My motive: When I built my current desktop, I had only ever used nVidia Quadro graphics cards, which purport to be optimized for professional applications, such as SolidWorks, which I use in school as an Aerospace/Mechanical engineering student. These cards had done wonderfully, in SolidWorks, so I decided to go for the professional graphics card approach in building a desktop. When I decided to build, the FirePro v7800 had just come out, and was by far the best bang for the buck. When I got into Bitcoins, I started to mine on it, and found that it can get about 220 MH/s when hot, or 280 MH/s when cool (as a single slot design, it has a little trouble keeping cool. I haven't tried messing with clocks more than 5-10 MHz to affect temps). I have since added a Diamond Radeon 6970, which seems to run all of my applications just fine, so I realize now that for my purposes this card is way overkill. For some, though, it is just the right thing, and it opens the door to specialized drivers for professional applications. See http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/fire/certified/Pages/certified-applications.aspx to get an idea of what types of software these cards are intended for. I could probably sell the card faster on ebay, but I don't want to deal with their system and setting up paypal etc.; I like the community here and am in no rush to sell the card. I turn a profit the longer I keep it.
Right now, I'm running both the 6970 and the v7800 simultaneously, which has occasionally caused driver hiccups due to running two fairly different cards. I would rather go for a crossfire setup, and free up the capital and expansion slot that is currently devoted to the FirePro card.
Specs: In a nutshell, see http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814195098&Tpk=v7800
The v7800 is essentially a Radeon 5850 except:
- Single Slot
- 2GB of (I think ecc) GDDR5
- Optimized/certified drivers
- Clocks of 700/1000 core/mem
- 1 DVI and 2 full sized Display Port outputs
My card is nicely used and has been run a lot. It has some dust built up, but I try to keep it reasonably clean. I've had no problems with it not performing to spec in any way.
I've really enjoyed having this graphics card, but it just isn't suited to my current needs, and I would rather have the BTC than the card. It's pretty efficient in terms of MH/J (MH/s per Watt), with ~1.87, when compared to other GPUs, although FPGAs and ASICs (when/if they come out) will easily beat them. This is not a card to buy just to mine. If, however, you have a need for a card that supports the professional drivers and want to mine in the background, this card could be good for you.
If anyone has any questions, I'll try to answer them. I'll post pics if there is interest in the item (it's a hassle to pull the card out to take a picture, and not worth it if nobody is even interested). I would much prefer to use escrow, but would be open to shipping after receiving payment. Escrow would probably keep both a buyer and me the most comfortable. I would rather only ship to the lower 48, but would look into international shipping if there is a strong interest.