if i had enough space, i'd have the box tucked away because none of it's functions require it to be accessible but you are correct that noise is a bit of a factor in the living room so i'll probably dial the overclock back unless i some day go the water cooling route. it has given me the opportunity to turn a few new people on to bitcoins after they ask "what's with all the noise your pc is making??" haha. if the card wasn't SO long that i had to remove one of my 120mm intake fans just to fit it in my case, noise would be less of an issue too, but i have a plan to squeeze it back in there with the help of some tin snips
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i'll keep your advice in mind but doubt i'll be going to linux on this particular machine because some of the software i have running 24/7 is windows only, as far as i know, and i also game on it occasionally.
at this point, i'm probably at the "good enough" point but, of course, i continued tweaking anyway and have now run into a new issue.
i installed APP SDK 2.1 along with SDK 2.7 (which is included in the latest (12.6) drivers because i had read that even the modified kernels like the dia one i'm using, which are tweaked for performance on the 2.6+ platform, are still just trying to close the performance gap with the better performing 2.1 SDK. everything APPEARS to be working when i use the GPUs with 2.1 and my hash rate went up considerably (showing 365-370 per core), but zero shares are actually being submitted. when i select the 2.7 api, everything works properly again, albeit slower. i don't know if you are also experts at mining in windows since you both use linux, but i have created a new thread for it here:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/zero-shares-submitted-with-sdk-21-sdk-27-works-fine-on-same-machine-92258
and thanks for the help getting me as far as i have!
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