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6970 availability...

B

burritoboy9984

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Joined
Mar 1, 2011
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Over the last few months, they have been getting more and more scarce on many e-tailers (newegg only lists 11, and 3 are out of stock). It also doesn't seem like you can find the overclocked models anywhere. Is it because their EOL is forthcoming with the 7000 series? Or does anyone have any insight?

-Erik
 
burritoboy9984 said:
Over the last few months, they have been getting more and more scarce on many e-tailers (newegg only lists 11, and 3 are out of stock). It also doesn't seem like you can find the overclocked models anywhere. Is it because their EOL is forthcoming with the 7000 series? Or does anyone have any insight?

-Erik
Click to expand...

I'd assume it would be AMD trying to clear stock for the release of the 7000 series. Rumours are that the 7000 series will be out as early as late September.
 
Maybe they just aren't selling as well because the 6950 is so close in performance for much less money.
 
Who knows but maybe the bitcoin miners are having an effect on stock just like they do on the 6990s.
 
Thank to bit-coin miners, the price of ATI 6990 sold on ebay around $1000.
 
Its purely bitcoin fucks. No other reason. The 900$ watercooleed power color 6990 was in stock for 1.4 mins today before sold out on newegg.

Its not end of life. You can still get 4,5,and 68 series cards all day long everwhere except now its the bitfreaks that are snatching up all these cards
 
newegg only lists 11
Click to expand...

How many do you want? I mean, its not like there are only 2-3.. theres 11 differen't models/board partners to choose from. Thats just from 1 e-tailor too.
 
Mikerocks2112 said:
I just came out from under my rock....what is bitcoin?
Click to expand...

Bitcoin is akin to running folding@home on your GPU, but the work or "hash" doesn't serve any benefit to anyone like F@H does.
EXCEPT, as I understand it, as your GPU does work given to it by some bitcoin website, you are "paid" in some form and can use this work to be awarded "bitcoins".

The bitcoins can be traded for goods at some places, or even cashed in for real currency.

I'm not versed that well on how it works, but apparently AMD GPUs are very good at running the work programs due to their shader density, so these bitcoin "miners" are snatching up AMD GPUs right and left for some bizarrely inflated prices, especially on eBay.

I was looking for an HD 6990 and they are over 1000 dollars on eBay.
I did manage to buy on two weeks ago when literally no one was watching for about 25 dollars over retail price. I was lucky and made the guy an offer and he accepted.
He wasn't greedy and wanted a quick sale, so i got really lucky. It was essentially brand new in the box.:p

As I stated in my post, I would really like a factory overclocked one.
Click to expand...

These cards overclock very nicely.
Buy a reference model like the MSI HD 6970, download Sapphire Trixx software and overclock the card yourself. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127554
You will be able to best the factory overclocks easily.
I use Trixx, it is a great software program, read about it here: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/07/25/sapphire_hd_6950_2gb_dirt_3_video_card_review/3
 
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It is more about having a better cooler than the reference style, both in cooling and acoustics. But if I don't find one soon, I guess I'll be grabbing a standard 6970 :)

-Erik
 
Bitcoin is skyrocketing prices, they are idiots to be buying new 6970s and 6990s though at retail prices. 5870s can be found used for ~$200 and they have the exact same Bitcoin performance as 6970s.
 
These miners are looking for best performance and long term profit. If the money is not their issues, they will buy $1000 graphic cards just for 20-30% increase performance. Maybe, in long term, they will get their money back. It's kinda hard to understand their business models.
 
I bought an XFX 5970 Black Edition in April 2010 for about $700.00 on Newegg and sold it in June 2011 for $970.00. Nice little profit for a card I got to use for over a year for free. I turned around and bought a EVGA GTX 580 for about $450.00 including the rebate and pocketed the rest. To be honest, I was glad to get rid of the 5970 because the drivers sucked.
 
So the resale value of my shader unlocked 6950's might be quite good if I want to upgrade to newer cards once they are released. Good news !
 
its totally the miners, these cards cashflow

I was looking for a 6990 to double my mining output...good luck finding one of those
 
kasuza said:
These miners are looking for best performance and long term profit. If the money is not their issues, they will buy $1000 graphic cards just for 20-30% increase performance. Maybe, in long term, they will get their money back. It's kinda hard to understand their business models.
Click to expand...

Anyone who understands Bitcoin knows that it will not work in the long term. Difficulty increases will likely render GPU mining inefficient within a year. Ten 5870s only cost about $3000 and have the same performance as five 6990s which would cost $5000. Hence my comment about it being dumb to buy 6990s. Graphics card generations has nothing to do with Bitcoin performance. It's just OpenCL support, clock speed, and number of SPs basically.
 
Spare-Flair said:
Anyone who understands Bitcoin knows that it will not work in the long term. Difficulty increases will likely render GPU mining inefficient within a year. Ten 5870s only cost about $3000 and have the same performance as five 6990s which would cost $5000. Hence my comment about it being dumb to buy 6990s. Graphics card generations has nothing to do with Bitcoin performance. It's just OpenCL support, clock speed, and number of SPs basically.
Click to expand...

Thank you for information!

I saw people bought 2 * ATI 6990 graphics card just for mining on bit-coins. I don't understand why don't they use 4*MSI ATI 6970 graphic card which easily OC up to 1GHz or GTX 580 3GB.
 
kasuza said:
Thank you for information!

I saw people bought 2 * ATI 6990 graphics card just for mining on bit-coins. I don't understand why don't they use 4*MSI ATI 6970 graphic card which easily OC up to 1GHz or GTX 580 3GB.
Click to expand...

Buying a dual GPU card uses fewer slots, you don't have to buy more systems to accomodate more cards.
 
Spare-Flair said:
Anyone who understands Bitcoin knows that it will not work in the long term. Difficulty increases will likely render GPU mining inefficient within a year. Ten 5870s only cost about $3000 and have the same performance as five 6990s which would cost $5000. Hence my comment about it being dumb to buy 6990s. Graphics card generations has nothing to do with Bitcoin performance. It's just OpenCL support, clock speed, and number of SPs basically.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, dumb? maybe, but lets be sure you are considering everything here. A lot of folks on this board have existing rigs they would like to max out before committing the capital to a whole new system, so subtract the cost of a new MOBO,CPU,PSU from that of an (admittedly overpriced) top end GPU and things start to look a little different. If one does build out a new system with 5870s you are also paying the additional power overhead of the CPU, power supply ineffeciency, fans, etc for no benefit.

Plus with the big card when mining does become unprofitable you have this enormous epeen and an awesome gaming machine to console yourself with. ;)
 
I don't know hardly anything about this silly bitcoin stuff. But as someone mentioned, the difficulty of mining increases over time. And on top of that, you are paying for electricity to do the mining. I guess it might have been useful at one point possibly? But now it just seems like its just a bunch of idiots buying up all these cards who also click on the "work at home, make a seven figure salary!" advertisements.
 
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