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Talk me out of dual 970s


mcl

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Currently, I have two GTX 680s SLI'd in my gaming machine.  I happen to have the money laying around, and I'm toying with the idea of buying two SSC 970s to replace them.

 

Tell me why I shouldn't.

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because its a waste of money

get a console for the money instead and find yourself not having to spent money on upgrades for the next 5 years or so

 

I already only spend money on upgrades every 5 or so years. I build myself a new PC every 4-5 years, from scratch, with top-of-the-line parts.  about 3 years in, I tend to buy new graphics cards.

 

Besides, I've got a PS3 and a 360 collecting dust.  And it's not just a keyboard/mouse thing, either, since I've also got a XIM3 collecting dust.  I just prefer PC gaming.

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Those look pretty damn beastly! Can't imagine you'd have any game issues running those!

I will probably end up buying them eventually, but it's a waiting game...a trade-off between how much the price will drop between now and the end of the year, and what the price of Bitcoin will be between now and the end of the year (particularly since it's greatly affected by political events like Greece).  Newegg accepts bitcoin as payment, and I've got more than enough laying around from mining, but I also view my bitcoin as a "SHTF" reserve.

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One big reason NOT to buy SLI:

 

Most SLI support even on big titles is shit.

 

A single card with beefy specs will almost always out perform a SLI setup even if the SLI setup has more power, theoretically. It comes down to game optimization and priority and SLI is still at the bottom when a new release comes out 9 times out of 10.

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Ahh you're patient, I couldn't do that, I'd just buy it straight away haha. Oh nice, do you have a mining rig? 

 

I do.  Two R-Boxes which generate on average 240Gh/s, and an Antminer S5, which reliably hits around 1.1-1.2Th/s.  In my pool I'm usually just under 1.4Th/s, which gives me around $120-150/month (assuming a $250/coin price point), with only about $30/month energy usage.  The Antminer has to sit in the basement because damn, it's loud.  Thankfully, it's a self-contained unit (no external computer necessary), so I just had to feed it power and Ethernet.  The R-Boxes have to be connected via USB to my desktop.  I would have preferred to run them off a Raspberri Pi, but when I tried, the Pi kept locking up about once a day, and I don't want to have to babysit the things.

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One big reason NOT to buy SLI:

 

Most SLI support even on big titles is shit.

 

A single card with beefy specs will almost always out perform a SLI setup even if the SLI setup has more power, theoretically. It comes down to game optimization and priority and SLI is still at the bottom when a new release comes out 9 times out of 10.

 

I agree, and BF4's crappy SLI support annoys me.  But at least CoD's support is solid (as long as you run fullscreen), and nothing else I play really needs the horsepower (though that may change since my wife pre-ordered me a Steam Link and Steam Controller as an early Christmas present!)

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Well, that didn't take long.  I sucked it up and realized I'm not really using SLI much, and Newegg has a sale on the EVGA GTX 980 Classified -- 10% off with code, and then a $40 mail-in rebate.  With 3-day shipping AND a backplate, it came out to $560, or just over 2 BTC.  Should have it installed this time next week.  I figured I need the texture memory more than the SLI.

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I do.  Two R-Boxes which generate on average 240Gh/s, and an Antminer S5, which reliably hits around 1.1-1.2Th/s.  In my pool I'm usually just under 1.4Th/s, which gives me around $120-150/month (assuming a $250/coin price point), with only about $30/month energy usage.  The Antminer has to sit in the basement because damn, it's loud.  Thankfully, it's a self-contained unit (no external computer necessary), so I just had to feed it power and Ethernet.  The R-Boxes have to be connected via USB to my desktop.  I would have preferred to run them off a Raspberri Pi, but when I tried, the Pi kept locking up about once a day, and I don't want to have to babysit the things.

 

So there was a sort of high investment cost to start, but sounds like it pays for itself after a few months!

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So there was a sort of high investment cost to start, but sounds like it pays for itself after a few months!

 

They do!  But the mining difficulty is always going up, which means the payoff is always going down.  It's a big bet on whether that rate of decline is lower than the rate of increase of Bitcoin price.  Even then, eventually they become expensive, noisy paperweights.  They're decent space heaters, though. :)

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Ahh you got me excited about Bitcoin again! Maybe litecoin or another alternative may be worth mining instead with your rigs?

 

Unfortunately, Bitcoin ASICs are only good for mining Bitcoin.

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Tell me why I shouldn't.

 

I don't really wanna go on the YOLO wagon, but then again I will.

 

My friend, you only live once and if you still have the money for food then go for it! Either that or I can easily link my Paypal account ^^

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