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Trade my GTX 680 for a Gigabyte 7970 GHz card?

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Is it a straight trade? Is he giving you card + cash? I don't think I would do it. I think the 7970 is a great card, don't get me wrong. Yet your trade would mostly be a lateral trade, because they perform pretty similarly.
 
he is giving you cash.


the 7970 will bit coin mine at about 510 hash and 190 watts. just do one setting at under clock for bit coin and other setting for gaming and a third setting for movies.

if you mine at 510 hash you earn a bitcoin about week.

so it earn 12 bucks a week.

it heats your home it will be getting colder.

and it will burn 3 bucks or so a week in power..

so at todays prices it will net 9 bucks a week easy.


1 week should make up for the 10 dollar price difference .

of course if you have a game that you like that runs really well on nvidia and so so on amd then don't trade.




bit coin is easy to setup.



https://walletbit.com/ your wallet

http://bitminter.com/ a decent mining site

http://www.btcbuy.info/ a place to buy amazon newegg and other gift cards with the money earned.



since you paid for the 680 card which does not bit mine at good speeds.


you will lay out $0 to be able to make 8 or 9 bucks a week.. even if the bitcoin craze dies out you only need 5 or 6 weeks of mining to make back 40 to 50 bucks. for no money out of pocket.
 
you seem like you really have your mind made up already. If your asking if its crazy then i would answer no. But as others have indicated, your not really gaining anything physically. But you obviously there is some emotional gain to be had, the happiness of owning a very capable AMD GPU. It would be a great toy for you to tinker and i am sure you would find joy in that too.

But as far as bitcoining. Geez, is that really worth it? 9 bucks a week? Then the huge risk that all your months worth of work goes a bust when the scammers skim millions from all the small time worker ants. I cannot see whats appealing. I mean its not a lot of money at all, just small change. All the hassle for a tiny tiny amount. Thats less money than allowance wages for a 6 year old. I just dont see the appeal. Especially when its inevitably gonna bust again when the "hackers" run off with accumulative mega-millions the stole from the wallets of the masses. There is no accountability and everyone knows its gonna happen again. Why waste your time on such a questionable operation that seems to be a set up to be scammed?

Anyway, sorry about the rant. Bitcoins isnt for everyone. Not remotely appealing to me and i would bet that more people arent interested in it as well.
 
I dunno about the gigabyte but It's stock at 1100 gpu core. My card overclocks at 1170/1580. I dunno how others got the card overclocked to 1200 and above. But it runs pretty cool.

If you like adaptive vsync and don't plan on running crazy resolutions or multiple monitors the 680 is great.
 
ocre said:
you seem like you really have your mind made up already. If your asking if its crazy then i would answer no. But as others have indicated, your not really gaining anything physically. But you obviously there is some emotional gain to be had, the happiness of owning a very capable AMD GPU. It would be a great toy for you to tinker and i am sure you would find joy in that too.

But as far as bitcoining. Geez, is that really worth it? 9 bucks a week? Then the huge risk that all your months worth of work goes a bust when the scammers skim millions from all the small time worker ants. I cannot see whats appealing. I mean its not a lot of money at all, just small change. All the hassle for a tiny tiny amount. Thats less money than allowance wages for a 6 year old. I just dont see the appeal. Especially when its inevitably gonna bust again when the "hackers" run off with accumulative mega-millions the stole from the wallets of the masses. There is no accountability and everyone knows its gonna happen again. Why waste your time on such a questionable operation that seems to be a set up to be scammed?

Anyway, sorry about the rant. Bitcoins isnt for everyone. Not remotely appealing to me and i would bet that more people arent interested in it as well.
Click to expand...

Phil is very optimistic that prices will remain steady or rise (no guarantee of that); that difficulty will be static for the next "5-6 weeks" (which is absurd if you look at the large rise in difficulty over time since the summer... difficulty will likely double in the next 5-6 weeks, perhaps quadruple or more if ASICs roll out soon). He is also leaving out this important part: mining rewards halve at the end of November, possibly sooner if ASICs (special purpose chips that are 20 times more efficient than GPUs at mining) roll out before then. And electricity is not free for most people so it will actually hurt your profits by more than 50%. Example: say you make $40 in bitcoins but pay $15 in electricity to do so.. if rewards halve, you will make $20 and pay $15 in electricity, so your profits will drop by 80% even though rewards dropped only 50%. If you're just starting to mine now it's too late to make much profit off GPUs, try buying an ASIC instead.

I think keeping the warranty and saving unnecessary wear and tear make it a no-brainer to keep OP's current card.
 
ocre said:
But as far as bitcoining. Geez, is that really worth it? 9 bucks a week? Then the huge risk that all your months worth of work goes a bust when the scammers skim millions from all the small time worker ants. I cannot see whats appealing. I mean its not a lot of money at all, just small change. All the hassle for a tiny tiny amount. Thats less money than allowance wages for a 6 year old. I just dont see the appeal. Especially when its inevitably gonna bust again when the "hackers" run off with accumulative mega-millions the stole from the wallets of the masses. There is no accountability and everyone knows its gonna happen again. Why waste your time on such a questionable operation that seems to be a set up to be scammed?
Click to expand...

People have been saying this for a very long time now and it hasn't happened. I'm not saying there haven't been instances of some of it, but it's not at all inevitable, like you are making it sound. There are people out there running AMD 5000/6000/7000 cards that have made enough money to make being a computer enthusiast, not just free, but profitable. At $9/wk you would pay for a 7970 in a year. Basically, free state of the art card.

I've been reading these posts since the 5000 series and it's proven to be nothing more than fear mongering. Frankly, I wonder the motivation for it? Could it end tomorrow? Sure it could. Everyone knows that though. It doesn't mean that it will end tomorrow, and if it does anyone who bought an AMD card, because of bitcoins, will somehow be worse off than someone who owns an nVidia card.
 
lehtv said:
I would never trade a 680 for a 7970. I'd rather have similar performance at a 70W lower power consumption.
Click to expand...

This has been shown to be wrong on our forum at least 10x and it's disappointing to see that it keeps being repeated yet again.

Reference 7970 Ghz edition card does not exist in retail. It was used for testing purposes only for reviewers to estimate performance, nothing else. After-market 7970 Ghz cards use FAR less power. They use non-reference PCBs and because the cards run cooler, they use less power as well. The difference is huge between after-market 7970 Ghz and reference 7970 GE card tested on AT. Not to mention AT's power numbers have been off from every review on the Internet to begin with. They have GTX670 using less power than an HD7950 but in 20-30 reviews HD7950 uses less power than a GTX670. Trust 1 review of 20-30 that consistently show that AT's numbers are way off.

Visiontek 1050mhz 7970 = peak of 181W
HIS HD7970 X 1180mhz = 224W

Even Sapphire Toxic that uses 6GB of GDDR5 uses 230W at 1100mhz.

Even non-GE 7970s overclocked don't use much more power than a GTX680 card. 1070mhz MSI Lightning uses just 22W more power on average across 6 games. Hardware.fr and Xbitlabs have HD7970 @ 1150mhz consuming about 225-238W of power. So how in the world can an after-market HD7970 1100mhz use 70W more than a 680?

power-consumption.jpg


70W power consumption difference is a gross exaggeration that keeps getting repeated because there is no such card for sale as a reference HD7970 Ghz edition.

The real world difference in power consumption between an after-market Gigabyte 7970 Ghz and an after-market Gigabyte GTX680 will be 30-40W but the AMD card will be at least 10% faster and in games where AMD is faster it'll grow to 20-30% faster. If someone wants a more power efficient card by 30-40W, wants specific NV features, the GTX680 makes sense. However, there is no question that it offers less consistent performance across many games. In games where 680 trails, it is sometimes only as fast as a 7950 (or slower). In which games does HD7970 GE lose to the 660Ti? Furthermore, when 680 leads, it's usually by 5-10%, 15% on rare occasions.
 
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blastingcap said:
Phil is very optimistic that prices will remain steady or rise (no guarantee of that); that difficulty will be static for the next "5-6 weeks" (which is absurd if you look at the large rise in difficulty over time since the summer... difficulty will likely double in the next 5-6 weeks, perhaps quadruple or more if ASICs roll out soon). He is also leaving out this important part: mining rewards halve at the end of November, possibly sooner if ASICs (special purpose chips that are 20 times more efficient than GPUs at mining) roll out before then. And electricity is not free for most people so it will actually hurt your profits by more than 50%. Example: say you make $40 in bitcoins but pay $15 in electricity to do so.. if rewards halve, you will make $20 and pay $15 in electricity, so your profits will drop by 80% even though rewards dropped only 50%. If you're just starting to mine now it's too late to make much profit off GPUs, try buying an ASIC instead.

I think keeping the warranty and saving unnecessary wear and tear make it a no-brainer to keep OP's current card.
Click to expand...



in the op's case his intial cost to bit mine would be $0 .

his example is not the norm. he would make back money and he does not have to stress his card he can underclock . My guess is in the next 5 to 6 weeks he could make 20 to 50 profit. after power cost. so you could say the trade is not even he is trading and getting cash. a small amount but still some extra cash.

to me the nvidia cards only work if you have a specific game in mind that they are a lot better then an amd. more then one game is out there that the gtx 680 is a lot better then an amd hd7970 especially on a smaller screen resolution.


I had a 680 and I have 1920 by 1200 screen. It was a fine card for that screen. But I don't game that much and I have a use for the hd7970's above and beyond the gaming, mining.


If you are buying from the beginning I do not think you should really think much about mining. He has spent the money and is thinking about changing at no cost. So 4 to 6 weeks of mining will put some money in his pocket. Yeah maybe 40 or 50 is high. More like 15 to 25. Just one more factor for him to think of. Your point of taxing the card does have some validity. It is to be considered.
 
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Good post RussianSensation, but the underlying point still stands - I would rather have the card that consumes less power. especially if I already owned it.
 
I have a 7970 going to get a 650 as a dedicated physx card. Best of both worlds!

I usually have used AMD cards right from the ATI 9700Pro, 9800Pro then 4870X2 and never had a problem with either of them. Then I get a GTX 460 2Win and I swear that card is the reason for some new gray hairs.

Since I was past the return period, I decided to just bite the bullet and use the Step it up program to get the GTX 660ti. Which I'll more than likely sell or give it to my nephew.
 
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3DVagabond said:
People have been saying this for a very long time now and it hasn't happened. I'm not saying there haven't been instances of some of it, but it's not at all inevitable, like you are making it sound. There are people out there running AMD 5000/6000/7000 cards that have made enough money to make being a computer enthusiast, not just free, but profitable. At $9/wk you would pay for a 7970 in a year. Basically, free state of the art card.

I've been reading these posts since the 5000 series and it's proven to be nothing more than fear mongering. Frankly, I wonder the motivation for it? Could it end tomorrow? Sure it could. Everyone knows that though. It doesn't mean that it will end tomorrow, and if it does anyone who bought an AMD card, because of bitcoins, will somehow be worse off than someone who owns an nVidia card.
Click to expand...

Nine dollars a week is chump change. Seriously spend twice as much a day for my lunch not to even speak of dinner. I just dont see how anyone thinks this is something great???? i mean there are so many ways you could find to earn that tiny amount in a week, and thats not even being creative.

This is my opinion, and i am sure others share it. You say its not gonna go bust? it already has! Millions have been stolen by those....."danged ole hackers" without any hope of every being caught. This plummets their value to nothing so it effects not only the people who got robbed directly but everyone. There is zero accountability and when they steal millions again they will be like, oops those hackers done it again. This is the major robberies but it doesnt stop there. People get ripped off all the time with bitcoins. That information is everywhere, just visit a community and read one after another. These small time scams are individuals losing their coins or not getting payed for the weeks of work they put into it.

I am not saying dont bitcoin. What i am saying is that not everyone is interested in it. There are many reasons and some of which i have listed. The main reasons i dont care i have stated. I cant see the appeal at all. None. It is a way to make some change i guess if your in need of some. There is so many better ways to have some extra cash to put back than something as questionable as bit-mining. We talking real money and not a little change a week.

And finally your statement," i wonder the motivation for it". LOL!!!
I told the OP to swap if he likes AMD and especially sense he is fond of them. I concluded this without bitcoins at all. My motivation is to step in and speak up about bitminning. Some seem to automatically think it is for everyone when its not. I am not saying that bitcoins shouldnt be done, there are some that seem to find it useful in their life. But i find it not at all interesting and there are many many others who arent looking to bitcoin for tiny bits of change.

Also to say there is no risk is laughable. I wonder what the motivation is for that?
 
Ocre, mining is essentially risk free if you sell coins right away. There is a risk if you hold onto them. None of this really matters since the age of GPU mining is about to come to a screeching halt with ASICs and exploding difficulty level coupled with halving of revenue... profitability will be very low or nonexistent. So let's just leave mining out of this altogether since it'll be a nonissue within 7 weeks.

I would value having a warranty at a healthy dollar amount and that's why I wouldn't trade cards. Plus we don't know how hard his friend has been riding his 7970.
 
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ocre said:
Nine dollars a week is chump change. Seriously spend twice as much a day for my lunch not to even speak of dinner. I just dont see how anyone thinks this is something great???? i mean there are so many ways you could find to earn that tiny amount in a week, and thats not even being creative.
Click to expand...

With a straight up no cash involved trade, 1100mhz HD7970 is actually faster on average and he can mine until GPU mining fails. I am pretty happy that I didn't have to waste $500 on a GTX680 when the alternative was free. Not only is the OP getting a faster card, but has a chance to make free $ on the side. Strictly from a performance perspective, even in the 3 games OP listed, 7970 1100mhz should be faster in GW2 and in Dirt 3. Also, I don't believe in "wearing the GPU down" theory as companies like HIS warranty their Tahiti cards for 24/7 operations 365 days a year for 2 years. I've ran all my CPUs and GPUs for roughly 2 years before I upgrade at full load and they have never failed on me. If anything, I'd be more worried about GTX680 can't take voltage above stock without degrading silicon and reference 680 PCB and VRM setup is nothing special. If the OP is happy with the 680, there is nothing wrong with keeping it but there are legitimate reasons to switch to the 7970 since it's faster overclocked in the most demanding situations (Skyrim + mods, 8xMSAA, graphically demanding games like Metro 2033, Witcher 2 EE, Crysis, Arma II games), can bitcoin mine and has more consistent performance in a wider variety of games. You also get 3GB of VRAM as a free bonus.

balane said:
Well, fate has intervened and presented me with an opportunity. An acquaintance of mine has acquired a Gigabyte 7970 GHz edition from Craig's List. I've seen it in his computer, seen games play on it. It's a perfectly fine functioning card. He asked me if I liked it and I said yes, very much. In an off-handed remark he asked if I would want to trade my GTX 680 for it. (He's very much an nVidia fan but he got a great price on the AMD card. As far as I know he might have bought it hoping to trade with me.)
Click to expand...

Why don't you guys just swap cards for 1 day/week and see if each likes the performance, noise levels and drivers for their new card? If not, you can keep the 680. It also gives you a chance to see how well this 7970 overclocks and compare to your own overclocked 680. If his 7970 has annoying coil whine or overclocks poorly, then you have no reason to trade. If he refuses to let you use his HD7970 for 1 day and swap cards with you, then don't do the trade. That's what I would do. This limits the risk of a trade for you since you can test the card out for yourself.
 
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ocre said:
Nine dollars a week is chump change. Seriously spend twice as much a day for my lunch not to even speak of dinner. I just dont see how anyone thinks this is something great???? i mean there are so many ways you could find to earn that tiny amount in a week, and thats not even being creative.

This is my opinion, and i am sure others share it. You say its not gonna go bust? it already has! Millions have been stolen by those....."danged ole hackers" without any hope of every being caught. This plummets their value to nothing so it effects not only the people who got robbed directly but everyone. There is zero accountability and when they steal millions again they will be like, oops those hackers done it again. This is the major robberies but it doesnt stop there. People get ripped off all the time with bitcoins. That information is everywhere, just visit a community and read one after another. These small time scams are individuals losing their coins or not getting payed for the weeks of work they put into it.

I am not saying dont bitcoin. What i am saying is that not everyone is interested in it. There are many reasons and some of which i have listed. The main reasons i dont care i have stated. I cant see the appeal at all. None. It is a way to make some change i guess if your in need of some. There is so many better ways to have some extra cash to put back than something as questionable as bit-mining. We talking real money and not a little change a week.

And finally your statement," i wonder the motivation for it". LOL!!!
I told the OP to swap if he likes AMD and especially sense he is fond of them. I concluded this without bitcoins at all. My motivation is to step in and speak up about bitminning. Some seem to automatically think it is for everyone when its not. I am not saying that bitcoins shouldnt be done, there are some that seem to find it useful in their life. But i find it not at all interesting and there are many many others who arent looking to bitcoin for tiny bits of change.

Also to say there is no risk is laughable. I wonder what the motivation is for that?
Click to expand...

I already put $9/wk in to context. It's = to a free HD7970 in a year. Your food budget is irrelevant to the discussion.

I never said it's not going to go bust. I only said that people have been predicting that it will for years now, and it hasn't.

Millions have been stolen? If you are concerned about that, get offline immediately. Do you have any idea how much theft occurs online everyday?

And yes, I do wonder the motivation. You post a whole wall of text to marginalize something that you have no concern for. What would motivate someone to do that? It makes no sense to me.

For example, I don't care about PhysX. It's a gimmick nVidia is using to scam everyone. It kills performance and is completely unrealistic looking. But if someone thinks it's cool and worth it, that's fine with me. I honestly don't care.
 
ocre said:
Nine dollars a week is chump change. Seriously spend twice as much a day for my lunch not to even speak of dinner. I just dont see how anyone thinks this is something great???? i mean there are so many ways you could find to earn that tiny amount in a week, and thats not even being creative.
Click to expand...

I know it's like nothing, but would you please show everyone you are serious here, by sending me $9 each week? It's for science, and you won't even miss it trust me.
 
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