November 21st, 2013 
CryptoBadger Many of you have contacted me recently asking for my opinion of x brand/model of 7950 GPU, given that some of the top choices from my mining hardware guide are sold out everywhere. Thought I’d throw up a quick post with some of the best alternatives for those of you that are looking to build a rig.
Yes, the Radeon 7950 is still the best GPU mining platform (and probably will be for quite some time), assuming you don’t have access to free electricity. Click “read more” for the list.
Top Tier cards
If you can find an MSI TF3 in stock anywhere at a price that isn’t outrageous (a lot of people are trying to sell them for $400-500 given the latest mining rush), absolutely grab it—it’s still the best option. Note that the “BE” (“Boost Edition”) models are not the same cards and will likely result in slightly lower mining speeds than their non-BE counterparts (update: I didn’t mean to give the impression that the BE model is necessarily a bad choice for mining—it’s a fine performer, but given the choice, grab the non-BE model if possible).
The Gigabyte WF3 cards are on par with the MSI cards speed-wise, although there are quite a few reports of blown VRMs on these cards (I experienced one myself, but I’ve also used quite a few of them). Gigabyte does offer a 3-year warranty on the card, and the RMA process is relatively painless, so don’t let that stop you if you’re looking for a top-tier mining card (assuming you can find any in stock).
The Sapphire Vapor-X is what I’ve been using in the mining rigs that I build for customers lately, given that Amazon seems to get new stock in daily. It offers 99% of the speed of the MSI and Gigabyte cards, while offering near silence (at least in comparison to other top mining GPUs). The extremely low noise of these cards is really nice if your rig will be located within earshot. The Vapor-X cards are also constructed like tanks—they’re significantly heavier than other brands—and it’s the only brand of card that I’ve used that I’ve never had to RMA for any reason.
The Sapphire HD 7950 offers the performance of the Vapor-X card without the superior acoustic qualities. It’s also a bit cheaper, so if your rig will be located someplace that you won’t be able to hear it anyway, this might be your best choice.
Edit: If you’re looking for cgminer settings for any of these cards, check out my FAQ entry on the subject.
Other good options
I’ve had several comments from people that are running HIS IceQ cards at 640+ Kh/sec while undervolted without issues, although I haven’t used one myself. The single fan would appear to be a disadvantage when compared to the top tier choices, but the performance of the card seems solid.
I’ve also heard favorable things about the PowerColor HD7950, especially given it’s (typically) low price.
Avoid
Anything by XFX, if you trust the general consensus of the internet mining community. I haven’t used XFX’s cards personally, but there seem to be quite a few people that are unhappy with them.
Non-7950 Options
Perhaps you have access to free (or extremely cheap) electricity, or mining isn’t your primary concern. Here are some options that aren’t based on the Radeon 7950 GPU.
The Radeon R9 280X is probably the best “next generation” GPU choice, although it’s essentially a re-badged 7970. Properly configured, you should see hashrates that are about 10% higher than the 7950 (may improve over time as the drivers mature). You’ll pay for the increased speed with significantly higher power consumption, however. Models from Gigabyte, Sapphire, and MSI should all be good choices.
The Radeon 7970, like the 280X, hashes only slightly faster than a well-configured 7950, but it consumes far more power—generally making it a sub-optimal mining GPU. However, for those of you with free electric, there have been some good deals on these cards recently, with some examples selling for as low as ~$220. At similar prices points, there is probably no reason to choose the 7970 over the 280X.
I’ll also mention the Radeon 7990, although I’m not a huge fan of it for mining (some people do swear by it, though). This is essentially two 7970 GPUs in a single card package, so you can expect 1300+ Kh/sec per card. Sounds great, until you consider the downsides: the massive levels of heat that these things throw around, the extremely high power consumption, and the high up-front cost of the cards. However, if you’re trying to build a rig with the absolute highest GPU density possible, without regard with other considerations, then this is probably your card. The MSI or Sapphire are good choices here.
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Crap. Yesterday, I just bought 4 MSI TF and I just noticed (today) that I did actually buy the BE edition. Would you recommend sending them back and getting the Radeon Vapor-X in its place? I realize it will be another $250~ to do so.
Do you know if your cgminer settings (overclocking, intensity, etc…) will work the same with the BE card?
–Edit
I went ahead and cancelled the BE TF3 cards and ordered the Vortex cards you linked to via Amazon. Would you mind posting the cgminer command line parameters you use with the Vortex cards like you did in your guide for the MSI TF3’s?? Also, what are you undervolting the Vortex to? 1081mV?
I updated the mining FAQ with settings for a couple of the other popular cards, including your Sapphire Vapor-X.
Great info, Crypto! I appreciate the help!
The MSI TF BE’s are on par with anything, just follow the guide to flash, undervolt and away you go – https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=321648.new#new
Instead of using a custom bios for those BE cards, couldn’t you just reflash the existing bios after adjusting the voltage there as per Cryptobadger’s guide??
Re-reading my post, I probably made the BE version sound worse than it actually is. The newer models (the ones with 2 fans) are certainly a fine choice for mining, although I’d still rate them below the “top tier” cards. I’ve used a few, and the consistency between cards just wasn’t nearly as good as other models, although every example delivered acceptable performance (undervolted, some examples wouldn’t get above 630 Kh/sec without causing instability, while others would do 660+ Kh/sec without issues). The non-BE cards (and the Gigabyte cards) seem to consistently hit 660-670+.
Pretty much a moot point now, given that it isn’t possible to get most of these cards at reasonable prices.
Thanks for clearing that up, Crypto. I had called to cancel the 7950 BE cards I ordered earlier this week but was told they had shipped. I had intended to just refuse the shipment but I think I’ll give them a try. With the supply of 7950’s being non-existent I should probably give these a shot and see if they work. After all, if I send them back I may never get any more 7950’s in the mail regardless of manufacturer or edition.
I’m thinking we will all be moving onto the 280x cards sooner than we think. All the retail outlets are telling me than the 7950’s have been discontinued and replaced by the 280x’s.
Hi Cryptobadger! What good things have you heard of about the powercolor 7950 cards? Hash rates? Temps? Noise level? They look to be significantly more affordable where I am!
I’ve received a few messages from people that are running them in the 600-640 Kh/sec range (undervolted), which is pretty good. I can’t comment on noise level, although I’d be surprised if it’s significantly different from the MSI cards.
How do I know if it’s a boost edition? I have a Canadian card and it says MSI TF3 OC Boost Edition and looks exactly like the MSI TF3 OC picture. Is it the same?
will the seasonic 860w still be enough to handle 3 x 7970/280x cards? thanks so much for your help!
I think 860w will be too short for the 3x 7970. One of my rigs has 3x sapphire 7970, I overclocked them (engine 1040, mem 1500) and undervolted them to 1.087V and the whole system runs stable and fresh at around 800-850 watt. It would therefore fit in your case but consider that if room temperature goes higher, the fans will go faster and power consumption will go higher too, so the system stability will be compromised with that 860 watt power source. Also consider that making a power source work at its limits is not optimal in terms of power consumption.
Actually the load on the PSU is not important. There’s no significant difference between 80% load and 100% load.
Source: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/343495-28-power-supply-efficiency-myths
All card must be the same or can we use different cards ? For example 2xmsi, 1 vapor, 1 his ? Thanks.
Just try it 😉
Best thing to do would be to install one by one and find best config for every single card. Then you can pass different parameters for each GPU in one cgminer instance while all card are present.
for example different intensities:
-I 16,19,11
so just comma separate them
have a look into the cgminer readme files
You mean same model but different manufacturer ?
Yea.
I’m curious about this too. Somebody know an answer ?
Hi,
I’m having a tough time fitting any of the aforementioned cards into my budget at their current price points, so I’m wondering about different options just to get up and running.
What are your thoughts on the – Gigabyte AMD Radeon HD 7870 2 GB GDDR5 DVI-I/HDMI/2x Mini-Displayport PCI-Express 3.0 Graphic Card GV-R787OC-2GD cards
(or)
Running 2 7950’s instead of 3, until I could afford an upgrade…
Would it be even worth it? Thank you!
Hey Crypto! Your guides are awesome! I just wanted to know a few things.
Around how much power consumption do you think 1 7950 with your setup would be? I looked around the web, but only found answers for 3,4, or 5 cards.
Also, since I already own a 7950, would it be good (relatively speaking) to just purchase a psu, cheap CPU, and mobo and begin mining since LTC is around $36 at time of writing this?
Thanks a lot!
Hi Crypto! Thank you very much for the nice guide! I’ve just bought MSI 7950 BE, the only and the last one i found everywhere…but i would like to start mining at least with one more gpu…is there any issues building a rig with two different 7950, i meen one from MSI and one from Sapphire?
Would the Sapphire Radeon TOXIC R9 280X be a good substitute all the other cards you mentioned are out of stock…?
Wondering the same…have 3 lined up to purchase but am worried about power consumption.
If you have free electricity, and are after kH/s per $, you may want to consider the HD 6950.
Hello all and thank you for the great site badger 🙂
Can anyone recommend which version of drivers i should be using for sapphire r9 280x toxic gpus. My 7950 rig is running smooth however i am unable to get these gpus now so i opted for the r9 however i am getting a lot of errors. Any help with the driver versions would be greatly appreciated.
Thx
D
Which settings are you using in cgminer for the r9 cards?
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
cgminer –scrypt -I 15 -g 1 -w 256 –thread-concurrency 2000
Using
AMD-APP-SDK-v2.7-Windows-641
and have tried
12-8-xp64-dd-ccc.exe
AMD_Catalyst_13.10_WHQL.exe
amd_catalyst_13.11_betav9.4.exe
Try these:
cgminer –scrypt -I 13 –thread-concurrency 8192 –shaders 2048 -g 2 –gpu-engine 1040 –gpu-memclock 1500
I suspect it’s not a matter of drivers but a matter of settings. These settings work very well for my r9 280x vapor-x and it hashes at 738 kH/s, being able to undervolt to 1.080.
Hello Javier
Thank you for the response. i tried your conf and the display driver crashed. Could you tell me what versions of the amd drivers you are using also?
Thank you
d
I’m not at home now, I’ll check the driver version later. Meanwhile try without –gpu-engine and –gpu-memclock options, so that we can discard an overclock issue.
Update
A big thanks to javier. Your settings are working a treat. I uninstalled the rubbish oc utility from sapphire and installed the msi oc tool. I am now getting 700khs at a cool 66c
Wow. Thanks again javier
Great to know you finally got it running. Maybe you have observed that doing any other thing like browsing while mining slows it down quite a bit. So you want it idle for everything that’s not mining. In systems with dual core cpus you can get up to 5% more extra juice with those settings. I have an asrock 970 extreme 4 motherboard and sempron cpu. I chose the unlock core option in the motherboard bios. It is detected as an athlon x2 cpu and the hashrate goes up to 730 for my 7970 cards. Try that if you have the opportunity, maybe you can also get those extra 30 khs per card 😉
Tnx for the advice. I will try that tonight when i get home and post the results.
Thnaks again for your advise and help
D
I did what you suggested and i am now getting 730khs as you suggested. Thanks again:-)
Well done! Have a good mining!
Fyi im running with sdk v2.7 and amd catalyst driver version 13.6
Hey! Would anyone know how to configure the settings in cgminer for 2 different GPU models? I have a Sapphire 7950 Vapor-X and a Sapphire 7950 3L graphics cards.
Hey Cryptobadger, thanks for a great site and some great guides. I will be sending you some coin for a beer shortly as you guide has helped me push through linux and run a 5 card 7970 setup.
My question is regarding power supplies. I currently run a Lepa 1600 watt gold on 5 7970 AMD Saphire cards. I am building a few more rigs with my profits from both BItCoin and LiteCoin to focus on scrypt, as I have done well these past few months.
Any suggestions on really getting the most out of a rig, and pushing 6 cards or more?
I use powered risers for everything, and I got a stable 5 card rig running at 1290 watts taken from Killawatt….
I am pretty handy, and can setup a dedicated 20 amp circuit. I also build my own aluminum open air rigs. I am just trying to figure out if there is value in 6 card setups when you consider the power supply issue. I havn’t seen anything greater than 1600 watts so far.
1) How do you handle the power issues…. two separate power supplies with a joining cable?
2) I might have room for one more card on this power supply. How close can I get to 1600 watts without blowing out the power supply?
3) Any issues with mismatched power supplies that you know of?
4) Anybody know of any bigger power supplies out there?
Thanks for any help!
You might want to look into an Add2PSU Multiple PSU Adapter. Allows you to chain power supplies together on one motherboard.
So 2x800w = 1600 watt
Anyways, here is the website http://www.add2psu.com/
Anyone know what would be a good gigabyte motherboard to use, seems asrock 970 extreme4 not available anywhere.
I’ve just ordered one from Amazon UK mind.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B0058HUQJ0/ref=redir_mdp_mobile?ref_=pe_385721_37038051_pe_217191_31005151_3p_M3T1_dp_1
Hey Crypto, I wasn’t able to order the 280x brands you recommended (EVERYTHING IS SOLD OUT) but I did manage to track down/order three of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121803
Does Asus make a good GPU?
Drak I was looking a buying an ASUS 7950 but the reviews on amazon are poor. I can’t find any 7950s anywhere! Will have to try the 7970.