We are important! AMD acknowledges Mining!

[legolouman]

Do you guys have a recommendation on a manufacturer?  like XFX, Sapphire, etc?
 
It'll be my first high-end video card purchase, so I don't want to buy crappy and suffer later.

Stick with ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, and Sapphire. The rest is second or third tier shit, especially XFX and Powercolor and Club3D.

I've always found HIS to be acceptable. Not the first choice of mine, but it is acceptable.

[DiabloD3]

Do you guys have a recommendation on a manufacturer?  like XFX, Sapphire, etc?
 
It'll be my first high-end video card purchase, so I don't want to buy crappy and suffer later.

Stick with ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, and Sapphire. The rest is second or third tier shit, especially XFX and Powercolor and Club3D.

I've always found HIS to be acceptable. Not the first choice of mine, but it is acceptable.

HIS is probably okay as long as you stick with the reference designs.

[ThiagoCMC]

Do you guys have a recommendation on a manufacturer?  like XFX, Sapphire, etc?
 
It'll be my first high-end video card purchase, so I don't want to buy crappy and suffer later.

Stick with ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, and Sapphire. The rest is second or third tier shit, especially XFX and Powercolor and Club3D.

My best 5870 is a PowerColor... I have 3 of it mining @ 890fxa-gd70, 24x7, non-stop, for 5 months...

[Transisto]

Do you guys have a recommendation on a manufacturer?  like XFX, Sapphire, etc?
 
It'll be my first high-end video card purchase, so I don't want to buy crappy and suffer later.

Stick with ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, and Sapphire. The rest is second or third tier shit, especially XFX and Powercolor and Club3D.

My best 5870 is a PowerColor... I have 3 of it mining @ 890fxa-gd70, 24x7, non-stop, for 5 months...

My best cards are also 5870 PowerColor,  @970mhz

I would put sapphire among the worst.

[AngelusWebDesign]

It looks like the 7970 is going to be garbage, unless there's something I'm missing.

The 5970 has 3200 stream processors, for a cost of $500.
The 7970 has 2048 stream processors, for a cost of

I should point out that stream processors are EVERYTHING when it comes to mining. If that weren't the case, we'd all be happily mining on nVidia hardware.

So the card better be cheap, like around $330, to be an equivalent value.

If the card is $600 or $700 you can forget it.

[legolouman]

It looks like the 7970 is going to be garbage, unless there's something I'm missing.

The 5970 has 3200 stream processors, for a cost of $500.
The 7970 has 2048 stream processors, for a cost of

I should point out that stream processors are EVERYTHING when it comes to mining. If that weren't the case, we'd all be happily mining on nVidia hardware.

So the card better be cheap, like around $330, to be an equivalent value.

If the card is $600 or $700 you can forget it.

I beg to differ with the benches I've seen, and the digital optimization from AMD (specifically for 'folding and mining').

Without, what I assume are special mining drivers, people have been getting like 460-480 stable. But there's that optimization, which could boost it more.

I'm talking about AMD app acceleration, quoting from here: http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/7000/7970/Pages/radeon-7970.aspx

[ZodiacDragon84]

I need to look into those VISA cards that you buy at like Walmart, where you put on cash (non reloadable I think?) but do you know if you can use those cards over the Internet as a legit Credit Card?

I use my Wal mart money card regularly online. and they are re loadable

[DiabloD3]

It looks like the 7970 is going to be garbage, unless there's something I'm missing.

The 5970 has 3200 stream processors, for a cost of $500.
The 7970 has 2048 stream processors, for a cost of

I should point out that stream processors are EVERYTHING when it comes to mining. If that weren't the case, we'd all be happily mining on nVidia hardware.

So the card better be cheap, like around $330, to be an equivalent value.

If the card is $600 or $700 you can forget it.

You're missing a lot. Stream processor numbers across unrelated archs are not equivalent.

[Unacceptable]

Do you guys have a recommendation on a manufacturer?  like XFX, Sapphire, etc?
 
It'll be my first high-end video card purchase, so I don't want to buy crappy and suffer later.

Stick with ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, and Sapphire. The rest is second or third tier shit, especially XFX and Powercolor and Club3D.

I beg to differ about XFX,I have great results with thier 6970's & the warranty is lifetime!!! Not 1-3 years

Mine are reference type,the non ref type I don't know.I try to stay away from them.

[bronan]

Well most funny of all is that sapphire and xfx are from the same owner.
But  to be exact the XFX has limited life time warranty. But i agree its a top card not an B brand
I got 2 problems with my cards and XFX allways helped me to get a solution.
For me XFX is even better then all the others

[cuz0882]

The 7970 would be a horrible investment for bitcoin mining. Not even a good upgrade for gaming if you already have a decent card. Games only run so well.

[DiabloD3]

The 7970 would be a horrible investment for bitcoin mining. Not even a good upgrade for gaming if you already have a decent card. Games only run so well.

Well, think of it like this. If the best you can get on a 5870 at 188 watts at stock clocks is about 380 give or take (not on SDK 2.1, of course), and the best you can get out of 7970 is a theoretical upwards of over 600 at 200 or 250 watts, and you either want to stick with a single GPU (you mine on the side), or you're at a slot premium (a bunch of mega miners at 4, 5, 6, whatever cards per box, and you have a couple boxes) and it is cost prohibitive to buy more boxes (or you ran out of power and don't want to install more circuits), 7970 still wins, especially once it starts dropping below $400.

I mean, its either that, or you sell your soul to the FPGA people. FPGA just isn't right for everyone.

[Mousepotato]

FWIW, my 5870s @ 440-450 MH/s were using right around 200W ea.  I think they were at 990 MHz, 1.175v IIRC.

[kokjo]

+1 to AMD!

[The LT]

Sapphire is total crap. 4 cards died on me in the past month alone. One just died completely and three others had cooling fan failures. And no, they were only 73 degrees C hot...

[Starlightbreaker]

weird.

10 out of 11 cards i have are sapphires.

there's one i've been using for ~3 years now.

[teflone]

Sapphire is total crap. 4 cards died on me in the past month alone. One just died completely and three others had cooling fan failures. And no, they were only 73 degrees C hot...

Just a tip, your Power supply is too small...

[DiabloD3]

Sapphire is total crap. 4 cards died on me in the past month alone. One just died completely and three others had cooling fan failures. And no, they were only 73 degrees C hot...

Just a tip, your Power supply is too small...

That wont kill the cards, it'll just kill the PSU.

He probably killed the fans by running them at 100%.

[legolouman]

Sapphire is total crap. 4 cards died on me in the past month alone. One just died completely and three others had cooling fan failures. And no, they were only 73 degrees C hot...

Just a tip, your Power supply is too small...

That wont kill the cards, it'll just kill the PSU.

He probably killed the fans by running them at 100%.

I agree, I've killed cards that way. I do have to say, my HIS IceQx stays at like 30 while mining. I could push nearly 375mh/s if I chose to.

[despoiler]

The 7970 would be a horrible investment for bitcoin mining. Not even a good upgrade for gaming if you already have a decent card. Games only run so well.

IDK about dedicated bitcoin mining, but I disagree entirely on gaming.  There is no magic limit on how well games run other than your video card.  CPUs stopped being a factor a few years ago.  My 7970 is almost twice as fast as my 5850 with the same settings in various games.  I'm still way over my 5850 with all the bells and whistles turned on.  The 7970 is an absolute gaming monster.  For someone like me that games and does bitcoining on my downtime the 7970 is again almost twice as fast as my 5850.  I'll take it since equipment cost is not even a consideration on a gaming rig. 

Sapphire is total crap. 4 cards died on me in the past month alone. One just died completely and three others had cooling fan failures. And no, they were only 73 degrees C hot...

How are fans dying from heavy use an indication of manufacturer quality? 

Sapphire is like the grand daddy of all of the AMD card makers.  They sell the most AMD cards in the entire world and have been making cards since the dawn of AMD time.  They also have an R&D role with AMD so their knowledge is second to none.  That doesn't mean they don't have defects, but my research indicates they are every bit a top tier manufacturer.