Topic: WHere are the 7800's????? (Read 2827 times)

They just ran out at OCUK of sapphire 5850's, which they sold from £100 inc VAT about 3 month ago to £160 inc VAT 2 months ago. I got loads of them and all do 1000/300 and use a shroud like XFX's on them. Unlike cheap and nasty XFX, sapphire released Trixx, An overclocking utility. I've had an XFX 5870 die on me cause of the cheap fans they use.

I agree now there hard to find, But OCUK have been pumping them out like theres no tomorrow haha. Your loss

My loss? I'm not talking about three months ago mate, I bought those 5850 extremes from OCUK back then too - got 4 of them and they're running very well (not getting 1000/300 though - 975/300 seems to be my limit, but I don't tweak voltages).

I think I paid £120. Then they went up, then I started looking at 6950s, then they were gone. There seems a steady supply of 5830s though, at videocardshop.co.uk - but the quality of the cards seems somewhat suspect. Time will tell - I've had two cards from videocardshop fail on me (one XFX 5850 Black Edition - which was crap and couldn't overclock a damn - and one of the Peak Value 5830s).

I'm keeping an eye on OCUK for Asus DirectCU II 6950s now - they're awesome, well built, solid metal, unlockable shaders, and have the all-important overdrive upper limit raised so an easy 430 MH/sec is possible without serious BIOS tweakage.

The 5830s are still nice though since you can run four of them off a cheap 800W supply without stretching it. PSUs get expensive over 1000W and that's what you need for four 6950s when overclocked

Not to mention the cost of electricity... anyway, when was the last time you saw a 5850 or 5870 on a UK website (new, not overclocked till the original owner smelled smoke and returned it under distance selling regulations ) - let alone for sensible money?

Remember, manufacturers are *still* turning out new designs of cards using the 5830 cores - I spotted a load for sale on videocardshop.co.uk and picked some up, thinking they'd be the same 'Value' 5830 (made by Peak, with two protruding tall heatpipes, every one with snapped fan housing screws, though that didn't stop them working, and all with completely random overclocking potential from extreme to limited).

They weren't - they were new XFX units - a completely new design I hadn't seen before, no complete card shroud, just a spiral-heatpipe fan cooler and a passive heatsink on the VRMs. I haven't tried overclocking these in anger yet, but the one I've got up and running seems OK (around 5˚C hotter than the Peak twin-heatpipe shrouded cards, at 850/300 and around 275 MH/sec).

I presume that all the Cypress cards (5830, 5850, 5870) are effectively the same chip but graded according to defects, right? Or are they specifically designed differently? Seems odd that there's still a supply of *new* Cypress silicon into the market - there's obviously demand because the 5830 is pretty decent in terms of hash per watt in bitcoin mining, but if these new XFX designs aren't just using up surplus production, and AMD are still running Cypress chips on their fabs, then we may be waiting longer for the 78xx cards than expected.

IMO, I'd be happy with identical hashing performance but half the power consumption. In the UK, electricity is the main cost for heavy bitcoin mining...

7900 are based on CGN new thing at 28nm and will be like Nvidia so not good for mining.

A watt is a watt it doesn't care how efficient the GPU is.  To displace 120W will take roughly the same cooling hardware on 7xxx series as it does on 6xxx series.

How do you figure that? How many hashes per 5870 and what price are you getting them at?

Example:
$280 5870, 460MH/s = 1.64 MH/$
$400 5970, 700MH/s = 1.75 MH/$

Unless you are finding 5870 at less than $250 per card new I don't see how they are best hasher per $$$.
Are far as the 5970s being "silly money" unless you are only buying one card, 2x 5870 cost more than a 5970.

5970 makes deployment simpler and has higher electrical efficiency.  However keep buying those 5870s I don't want the price to go up on 5970s.

5870 is best hash per ££££($$$$) or the 5850 OC'd. 5870's are like rocking horse poo to find, and 5850's are more and more the same. 5970's are still silly money, especially with the dip in BTC, but hey, thats half the fun

Fixed your post.  If the price point of cards fall then you get same hashing power for lower price and lower electrical draw.  How exactly would that be bad for mining?


Actually the 5970 is better for mining however the only reason they are good for mining is the price has been reduced.  5970 @ today's $400 to $500 per card = good deal in MH/$.  5970 at initial retail of $780 per card = not so good deal in MH/$.

It is getting harder and harder to buy 5970s even on ebay.  Got outbid on 4 auctions today (trying to get them for $350 per card).

Guys it really is damn clear how it is going to pan out.

7800 are based on VLIW4 but 28nm just like current cards but more efficient and at much lower price point so will be very good for mining.
7900 are based on CGN new thing at 28nm and we don't know how (in)efficient it will be at mining.

5870 cards are the best for bitcoin mining ! There will be no replacement for them in the future, sadly. Maybe I should stock up on some more !?

Well I *hope* you are wrong.  It would be a massive step backwards for gaming and GPU.  Might as well scrap plans for any new games in 2012 either push them back or scale them down to take advantage of existing hardware.   While you are at it sell any stock you own in AMD as no gamer is going to upgrade for no performance gain and pay another $400 for the privilege.  AMD only saving grace has been strong graphic sales and if the 7xxx series is pathetically priced like that it will kill off all demand.     

Actually I don't hope, I 100% know you are wrong.  The 7870 won't be priced at $400 (6970 retail price).  I am willing to place a bet of any amount on any bitcoin betting system against that. 

Saying "We will see" is kind meaninless. 

I could say "I think the 7570 will deliver 438940238 TH/s on 0.5watts and cost $1.95, we will see!" 

We will see.... thats all im saying

Not sure what you are trying to say.

Still 40nm to 28nm is 50% die size not 85%.  (28/40)^2 = 0.49.

This doesn't mean the die will be the same size.  Yields will be lower and cost higher w/ 28nm to make product price compeititive AMD will look to shrink average die (and thus get more chips per wafer).  AMD won't leave "space unused".  They make chips on giant 12" wafers.  Smaller die = more chips per wafer = lower cost per chip. 


The 7850 isn't the 6950 replacement.  It only offers roughly the same performance despite having half the die size.  So AMD is going to charge the same price as 6950 despite their cost effectively falling in half.  Have you forgotten about competition.  If AMD does that, nobody buys 78xx series chips and Nvidia laughs all the way to the bank w/ their competitively priced 28nm chips.

Chips get faster.  That is a reality in silicon products.  Yeterdays high end is tomorrows entry level.

Nothing is static.  Just because 6950 performance cost a lot and is a upper mid range card doesn't mean it will always be that.  The 7xxx specs show us AMD will be moving 6950 performance down to entry level cards.  6970/6990 level performance becomes the new mid range and 6990+ performance becomes the the high end.

question:

if the die size is half the size and the wattage is lower with these 32 and 28 nm chips,

should one expect a smaller card then?

something that might take 1 slot instead of 2 (current)... smaller fans maybe?

anyone have any info on the possible changes in cooling of these cards?

Plus no 78xx card is going to get 800 MH/s.  The 7800 series is the mid level cards.  If it has similar efficiency (operations per hash) as 6xxx cards (which it should having same VLIW5 architecture) then we would expect peformance something like this:

The main advantages of 7xxx series is higher performance per $$ and per watt.  ~4MH/W vs 2 MH/W.  Still those expecting 800MH/s+ out of a <$200 card are going to be disapointed.

The 7870 is upper mid range card (equivelent to 6870 today which launched @ $199).  So pretty impressive you are getting about 50% more hashes per $ and about 100% more hashes per watt.   Still a far cry from 800MH/s.

The pricing is a guess on my part but AMD has OEM relationships to maintain and there are certain pricepoints the market is looking for.  My guess is that at launch we will see the following retail prices:
7870 - $199
7850 - $149
7670 - $99 (maybe up to  $119)
7570 - $79 (maybe up to $99)

This would be inline with prior launches and would fill all the price points that OEM are looking to move cards at.

Now the 7950, 7970, and 7990 will likely offer some impressive performance but they use a new architecture so we need to wait and see how they perform at mining.

Ahh aren't there several cards now that can get 800 m/hash? And at a much better cost than the latest high end card will be.

7570	 768SP @ 750MHz   50W   ~167 MH/s
7670	 768SP @ 900MHz   60W   ~200 MH/s
7850	1408SP @ 850MHz   90W   ~350 MH/s
7870	1536SP @ 950MHz  120W   ~420 MH/s