the 7970 could someday deliver 500 MH that would be decent.  600 MH+ would be amazing.  It isn't going to deliver 1.5GH.  You can't optimize something out of nothing.

[DiabloD3]

i will be pretty upset if the 7xxx comes out only marginally better for mining. Because i just sold both 5970 at $300 a pop on ebay getting ready for the 7xxx series. Miner is down right now waiting for the new card to release.

Why would you do that?  The discussion has been for months that GCN architecture may not be mining friendly.  

Your sold 5970s deliver 1.4 to 1.5GH.  You do realize that it is a pipe dream to think the 7970 will be ANYWHERE near that.  Worse at launch the card is likely going to sell at $549 and even then availability may be difficult. 

Disablo may be able to pull some respectable performance out of the card (eventually) but your sale was downright foolish.  If the 7970 could someday deliver 500 MH that would be decent.  600 MH+ would be amazing.  It isn't going to deliver 1.5GH.  You can't optimize something out of nothing.

I'll have to agree here. Unless I hit it out of the park and find, like, some hidden single cycle "hash ALL the coins" function, I'd still use a 5970 over a 7970 especially since they're two different products... what you want is a 7990 (the dual 7970 board, matching the 6990 and the 5970), which will have a retail price of approximately $9001.

[BOARBEAR]

i will be pretty upset if the 7xxx comes out only marginally better for mining. Because i just sold both 5970 at $300 a pop on ebay getting ready for the 7xxx series. Miner is down right now waiting for the new card to release.

Why would you do that?  The discussion has been for months that GCN architecture may not be mining friendly.  

Your sold 5970s deliver 1.4 to 1.5GH.  You do realize that it is a pipe dream to think the 7970 will be ANYWHERE near that.  Worse at launch the card is likely going to sell at $549 and even then availability may be difficult. 

Disablo may be able to pull some respectable performance out of the card (eventually) but your sale was downright foolish.  If the 7970 could someday deliver 500 MH that would be decent.  600 MH+ would be amazing.  It isn't going to deliver 1.5GH.  You can't optimize something out of nothing.

He did not say 7970.  He could wait for a 7890 or something that uses VLIW4 which are better at mining. 

[DeathAndTaxes]

i will be pretty upset if the 7xxx comes out only marginally better for mining. Because i just sold both 5970 at $300 a pop on ebay getting ready for the 7xxx series. Miner is down right now waiting for the new card to release.

Why would you do that?  The discussion has been for months that GCN architecture may not be mining friendly.  

Your sold 5970s deliver 1.4 to 1.5GH.  You do realize that it is a pipe dream to think the 7970 will be ANYWHERE near that.  Worse at launch the card is likely going to sell at $549 and even then availability may be difficult.  

Disablo may be able to pull some respectable performance out of the card (eventually) but your sale was downright foolish.  If the 7970 could someday deliver 500 MH that would be decent.  600 MH+ would be amazing.  It isn't going to deliver 1.5GH.  You can't optimize something out of nothing.

He did not say 7970.  He could wait for a 7890 or something that uses VLIW4 which are better at mining.  

Well a couple problems w/ that.

1) 7890 or 7870 or 7850 will all be relatively expensive at launch.
2) Launch for the 78xx series isn't until Feb or March and that might be pushed back further.  What is the oppertunity cost of 2x 5970 for 4 months?
3) There is no guarantee that 7870 will use VLIW4 or be any better at mining.  Later reports indicate the 78xx will be GCN also and only the entry level OEM trash (76xx) will be die shrinked VLIW4.  

Like I said all this has been extensively discussed for last month or so.  


Now IF the 78xx series has good performance and IF someone like diablo can tweak mining kernel enough to unlock that performance AND if the cards launch on time and IF AMD is aggressive in pricing then MAYBE the 7850 will be a decent mining cards ... in 3 months.  To sell hands down the best mining card for a hope is .... silly.

[DiabloD3]

i will be pretty upset if the 7xxx comes out only marginally better for mining. Because i just sold both 5970 at $300 a pop on ebay getting ready for the 7xxx series. Miner is down right now waiting for the new card to release.

Why would you do that?  The discussion has been for months that GCN architecture may not be mining friendly.  

Your sold 5970s deliver 1.4 to 1.5GH.  You do realize that it is a pipe dream to think the 7970 will be ANYWHERE near that.  Worse at launch the card is likely going to sell at $549 and even then availability may be difficult. 

Disablo may be able to pull some respectable performance out of the card (eventually) but your sale was downright foolish.  If the 7970 could someday deliver 500 MH that would be decent.  600 MH+ would be amazing.  It isn't going to deliver 1.5GH.  You can't optimize something out of nothing.

He did not say 7970.  He could wait for a 7890 or something that uses VLIW4 which are better at mining. 

78xx is most likely going to be the existing 69xx arch fabbed at 28nm (since it was originally meant for 28nm anyhow). 69xx still doesn't beat SDK 2.1-able VLIW5. That isn't a good trade unless you can get a 6970-like card for under $150 (and then he can go buy four of them).

[newguy05]

i will be pretty upset if the 7xxx comes out only marginally better for mining. Because i just sold both 5970 at $300 a pop on ebay getting ready for the 7xxx series. Miner is down right now waiting for the new card to release.

well my reasoning was the new gfx card will be released in the next week or two, causing the older models to drop in price significantly as this is a full refresh not just an upgrade.  So if 7xxx isnt all that hyped up to be for bitcoins, i should be able to score some of the older cards at much lower price otherwise i will just get a pair of 7xxx. The one thing i didnt want to do was holding onto an aging pair of 5970 that will be two generations old.  

If it was some cheaper $150 card i would probably just kept it, but at $300 a pop they can still lose quite a bit of value quickly.

[tonto]

I'm pledging 5btc to Diablo.  Will either send it tonight or tomorrow when I get home (if I forget (I have kids - they steal your memory) Diablo has permission to publicly call me out until I pay up.   )

[racerguy]

6 x 7670 should get 1.2 ghsh/motherboard, might be worthwhile.

[DeathAndTaxes]

6 x 7670 should get 1.2 ghsh/motherboard, might be worthwhile.

If you have a lot of space. 

3x 5970 gets 2.2 to 2.3GH/ rig and are pretty cheap to assemble (no extenders needed w/ right MB).

[DiabloD3]

6 x 7670 should get 1.2 ghsh/motherboard, might be worthwhile.

Depending on what that series ends up being, sure. AMD needs to stop with the chimera families. I liked it better when every member of the family was some variant of the main arch.