Hey Logan, I have watched you talk about BTC a lot in the tek and was wondering what GPU is good for mining, if it is not obsolete yet.
Also BTC is $86 on BTC-E. Is BTC dying?
You always,always, go AMD for BTC mining. I would suggest, and I am not extremely versed in Radeon, a 7870. BTC isn't dying, it always fluctuates.
I didn't mean BTC is dying :P I meant that is GPU mining dying... I am trying to buy some BTC on BTC-E but there are many hoops to jump through... I want to get it whilst it is low. Thanks for the suggestion.
Also, I currently have a 560 ti, and I play a lot of games. Overall, would it be worth getting a 7870? I see that it is a better card and it mines better than the 560 ti but how much better?
Thanks.
So due to the way AMD has designed their shaders they can fit more onto their processors. This gives them way higher hash rates. The 7870 gets a hash rate of 460 mhash/s while a 560 TI gets 81 mhash/s. The 7870 only costs $229 on newegg.com which makes it a good deal. Personally I don't mine much so I run nVidia, but AMD Radeon is the best way to go for good computing. It's also good for playing games. On passmark.com the 7870 scores 4,231 while the 560Ti scores 3,524. That is a significant difference. In the end it's up to you on whether or not you want to but the card but if you're interested in gpu mining it's definitely a good choice.
Now whether or not gpu mining is becoming dead, that's open for debate. As companies create faster and faster mining macines (Upwards of 66,000 mhash/s) the harder gpu mining will become. So is it dying? Maybe, maybe not.
Thanks very much for the reply! I'll probably get this card, and if BTC mining becomes bad I will just start mining LTC.
I would definitely advise mining LTC over BTC. GPU mining is fading away more and more each day in the Bitcoin world. ASICs are being shipped out more and more, and the hashrate keeps on rising. It's barely worthwhile to mine BTC now with your GPU if you're in the proper conditions (which are cheap electricity and cooling).