Buying AMD Radeon 7950, should I upgrade Mobo?

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Yuriman

Yuriman

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Jun 25, 2004
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You might not have a choice about it, but that seems really expensive for a 7950, considering you could find them for close to $200 just a couple months ago. The R280X is the same price and is overall a faster card (based on the 7970).

What exactly do you intend to achieve by upgrading your motherboard?
 
Redinit

Redinit

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Yuriman said:
You might not have a choice about it, but that seems really expensive for a 7950, considering you could find them for close to $200 just a couple months ago. The R280X is the same price and is overall a faster card (based on the 7970).

What exactly do you intend to achieve by upgrading your motherboard?
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These cards are the most efficient at mining scrypt, so the demand raised the prices. I don't want to fry my mobo running it 24/7. From my understanding it has a 3+1 phase and I would want to upgrade to a 4 + 1 phase VRM
 
Yuriman

Yuriman

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Redinit said:
These cards are the most efficient at mining scrypt, so the demand raised the prices.
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The 280X is based on the same core but is a faster card. I can't think of any reason to get a 7950 instead at the same price.


Redinit said:
I don't want to fry my mobo running it 24/7. From my understanding it has a 3+1 phase and I would want to upgrade to a 4 + 1 phase VRM
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If scrypt mining doesn't load your CPU heavily, there is no need or reason for beefier CPU power regulation.
 
Redinit

Redinit

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Yuriman said:
The 280X is based on the same core but is a faster card. I can't think of any reason to get a 7950 instead at the same price.




If scrypt mining doesn't load your CPU heavily, there is no need or reason for beefier CPU power regulation.
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No the CPU isn't used, thanks a lot man for the info. Any particular manufacture of the R9280x? I have a sapphire one now.
 
Yuriman

Yuriman

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Jun 25, 2004
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Depends on if you're going to be overclocking, and how much you mind noise. If not overclocking (and doing this for cash) I'd spend a little bit more for one with higher stock clocks. Maybe MSI?
 
N

nwo

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Jun 21, 2005
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I see no reason to purchase a 7950 for more than a 280x especially if your primary use is going to be mining.

With that said, the motherboard plays practically no role in your mining performance. I'm not sure what the technical way to describe it would be, but basically you can get the same mining performance from a PCI-e 1x slot that you would get from a PCI-e 16x 3.0 slot. That alone proves that the motherboard, chipset, PCI-e slot bandwidth, and many other motherboard/CPU related factors do not influence your mining performance.

All the 280x's seem to be equally bad according to the reviews I have read on newegg... Sapphire toxic edition seems legit, but one of the reviews said it gets really loud above 30% fan speed :rolleyes:

I love my Sapphire 7950 Dual X. Given the conditions, it runs extremely cool and quiet under extremely high (GPU core) overclocks (stock voltage though) and gets close to the same hashrate as my 7970.

If you are going to be running only one card in your PC then the temps will not be an issue, so just go with the cheapest card imo. Powercolor is a decent brand if you ask me, love the refurb PC 7970 I have, and their customer support is pretty good.

I have an MSI 7870. Card had insane artifacts after I installed the drivers/software from the CD provided in the retail box. Artifacts went away after installing newest AMD drivers. Fan is very loud (by far the loudest out of all my 7870s - I also have Sapphire and XFX) and rattles above 60% fan speed. Luckily, the card runs fairly cool so there is no need to go much higher than 60%. I would not recommend MSI. Just read some of the awful reviews on newegg in regards to the poor quality fans.
 
Redinit

Redinit

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May 15, 2012
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nwo said:
I see no reason to purchase a 7950 for more than a 280x especially if your primary use is going to be mining.

With that said, the motherboard plays practically no role in your mining performance. I'm not sure what the technical way to describe it would be, but basically you can get the same mining performance from a PCI-e 1x slot that you would get from a PCI-e 16x 3.0 slot. That alone proves that the motherboard, chipset, PCI-e slot bandwidth, and many other motherboard/CPU related factors do not influence your mining performance.

All the 280x's seem to be equally bad according to the reviews I have read on newegg... Sapphire toxic edition seems legit, but one of the reviews said it gets really loud above 30% fan speed :rolleyes:

I love my Sapphire 7950 Dual X. Given the conditions, it runs extremely cool and quiet under extremely high (GPU core) overclocks (stock voltage though) and gets close to the same hashrate as my 7970.

If you are going to be running only one card in your PC then the temps will not be an issue, so just go with the cheapest card imo. Powercolor is a decent brand if you ask me, love the refurb PC 7970 I have, and their customer support is pretty good.

I have an MSI 7870. Card had insane artifacts after I installed the drivers/software from the CD provided in the retail box. Artifacts went away after installing newest AMD drivers. Fan is very loud (by far the loudest out of all my 7870s - I also have Sapphire and XFX) and rattles above 60% fan speed. Luckily, the card runs fairly cool so there is no need to go much higher than 60%. I would not recommend MSI. Just read some of the awful reviews on newegg in regards to the poor quality fans.
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Should I just go with the R9-290 than?
 
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N

nwo

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Redinit said:
Should I just go with the R9-290 than?
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Assuming newegg's prices, you'd be paying $100 for an extra 100kH/s which isn't worth in my opinion since it will take you a couple of months just to break even on the additional $100 premium.
 
Redinit

Redinit

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FalseChristian

FalseChristian

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Why doesn't NVidia's GPUs not have good Compute performance? You think they would and cash in on all this mining. Resellers can't keep these R9 2xx(x) on the phucking shelves! Not so with NVidia's GPUs.
 
Redinit

Redinit

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FalseChristian said:
Why doesn't NVidia's GPUs not have good Compute performance? You think they would and cash in on all this mining. Resellers can't keep these R9 2xx(x) on the phucking shelves! Not so with NVidia's GPUs.
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Yeah, it just so happened that AMD had the best performance for scrypt mining. They didn't plan on it, but when they found out, retailers started raising prices. I would think Nvidia is rethinking some things, because there is little reason to buy a Nvidia, as you can do more with an AMD at the moment.
 
Fanatical Meat

Fanatical Meat

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Feb 4, 2009
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I wonder if we will get to a point where Governments basically shut down the exchanges for money laundering and the trend abruptly stops. Will there be a massive deluge of powerful graphics cards for super cheap?
 
Redinit

Redinit

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Fanatical Meat said:
I wonder if we will get to a point where Governments basically shut down the exchanges for money laundering and the trend abruptly stops. Will there be a massive deluge of powerful graphics cards for super cheap?
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They're trying to regulate it, I don't see why they would shut it down when they can profit from it.

But I would assume the prices would drop.
 
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