Bitcoin Forum

Hey all,

I'm having a frustrating time improving the hashrate on my MSI RX580 Armor 4Gb's with Elpida memory.

Stock, mining ETH only, I'm getting around 21mhs. In Wattman, the best I could do was with 1175 on the GPU, 2050 on the memory, and voltages pretty much at 950 across the board. That got me to around 24mhs, with really nice wattage per card.

Full of optimism, I turned to the bios mods. I tried copying the 1500 timings, PBE's 1-click timings, QBit's bios, and Anorak's bios. My procedure was the same. Flash the bios, run pixel patcher, restart the rig, run claymore. None of them made any difference to the hashrate. I know that usually it's mod the bios first, then oc, but I wanted to try out the oc just to get a sense of what kind of improvements are up for grabs on the voltage side.

So I'm now sitting around the 24Mhs mark, quite frustrated because there seems to be a lot of people with significantly higher hashrates.

I now have a few questions:

1. Is my procedure to modding this wrong?
2. Is there a reliable place for good timing straps/bios' etc?
3. Are modded bios's/timing straps somewhat interchangable? e.g., if there's a Sapphire Nitro 4Gb with Elpida memory, and a nice bios mod or timing straps, could it be used on my MSI card?
4. What's my best plan of action? (I'm stuck!)

Other little bits of info, using claymore, I have the amd blockchain drivers.

TIA

After the BIOS update, you must first reinstall the driver, and then play with the settings (cclock/mclock).
For 480/580 you need to copy/change the strap out from 1750 and higher. 1500 is for 470/570 cards.
For 480/580:
1167(core)/1940-2070(memory)
777000000000000022AA1C00AC615B3CA0550F142C8C1506006004007C041420CA8980A9020004C 01712262B612B3715
1950-2060(memory)
777000000000000022AA1C00EF615C41B0551016BA0D96060060060004061420EA8940AA030004C 01914292E692E3B16

Remember all modifications at your own risk!

Oh wait, I've to reinstall the AMD Blockchain Drivers each time I try out a bios mod?!

So even if I had phenomenal timing straps and voltages etc., they all do pretty much nothing unless I reinstall the drivers after I flash the bios?

did you use this driver "http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/Radeon-Software-Crimson-ReLive-Edition-Beta-for-[Suspicious link removed]pute-Release-Notes.aspx" ?

yes, but didn't realise I had to reinstall it after a bios mod

If you have a BIOS update and a frequency/voltage setting, the hashrate grows and everything works stably then you do not need to reinstall the driver. But if there are no changes then be sure to reinstall them.

So then if that's the case, that AMD Pixel Patcher thing that a lot of places say is necessary if you're using windows, is actually useless?

Try it without the patcher first. Some RX 580's don't need to use the pixel patcher to bypass the signature check with a modded bios. If you have a code 43 in the Windows Device Manager after flashing a modded Bios, then you need to use the pixel patcher to bypass the driver signature check.

You don't

This is both confusing and helpful! Many thanks for that, I'll give them a go later on and report back!

100% no need. Just mod and run(i did it many time)

So then am I correct in thinking that even if I just do a basic mod (i.e., copy the timing straps from 1500), I should still see some sort of hashrate improvement? and if not, then it could be a driver issue?

Not 1500!!! From 1750.

Sorry, yes, my mistake, from 1750. But then if there's no improvement in hashrate, it's likely a driver issue?

You can try to mining without reinstalling the drivers. If the hashrate does not change, then you need to reinstall the driver (I think this is necessary).
To change the frequency and voltage use OverdriveNTool https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/overdriventool-tool-for-amd-gpus.416116/ - if a blockchaine-driver is used
If your use Crimson-driver (16.9.2 for example) - need use  WattTool 0.92

Its 100% overclocking issue

I thought that you bios mod first, then overclock. So if you mod the bios (even just change the timings), and there's no improvement, it's still an oc issue?

depends if you modified your base clock strap or not

After you flash a BIOS with tighter timings, you won't be able to run the card with the same memory OC as you used to do with the standard timings. So you flash the BIOS first, try the standard memclock (most likely 1750 MHz in your case), and then try to slowly increase the memclock in increments, while checking the hashrate. Otherwise your card/driver might be crashing from unstable OC, the card resets in the "default" mode and that's why you don't see any increase in hashrate. Also run HWInfo in the background and check "gpu memory errors" counter. If it's not "0", then you memory is not stable.

I advise you to use this Polaris Bios editor, with a "one click button" Memory Timing editing :

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1882656.0;all (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1882656.0;all)

After that, you can follow this tutorial, very well done : http://www.cryptobadger.com/2017/04/build-ethereum-mining-rig-optimization/ (http://www.cryptobadger.com/2017/04/build-ethereum-mining-rig-optimization/)

But, no, you don't have to reinstall the drivers after BIOS editing

Let us know !

did the steps recommended, with qbit's mod from here: https://anorak.tech/t/msi-rx-580-armor-4gb-oc-elpida/5099/12
29.8mhs across the board, low temps, low voltages.

Nice one everyone, really big help!