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Title says it all, I upgraded to Cat 12.8 from 12.6 and i gained a magical 40mh/s
Can anyone else confirm/deny? Im most certain it was because of the SDK

Edit:
Win7x64ultimate
CAT (now) 12.8
CGminer 2.8.3
XFX 7950 Ghost, Not Double D

Edit:
The jitter problem is fixed by dropping intensity from 6 to 5.
Suuuper weird since it would run at 10 without the sound skip jitter, It would just lag

Do you have a screeny?  Also what other software are you running? cgminer, bitminter etc.

It is highly questionable and most likely a glitch. I have been running 12.8 on my 7970s with normal hashing numbers.

I used to get 510mh/s with intensity 10 core 1080
Now im hitting 549 with intensity 7 core 1054
http://imageshack.us/f/689/megahash.png/

Its apparently Not a glitch.. :D im happy
my 24/hr earning have just kept going down and down from difficulty, So i went "time to optimize cards for winter mining" and ended up going "oh hell, Why not try cat 12.8" and Poof, 40mh gain

My experience is that 12.8 is the buggiest version out there.

upgraded from 12.8 to 12.9 beta and went from 408mh to 432mh on a 6970 @ 970mhz.

Plus 12.8 would crash my system when i woke it up from screen saver mode while it was mining. 

Well if it keeps up then good on ya!    I should have watched closer when I upgraded.

I can confirm on the "buggyness" of the drivers, My game AND sound lockup briefly, Jitter style with these new drivers when gaming, Im Rebooting right now to finish installing 12.9 (i dont know or care if rebooting is neccessary, But im doing it anyways)

OOOoooKaaaayy, So help me out here, Only League of Legends is stuttering, with the 12.9 drivers, But when it does, Everything including sound locksup, My whole sound system goes STICK-continue, I've never had such a seemingly harsh stutter before, And yet mining while playing BF3 is totally smooth 50fps 140mh/s

Does it still do that if you switch off mining?
Is your card overclocked?
Do you have crossfire?

Also do you have your Power control settings set to 20%+

The 7000 series is a pain in the arse for mining.  I really wish I'd only bought 5970s.

oh well.  when its too expensive to GPU mine, I'll just have to put em in my PC and play BF3 in super duper detail :D

12.8 gave me a lot of problems.... Mostly HD audio problems when trying to use the GPU on my LCD.

Install Sapphire Trixx and check "Disable ULPS"

then install MSI afterburner.  Make sure your clock speed is reading what its meant to 800/900/1000 or whatever.

reboot, and tell us what happens

Im well aware of the ULPS bug every driver install i search the registry and set all "EnableULPS" to 0, And all the Crossfire issues, I have one single 7950
MSI? Yeah it's working just fine, Nothing weird or out of the ordinary, Did i mention that only Leage of Legends is Stuttering and skipping audio? And that BF3 Plays Perfectly?

Yes it's overclocked And rather gently to at that, I never touch the voltages, I drop the memory and raise the core (to a point where running intensity 13+a Furmark BURN IN test doesnt have any hiccups in the programming)
Changing the clocks to stock does nothing

I never touched the "power control setting" inside CCC because CCC sucks (or amd overdrive cataylst engine control center, Wtfever they named it)

Thankyou for helping!

Orly? 620MH/s @ 160W and temps in the mid 50s? I don't remember my 5970s doing that.

how can u think the 7xxx series are a pain to mine with? u must be doing it wrong :P

1190/685 @1.45v doing 647mh @ 76c on 7950`s using 12.9 beta drivers..  ;)

Gosh, You REALLY are tempting me to try and find my cards "ceiling" overclock...
What would be a good starting point for voltage increse if if my cards stock volt is 1.093v core 900, With 1070(90 if i do nothing but mine) being stable
I want my card to be nice and cozey, not having to worry about damage or lifetime reducing (beyond the expected from a non voltage change OC).

My plan was to just never increse the voltage, But im wondering if any harm is gonna come from me running it at 1.150v
And weather or not i'll gain stability at higher values, (such as game at 1100core while mining, i can do it at 1060)

hehehe, if your scared of frying your card then just start slow. the above statement of mine has a typo. the voltage i set is 1.145 not 1.45 :)
there are loads of guides on how to overclock these cards.

when i was starting out i used http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/radeon_hd_7950_overclock_guide,2.html (http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/radeon_hd_7950_overclock_guide,2.html)

if you have a closed case like me and more then 1 card in there i would recomend doing them 1 at a time ofc (can be selected in Afterburner settings) and see how the temp plays out on each one.
atm im running each rig with 2 cards. and the one thats closed in (meaning the fan is getting crappy airflow) is running lower clocks, the diff is about 10c.

if you only have 1 card in you can pretty safely pump up the voltage to 1.250 and set the core to 1200/625.. or just start with something a little lower,
i found that anything under 1095/685 can be run at stock voltage on my card, but all cards are different.. but like i said, the guide is pretty ez to follow :)

current settings for both my cards:
http://imageshack.us/f/197/mining.png/ (http://imageshack.us/f/197/mining.png/)

Well then... Really? 1.25 and 1200 is feasable?
My (crappy) case has two intake fans at the front (that i put in), Two side panel outtake fans (that i dremeled on) 1 large reat outtake, 1 PCI slot cooler atop the 7950
then 1psu fan, 1gpu fan, 1cpuLCUradiator fan

hoolllly craaaaap
I didnt touch that % thingy, But bringing the volt to 1.130v gets me to 1150 stable, Giving me 600+mh/s
Temperature hovers around 82-3° wich worries me a little since the fan spins at 86%ish instead of 70%

ye should be able to handle it. havent heard off to manny failing failing with those settings, worst case scenario is that u get a bluescreen and you reboot with normal settings...
but like i said, start off with lower clocks and voltages, play around with your limits til you feel more confident. as long as you dont go nuts with the voltages you should be pretty safe.

u can use a tool like gputool to check for artifacts and stability in general if you are unsure.
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1383/GPUTool_Community_Technology_Preview_1.html (http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1383/GPUTool_Community_Technology_Preview_1.html)

edit: to be able to do some voltage tuning etc u need to:


To enable the unofficial overclocking in this version it is necessary to edit the MSIAfterburner.cfg file located in the installation directory of AfterBurner (typically Program Files (x86) MSI Afterburner):


You need to alter the following:
Seek UnofficialOverclockingEULA field and add following text:
I confirm that I am aware of unofficial overclocking limitations and fully understand that MSI will not provide me any support on it
Set UnofficialOverclockingMode to 1 to keep PowerPlay active (may not work on old ASICs), 2 to traditionally disable PowerPlay or to 0 to temporary disable unofficial overclocking path
Using the unofficial overclock method opens up more freedom in terms of voltages and clock ranges, it however also can open a can of worms in terms of stability or weird issues.

Unofficial means unsupported -- we grant some extra tweak options to fool around with, but in no way, manner or fashion is it supported by Guru3D.com or MSI.

Thanks for all the info.
I've gone from 1.093 and 1060core upto 1.130mv 1150core and 800core
The fan runs at 84% with 81-83° temperature. instead of 70%fan and 77°, What kind of increse in lifespan deficenecy should i expect?
A year off the cards life?
I've boosted the core by another 90mhz and the voltage by .04mv

i would drop the memory clock all the way down to 685 to get the temp down even further :)

as for the lifespan i wouldnt worry so much about it, by the time it would ware out that much you would have gotten a new card.
you can always check the manufacturer for how long your warranty is, i know atleast the xfx black edition cards are lifetime,
and if a fan blows within 2 years all manufacturers will send u a replacement

besides, its allmost asics time, run your gpu to the ground  ;D

The higher voltage will likely cost you more in electricity than the small uptick in hash rate will provide.

Ah, I just got 12.10 today and it actually dropped my MH/sec a bit.

Here ya go,copy & paste this in the config,its down near the bottom of the list:

[ATIADLHAL]
EnableUnofficialOverclocking   = 1
UnofficialOverclockingEULA   = I confirm that I am aware of unofficial overclocking limitations and fully understand that MSI will not provide me any support on it
UnofficialOverclockingMode   = 2
AccessibilityCheckingPeriod   = 0

I tried 12.9 beta & was disappointed with it in BF3.As for mining I saw no gain or loss.

Went back to 12.8 & everthing is ok.

so your fps dropped with the 12.9 drivers?
pretty much everyone in my clan got a boost. got allmost 25fps more out of those drivers myself ;)
not that it matters with ~165fps hehe

12.10 WHQL and 12.11 both launched today.

Funny, I'm getting the same if not slightly better on 12.10. This is on a 7970, cgminer defaults, 1050/410.

I am getting slightly better on 12.10 as well for BTC.  I seem to be getting way better numbers for litcoin mining but it is very unstable and locks my machine in cgminer.

The only issue I've had is I used to be able to drop down to I: of anywhere between 4-6 and play swtor at the same time, with no issues. Now I get much lower fps, so I need to drop down to I:2, or just disable that GPU. Kinda annoying, but meh whatever.

I'm getting the same thing.  Used to run a cgminer with intensity of 5 and play Arma 2 and other games no problem.  Now anything more than Intensity 1 and it's a slide show in game with a 7970.

Update: I take that back.  Even on intensity 1, after about 5 minutes of playing my video driver crashes and wipes out the game and CGMiner.

I have bailed back to 12.8. The others were just too unstable with crashing and you can't even watch a video while mining.  ???

I had it crash on me a few times, and I thought it was my undervolting gone too far, as that sometimes does it. I.e. I can mine at 1050MHz @ 1050mV, but can't use Chrome without crashing, even on 12.8. 1050MHz @ 1100mV always worked.

I've just resorted to disabling the GPU and letting the Single run while gaming, and that seems to work.

If you're talking Youtube, just right click on the video and in properties disable the hardware acceleration.  Should clear that right up.

Getting about 10mhash/s more with 12.10 over 12.8, this is on a 7950 @ 1100mhz. Getting about 575mhash/s now :)

I have it off for the browser entirely. I was actually talking about MPC-HC, 12.10+ does not play well with it, although 12.8 is fine.

Actually whilst 12.10 seemed to have a higher hash rate than 12.8 it was actually producing less shares. CGMiner averaged at 7.2 per minute, as opposed to 7.9 previously. I've upgraded to 12.11 beta and that seems a little better than 12.10 but still not quite as good as 12.8 I don't think...

WOOT, 12.11 beta is out, you should expect 20% performance increase O-O *starts downoading immitdiatly*

A Wuhh?

That's a 20% performance increase in some games.  That has no bearing on mining performance, and in my experience, 12.11 is a buggy mess and worse than 12.8 for mining speed and causes crashes and video artifacts.

What kind of buggy-ness have you found?

Well, here's a bit of background, I have a Sapphire 7970 that powers 3 23" LCD's and was running catalyst 12.8.  I ran cgminer (2.8.1 and then 2.8.5) in one of two modes, full bore or lightweight.  Fullbore would run at intensity 9 with 1070/950 clock speeds for about 650 Mh/s and I'd use that when I was doing basic stuff on the PC like web/email.  The lightweight config ran with intensity 5 and clocks of 1000/1450 and I'd use it if I wanted to play a game.  Speeds I'd see would vary from 100-400 Mh/s depending on how much the game was stressing the GPU at the time.  I was able to run the lightweight miner and play games like Arma 2, Company of Heroes or Mechwarrior Online without a problem and other than the drop in hash rate while I was gaming, I had no issues.

Once I moved to 12.10 (I skipped 12.9) that all went out the window.  Both those configs would work fine, but probably ran about 5% slower with speeds around 620-630 MH.  If I tried to run any games with the lightweight config, after about 5 minutes the video driver would crash and kill both cgminer and the game.  I even tried setting intensity to 1 or to dynamic and it still crashed if I tried to game.

The 12.11 beta was even worse.  Not only did it drop my speeds even more (there were times I was seeing 300 MH/s even with my 'fullbore' settings), but it basically would throw all sorts of graphical artifacts on my screens.  I also saw for the first time in 6 months an error message pop up in CGminer that my card wasn't responding and it was set to DEAD.  I didn't even try any games and just rolled back to 12.8.

Oops, 12.11 IS indeed a mess :o
Mining on my HD7850 went from 360mh/s to 220 mh/s 0_0

While I now get 70fps stable on ultra in BF3 its just not right...
Also It seems that I cant push the core to 1200 mhz anymore, its more like 1140 mhz :/

When mining I get strange artifacts around the screen, small black blocks all over the screen while browsing normally...
So in one smiley:  :'(

God,I hate ATI drivers  ::)

I can't wait for the ASIC's to arrive,so I can go back to Nvidia.....................

I actually switched back to 12.8. But CGMiner rebuilt my kernel with the new OCL runtime, and I kept my slight speed increase. Now I'm getting 630MH/s instead of 623MH/s. 7970 @ 1050,410.

+1 to this.  I'm so sick of fighting AMD/ATI cards and their drivers.

Same happened to me, pretty awesome

Was the jump back easy or was it as much as a pain as it usually is (driver sweeping)
Could you just use the Uninstall, And then Install the older? (ofcourse afterdoing the CGMiner kernal trick)

After you install 12.10 check to see if it works and gives you better performance, because on my 3x 7950 rig(windows 7 64 bit) I'm getting a good boost but on my single 7970 rig(windows 7 32bit) I can't even run cgminer without constant hw errors. If it doesn't work just uninstall and restart, then install the older 12.8. No sweeping because you want the new ocl to be inbedded to run with the older drivers.

10 or 11beta?
I thought 11beta had the buggy boost

You don't need to worry about the buggy drivers just add it or leave the new OCL driver on uninstall.

I can confirm a small increase using 12.8 with the 12.11 OCL driver. Looks like 616Mh/s @1025Mhz on 7970s.

On 12.11 i get 555mh/s with CGMiner Diablo, v1 w256 I:7 using a 7950

You may want to switch that over to poclbm and see if that gives you more hashes.

Always did... :\

I actually never uninstalled anything. Go into device manager, right click on ur GPU, and update driver software. Click browse my computer, and then let me pick from a list. I choose the 8.982 driver, and then rebooted. No hassle at all, and took me 3 minutes.