Bitcoin Forum

So I bought a new Asus EAH6950 DCII/2DI4S/1GD5 for a dedicated mining rig. I know it isnt the biggest or the best card, but it is what I was willing to put into a dedicated rig for the moment. Anyways...

From reading the forums and the hardware comparison chart, people are getting high 300's or low to mid 400 MH/s rates on this card. I am getting a consistent 340 MH/s after I have overclocked it to 900mhz. It is also running pretty hot even with the fans set at 95%. The card is running between 87c and 92c. I am running guiminer with poclbm and flags -v -w128 -f1 (f1 because it is dedicated... ie not used for anything else). Anyone have any suggestions? I have seen suggestions to boost the voltage 20% but I have two questions about this; I am not 100% sure where to do this, in MSI afterburner the voltage is blank and the ASUS smartdoctor it has a VCORE setting but I don't want to touch that until I know what it is. Also, won't increasing the voltage make my heat issues worse?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Yes, some 6950s in the hardware comparison chart are delivering some really high numbers. That's because they are hacked to "become" 6970s. This may be possible on your card as well. You can read more about it here: http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/159

I think in some cases the locked shaders may not be functional, and unlocking them can give you a GPU that doesn't work right. I've never tried this though, so I don't really know what I'm talking about. Just if you decide to try it, make sure you read the "what if something goes wrong" section. ;)

Anyway, I'd be interested in hearing if you get any higher performance with my miner. It's optimized for 6900 GPUs. It's at http://bitminter.com if you want to try it.

What is your current total hashrate at that pool? I'll try it out either way when I get home, but I'd like to know the total rate so I can add it to my backups or even main pool.

I get 300 mhash with my 6950. But i have to check out, if my 2nd has more mhash ( just installed it ).

It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem starting a new pool. Everyone wants to mine in the big pools, so how do you become big? But to get things started I'm giving out 150 bitcoins in the form of a 5% bonus on all work done up to block 60.

Next two things coming are pool rate display and miner optimized for radeon 4000+5000 series.

Anyway, if any of you guys modify a 6950 I'd be interested in hearing how it goes. There's probably a chance to render the card useless, so I wouldn't advise anyone to do it, but it does sound interesting. ;)

You need better ventilation in the case. Those temps are just BAD.

If you up the voltage, your card will be fried. If the card is 92C at core, then the VRMS are frying which is not good.

So long to your card pretty soon unless you return it to stock and downclock the memory.

Ok fixed the case issue. We are now running at around 72c

we really need a wiki page with acceptable temps for all the cards, so people understand what they should be aiming for imho.

I agree. Thanks to all that have helped in this thread, but I honestly looked everywhere else and couldn't find adequate information on a 6950 anywhere else.

i can help you with the "power increase".

open catalyst control center

goto the overdrive section

goto the power control settings slider

slide it over to at least 5%

if you raise clock speeds without increasing the "ceiling" of the card, it'll actually throttle down even though you've told it to raise the clocks.

some people say slide it over to 20% to turn off the power play completely but i find 5% will hold the small overclocks i set.

good luck

'monkey