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Hi guys,

So i'm new to this game, about 3 weeks in now. One of the most frustrating problems i came across, was that my 2 7970's both got 700+Mh/s on sha-256 but when it came to scrypt they were only getting about 550Kh/s.

I spent a solid week searching for answers - I have noticed so many people with the same problem - and there are lot's of responses about how certain 7970's are just crap and you should sell them blah blah well anyway that's rubbish - Most if not all 7970's should be able to get 700+Kh/s.

Some of you will have just not set them up properly and won't need to flash, but, there are specific cards that for some unknown reason seriously under perform on scrypt. Luckily, the solution is rather simple.

Now, just to clarify, all the setting i state are for a sapphire vapor-x ghz edition, so they may vary for other cards.

I can confirm i have gotten peoples gigabyte and xfx cards up to these speeds, and my own is currently hashing at 730Kh/s. It is usally the ghz/vapor-x/ possibly OC editions that need flashing.

Oh and one other thing - if you think your card is voltage locked, try MSI afterburner version 2.2.2 and Sapphire Trixx, as some cards that people claim to be voltage locked are not when using Trixx or older MSi software.

Before we go as far as flashing, try the following:

Before running cgminer, open cmd, type  "setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100" (no quotation marks) and press return, then close cmd.

Change your MSI afterburner settings to the following:

GPU Clock - 1040Mhz *
GPU Voltage - 1100Mv
Memory Clock - 1500Mhz
Memory Voltage - 1500Mv

*This is the optimal value for one of my identical cards, the other one get's a much lower hashrate with this value so i use 1025Mhz which get's 730Kh/s as well - It will be specific with each unique card, and it's more about the ratio of the GPU to memory speeds than how high they are. With scrypt 1Mhz can easily make a 20Kh/s+ difference in hashrate.

EDIT - I have noticed something peculiar about the vapor-x cards. Sometimes the hashrate is very stable, stays at the same value, but if i change something suddenly the hashrate will be up and down like a yo-yo.
         The strange thing is, this doesn't seem to be because  for e.g there's not enough voltage or your clock speeds are too high. I found that is the difference between memory voltage and clock OR              
          GPU Voltage and clock that causes this in my experience, if it's too big a difference you have problems, if it's too small a difference you have problems. Hope this helps if you've noticed this issue.

The trick is to find the sweet spot - Start at 1040, find whether going up or down increases hashrate, then keep moving GPU speed in that direction untill the hashrate suddenly goes down, back up 1 or 2Mhz and that should be the optimal clock settings for 1500Mhz memory - if you then decide to change memory speed you will need a totally different gpu speed.

Then go into a fresh cmd window and type:

cgminer --scrypt -o yourpool -u yourusername -p yourpassword -s 2 --expiry 1 --queue 0 --thread-concurrency 20992 -I 13 -w 256 -g 2

Also try 8192.

If your hashrate is still only 550Kh/s - 650Kh/s then a bios flash will be necessary.

**WARNING - If you mess up, there is a small chance you may brick your card**

Luckily with certain cards i.e the vapor-x you have a switch that can switch between 2 different BIOS. So if for some reason after flashing you are unable to boot (i can't imagine any reason this would happen, but still), just push the switch and boot off the second BIOS then re flash with the original BIOS. If you don't have the switch and for some reason you can't boot, you will need to boot off another graphics card and re flash the bios back to original.



Ok so here's what you need to do, you will need a USB flash drive:

1. First of all you need to make the flash drive bootable. This software should do the trick: http://rufus.akeo.ie/

2. Next Download the BIOS for your card from this website: http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios

As for what BIOS you need, this depends on your card. For the Sapphire 7970 this one worked for me: http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/129658/sapphire-hd7970-3072-120926.html

Say you have a Gigabyte 7970 Ghz - You want to flash with the Gigabyte 7970 BIOS for a NON Ghz edition version of the card.

Then download atiflash: http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/2230/atiflash-4-07/

Feel free to rename your bios to new.bios to make life easier further along.

3. Copy both files over to the bootable USB you created earlier.

4. Restart your PC. Go into your motherboard BIOS and set your boot device priority so the USB drive is first, save and exit. (don't forget to switch this back to your operating system drive after your done)

5. Right so if everything is going well, atiflash should boot (a black screen like cmd if i remember correctly). Type the following and press return: atiflash.exe -i

That will tell you the device number to use in the next step.

6. Then type the following and press return, where 0 is your device number and new.rom is the bios name, or leave it the same if you renamed it: atiflash.exe -f -p 0 new.rom

Once complete, reboot and keep your fingers crossed ;)

Go through the steps i wrote first, varying your GPU speed to find the best value.

HOPEFULLY that should do the trick.




Pleas let me know if i haven't explained something properly, or if anyone needs any help with it, post back and i will try my best.

Hope this helps :)

Edit - I think this also works for under performing 7950's but obviously not as high and different settings across the board.

Edit - Well i got bored, so here's some proof for any doubters.. and a nice tidy blond piece to go with it :P

http://s12.postimg.org/i1n3cd5wd/cgminer.png

As you can see i've been playing about with MSI Afterburner settings, still haven't got the sweet spot quite right, it's amazing how sensitive these cards are to such small changes.

Great write-up!

I just purchased an xfx hd7970 and noticed that the tc for that card will not go as high as my powercolor hd7970.  Didn't think there would be that much difference between the cards.  haha, guess I'm still new to this too!

Very interesting about the voltage, I've been a little couscous about messing with those setting as they can end up damaging the card if not done right.  With adjusting the voltage from stock have you noticed the cards running cooler at the same hash rates?  I had to lower the hash rates of both my cards down to just above 500 KH/s (scrypt) in order to keep the heat down.  Maybe an open frame design with a box fan is next :).

Keep it up man!

Cheers Bud :)

In my experience you can get pretty much the same hash rate with a thread concurrency of 8192 as you can with a higher one, but then all the other settings need adjusting.

As long as you are careful, i wouldn't worry too much about damaging your card through changing the voltage.

I am finding that many cards have a stock voltage way higher than needed - for example the stock voltage on my vapor-x is 1.256V, and that produces way too much heat.

I think mine were 80+ before i downed the voltages. Now the first card is 60C fans 50% and the second card is 70C fans 70% - I have a pci riser card in the mail though, so that should get both temps down to 60C which is more than optimal imo.

Download MSI afterburner 2.2.2 and have a look at the voltage. If it's 1.2V+ you could definitely lower it a bit which should noticeably reduce heat. It depends on your clock speed and card obviously, but i find a nice 40-60mV gap between clock speed and voltage give nice stability - i.e 1040 GPU speed, 1080mV Voltage.

Let me know how it goes :)

I remember you from the trollbox on BTC-E, I'm going to need this thread later. I'm getting 3 of the gigabyte 7970 OC cards soon.

Ah yes, good ol' trollbox :P

I actually like that thing, met some nice people :)

So i managed to get up to 800 Kh/s on the 1st card, although i've only just noticed a few hardware errors, it's been running a fair few hours.

I'm gonna tweak it tomorrow, i'll post the results. Gotta sleep now.



http://s9.postimg.org/avazstcxr/Untitled.png

For anyone interested, i managed to get 800Kh/s stable (so far anyway), made a thread with details here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=202909.msg2121006#msg2121006

Your desktop background looks like it has a high hash rate probably adds an extra 50 kh/s !

One of the keys to your tuning is that you are using 2 GPU threads.  Older series cards like only 1 GPU thread.  This presents a problem in a mixed environment.  For example, I have two 58030's and one 7970.  I have to use -g 1 to get the 5830's to hash at ~290kH/s, but that drops the 7970 from 730kH/s to ~600kH/s.

What MSI? what Afterburner? What cgminer?

Urrrm.. You can clearly see the versions i'm using in the picture... and MSI is MSI Afterburner...

Hmmm, surely you can set -g1 for one card and -g2 for the other..?

I tried some config options and it wouldn't let me.  If anyone knows how I'm all ears.

Did you change it in the .conf file rather than trying to add it to the command line?

Have you tried running the cards in separate instances of cgminer? Sounds like that might sort your issue out.

I've got a lot of different 7970 cards and the XFX ones are the worst i've ever used. My Gigabyte ones will fly over 700 a piece of cake, my Diamond ones will do over 600 without much effort, but the XFX ones i'd be lucky to hit 550 no matter how much tweaking or OC'ing.

But did you flash? It's the flashing that usually gets them from 550 Kh/s up to 700Kh/s...

The XFX ones i have are 925 core edition, isn't that what i'd want the bios to be anyway? Or is there more to it than that?

There is more to it. It's the actual BIOS, rather than the settings the BIOS sets the card to, that seems to be the problem on certain cards.

It depends which xfx you have, but i had a couple of guys now i think who have gone from 550Kh/s up to 700Kh/s with certain XFX cards after a BIOS flash. If you are using the setting i suggested and still only getting 550Kh/s then i'm pretty confident it's the BIOS holding it back - I am not sure which XFX Bios would work, but you'd have to have a look.

What's the worst that could happen if the bios flash doesn't work right? Will my card be dead? And I am going to have a 690 as my main card, with three 7970s for mining. Is there any way I can accidentally flash my nvidia card with the AMD drivers?

The worst that could happen would be you would brick your card, unlikely but possible. But if the BIOS didn't work, you should just be able to boot off another card and re-flash the BIOS.

You could accidentally flash it if you didn't put the correct device number in the flashing utility - If you are worried about that just take it out when flashing.

It's up to you, i'd do it, but i do take risks with my tech sometimes..

Have you seen this flash done on the xfx 7970 cards which didn't use the reference pcb.

Very nice post :)

please tell me smth, i have for instance and RADEON 7970 cards, and MSI ones and HIS ones. I go for insance on the HIs ones here-->  http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/index.php?architecture=ATI&manufacturer=HIS&model=HD+7970&interface=&memType=&memSize=3072


Which one i should choose? ??

What is the exact card? e.g black edition / double d black edition

I had a guy who i think said he had a black edition and got it up to 700Kh/s but i can't remember which BIOS he used.


Hmm i'm not sure about the HIS - i don't know anyone who has tried the BIOS flash for that card.

What is your hashrate on scrypt currently?

Its the fx-797a-td

Its the double dissipation non black edition

I also have the XFX Double D FX797GTDFC and can't get over 500-550 KH with it.  I can get 680-700MH/s though.  Been kind of pissed since I bought them.

Then i would think a bios flash would work

I have a spare card there so even if it doesn't take I won't have to blind flash the original I suppose, be mighty pissed if I f-ed it up though lol

Nice post.  I have two XFX 7970 and will try the BIOS flash and will report back.  As for finding the sweet spot, just close out afterburner and you will see it.   ;)

tb

Being doing a bit more reading if your card is one with dual dvi's it is not the reference board it is xfx's own spec and flashing a reference BIOS will brick it  >:(

I get artifacts when I put in your settings and my card crashes after 20 seconds. After that it is stuck at 500/150mhz till I restart my computer. I get this everytime I'm going to high with my card. Anyone know how I can fix this?

Which card do you have?

try increasing the gpu voltage a tiny bit.

Hmm i wouldn't of thought it would brick it - you should just be able to boot off another card and re-flash.

If flashing to a reference BIOS doesn't work as you say, i would of thought there would be a suitable BIOS somewhere, it would just be about finding the right one.

I'm going to start taking more details down when i help people.

If anyone has been helped by this using a non sapphire card, can you please post the exact card you have and the exact BIOS you flashed with that worked.

Cheers :)

Hey, so I've made some changes with my setup.  My XFX HD7970 DD can now reach 700 KH/s, and is stable at around 680 KH/s.  I'm still tinkering with it, but I think it's possible to break the 700 KH/s + mark.  Here is the guide that I used and a link to the bios that I used to flash the card:


The forum where I grabbed this from can be found here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174036.msg1980690#msg1980690 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174036.msg1980690#msg1980690)

Just to say, i think i heard someone say using the Gigabyte BIOS on a Sapphire Vapor-x Ghz does not boot. I may be wrong though, just a warning as that guide states to use that BIOS for a sapphire vapor-x - I can 100% confirm the BIOS i said, which is a sapphire BIOS will work for the Vapor-x ghz.

Good to know that BIOS works for an XFX though, i had people tell me they got it working for XFX cards but forgot to ask which BIOS they used.

I just got my 3 gigabyte 7970s and so far I am getting 700 khs at 1040/1500. It looks like I won't need to do a bios flash. I have been having problems getting more than one card to work at a time though. Has anyone here gotten higher than 700, or is this the limit for a 7970?

It's only possible for techbytes ;).

I haven't been able to get mine stable above 700, really wish I could though!

http://i1286.photobucket.com/albums/a610/wowc8/cgminer_zpsb72d7276.png

Disclaimer: I am a total noob to this


 XFX double D 7990 blk ed  X3= 2100 kh/s     approx 680kh/s per card   1100/1500  I 20   G1   tc 19000-22000(flashed w the gigabyte bios)


Strange thing is I was able to get them to run at 750 kh/s but the "accepted" column in gui-scrypt was increasing much slower and the hashrate on the pool website crashed miserably.

tc 4196    I 13  G2.  


Going to run them @ 750 overnight and see what happens




 

Thanks for the how to on updating the GPU ROMs. I was getting ~550kh/sec before but 650kh/sec now. :) Still not at the purported 750kh/sec though (see below).

A couple of "gotchas" that I stumbled into along the way:

First, since I have no Windoze machines I used unetbootin to make the FreeDOS USB bootable drive. However, although it worked I was dropped into A: which didn't have atiflash.exe nor the ROM. This really confused me and I tried B: but it didn't exist.

After much fiddling about I tried C:, just in case, and low and behold there were the files. *facepalm* So, after booting from your FreeDOS USB remember to go to C: to find your BIOS flashing files. ;)

Second, despite flashing both GPUs (just got two in there at the moment while waiting for risers) I was getting only about 350kh/sec each from both cards. WTF! Again after much fiddling about and head scratching I had to leave the office (I'd brought the rig in so some of the guys at work could give me a hand). I noticed that one card was a lot hotter than the other. Then I realised I'd only plugged one screen in and had not been using the dummy plug. Doh!!

This one was a gotcha since it looked from cgminer's screen like both cards were working, but in reality I think the hashing was being erroneously allocated evenly(ish) to both when in reality one card was idle due to not detecting a screen. Anyway, I hope my n00bish mistakes help someone else. ;)

Regardless, I've only managed to get an average of 650kh/sec/GPU out of the cards using:

./cgminer --shaders 2048 --thread-concurrency 8192 --intensity 13 --worksize 256 --gpu-engine 1100 --gpu-memclock 1800

As an aside, setting engine/mem speed to 1080/1500 reduces it to 640kh/sec. Changing -g to 3 (not quite sure what -g does even after reading the docs (https://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer/blob/master/SCRYPT-README) but whatever! :p) seemed to make no appreciable difference, or even reduced hashrate, so given the health warning it comes with I decided to leave it alone.

When I try and tweak most things (other than clock speeds) I tend to get "invalid nonce" errors. This applies to many of the proposed settings on the github LTC mining comparison page (https://github.com/litecoin-project/litecoin/wiki/Mining-hardware-comparison) - any intensity above 13 seems to barf in particular. I've read that you can get 700-750kh/sec from these cards though as have others on this thread. Any suggestions? I saw something about it being better to use older graphics drivers somewhere but can't find it now.

Kate.

PS. The cards are Gigabyte HD 7970 3072MB GDDR5's with the latest BIOS (http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/127156/gigabytehd7970-3072-120905.html) and I'm using cgminer 3.1.1. Oh, and Xubuntu.

---

Edit: I've now got three 7950's in the rig and after reading the consolidated Litecoin mining guide (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=117221.0) have found a thread concurrency above 8192 which seems to work and allow greater intensities without those invalid nonce errors. I'm currently trialling this:

./cgminer --thread-concurrency 22392 -I 19 -w 256 -g 2 --gpu-engine 1050 --gpu-memclock 1840 --temp-target 70 --auto-fan -o <blah>

it is not stable though. :( A quick way to tell if it is unstable I've found is to try to ctrl-C (kill) it soon after starting. If it hangs, its unstable. The above is tantalizingly squeezing a teeny bit more from the cards though; I'm now up to just under 670 Kh/sec on average. not much use with the instability though!

With intensity back to 13 and the new thread concurrency I'm getting 630 kh/s. I'm exploring the range above 13 to see if there are any stable ones. I know most people say not, but what the hell. :p Will let you know!

Hi, only just seen your post.

Just to check quickly, as it wasn't in the command line you wrote - did you use -g 2 (-g is threads per GPU btw) with the 7970? If you don't put - g 2 in i believe it uses -g 1 which gives a lower hashrate.

I currently use this for my 7970's btw:       -s 2 --thread-concurrency 20992 -I 13 -w 256 -g 2    1040 gpu / 1500 memory (1081mV/1500mV)

I think I am ready to flash my bios but need a little help. I have a Gigabyte HD 7970 3072MB GDDRS and have tried everything but no luck getting past 550 Kh/s via scrypt. I am thinking my BIOS may be too old on the card as this is my current stats on windows 7:

Display device       : AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series on Tahiti GPU
Display driver       : 9.14.10.0969, Catalyst 13.4
BIOS                 : 015.022.000.004
GPU: Gigabyte HD 7970 3072MB GDDRS - GV-R797OC-3GD


Looking at http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/index.php?manufacturer=Gigabyte&model=HD+7970 there seems to be much newer ones although I have never flashed a BIOS or anything for that matter so maybe I am wrong? My current settings are :


I have tried -g 2 and every time it drops dramatically down to 380 Kh/s from 540 in -g 1. I have also followed the ReadME file for Cgminer and my ThreadConcurrency speed came out to be 22400 but have read to use 8192 and see no difference. So at this point I am thinking a flash of the bios will be the way to go. What do you think? Thank yoU!

color 0A
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
cgminer --scrypt -o pool -u user -p password --auto-fan --gpu-engine 1008,1008 --gpu-memclock 1675,1675 --thread-concurrency 8192,8192 -I 13,13 -g 2 -w 256,256

make this .bat file you wil get  712 and use pc also

dont know about that

really digging the green color =D but the result is a 390 :/ Still not sure why when -g 2 is changed to -g 1  I get 540? still way below what I should be getting.

I'm not too sure about that card tbh. The BIOS flash is not to put a more up to date BIOS on, but to put a different BIOS on which doesn't suffer from the low scrypt hashrate. As i say this is a problem with certain cards, usually the OC / Ghz editions.. Just to confirm, your card is a normal Gigabyte, not OC or Ghz edition or anything?

Try the following and let me know what hashrate you get: -s 2 --thread-concurrency 20992 -I 13 -w 256 -g 2    With 1040mhz/1081mV GPU and 1500Mhz/1500mV RAM.

*Edit - reading your post more closely, am i right in saying you have an OC edition card? If so then i'm pretty sure a BIOS flash to the non OC version would work.

Also if anyone's interested, my 7970's use about 250w each at these settings.

Yeah am pretty sure it is an OC version from these numbers :

GPU: Gigabyte HD 7970 3072MB GDDRS
GV-R797OC-3GD
Display device       : AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series on Tahiti GPU
Display driver       : 9.14.10.0969, Catalyst 13.4
BIOS                 : 015.022.000.004

Do you know how to flash the card or what BIOS to actually flash to as there are so many to choose? this will be my first time flashing but am confident I can make it happen

3 x Gigabyte 7970TO

https://i.imgur.com/HHSM9VD.jpg

and using that config line for cgminer I get a 380 Kh/s with the -g 2. When i change it to -g 1 I get 510 kh/s

jealous!

Well it runs stable and gets those 760 kh/s, however the cards are factory overclocked and locked at 1.256V. So I am not sure if its good for power consumption(obviously not), tried to flash 7970TO bios to 7970OC bios and the card did not perform as good but the voltage was down to 1.171V

So then getting out of my 7970OC BIOS might be a good move? Thanks for the help!

tiny update! So i ended up flashing the GPU with the most updated GIGABYTE BIOS and am now getting 590 kh/s almost out of the box settings =D that is about 40 more then I was able to get past for the last week so progress finally made.

I used the F3BIOS to flash : ATI Source BIOS Version:015.032.000.004
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4102&dl=1#bios

I then went back to 13.1 catalyst and am on 2.7 SDK as when I try to instal 2.8 SDK i get something about installation pkg error fail?

So the fact that I have pushed past the 550 mark pretty easily on the new BIOS means I am off to a good start right? Now to just get past 600 and maybe 7? If you think I should flash with a different BIOS please let me know as there were many to choose from and just chose the most recent. Thanks guys!

Did you actually use the Gigabyte bios listed, or something else for the XFX 7970 DD?

For my sapphire xfx7970 used the following: http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/129658/sapphire-hd7970-3072-120926.html
Running 770 kh/s as well on 1100/1500 now using 13.6 beta 2 catalyst on win 7 rig. Hope that helps!

For the record, I used the bios mentioned in this quote, and my XFX 7970 DD performance went from a high of single thread 550 (I could never get >400 using 2 GPU threads) to 690 (690 using stock mem/cpu settings, but 2 GPU threads).  This is the best thread ever, and I'll be sending some donations out for sure.  Can't wait to tweak mem/cpu later tonight and break 700! :)

Congrats! it is a good feeling isnt it? I ended up with 1100/1500, -g 2, -I 13 and TC 8192 even though it defaulted at 22400. Not much else is needed unless your running them in the case. If they are still in a case you may want try 1040thru1070/1475 so it does not get as hot.

After struggeling for weeks, I'm now doing 1500 Khps with 2 VaporX cards.

The BIOS flash indeed is the way to go.

Driver 13.6B2
I 13, TC 8192, G 2
Sweetspot found @ 1065/1500

This topic has helped me a lot!!
Thanks!!

Hi, to refresh a subject a little bit :)
I have 4x 7970 Sapphire DualX cards and I obviously have an issue with them. I cannot pass the 600 Khash barrier with them even on 1150GPU and 1650MEM with 1175 voltage.... Thread is on 8192, w256, I13 threads per gpu 1....
I tried to flash bios with the one from the first thread and nothing.... Then I reflashed bios with the one from the website for my card and I did it good :) but no change in hash rate.... So, does anyone knows what bios should I use to improve hash rate?

I have the Vapor-X cards and like everybody else I flashed the bios to the Dual-X and got it to 760kh.  So if we're flashing the bios to the Dual-X then I don't think you need to flash the bios at all, IMHO.  I think you just need to tweak your settings until you find the sweet spot.  It's a tedious process, especially if it's your first mining rig.

Its not my first mining rig, but for the first time am using 7970.... I tried all the setings that I found on the internet and thats it... 590-605 Khash and not 24/7 stable....

Any suggestions?  I have the XFX 7970 Black Edition.

The card works, albeit, much more slowly than I am wanting but I can't flash to upgrade.

I used the rufus boot and when I use
 C:> ATIFLASH -F -P 0 s.rom
I get the response below.   (I might have used more -f flags when the simple one didn't work.)

Old SSID: 3211
New SSID: 3000
Old P/N: 113-797ATDBV32_111215SZ
New P/N: 113-2104XTHY-OB5
Old DeviceID: 6798
New DeviceID: 6798
Old Product Name: Tahiti B0 CR XT C38601 GDDR5 3GB 500e/150m
New Product Name: Tahiti B0 XT GDDR5 3GB 500e/150m
Old BIOS Version: 015.022.000.004.000000
New BIOS Version: 015.025.000.099.000000
Flash type: Unknown SPI

Write fail
0/20000h bytes programmed

Any ideas?  Also what's weird is that when I started I tried to save the ROM and the info says it's 40000 in length not 20000 in length like the replacement is.

I am having some problems with my 4 gigabyte OC 7970s. As I said a few months ago, I somehow got all of them to run at 730kh/s at 1040/1500 with the BIOS that came with it. Last month, one of them had a capacitor that exploded on the back of the board, so I RMAd it and got a new one yesterday. I put it in my rig and set it up like it was before my 4th card died, and now I can only get 550kh/s. I didn't change any settings going from 4 to 3 cards, so I am thinking the newer card is causing it somehow. Could it be the newer card, or what?

Ok, I have figured out what was causing my problem. It was the new card the Gigabyte sent me. For some reason, it won't work with the F62 BIOS, which is what my other 3 cards have and I can get 730khs with. When I use this card in the same rig with the other 3, it drops the hash rate of every one. I think this card is defective. After flashing it to the F62 BIOS, I get crashes and graphical glitches. It has the same PCB as the other cards and is otherwise identical. Has anyone else heard of this happening?

All new Gigabyte GV-R797OC-3GD with f80 bios are like that.
I tried  to reflash it with f72 bios, but it didn't work.
And I still didn't find suitable bios for them.
I have about 680 kh/s with them at 965Mhz/1500Mhz tc 10240 with latest beta AMD drivers.

Do you think I could RMA it, or should I sell it? I am not going to use it for anything else.

I might try to use it again, but that was a lot of work when I first tried to make it get a good hash rate. What BIOS are you using with it?

What about the new R9 280x cards (that are essentially 7970s) - do they have the same issues?

Is it hard to get them over 700kh/s ?

I had the problem with low and stuck hashrate at 550kh/s then 660kh/s and eventually got it up to 740kh/s. This is a Sapphire 7970 GHZ Edition (1050/1500/1.256V) and a Sapphire 7970 Dual-X (925/1375/1.175V) (these are based on the same board).

Here's how I solved it:

-- To get to 550kh/s --

1. Disabled all uneeded resources on the motherboard via the BIOS menus (SATA, USB3, WIFI, Sound, IDE, Ethernet) and installed Kubuntu 12.6 LTS (13.10 is no good) 64-bit on a Kingston 16GB drive
2. Installed AMD DRIVER 12.8 and AMD APP SDK 2.7 together with CGMINER 3.7.2
3. Saved the original and flashed the BIOS using DOS+ATIFLASH to the following (same as in the start of this thread): http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/129658/sapphire-hd7970-3072-120926.html
4. Always delete the scrypt*.bin files in the CGMINER directory before starting CGMINER
5. Started CGMINER with --thread-concurrency 8192 -I 13 -g 2 -w 256 --lookup-gap 2 --gpu-engine 1100 --gpu-memclock 1600

-- To get to 660kh/s --

1. Uninstalled DRIVER and APP SDK (script below), then installed AMD DRIVER 13.11b (latest) and AMD APP SDK 2.9 - ran aticonfig --adapter=all --initial, reboot
2. Deleted scrypt*.bin files
3. Started CGMINER with --thread-concurrency 8192 -I 13 -g 2 -w 256 --lookup-gap 2 --gpu-engine 979 --gpu-memclock 1600

-- To get to 740kh/s --

1. Fixed my CGMINER script (below) to properly map the 'export' statements to the right session - which means that thread concurrency is no longer stuck at 8192 for me (but still the best performing value)
2. Deleted scrypt*.bin files
3. Started CGMINER with --thread-concurrency 8192 -I 13 -g 2 -w 256 --lookup-gap 2 --gpu-engine 1055 --gpu-memclock 1500

amd_uninstall.sh

cgm.sh

cgm-screen.sh to start cgm.sh in the background

If this helped you - make sure to send thanks to LTC LiVXy9ykEmBQyn3UzaJXrg9WnnntjHa3pE or BTC 1EqoSXzRr8eex4jimLDYxDsjPH4svXBguN - appreciate it!

I seriously cannot believe this worked :o I have 2x XFX 7970 GHz Edition cards that I couldn't push past 575 khash/sec @ 1100 / 1800 MHz, and that was using 650 watts (measured at the wall)...
Just flashed that Gigabyte BIOS mentioned earlier, the 925 MHz core version and now hit ~650 khash/sec on each card, @ 925 / 1500 MHz and am only 450 watts!!

Better yet, I have a custom water loop that was running "hot" at 55C earlier, now it's stable at 40C and I'm speechless. Incredible, goes to show that hardware performance truly is all about the software  ;D

Thanks for all the hard work OP, and research by everyone in this thread!

Just a tiny note, and sorry if it's been mentioned before, but from experience:

if you do "brick" your card, it may be possible to "unbrick" it
by re-flashing with the original rom.

my double d with dual dvi worked with bios flash

I'm wondering if ghz bios will work

Hi, i have x5 Gigabyte GV-R797OC-3GD rev 1.0, and only 550-580Kh/s via scrypt. Intensity - only 13 work, any other - drop down hashrate... I have tried -g 2 and every time it drops down to 380 Kh/s from 550 in -g 1. I try many conf also gpu: 900 - 1100 Mhz, memory: 900 - 1500Mhz, threadconcurrency 8192 - 22400, but see no difference. Try flash BIOS: F1, F2, F3 from Gigabyte, no results, with BIOS F72 and other Fxx - cards not start, this BIOS versions for rev 2.1 and not support memory type used in rev 1.0. What do you think? Thanx!

I want try flash BIOS from http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/123481/gigabyte-hd7970-3072-120628.html this BIOS support memory type used in my cards, maybe anyone run scrypt on Gigabyte GV-R797OC-3GD rev 1.0 and what version of BIOS are U use?

p.s. in sha256 mining cards work on 635Mh/s with no problem.

p.p.s system - Win7sp1x64, Catalyst 12.6, RAM 4Gb, setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100, setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
 - parameters set.

I think you should try updating your CCC and also make sure you are flashing to the reference bios. Then after that make small tweaks I can only seem to get 640kh/s with my 6x7970s but with just one I can get 690. Also my settings are 910 core 1370 mem, I spent hours trying to get it to go higher going up but i took it down a bit and got a 40kh/ sjump

But I am also having a similar problem why is it that with multiple cards I get lower kh/s and I have 6x7970 reference models all 925/1375 and stock they do 600ish and tweaked they do 690 solo but 640 combined.

I don't understand how you are keeping the temps in the low 70's.  I'm at 640 khs and struggle to keep around 80.  I can easily bump my hash up to the mid 70's but the cards overheat immediately.

kilcondlost, u have Gigabyte GV-R797OC-3GD rev 1.0, if not, this method not work for it.

Picked up 6 of those XFX 7970's from TigerDirect on the black friday deal.
very unhappy to say the MAX i can pull from these cards is ~560 hashes, even massively overclocked.

Would like to see if anyone else bought these, and have had any luck getting these to normal 7970 rates? (~650-750)
Card specs are as follows:
XFX Double Dissapation, Core edition model FX-797A-TDJV.
Version 1.0 on box
NON-REFERENCE PCB/matte black, NO ATI logo on bottom of card or BIOS switch at top.
clocked at 925/1375 stock.
GPUZ screenshot attached.
http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh156/muhammadbintariq2/tahiti7970s_zps4848f622.jpg~original (http://s255.photobucket.com/user/muhammadbintariq2/media/tahiti7970s_zps4848f622.jpg.html)

MAX hashrate i was able to achieve was about 560khash, at about 1110/1675 clocks, with 7192 TC, 13 intensity, and 12.8 drivers.
tried 13.4 as well, same problem.
tried 24000 tc, tried 40960 tc, tried 8192 tc, tried I20, I19, I18, all give lower hashes.
Funny thing is that the powertune settings dont seem to affect hashes at all, or even power consumption, tried it at +20, same hashes, tried it at -20, same hashes as well as same power pulled from the wall. Maybe this has something to do with the LOW LOW hashrate of these cards.
in the screenshot, you can see my 7950 outperforming these by a longshot.

this was all on a clean install of windows 7 64bit.yeah, sorry forgot to add that, i am using 2 threads, that, with 8192, i can get a max of 560 as i said :(

Great wealth of knowledge going around in this thread.  Has anyone done a bios flash with an XFX 7970A-TDK 1.0?  I see lots of other success stories of people flashing the TDJ version.  I am  stuck at 570k and have tried all the normal rounds of cgminer adjustments.

I used the bios suggested here (didn't take the first time. had to reboot and flash it again) and am getting 730Kh/s now using one those tiger direct specials. (This is a friend's card)

Here are my experiences getting my XFX 7970 to ~700 KH/s. Hope it helps someone! This thread has helped me a lot.

http://zsprawl.com/iOS/2013/12/mining-bitcoins-in-esxi-using-an-xfx-7970/

Same issue with that model card.
Has you found a resolution yet?
I tried 20+ other bios flashed on it....takes none one of them well.
 >:(

I'm gettin the same thing right now.. Can't flash this bastard! Did you have any luck? I've thrown basically every command I can find at it. Not even able to flash the extracted rom.... just kicks back the same message pretty much...

 -von

Still cant flash my TDKC 1.0.  Freakin sucks to be stuck at 500kh/s

Can anyone recommend a BIOS (Non OC edition) that works well for an MSI 7970 OC Edition?  
( R7970 - 2PMD3GD5/OC  http://gpuz.techpowerup.com/14/01/16/gyd.png )

I've tried everything currently listed for MSI on techpowerup.com without much success.  (http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/index.php?architecture=&manufacturer=MSI&model=HD+7970&interface=PCI-E&memType=&PmemSize=)

Printed on the PCB Board: "V277 Ver 1.0"

Thanks for any suggestions!

guys, check out configs from this page :p
they might work for u
http://cgminer-config.com/ (http://cgminer-config.com/)

I literally stayed up all night till about 5AM trying to get this exact card to hash over 550. The bios I flashed it with was one that changed made afterburner see it as a lightnining b to get a hash rate of 650 stable. It did voltage lock the card though.

I'll be home later today and will uploaded the bios I used since I don't remember the one I got from techpowerup.

Hi!
Sorry for waking up an old thread but I've got some problems with my XFX card....
The highest I've been able to get is around 650Kh/s but since I should be able to get over 700Kh/s I really need some help.
I got the highest when I flashed my bios to the Gigabyte one.
Need some advice

EDIT: got it up to 700Kh/s by maxing out my memclock as high as it could go and take that times 0,59 and using that as a coreclock.
Wow I'm good..
--thread-concurrency 8192 -I 13 -g 2 -w 256 --gpu-memclock 1750 --gpu-engine 1032

Hello,  this thread looks very useful!

Before trying to follow the advices i wanted to ask, casue I'm afraid of doing damage..

So i have  2x  Asus HD7970 dc2t-3gd5

I ve been trying to tweak all days long,  but max i can get is about 550kh per card.

Now i wanted to try to flash the bios , wich one should I choose?  I need to use the bios of my particular card model,  or  I need to use Bios from another one?

thanks!

MSI 7970 3GB OC (Boost Edition) :

http://i60.tinypic.com/16lftoo.png

reply if interested about details

I'm interested!
I'm stuck with the Gigabyte 797OC-3GD at 530Khs. Tried flashing ~15 different BIOSes but either doesn't help or won't boot/load drivers/crashes on cgminer.

Hi

I am new here i also have the XFX Hd 7970 Black Edition 1000/1425 reference cards. 3 of them to be exact, and i am just in the beginning stages of building my very first mining Rig
I have understood these cards dont hash that great, so me too I am looking for the correct BIOS to flash them with.

I did a quick search on the "NEW BIOS" that you were trying to flash with, and I find that that bios "015.025.000.099.000000" belongs to a HD 7950 card
I dont know if that maybe is a reason for your write miss match, or maybe it is intentional. Are you suppossed to reflash the 7970 to a 7950??

If i find any sollution to my 3 cards i will post here. If anyone out there allready has a sollution,i would greatly appreciate a hint in here:)

Thank you

I'm having this same issue with this same (rev 1) card. Can you please tell me what bios you used? I can't find one that seems to work.

Thanks!

I have this card PowerColor AX7970 3GBD5-M2DHG. Could some one please tell me the correct BIOS to flash to get in the 650 to 700khash area. I currently get 585khash/s on all 10 cards with 1090/1500/1.111v
Cgminer -g 2 -I 13 --thread-concurrency 8192. If someone can tell me the correct BIOS I am willing to offer a bounty in BTC or DOGE. Thanks.

I have 3 of the exact same cards. Just got them yesterday to begin my mining rig. So far I have only 1 card running as my motherboard is yet to arrive. as for the settings I'm running :

Catalyst 13.1 clean install. with included APP APK.
Win 7 Ultimate 64Bit
CGminer 3.1.0


Now this will get me anywhere from 520-560kh/s speed on the card if I leave the card at default clocks. BUT after hours of tuning with just AMD Overdrive, I gotten my hasrate up to 660Kh/s

945-949/1575 = 650KHs
895-899/1500 = 625KHs

mem clock is set to max for the best efficiency mining and the core clock has a very sensitive line.
For example my card will get around 550KHs with 950/1575 and 650KHs with 945/1575
Because AMD Overdrive only does 5Mhz increment I cannot pin point the exact line to the 1Mhz yet.
You can play around with ur Core clock a bit with one card and try to find the line that gets u that extra 100 Khs :)

Since 650KHs is still probably a bit off from the optimal speed for a 7970
My next step would be trying to find more BIOS for the card but I havent started on that yet!  

Thanks for the ideas. Let me know if you can find the BIOS that will help these cards in your travels. I will send you some doge or btc.

So for my cards the 3 XFX HD 7970 Black edition coreclock 1000/1425, i founs a Bios sollution , And I have flashed them all.
When flashing as somebody asked you must flash with the Bios switch in position Nr 1
Pos. Nr 2 is locked, and good to have if ya screw up...
Core is then reset to 925/1375, then you have to manually overclock to 1050/1575
and i now get a hasrate of round 740 kh/s

The Bios that I used Is one which is Modified by "TheStilt" and it will 100% work on the cards that have the part number "FX-797A-TN FX-797A-TNBC v1.0"
on the back sticker..
heres a link to that Bios http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=73769960143386079737 (http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=73769960143386079737)

It may also work for other similar cards but I dont know, but as long as you have a bios switch there shouldnt be any problem in trying, at your own risk.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27596325/test3.png

Back off your OC. What do you get at 1025/1500/1.111v?

I have gone from 900 to 1100 on my gpu clock. It just slowly increases each time i move it up. No sweet spot no big jump at any spot. Really weird if you ask me.

 I am now at 1100/1575/1.102v and getting 596khash/s

Update for ya, I found a ASUS 7970 bios modded by The Stilt that can boost my card up to around 711KHs. I'm still testing the stability will keep u informed very soon, still finding the highest hash rate so far.
Also I changed my minier to sgminer 4.1.0 as that's the newest miner available, Driver still 13.1. script:

EDIT: also when your increasing your core clock and hash rate goes up that's a good sign, keep going up til u hit the point where it DROPS. and that last clock where it didn't drop is the sweet spot.

EDIT2: After a few hours of tuning I have gotten my card to run at 750KHs @ 1070/1500/-20% Power tune/80% Fan @ 73C. Gotta say I'm pretty satisfied. The card seems to be able to handle even higher speed but I'm playing it safe as 1070 is already fairly high clock.

For this BIOS MEM CLK stays @ 1500 as specified by The Stilt due to the BIOS contains modified CL timing. Just raise your clock from 1000 with 10 increment til it either drops or if temp is reaching GPU ~80C /VRM ~90C. My still goes up even after 1070 But like I said, I want choose this place to stop at around 750KHs for safety.

BIOS:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cgaaubvsnw9uh0w/7970MOD.bin

HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool:
http://download.cnet.com/HP-USB-Disk-Storage-Format-Tool/3000-2094_4-10974082.html
WIN98 Boot:
http://www.bay-wolf.com/utility/usbkey/win98boot.zip
ATIFLASH 4.17:
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/2306/atiflash-4-17/

If you don't know how to flash heres the post where I learned it:
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?p=4503953

PS: My card is Powercolor AX7970 3GBD5-M2DHV2, with SK Hynix H5GQ2H24MFR VRAM Chips. Have the reference AMD red/black Turbine cooler.
PSS: when you are putting the atiflash.exe in the usb its easier to name it shorter as DOS tend to shorten it as ATIFLA~1.exe which is a PITA to type.
PSSS: back up your current BIOS from GPU-Z and name it 7970Ori.rom so you can flash back in case of failure. Flash the BIOS 1 on the card. the switch is near the CF bridge.

Hope this helped you! I'm still waiting to sell my gaming machine for money so I can get a mobo that can run all 3 of my cards together haha. Right now only one card its sitting in this old HP machine with AMD 4600+, 4GB DDR2 533 RAM and an Antec 450W PSU :P and it still hashes 750KHs without a sweat xD

One thing. I was going to try this but I thought the bios should be a .rom file not a .bin?


Edit:  tried it. Flash worked. But only gained 4khash/s. wtf

shouldnt matter.

lol really only 4? what settings have u tried and what drivers are you running?
also give me a screenshot of the flashed card with gpu-z

I can actually get a little over 700kh/s on my Powercolor without flashing it
use the mem and clock tuning in cgminer and set it to 1020/1450
and i use the same config in scrypt as you do
heres some info on the card i have
if you like i can send a copy of my bios..

PowerColor Card
GpU-Z
015.032.000.002.000000 (113-C3860100-100)

Tahiti indentifier- HD 7970 (SK Hynix H5GQ2H24AFR)

you have the AFR vram which according to The Stilt has the correct timing built in. I got the MFR which is the rubbish timing. But I already got a modded bios which can get me 750KHs so I'm good! But thanks.

Anyone got any ideas or suggestion / help for these please: 

I Have 2 x XFX R9-280x-TDFD / R9 280X 1000M BOOST 3GB D5

They have been clocking very stable at ~702Kh/s for 3 weeks ( GPU clock 1020, MEM clock 1500, 1200mv )
powertune 20. Using CGminer3.7.2 each card matching pretty much constant.

I have also had them run stable for over the last week at this ~725Kh/s ( GPU clock 1050, MEM clock1500, 1200mv )

Just the last 2 days one card has been dropping down to ~614Kh/s regardless of clock settings above and into the ~500KH/s at stock clock of GPU 1000, MEM 1500

It starts of ok for the first 15 mins where they both match then it drops off bouncing from 64% load to 99%load spending like most time between 64% and 70% load. approx. 580kh/s  - 615Kh/s THE OTHER CARD JUTS SITS STABLE 724Kh/s - 725Kh/s

I have ran several programs to check it, the only thing I have noticed during the tests and overclock programs is that the fan speeds reports they are only spinning the fan at 70% of the other card even when it reports 100% in test programs it shows actual rpm of the other cards saying 70%.

So while 1 can spin 3150RPM at 85%     the other card reports 2800RPM at 100%

OR there is a bit of give and take on the figures below +/_  of 25 - 50  I just took averages.

GPU0 Fan speed ~100% =RPM 3150   GPU0 Fan speed ~85% =RPM 3150   GPU0 Fan speed ~75% = RPM 2850        
GPU1 Fan speed ~100% =RPM 2800   GPU1 Fan speed ~85% =RPM 2800   GPU1 Fan speed ~75% = RPM 2500

I have swapped the cards round in there pcie x16 sockets and it makes no difference.

I have tried running in both CGminer 3.7.2 and SGminer4.0

In both programs the same card is down in KH/s on what it normally is, while the other runs same as always. They are only 4 weeks old.

Any Ideas, advice  or suggestions would be welcomed ?

Thanks Axco

http://gpuz.techpowerup.com/14/03/02/efz.png

Cat 12.8 <-- Could this be the problem?

I have the MFR Hynix. Could I get you BIOS iCrazyNoob?

The one I posted above is my BIOS, Keep your mem clock at 1500
and adjust core from 1000 and higher I'd say for my card 1020/1500 - 1070/1500 is the best performing clocks.
Use AMD uninstaller to uninstall all drivers and download 13.1

Is that screen shot confirm it is the same bios you are using?

I know it's a 7970 thread but ...

I hold a brilliant Sapphire Vapor-x 7950 (11196-09-40G). Unfortunately, memory that is installed on it is the "SK Hynix H5GQ2H24MFR" which with stock BIOS. I have a poor hashrate (tested a lot of settings, max 510kh/s) and the VRM are hot like hell while the GPU is at 69°C, which is correct. After some reading I came to the conclusion that I needed to recover a modified bios to solve this problem. But, as you certainly know The Stilt closed his thread on litecointalk.  :-\

So I wanted to know if by luck one of you had the stilt bios for this card or a modified bios that can solve the problem. PM me please.

Otherwise, good luck with your 7970.  :)

iCrazy it seems it was the 12.8 Drivers causing the problem. I installed 13.1 and what a world of difference. Thanks so much for your help! Would you like a tip in DOGE or BTC?

good to hear, how much are you getting now with what clocks? I'm currently running 1050/1500 @ 730KHs. 1070/1500 can get me 750KHs for about 15 min and it lowers to 730 for some reason, so I just lowered clock to 1050 and it hashes 730KHs happily.
anything is appreciated :)

:D tip received thanks ! that was my first income since I started mining LOL.


EDIT: I found another Modded BIOS for the card going to try it out later when I get home today, will keep you updated! Happy mining
EDIT2: Well the BIOS I found pretty much perform on-par with the last BIOS i posted. I'm gonna try out 13.12 driver see if any difference with that.
EDIT3: 13.12 and 13.1 perform same. So I pretty much hit the ceiling for now at 730KHs/s on this powercolor reference.

Sent you a lil something. I am running at 1020/1500/1.0v getting around 705khash/s

I also have 2 Sapphire reference 7970. Tried flashing that ASUS Bios and it bricked them. Love that BIOS switch.  If you have any ideas or Bios for those let me know. Thanks

Try this BIOS out:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/8dldldm58wxqrs2/MBA_C3860100-100_AGR_K2.rar
it should work well with any reference design card!
Same stuff as always 1500MEMCLK only and adjust core&voltage to your liking.

Use GPU-Z to check your VRM temperature, for mining you want to use as low voltage as possible that will greatly reduce VRM stress and power consumption.
When you are mining the first to overheat is your VRM if there is no steps taken to lower your voltage and additional cooling fans at the back of videocard.
most likely the reduced hashrate is because VRM overheat and throttling down the core speed.

Worst case scenario it will heat up to much your video card caches on fire. according to the stilt some XFX cards have really cheap VRM controller (analog instead of digital) to save cost.

You can use VBE7 to modify BIOS voltage or use software like MSI Afterburner to lower voltage. You can start by lower the powertune to -20%

Turns out the cards were fine. The Bios in the ASRock mobo did not like the new GPU Bios and would not boot because of that.  I updated the MOBO Bios and now all is good!

Joshwaa/iCrazyNoob,
I'd kill for 700kh/s average on my xfx r9 280x DD.  I'm averaging around 675 with throttling or even lower (630) with (non-throttling) clock speeds of 1020/1400. Everything fully cranked 1135/1500 @ 20 Intensity will get me almost 700kh/s, but it runs hotter, throttles every 20 seconds, and produces a lot more rejects.

I've tried just about everything.  Updated to the latest amd drivers (from 13.11), updated to cgminer 3.7.2, tried two of the Silts undervolted bios, created my own undervolted bios, tried a dozen or two different config files, tried bat file configurations, even tried linux (Ubuntu) all with no hash increase. The only things I havent tried yet are custom kernals (up to 20kh/s increase) and sgminer. 

Recently I've noticed quite a bit of throttling when they're running at 1100/1500 (currently undervolted to 1.144, anything lower and the card crashes when mining). I get less throttling at 1020/1500, and almost none at 1020/1400, but a much lower has hrate.  I've also noticed the MVDDC still seems quite high at 1.500 in gpu-z. Does that seem correct or should it be lower? Might that have something to do with the throttling? Atleast I'm running a bit cooler with it undervolted (regardless of throttle).

Any advice? Can/should I lower my mem vddc?

Someone mentioned using Trixx, Afterburner, gpu tweak, etc to stop throttling. If I lower the voltage just a little the card will usually crash.  Anything else I can do?

See my gpu-z and be7 image attached

Cheers,
- VR
https://i.imgur.com/pUH1EQB.jpg

Hmm, if you are using Stilts' BIOS u can also try 1375MHz Mem and adjust core clocks accordingly.

If your card is throttling even at 73C check your VRM temperatures in GPU-Z, if that is hitting 90C+ that might be the problem. Try turn the Power Limit to -20% might help.

Keep in mind sometimes higher clock doesnt result the highest hashrate. go from 900 Core clock and add 10Mhz each time if hashrate goes up try bump 10 more until you hit the point where it start dropping or your card is running too hot. try to keep it under 80C

Adding a strong fan blowing directly at top of the card or the back of the card will reduce VRM temptures try that.

my 7970s run @ 1050/1500/1.087V