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[Tellemurius]

There is just lost in the Advice section, SEARCH its there

[gimlet]

Actually, if you don't mind sharing any info you've found regarding cost-effective GPU mining cards

There may not be *any* cards that will pay themselves back at this point in time - it's a big crapshoot right now, a combination of not-rising coin prices and increasing mining difficulties.  The most popular card is the 7950, lot of bang for the buck but part of its appeal is power efficiency which you don't care much about.  Currently mining rate is about $3 worth per 7950 per day at current price/difficulty (about $2/day net here counting electricity cost), and chances are difficulty will be going up and up.  The hope is that prices will go up to match - but they might just as well drop if there's more scandals, technical difficulties or government interference.  Specific card brand/model is somewhat important, everybody has different favorites.  I got mostly MSI Twin-Frozr III that are OK but nothing special, and some SAPPHIRE 100352-4L ditto, mainly because they were on sale at the time.  Unfortunately there's no tool to undervolt these in linux so I'll have to switch to windows when difficulty goes up much more :p

These pages have reported hash rates for bitcoin https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison and a much less complete one for litecoin: https://github.com/litecoin-project/litecoin/wiki/Mining-hardware-comparison - litecoin tuning appears to depend a lot on other parts of the system so it's WAY more fiddly to tune than bitcoin...

Maybe someone can make like an official hardware support/question thread or something for things like this. Unless its already made and I just missed it in the search

There's a couple threads of computer/troubleshooting discussion in the Life Advice section - that might be the place to try, threads get buried pretty fast in this forum.

[pilgrimboy]

Since I have a somewhat similar question, I'll just ask here instead of starting a new thread:

I've heard that laptops that can play modern games on medium settings are generally in the $600 price range and I'd like a second opinion on this. I really only know that $200 computers suck for games and $1000 computers will run anything in the history of ever, specifications are all gibberish. If there's a notable price gap I'll accept medium-with-occasional-stutters, and the biggest help to me would be a recommendation of a specific model or brand of computers to pick from.

Thanks in advance!

I wrote a little guide on buying value gaming laptops. I game on one that I spent less than $400 on. The key tips are in the article.

Buying a Value Gaming Laptop on a Budget

And if you actually need help. I could spend a half hour searching for you tomorrow.

[Vendayn]

So, after doing a lot of research. I'll be going with this (same card I linked in my opening post)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BZB0I3W/ref=s9_psimh_gw_p147_d1_i3?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=1VQHGWM75G0YMEXETFNX&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1389517282&pf_rd_i=507846

Hopefully I'll have the money by next week. It'll depend how many jobs my parents get after memorial day. Plus if not next week, I get my disability check on the 1st, that I can probably use some of the money to get the card.

 I was thinking of the 660, but after doing my own research and dad did a lot of research as well...the 660 would only be a slight increase in performance and the extra cost isn't really worth it. I could go with the 660ti, but that is around 300 usd...and at that, price I might as well go for a 400-500 card at that point. The 650 is much more worth the cost. It is pretty cheap really for what I'd get, and still be at least 3x better than my Geforce gtx660 896 mb.

Now, it is possible there is some memory bandwidth problems...supposedly this goes all the way until the 670 series cards. However at the same time, I hear from different sources different things. Some people on Tomshardware say (and the tech guy I originally talked to) after 1.5 GB is used, it doesn't fully use the other 512 and uses it as cache or something. But, then people here on this forum say that isn't the case with the retail cards. Whatever case it is, doesn't seem to be talked about in any extensive detail. But, it will still be a much better card (especially for the price) than my old one.

But that will be the card I go for. I hear a lot of good things about it. And I'll probably go through amazon, because I have a gift card that should have 15 dollars left on it. Plus free shipping. Maybe going radeon would be better for the money, but in the end, me and my dad decided to go with the card I linked.

[Tellemurius]

in all honestly as long as you have the memory and big bandwidth you should be be fine for loading and offloading.

[Vendayn]

Okay, so before I finalize my purchase (going to buy a new GPU tomorrow as I have the money now and its between these two)

These are pretty much same price and specs. Any reason to go with one or the other?

The EVGA one I linked:

http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GTX650Ti-SuperClocked-Dual-Link-Graphics/dp/B00BZB0I3W/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369805218&sr=8-1&keywords=geforce+gtx650+ti

and Gigabyte

http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-GTX650-GDDR5-2GB-Graphics-GV-N65TBOC-2GD/dp/B00C12M9CM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369805268&sr=8-1&keywords=gigabyte+geforce+gtx650+ti

Dad said he heard EVGA card(s) can be quite loud, and he thinks the Gigabyte one would probably be quieter with the two larger fans. Gigabyte is good, dads machine has a couple Gigabyte hardware in it and they still run really well after...must be 6 or so years now, maybe 5...in that range. But I know EVGA is a really good brand.

So is it pretty much either one? Or is one better? They look to be the same specs pretty much.

[Tellemurius]

The base clock on the EVGA is alot higher than the Gigabyte but yes it will be louder, i recommend the Gigabyte cause honestly it won't hurt your fps that much

[Vendayn]

How much FPS do you think I'd lose with the Gigabyte one? I personally would rather have quieter PC than a loud one, if its only like a few FPS I lose I'll go with the Gigabyte one.

[Tellemurius]

How much FPS do you think I'd lose with the Gigabyte one? I personally would rather have quieter PC than a loud one, if its only like a few FPS I lose I'll go with the Gigabyte one.

about 1-5, personally, thats ok by me considering these things are atroicously loud when going full blast.