Quote from: SpeedDemon13 on October 12, 2013, 02:21:14 AM

Quote from: bholzer on October 12, 2013, 01:40:50 AM

Quote from: aa on October 11, 2013, 10:57:04 PM

An R9 280X has been added to the hardware comparison page. With OpenGL, it's either as good as the original 7970s or better. At this point, it seems to be way better than the 7970s. It looks like whatever they changed has fixed the original 7970 issues.

https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison

I get 750 kh/s with my Sapphire 7970s (w/ default firmware, 1080 engine, 1500 mem, I 13)

They're getting 740 kh/s on the 280x at 1100/1500. Obviously the same chip...so I wouldn't expect much different I suppose...but still a bit disappointing.

The driver is in beta still, so you can say it's a fail yet. HD 7970 is a mature product and the R9 280X is still in it infancy. The price is the same as any other HD 7970 and will eventually drop over time.

The driver is not in beta, the driver released for review testing and BF4 is a beta. The R9 280x IS a 7970, they are XT2 boards and have nothing other than a flashed bios and a different cooler. To think you will see any increased performance over a 7970 is crap and there is nothing at all infant about the R9 280x.

ALL 7970s (R9 280x) can push over 720Kh/s - The main difference between cards ignoring gpu/mem clocks is the configuration of 3 key miner settings:

--gpu-threads
--thread-concurrency
--Intensity

Some 7970's especially older ones do best on a single gpu thread with a high thread-concurrency and intensity. eg, "--gpu-threads 1 --thread-concurrency 24000 --intensity 19"

A lot of newer boards (GHz editions) including the rebranded R9 280x do best with two gpu threads and a lower thread-concurrency and intensity eg, "--gpu-threads 2 --thread-concurrency 8192 --intensity 13" (have also found an odd thread concurrency such as 8191 give even better results)

I have personally tested this on several 7970 boards and even 7950s are affected the same way. No BIOS flashing or modding has ever been needed just a correct miner configuration and the right gpu/mem clock ratio which I have found to be very different on some cards simply because of the type of ram used and the different timings some memory chips run at which is why some users get lucky with low mem frequencies and others simply do not.

Bear in mind also that the R9 280 (non x variant) if and when its released will be a re-branded 7950 so could turn out to be a very good bang for buck card. Avoid the R9 270x as this is just a re-branded 7870, again the non x variant will be a rebrand of the 7850.

Do enjoy your AMD re-branded kit while we wait to see if the real news here the R9 290x will be a mining king. Wink

Queegeh

Posts

Merits