Bitcoin Forum

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UPDATE 23.1.2014:  summary of the analysis in #103 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4690029#msg4690029)
Quickstart 1: "running cool" high efficiency optimum in #37 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4500529#msg4500529). My favorite. We call it (C).    Quickstart 2: "running hot" optimum in #67.  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4625178#msg4625178) We call it (B2).
N.B.: If you have never flashed a BIOS, read the whole thread. It's all your own risk. You might brick your card. But tears are nice, too, sometimes.
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UPDATE 3.2.2014: Table of contents (only important pages):

Tweaking a 7970 xfx for more khash with less electricity. Your own custom BIOS!
No: Not simply more khash - that's easy. But more khash for less expenses.

#5 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4276538#msg4276538) factory bios, overclocking with cgminer; no undervolting, no BIOS flashing - you can do this, for sure, everyone can 622 khash with 277W
#7 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4276709#msg4276709) factory bios: CC, MC, VDDC for 7 settings - info, understand, decide
#9 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4282261#msg4282261) undervolting success! Manual how to do it. But the settings are still unstable.
#13 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4320578#msg4320578) stable settings. Through undervolting by 0.140 Volts, I save 10% electricity and gain 12% hashrate.
#25 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4357504#msg4357504) How to measure Watt of only the GPUs. Manual
#28 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4358354#msg4358354) Sweet spot was found. Amazing 3.78 khash/Watt. Lower memclock than engine clock! 578khash/s at only 153W
#34 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4440386#msg4440386) Summary so far for another 7970 XFX DD (FX-797A-TDFC) owner.
#36 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4499607#msg4499607) First published BIOS. Works perfectly with good cgminer settings, but crashes with bad cgminer settings.
#37 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4500529#msg4500529) "THE" posting. Start here if you are in a hurry. - do not not read it.
#39 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4500924#msg4500924) cgminer.conf - perfect settings, and with support mining for drakoin. Yes, you can pay a bit for my work.
#45 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4523960#msg4523960) Second BIOS published. Enables undervolting of previously volt-locked GPU. Stable settings.
#50 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4541240#msg4541240) (at end of the posting) pool settings for support mining - help drakoin to continue this
#56 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4559626#msg4559626) Warnings explained. Your GPU can get destroyed by this!
#64 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4584486#msg4584486) Watercooling (also #58 #68 #92)
#67 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4625178#msg4625178) TheStilt + drakoin-undervolting + psw-kernel: 720 khash/s at 275W
#73 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4665948#msg4665948) why underclocking?
#80 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4673691#msg4673691) CELEBRATION :-)
#87 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4683375#msg4683375) Some cards know their Ampere & Watt! Mine doesn't :-(
#91 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4685378#msg4685378) Useful table, perhaps helps to find other sweet spots?
#93 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4685873#msg4685873) long debate comes to an end: We were both right!
#98 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4686703#msg4686703) Help me to find this hardware: Clamp + Board + USB
#99 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4686723#msg4686723) Mathematical analysis of profitability-of-coin versus khash/s per Watt - Ferengi look here
#101 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4689177#msg4689177) Numerical results: Costs & khash/s for 5 settings
#102 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4689295#msg4689295) Depending on the market situation / profitability, choose the right settings!
#103 SUMMARY: HOW TO CHOOSE WHICH SETTINGS? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4690029#msg4690029)

#108 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4778658#msg4778658) TheStilt mod5: Elpida only!
#123 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4903498#msg4903498) Checklist if it doesn't work as you expect.


#104 Donate. Give a tip. Leave some encouragement. Give me coin dust. Pay me for this work here. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4690974#msg4690974)
#115 Or let one of your rigs run for me (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4832595#msg4832595) for an hour, a day, a week, a lifetime.

You will save tons of electricity, believe me. Think of me in 1 month, in 6 months, in 1 year, in 2 years.  ;)


Happy mining!
http://files.overclock.net/images/smilies/thumb.gif (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4690974#msg4690974) (CLICK)


---
 P.S.: Let's spread the word, imagine the altcoin network starts saving 1/4, 1/3 or even 1/2 of electricity.
http://cdn.overclock.net/0/0b/1000x1000px-LL-0b701251_www.tiny.cc_-improve7970_v02.png (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4500529#msg4500529)
(use these graphics by pressing "quote")

END OF Table of contents. Time warp into the past:

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ORIGINAL 1.1.2014 "undervolting 7970 XFX with VBE7 & ATIWinFlash":
It started all with a question. I had well prepared it, but it was just a question:
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Do you have successfully undervolted an XFX card?
I am collecting all information I can before that open brain surgery :-)

It is a 7970 XFX DD (FX-797A-TDFC) with 68.6% ASIC quality.

Please help me avoid the stupidest mistakes. This is my preparation:

• GPU-Z for reading the ROM
• VBE7 for editing the ROM
• ATIWinfFlash for writing the ROM

http://cdn.overclock.net/5/56/565e1a40_7970-flashing.png

Some questions:

• Why is the ROM that I exported with GPU-Z twice as big as the ROM inside the card? Problem?
• My main goal is setting another VOLTAGE, because cgminer cannot change voltages on this card (change clocks is easy). But still: Why not also change the engine-clock&memclock to what works best for me. Opinions?
• Which VOLTAGE do you suggest?

(How to calculate/guess an ideal voltage from ASIC quality and clockspeeds?)

Thanks a million!
 ;D Happy New Year!

P.S.: HAVE YOU DONE THIS BEFORE?
Do I simply boot into Windows, and do the ATIWinFlash, or do I prepare the card somehow?

No wait. I did this and got it wrong (exact same card). I am far less technically minded than you and most here, so suggest you wait for some differing opinions.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=293872.msg4118646#msg4118646
I'll be working on this today
Why are you undervolting? to get more hash? what are you hashing at now?what do you expect?

Thanks for your answer. I take your warning seriously. More research before I do the action :-)

Oh, sorry to hear that. Could you repair it?  Perhaps it's only the HDMI, try the DVI? Try booting with another GPU card, then flash the old BIOS back.

Thanks for the link.

Seemingly people just don't care what make and model it is. Interesting that you can flash an XFX with a gigabyte ROM.
It's not what I would try though. BIOS is not only about clocks and voltages.
I would like to keep my XFX ROM, just tweak a few values, with VBE7.


We pay 0.35 dollarcents per kWh, second highest in Europe, because solar power and wind energy is highly subsidized here, and all electricity customers have to pay for the "energy shift" to happen. It got us quite far already, over 20% are renewables. Slightly different political concept than funding a huge army to keep energy prices low :-) But what a coinmining paradise the US and Canada must be, at 30% of our kWh-prices.

Electricity costs eat up almost half of my profits.
Every Watt I can save, is really important.

I use 1.125v. Don't forget to raise memory overclock up to 1800 (default 1375 which is not enough). My cards are running at 1030/1600 clocks @720 khs.

Also, you can try my bios: http://rghost.ru/51363906

It's a closed rig, so temperature builds up easily. Higher temperatures eat more Watt over-proportionally (so hotter with more khash might even get me less profit out), and high temperatures will destroy the hardware faster.

That's why I am keeping the temperature at ~74C.
With 277W, I still get 622 khash with these settings (after literally days of optimizing):


please please please when publishing your khash optimized settings, always mention the WATT of your settings, and the TEMPERATURE, thx.

And, for your own sake: Read the SCRYPT-README.txt in \cgminer\, it's what gave me ideas how to tune my card. Every card seems to be different.

I know you are optimizing for temp / watt, but 7970s only really hit 700+ with a core in the 1000-1100 range.

Thanks a lot, Vizakenjack.
Do you also have the XFX R7970 DD (FX-797A-TDFC ver 6.0)? Mine has ASIC quality 68.6%.

Oh, cool Thanks. Finally a value :-)

Which improvements did that bring?


How hot, and how much Watt?


I am not sure that I want to afford the temperature resulting from such high clockspeeds. And before I get the riser cable, the cards are not venting well. But thanks - I can try, and that's easy because I can do that from cgminer later.

Please tell me more about that BIOS, what was the original, which settings did you change?

When I read my ROM into VBE7, I get the following values:

_______________________	________	________	________	___________________
State 0 - Boot	#0	CC 925	MC 1375	VDDC 1175 changeable
State 1 - Performance	#1	CC 300	MC 150	VDDC 850 un-changeable
State 1 - Performance	#2	CC 501	MC 1375	VDDC 950 un-changeable
State 1 - Performance	#0	CC 925	MC 1375	VDDC 1175 changeable
State 2 - UVD	#2	CC 501	MC 1375	VDDC 950 un-changeable
State 2 - UVD	#0	CC 925	MC 1375	VDDC 1175 changeable
State 3	#3	CC 300	MC 150	VDDC 850 un-changeable

What do you suggest for the updated ROM?

Thanks thanks THANKS  ::)

Yes, i have the same one. I don't know about asic quality, i'm running it on bamt.

Lowering temp by 5-10º, its now 80-90º (not on raisers, just a two cards in two pcie slots). Yes, it's very hot, but stable though.

I don't know about watts, because I haven't power meter -(

yes, it's original with my mods, you can open it in VBE and read. It's overclocked by default.

Also, if you need almost 'vanilla' bios, try this one: http://rghost.ru/51365056
It comes with reduced voltage and removed cap of memory overclock.

SUCCESS!
Even a cheap XFX 7970 can be pushed to performance, and without burning it on 90C temperature!
This is not khash-optimization, but khash/Watt - optimization. So below 700khash/s, I am already very happy.


With VBE7 ... I changed only "State 0 - Boot":

Original:	#0	CC 925	MC 1375	VDDC 1175
MyChange:	#0	CC 750	MC 1050	VDDC 1025

Flashing the BIOS (with atiwinflash) took much more than 1 minute, and the progress bar got stuck at 20% and didn't move for ages - it was terrifying! Finally, it said: Successful; then reboot, no driver update necessary! New cgminer measurements (measured Watt are differences enable/disable, on top of small power for idle card):

The improvement is amazing:

Before:	1.175V	CC  907	MC 1450	72C	fan 75%	267W	619khash/s
1stOptim:	1.025V	CC 1000	MC 1585	72C	fan 59%	222W	691khash/s

So on the same temperature, with less fan speed, I get 12% more khash/s for 17% less electricity.
khash/Watt went up from 2.32 to 3.11 - that's like getting 4 cards coins value out of 3 cards power costs.

YIEHAH!

Now I let it run for a night, to see how stable it is.

This is the way:
0) Reboot, clean system, e.g. no cgminer started.
1) With CPU-Z read out the original ROM, make several copies.
2) With VBE7 change voltage & clockspeeds, save to new filename.
3) With ATIwinflash program the modified ROM, shiver for more than a minute. Reboot.
4) Tweak, fiddle, optimize. A Watt-meter costs 9 euros.

Disclaimer: At your own risk. Inform yourself well.
I spent 2 days of research before I dared to do this. But:

YIPPIEH, I DID IT.
 :D

P.S.: If you find this useful, you can tip me at: BTC 15UipUK3kGcArJzRyHbVKrwG5TsqYi1b9N


http://cdn.overclock.net/8/89/89350c26_7970-after-flashing.png

watch

Can you push that ram a bit more? Hash rate tends to be proportional to ram clock, if the bios doesn't introduce higher latencies at higher clocks. Mine can handle up to 1800 Mhz (unstable) and 1750 (24h solid).

Could you post a screenshot of GPU-z "Sensors" tab, scrolled down to the bottom, while mining? Thanks.

Edit: with undervolting, you're pulling ~700 Kh/s out of a XFX? Hmm...

Just a quick alert:


NOT.

When I have stable values, I will report them back to you.

This time I will "log to file" in GPU-Z, because I don't even know how many hours it stayed stable.

Almost there. Note to self: Don't try to tweak two cards at the same time  ::)

The above 7970-XFX card (7970 XFX DD  {FX-797A-TDFC} with 68.6% ASIC quality)
seems stable now, 24 hours running without problems on these settings:


performing 692 khash/s at 240W above disabled GPU. 2.88 khash/Watt.
Instead of the 2.32 khash/Watt (already optimized but) with stock voltage 1.175 Volts.

Through undervolting by 0.140 Volts, I save 10% electricity and gain 12% hashrate.

 :D  Juhu!



sure, is this what you are looking for? Why? What is your concern?
http://cdn.overclock.net/d/de/dedc6073_7970_2ndOptimum_stable12hours_anon.png

P.S.: If you find this useful, you can tip me at: BTC 15UipUK3kGcArJzRyHbVKrwG5TsqYi1b9N

undervolting the PowerColor 7850, too - documented some logfile riddles here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=392098.msg4321340#msg4321340

 :P

I suggest try value like these....I'm pretty happy with them.....temperature and fan are quite and power usage is about 180W x card.
Voltage is ok on my cards but on yours could be different .....you have to try go down with Voltage until it doesn't work anymore.
I suggest using MSI afterburner to find best setting and yhen flash them with atiFlash+VBE7


GPU 1: 625.1 / 629.2 Kh/s | A:26823  R:231  HW:0  U:31.28/m  I:13
58.0 C  F: 51% (2055 RPM)  E: 915 MHz  M: 960 Mhz  V: 0.981V  A: 99%  P: 0%

Thanks, mine2mind112, I have tried your suggestion:


When I lower the Memclock to your 960 MHz, the hashrate falls to 272 khash/s

Are those really your values?
What is the exact name of your GPU card?
What are the other settings (thread-concurrency, etc.)?


what is "U:" ?
My cgminer 3.7.2 shows WU:584.1/m

I agree that would be nice temperature and fanspeed - but at 272/691 = 39% of my current hashrate - no!



I measured your settings, and they result in 128W above the base power usage (when the card is (d)isabled). That's a lot less power than my 240W.  Your 272khash/128W = 2.13 are not too bad, really. But still 26% below my best performing settings.


But you give me an inspiration. If the rig itself doesn't use too much (which in my case it does), and you put enough cards into one rig, it might actually make sense to underclock cheap cards; get out much less coins, but also use much less electricity. Perhaps with colder temperatures there is a sweet spot better than my 2.88 = khash/Watt? But if the GPU cards are too expensive to buy, that would not make sense, because then you want a highest as possible hashpower. 

So: Your settings inspire to optimize for someone with VERY high electricity costs, e.g. on Tonga, or the Solomon islands ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_pricing ) - but who gets computer hardware for free  ;D

Yes are my value (when i see them i did't belive myself).

My rigs are 3x VTX HD 7970 X-Ediction and 4x Sapphire R9 280x Dual-X.

The "U:" not sure what is....it is reported when u are mining and click "G" for modify Video cards setting.

I would point out that 6 month ago i could not get these value.Recently I reinstall the rig with new drivers and cgminer 3.7.2.

try to put Engine to 900 and Mem to 910, then you go up with Mem 920, then 930 ecc...you should find a spot where you are about 600 Khash/s.

https://i.imgur.com/hkV7Wsp.png?1

280x rig is about 760 Watt
7970 rig is about 600 Watt

In the photo I' m not using 900 how engine but a little more....900 is just a point I use to start.

Hope this can help.

What are the other settings (thread-concurrency, etc.)?
Tc = 8192
I = 13

Here's how I do it on several XFX 280X :

1. After testing many different frequencies I found that my cards run best at 1050 core and default 1500 memory giving about 730kH/s. Yes some of them might be able to run at slightly higher frequencies but I think it is best to liming power consumption and temperatures instead of going for max performance.
2. Alter the voltage with Sapphire Trixx until I find a voltage at which the cards are stable (at 1050@1500), usually 1.15V, but one of the cards required 1.175V
3. Edit the bios and flash the cards with the modified bios using atiflash (under DOS).

My cards consume about 230W each and run at steady 730kH/s. Temperature is about 72-73C with fan at up to 80%. Note that every card is different and I found some of them running at higher or lower actual voltage at the same bios value. Also I found that some cards tend to show higher temperature readings without actually consuming more power, so this is definitely caused by differences in the quality of the cooling or how it contacts with the GPU.

If you found the above useful please donate!!

I did try your settings, and they resulted in similar power consumption yes - but only 272khash.

THAT is really interesting - and perhaps an explanation?
Perhaps you have "trained" your cards into high performance?

At which (approximate) settings have you had them running in those 6 months, before you reinstalled and readjusted? And which power consumption and temperature?


Which catalyst drivers?



If only I would get even close to 500, it would be fantastic.


Amazing. With that you could even mine for Danish electricity prices :-)

Same here.

For a while I had Tc = 10240, 11264  on my 7970 and 7850 - because that was the max multiple of shaders that didn't result in kernel errors.
But then very often, both cards would just not start at full power, always one of them hovering at 30khash.  
It took me ages to find out this solution, and that it is not a lack of power (I have funny cabling in my old machine):
Tc = 8192, 8192 works perfectly. It's only using 1072MB of the 3GB of my 7970, and I don't understand that - but it's fine.



hmmm ... we really need to find out how you are able
to drive your cards up to such high khash for so little
clockspeed = temperature = Watt = electricity costs.

Let's save half of the electricity of the worldwide GPU grid!

Thanks, I am trying your values
E: 1050
M: 1500
V: 1.149V

and I get:
69C
510 khash
253 W

that is 2.02 khash/Watt


To get over 700 khash, I have to up' the memclock to
M: 1680
E: 1050
V: 1.149V

that results in
72 C
705 khash/s
293 Watt

that is 2.40 khash/Watt.

Just made some shit with colors....hope u can  read the answer....and sorry for poor english  :P

What is your hash rate at 1000@1500 ? Such big drops(you mentioned 510) in the hash rate are usually because of too much clock, so try lowering the GPU clock a bit. You should be able to get about 700kh/s at 1020@1500. Also how do you measure the card's power consumption ?

510 khash/s

I tried a bit around your values of course, but around the 1050/1500 range it is just not optimal for my card.

Our cards are different. I have a rather cheap 7970 from XFX.

Yes, I can get >700 but with 1050/1680/1.149V and then
I use so much power, that I end up with 2.40 khash/Watt only.




How to measure properly
 
Step 1: Baseline
I switch all cards to (d)isable, then I wait until the temperature/fanspeed is down, then I have a look at the 8euro-wattmeter.
The result is what I use as my baseline.
Of course this baseline includes the power usage not only of the motherboard/cpu/rigfans/etc. but also of the idle cards with 300/150 Mhz idle speeds at stock voltage - but it's just an offset, for all my subsequent experiments. It's much easier than unmounting the cards, instead it's just a quick (d)isable/(e)nable. That baseline is a certain cell in my excel file, which I always automatically subtract.

Step 2: Optimization
I tweak the clocks until I get the highest possible khash.

Step 3: undervolting
I lower the voltage until catalyst / cgminer / windows crashes, then reboot, add something like 0.025 V to the crash value (sometimes less or more, it's "feeling" it *g* )

Step 4: waiting
until no more temperature / fanspeed change

Step 5: wattmeter
I stare at my wattmeter for about a minute counting out loud the values *g* because they usually fluctuate within 20Watts. Then after a while I just know the average.

Step 6: Excel
It's documented, so that I can compare, go back to it, combine cards, etc.

Step 7: Publish
Yiehah!

:-)

I understand you very well. Your English is not bad.

And I like the "shit with colors" ... makes it easier to read.

But please, what would be even better - if you simply DELETE everything in your quote that is not important for your answer.
You don't have to quote the whole message to which you are answering.

I see that a lot here in this forum, and it makes reading really difficult.
It takes only a few seconds of time to decide "I am not answering to that paragraph, so I delete it in my quote".

Thanks :-)


P.S.:
Oh and if I want to write in between, I just copy the
begin quote
and
end quote
tags

Yes, I also do that. Gives a lot more than -g 1

Or Watt.

How big is your PSU, perhaps it's not delivering enough amperes to the card, and the card notices?


Always optimizing only one card because otherwise I don't know where a crash came from.


Thanks!

Looks very similar to mine.

I don't know about these two:



{quoting got a bit messed up so I switch to email style for now:}

> > > I would point out that 6 month ago i could not get these value.

> > THAT is really interesting - and perhaps an explanation?
> > Perhaps you have "trained" your cards into high performance?

> I have just changed drivers, and flashed an undervolted bios
> cause 7970 on linux was locked....I flashed also 280x for then
> discover that cgminer can change 280x voltage (also on linux).

ah, nice to know.
What did you use to edit the r9-280x bios?  Also VBE7 ?

> > At which (approximate) settings have you had them running
> > in those 6 months, before you reinstalled and readjusted?
> > And which power consumption and temperature?

> Well I restart mining on november.. (during summer was killing me) .
> but i remember i had to use higher memory setting for the same result....
> Mem to about 1350

Alright, so very different from now.

> > > Recently I reinstall the rig with new drivers and cgminer 3.7.2.

> > Which catalyst drivers?
> Driver ati 13.12 and 13.10 .....
> I'm using ubuntu
> but it works also on windows ( i use it just for flash bios)

> I builded cgminer my self with AMD-APP-SDK-v2.9-lnx64.tgz ,
could that also be a reason for the good performance?

> but also the pre-build one could work. [/font]


> > Let's save half of the electricity of the worldwide GPU grid!

Let's get back to this now.  Have a look below.  Thanks a lot for the inspiration!

Inspired by these peculiar settings ...
... I have searched for sweet spots in completely new places. And found one in an unexpected area!

Usually, the optimal khash appeared around engineclock/memclock = 0.62 to 0.64.
But now I have found a new one, at memclock/engineclock = 1.06, that is more engineclock than memclock (!).
It has less khash, but so much less Watt that it's worth it.

It's the third (C) in this before-and-after table:

	CC	MC	Volt	Celsius	khash	Watt	khash/watt
(A)	907	1450	1.175	74	622	277	2.25
(B)	1025	1635	1.038	73	692	240	2.88
(C)	854	799	0.893	70	578	153	3.78

(A) = before undervolting (before I started this thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.0))
(B) = best undervolting (stable > 39 hours)
(C) = best undervolting & underclocking (stable for many days now)

3.78 instead of 2.88 is pretty amazing.

Yes, compared to the max possible hashing performance, I loose out on 16% hashrate - that is like throwing away 38 euros worth of 229 euros hardware; but on the other hand, the new settings (C) are saving 36% electricity compared to the max hashing performance (B), and 45% of electricity compared to before-the-undervolting (C).

This new sweet spot is cool:
Mem clock slightly lower than engine clock, for an XFX 7970!!

People in Solomon, Virgin, Turks, Caicos and Marshall Islands, Tonga, Jamaica, Niue, Denmark, Samoa, Tuvalu, Germany, Philippines, Cook Islands, Brazil, Kiribati, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, Ireland and Sweden (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_pricing#Price_comparison) - we are the good ones, because our governments actually care about the environment *g*. But here's a way for us, to also participate in cryptomining - we have to undervolt and underclock our coinmining rigs dramatically.

 :-*


EDIT: #37 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4500529#msg4500529) has become THE posting about this low energy mining.

How big is your PSU, perhaps it's not delivering enough amperes to the card, and the card notices?

Don't think.....PSU are 1000 for 7970 and 1050 for 280x

I don't know about these two:
"lookup-gap" : "2,2,2",
"gpu-dyninterval" : "7",

About these value i dind't find a lot on google but there is some info in the GPU-README of cgminer.
Looks like that if u set "thread-concurrency"  you don't need to set "shaders" , "lookup-gap" , and "worksize" ( if I remember correctly).
Some value like "gpu-dyninterval" are there because when I found a good setting i print it with cgminer and it add a lot of value i don't understand.

ah, nice to know.
What did you use to edit the r9-280x bios?  Also VBE7 ?

I changed State #0 and State #6 Engine,MEM,Voltage:
Engine: 930
Mem: 990
Voltage 0.980

but the voltage was to low ( i had no time to test it too mutch) so i had to set it higher with cgminer ( 1020 looks ok , but for 1 card was not enought)

> I builded cgminer my self with AMD-APP-SDK-v2.9-lnx64.tgz ,
could that also be a reason for the good performance?

Don't think because pre-builded cgminer is using an older version I think ( not sure wich one)


-----------------

Later I will try your value ( :) realy low voltage) .... going down with MEM under Engine (never tried).

Tried a few other values, but this is the best so far:
CC: 854
MC: 799 - if I go to 801 it falls from 575 khash to ~200 !
V: 0.893
Seems to run stable, but let's observe longer.
I would love to find one with a bit more Watt and khash.


It might be in a completely different spot. Just walk around in configuration space a bit, you will feel it :-) Enjoy!

I didn't try to undervolt but I can find your spot......don't know why you can't find mine.....

oh wow.

Cool.

That's interesting.

So these spot's are more universal than I thought.


With the 7970, or the R9?
The exact same CC:854  MC:799  ?
How many khash?


Now that you found my sweet spot on your card, I am starting to ask the same question...:

Yes, now I agree, that that is odd.


Hypotheses:

* Perhaps that 7970-optimum is actually slightly off your CC:925 MC:990 ?
   Did you optimize in 5Mhz steps, or in the end like this ... 927 ... 926 ... 923 ... 924 ... 925 ... ?
   If not, could you try that for me?

* Your cards are "used to" high performance. Perhaps there is a history dependence? Mine is only 3 weeks old.


What to do?

Hi all.
I am following this thread and I’ve tested some above tips, but I can’t get more than 450 KHash/s.
I have two 7970 XFX DD (FX-797A-TDFC).
I’ve tried undervolting one of my cards using the Vizakenjack’s bios so I have currently the following configuration:
-   One 7970 XFX DD with 1.125V (GPU 0)
-   One 7970 XFX DD with 1.175V (GPU 1)
Using this script:

I get the following rates:
 
http://i39.tinypic.com/zwgtjb.png

http://i40.tinypic.com/5n9n5h.png

http://i40.tinypic.com/2qkrmkm.png

Someone knows what I am doing wrong or what can I do in order to improve my rates?
Thanks in advance

> 7970 XFX DD (FX-797A-TDFC).
That is my exact card.

The 1050/1500/1.125V is by far not optimal for my card:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4357504#msg4357504

Read the whole thread?



I suggest you try all of the values, that I documented:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4276538#msg4276538
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4282261#msg4282261
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4320578#msg4320578

and report back, what you find out.


If you have a wattmeter/kill-a-watt, you might also appreciate these settings:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4358354#msg4358354
or https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4366415#msg4366415


Enjoy!
:-)

Thanks a lot. I gonna try to flash my cards using the above settings, but using VB7 I am just be able to set 1.025V or 1.050V instead of 1.035V such as you are suggesting. How are you setting 1.035 V?

Thanks again.

-----------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE: HERE IS A NEWER BIOS VERSION  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4523960#msg4523960) January 15, 2014

-----------------------------------------------------------

old posting of January 14, 2014, 05:15:24 AM:
--------------------------------------------

To help you all, I have made a package with

• old ROM
• tweaked ROM
• screenshot what changed
• README text - do yourself the favour and be careful :-)

Here's your 7970-XFX-DD_bios-tweaked-by-DrAKoin_(FX-797A-TDFC).zip (https://mega.co.nz/#!N4R3lBzL!dWOdYkeyPZTj9vAGbmS3GVAiBS5qndS_yHE4kWPXwn0)

Come back to the discussion here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.new#new) for the currently best cgminer settings.
Enjoy your energy savings!

These are the settings that I have changed (top original / bottom tweaked):
http://cdn.overclock.net/c/cb/900x900px-LL-cbcaedce_7970_XFX_DD_Tahiti_MOD02.rom_beforeafter.png

The purpose of lowering the voltage to 850 mV is not to run it with that voltage in cgminer (it would probably crash, 0.850 V is too low for most CC/MC settings), but to enable the whole range of voltages to be accessible from within cgminer.


N.B.:
This will save you a lot of money on you energy bills! I am poor.
Please consider to tip me: BTC 15UipUK3kGcArJzRyHbVKrwG5TsqYi1b9N Thanks.
And important for me: Tell me about it, so I can thank you personally.

Another option for donations is to let your rig run a bit for me,
I have published a suitable cgminer.conf file here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4500924#msg4500924)



-----------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE: HERE IS A BIOS NEWER VERSION  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4523960#msg4523960) January 15, 2014

-----------------------------------------------------------

-- ------ - -  - - ------------- - - - -- - -- -- - -- --- --- - - - -- - --- -- --- ----- - - ------ ---- - -------- --- - - -- - ----
UPDATE 23.1.2014:  A summary of the analysis (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4690029#msg4690029) is in #103. If look deeper first, I suggest start reading there. You will be linked back here to #37.
-- ------ - -  - - ------------- - - - -- - -- -- - -- --- --- - - - -- - --- -- --- ----- - - ------ ---- - -------- --- - - -- - ----
ORIGINAL 14.1.2014 :
-- ------ - -  - - -----------

This thread is worth its weight in GOLD. Saves a lot on your electricity bill, more coins for less pollution.

My so far best values are described here, in the table, as value (C) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4358354#msg4358354), compared to
the (0) stock values of the 7970 XFX DD (FX-797A-TDFC) with which it was delivered:

	voltage	CC	MC	CC/MC	temp	fanspeed	khash/s	Watt	khash/Watt	electricity	coins	profit/month
(0)	1.175	925	1375	0.673	71	65%	475	237	2.00	33 €	86 €	52 €
(C)	0.893	854	799	1.069	67	45%	578	153	3.78	24 €	104 €	80 €

With

• an average 6 euros per day per megahash coins generated
• an offset of 70 watts because I have an old rig with only 2 cards in it, and the way the cards' Watts are given (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4357504#msg4357504)
• an electricity price of 0.256 euros/kWh; we all must finance the transition into renewables, we have reached 20% nation wide!

Advantages:

• less noise, the fan is slower
• much less heat, my room is almost cool now :-)
• less temperature probably increases longevity of the cards
• less pollution, lower electricity bill
• more coins per day generated

--> Higher profits

This thread is worth its kilobyte volume in GOLD.

http://cdn.overclock.net/1/13/900x900px-LL-13f010ab_www.tiny.cc_-improve7970.gif

• 0) Order / Borrow a Wattmeter / electricity usage meter / kill-a-watt (http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=electricity+usage).
• 1) Read the whole thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004). Changing the BIOS of your card, and playing with voltage & clockspeed can destroy you hardware. You want to know what you do before you start with this. It's all your own risk!
• 2) Create your own ROM with VBE7. Or download the ROM (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4523960#msg4523960) that I provide for you. Read the README in the ZIP file!!!
• 3) run cgminer using the suggested cgminer.conf (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4500924#msg4500924) below.
• 4) Lower the voltage even more (same posting).
• 5) When found stable value, change your cgminer.conf; and please report back, together with exact name of your card, and ASIC quality.
  

.
.

N.B.: This saves you a lot of money on you energy bills! I am poor. Please tip me: BTC 15UipUK3kGcArJzRyHbVKrwG5TsqYi1b9N or other currencies (http://www.tiny.cc/drakointip).
Thanks. Or let your rig run a bit for me, with these cgminer.conf pool settings (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4500924#msg4500924). Then tell me about it, so I can thank you personally. http://files.overclock.net/images/smilies/thumb.gif (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=184146;sa=showPosts) (click)

To Drakoin:

I'm new to mining, yesterday I installed my XFX R7970 Double dissipation  Model NO: FX-797A-TD Part No: FX-797A-TDFC ver 6.0 to my computer (P6T deluxe OC to 3.82 Ghz). I use a 1000W PSU so no problem here.

I tried to flash the bios with your first values, then I tried your command values. I observed some card crashes and recoveries and card misfunction (lines appearing and disappearing in the monitor).

I returned to 1,175 V bios.  My question is very simple: you are writing about mem clock, voltages etc.. but it is not clear what are the values of the bios, because you can change that values also in the bios and in the command line of the program. could you write down a post with your best bios parameters AND then the best command line paramaters? you can repeat the A, B , C you did, but better explained.

thx (I'm from spain like you :P)

just use a higher voltage.
Perhaps the limits to optimizing are dependant on the ASIC quality of your GPU (https://www.google.de/search?q=read+asic+quality+gpu-z).

I do a final undervolting after I found a good CC & MC value:
1) lowering the voltage slowly, e.g. in 0.020v steps
2) when crash at x volts (Catalyst crash / cgminer crash / BSOD) I always reboot(!).
3) try with x+0.015 or x+0.025 Volts, then long term test.
4) if still unstable, raise voltage even more.
5) if stable for >24 hours, report the value here in the forum

Ah, sorry, yes - I haven't changed them in ages, they are up in post #13.
I don't use any command line parameters anymore.

Start with this cgminer.conf ( edit c:\wherever\cgminer\cgminer.conf ):


and then lower the voltage slowly like I described above.
with the keystrokes g c 0 enter v in cgminer: (g)pu (c)change 0 [enter] (v)oltage

I once lived with hippies near Orgiva at the bottom of the Sierra Nevada. Very nice memories.

This is my main confusion, specs on post #13 are different from the list you have written. All I would love to know is that:

core clock in BIOS: ????
memory clock in BIOS: ???
voltage in BIOS:  ???

gpu-engine in cgminer: 854? or 1025?
gpu-memclock in cgminer: 799? or 1635?
gpu-vddc in cgminer: 0.975? or 1.035?

I understand the fact that 2 cards are not equal and I have to "play" with the cgminers parameters as you said to finally tune the progam.
But first I would like to try to reproduce your results.

Sorry for your confusion, but this is not a thread in which it a final result is presented right from the beginning, but this is a thread in which several settings were tried out. 2 weeks ago, I did not know anything about this. In this thread, I reported four settings: (0) was the stupid unefficient stock settings with which the card was sold to me. And not only (C), but also (A) and (B) are all three good parameter combinations. They all optimize somehow:

(A) the best I could get with stock voltage, without changing the ROM. Least dangerous so to speak.
(B) the highest khash I could get without going to crazy temperatures, or instability.
(C) the overall optimum so far. Less khash than max, but much less power consumption.


The best answer is probably: Both :-)

The 1.038, 1025, 1635 is the superdooper maximum-khash settings (B) in posting #28 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4358354#msg4358354),
while the 0.893, 854, 799 is the setting (C), it was found much later as being incredibly economical in terms of khash/Watt (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4500529#msg4500529).

Is it clearer now?  If it works, please leave it running for a while with the "support mining for drakoin" pool settings (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4501823#msg4501823) cgminer.conf.
And please remember us in a month - let's say on Valentine's day - and tell us about your experiences, and how much you saved.

I understand that.

You don't understand me or I express myself very bad.

What are your BIOS specs?

core clock in BIOS:
memory clock in BIOS:
voltage in BIOS:

Are these the same for the supper dupper power and the max Khash/Watts ratio?

All I need to know now are BIOS specs.

No problem, your trying it out just makes this manual better :-)


The BIOS specs are in posting #36 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4499607#msg4499607).

After flashing with that BIOS - I did that only once! - I could choose the whole range of voltages all the way down to 850 mV.
From then on, all changes were only done with cgminer.conf, or manually inside cgminer.

OK, I didn't saw that last night... strange..
those BIOS specs are for both ?? for supperdupper and Watts optimization? or do you use supperdupper with another BIOS specs.

Here's

• a new BIOS with more stable settings, and
• a longer manual with much more explanations,
• now including instructions how to BIOS atiflash in DOS (instead of the unsafe atiwinflash).
• Moreover, there are 4 cgminer.conf settings files, for the 3 different optimal points - and factory settings for comparison.

Download:
https://mega.co.nz/#!x8g1WJ4Z!D8Sw9Ue3MRxhYpUBmY3GbA8MGl862caCZfREg8dj47g


For more explanations, visit #37 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4500529#msg4500529), and for a summary of the analysis ... #103 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4690029#msg4690029).

I only changed 3 values compared to the original vgabios rom:

http://cdn.overclock.net/9/9e/900x900px-LL-9e63e48c_VBE7_mod3-changes.png (https://mega.co.nz/#!x8g1WJ4Z!D8Sw9Ue3MRxhYpUBmY3GbA8MGl862caCZfREg8dj47g)

Is that it, now? I guess, soon I can take care of different challenges :-)

Happy mining!
http://files.overclock.net/images/smilies/thumb.gif

might give it a shot again to edit my 6970 Bios ( my current one from factory is broken and cant overclock)


edit : seems to be only for 7970 =[

The strategy will work.
Please try this BIOS editor http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1962/techpowerup-radeon-bios-editor-v1-28/ and tell us if it works for your card's BIOS.

Still download my package (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4523960#msg4523960), because of the detailed instructions in there.

NOW YES, it is super very clear.

Drakoin FOR PRESIDENT.

THis is PURE aWeSoMe.

I'm getting 600 k/hash highly undervolted.

I will post how to stays in 24h and I will try to get my ASIC quality of the card.

EDIT:
what confuses me is that you dont use the typical:
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1

why?

OK, I've experienced missfunction after entering windows (the display just fucked up), having 0,850 at performance in bios is too dangerous for my gpu card, it seems that after loading ati control center the card goes to performance mode (and thus the fail). So boot at 0,950V and now I have 0,950V at perfomance too. All is working flawlessly.
I've bought another XFX 7970 same model just to have the twin. At 244€ these monsters are really cheap. Next days I'm going to lower voltage in the config file and see what I get.

The twin is goign to be checked just in case the card was narrowly better to undevolt. I'm going to keep one at stock value. I need to play BF4 guys ;).

I have to start undervolting one 7950 that I have also. What I've learnt is that the 7970 with "magical" values in config works very very stable at 700 Khash and at 80ºC at 100% fans with I=13. HD 7950 values were rising and falling constanly albeit using high intensity values resulting in poor windows performances (I had only one gpu).

I've read that XFX models are avoided by the community, with this post has been clearly demonstrated that 7970 (and a XFX one) is a BEAST. 7950 was considered the best option.... I feel happy to know that 7970 is much better by far.

This is the post of the year guys.

P:D: I don't have faith in undervolting my 7950....

Made me smile. Thanks a lot. :-)

Spread the word!
Imagine, the whole network starts saving 25% or 33% or even 50% electricity per khash.

http://cdn.overclock.net/1/13/900x900px-LL-13f010ab_www.tiny.cc_-improve7970.gif (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4500529#msg4500529)
Can use this image:
http://cdn.overclock.net/1/13/900x900px-LL-13f010ab_www.tiny.cc_-improve7970.gif


cool. Once you have it >24h stable, please report all relevant values.


Yes, I had a START.bat file with those commands, but now I am starting and controlling cgminer with cgwatcher (http://manotechnology.blogspot.de/p/cgwatcher.html). Wait, I have an idea ... yes I can put a .BAT file into cgwatcher. Done.   But still: I don't see ANY difference. Does anyone know what these commands really do?


But the 850mV is just for booting. Then cgminer takes over, anyways.
I can also not run it with 850mV with much higher than 500 engine speed, e.g. CC550 MC825 at VDDC850 crashes. I tried that out.


ah, alright. To which enginge/memory-clockspeeds?

I am not using that ati control center. Do you have to?



I tried what happens if I don't specify any clockspeeds in cgminer, and
then it jumps to CC501 MC1375  - which is the "#2" that I can see in VBE7.

I am wondering if I should make an "end-user BIOS" (for people who don't want to tweak)
with
#0 VDDC=910
#0 cc=404 mc=555
#2 cc=854 mc=799
that's a slightly higer than optimal voltage, for stability.

But with those settings, as far as I understand it now,
cgminer should then be able to be run without giving any clockspeed settings.
?

But before I create that rom, I am still hoping for even better settings.

How many khash at how much Watt do you get out of the cc854/mc799 settings (if you are using them), and what is your lowest stable voltage?


but now you cannot go lower with your voltage in cgminer, no?


Sounds enthuasiastic :-)   I like that.  Tweaking hardware is fun, isn't it?


ooops.
100% fan --> Say bye bye to the fan earlier
80ºC --> Say bye bye to the GPU earlier
80ºC --> much much energy consumption

Mine is running at 67ºC now, very low fan.

Do you have a kill-a-watt / wattmeter?


when large fluctuations, I go slightly higher with memclock, or slightly (like 1, 2 or 5) lower with engine clock.

I guess, every card has a sweet spot. Keep on trying, I'd say. The recipe is clear now.


YES. And I got mine for 229 euros, just before the rush! I could afford only 1, though.



hahaha *proud* thank you very much.

Please consider to have your rig running a bit for me, I am really poor:


or donate directly BTC 15UipUK3kGcArJzRyHbVKrwG5TsqYi1b9N or [doge] DFPA5UXRH8jzJGEGWtJQVq27jyf1Nd4KEt

	voltage	CC	MC	CC/MC	temp	fanspeed	khash/s	Watt	khash/Watt	electricity	coins	profit/month
(0)	1.175	925	1375	0.673	71	65%	475	237	2.00	33 €	86 €	52 €
(C)	0.893	854	799	1.069	67	45%	578	153	3.78	24 €	104 €	80 €

So, I'm expected to believe that by going from 0 (high clocks) to C (low clocks), your hashrate has gone up?  But in your other table, the numbers are not the same...

	CC	MC	Volt	Celsius	khash	Watt	khash/watt
(A)	907	1450	1.175	74	622	277	2.25
(B)	1025	1635	1.038	73	692	240	2.88
(C)	854	799	0.893	70	578	153	3.78

I think you've got a typo in your first table where you're claiming 2khash/watt - verify what that hash rate actually is - I'm guessing it's going to be somewhere between the first two lines in your second chart.

I do like what you've done, and I agree with the concept - I'm mining coins with cards that only use about 25W to generate ~.004 BTC day each :)

thanks for your attention, Thirtybird, cool name  :)

No, of course not. Don't believe - just try it out yourself.

Yes. Exactly. You are hitting the point. Big surprise, isn't it?
And this is where the huge electricity savings are actually happening.
THERE IS a sweet spot down there. And even weirder, with CC > MC.

You can read this posting #28, that was typed directly after that discovery:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4358354#msg4358354


Numbers ARE the same. Just doublechecked them again. Only diff is the temperature, 67 vs 70C, but that WAS different in both moments.
Just for clarification: There are FOUR settings (0), (A), (B), and (C).  (0) is factory settings, NOT optimized for mining. (A)-(C) optimized for mining.


And: Nope. No Typo for the Watts, nor the khash, nor the quotient:
475khash/s divided by 237Watt result in ... 2.0042  
That's the factory settings, which I took as the baseline to compare all my later improvements.

How can I get you from guessing to trying out?


Very cool. THAT is efficiency.  Now I have to guess: You are not from the future, no? So you are using very different hardware.

When I started 2 months ago ... of course, I first stumbled into ASIC miners. But what I didn't like was the time-until-delivery, the price, and most of all, that they can only be used for this in itself rather useless hashing calculation, nothing else.  By now, I might be willing to change my opinion. The immense power consumption of GPUs is just crazy.  

So it seems to boil down to two choices:
Otherwise-useless hardware (which is also difficult to buy) but with good hash/watt ratio...
... versus bad hash/watt ratio on versatile ubiquitous hardware - which can be sold to gamers.

It's a bit like ... rare metals, water consumption & pollution .... versus peak oil and CO2, isn't it?

After how many days will you break even with the purchasing costs (http://thegenesisblock.com/mining/a/b59f9e598d)?


Thank you very much. Happy to read that!  

Do you have GPU friends? -->

Let's spread the word, imagine the altcoin network starts saving 1/4, 1/3 or even 1/2 of electricity.


http://cdn.overclock.net/0/0b/1000x1000px-LL-0b701251_www.tiny.cc_-improve7970_v02.png (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4500529#msg4500529)

DRAKOIN MAN!!!! THANKS DUDE!

I flashed both of my 7970 and now pulling 400 Watt out of the socket for the whole system, my cards run 2x 586 Kh/s :D :D

You are awesome!!!

I don't know what really happens when you write a lower V in config than in bios... This could be proved easily by writting a very low voltage and see what happens... could the GPU be damaged?

And you make me very happy with that. What a good start into my day. Thanks  ;)

Still, these days are a bit frightening for me. I am not earning enough with this whole cryptocurrency thing. That has to change - or I have to quit!  I seem too technical, and too little into actually making money (teach me how to make money!).   After all of my work for this here, and your enthusiastic reaction ... I ask for direct tips, or that you let your rig run a little bit for me. Use a cgminer.conf from the download package #45 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4523960#msg4523960)  or from the end of posting #50 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4541240#msg4541240) - or just send me some bitcoin dust to BTC 15UipUK3kGcArJzRyHbVKrwG5TsqYi1b9N or [doge] DFPA5UXRH8jzJGEGWtJQVq27jyf1Nd4KEt


COOL. Congratulations. Yes, 586 seems about right, same here. That's the most optimal sweet spot so far. Looks low at first glance, compared to all those people reporting 750 khash/s - but they are running their systems at 80-90 degrees, full throttle fans, and with insane power consumption.

I guess, you use the settings (C) cgminer.conf with cc=854 mc=799 ?  

Which voltage? What temperature before/after?  

What was the power consumption of the whole system before?

Thanks!
 ;D

When I tried, it did not work. The BIOS #0 voltage VDDC was always the lowest I could go to.

Yes, I guess one day I will also make such an all-easy-peasy BIOS. But I am still hoping that someone finds an even better combination of settings. It would be nice to squeeze a few more absolute khash out of our cards, with the same power consumption ratio khash/Watt - wouldn't it?

Man, you are asking THE question that worried me right from when I started to look into this. Of course, the GPU can be damaged, and with all we are doing here. YES. That's why I say everywhere: Do you own research, read the whole thread.  The company which sold the GPU to us has found values which hopefully are relatively safe for extended gaming - and who knows if even that is true?  But we are leaving their path (which was made for gaming, anyways.) We are pushing the boundaries by changing voltages, clockspeeds - and letting them run for 24/7, of course. I cannot, and will not guarantee anything. It's all your own responsibility.
If I were to own a GPU farm, I would be happy out of my mind finding this manual here, because I could safe some real bucks, increase my profit, and that's not only in expensive countries - BUT I would probably first try it only on a small portion of my rigs, and see how they behave long term. If they still do well after a weeks ... I would go back here, tell everyone, and donate a 2nd time to drakoin :-)
The way to reliably destroy your card is OVER-VOLTING too much, I read in several places. Water-cooling-gamers dare that to get stability with even higher clockspeeds. But I am almost sure, that will come with over-proportionally higher electricity consumption, so I am not interested in going there anyway. I want to extend my cards' life (low temperature, stable running), get as much khash as possible (they cost a fortune, and I need to reach break-even early) - and I want to reduce the necessary power (lowest possible voltage, optimal sweet spots) per khash. 
Actually, thinking about it now - there is one more reason to do this, and that's saving money when buying hardware: I do not need expensive crazy 1500W PSUs, because my whole system uses so little now.  And 1000W or 700W PSUs you can get second hand, too! So:

Spread the word!

Use the banner above, if you want to. Or change your signature to
  = Make 50% more profit = save power, pollute less =  just tweak your GPU = www.tiny.cc/improve7970 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4500529#msg4500529) =

Enjoy your day. Happy mining!
http://files.overclock.net/images/smilies/thumb.gif (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=184146;sa=showPosts) (click)

Im running the cc=854 mc=799 config and its just working smooth, 1 card does the job with .955v and cant go any lower while the other is stable at .895v. The cards only get to 65C with 55% fanspeed so its really great!

The power consumption on the system before was like 600W, now its at 370W so thats a 230W decrease which is just alot! Thankyou for that!:)

I am gonna send you some doge's when i get home!:)

Why don't you guys just switch to watercooling?

My 2 xfx (reference design) @ 1060/1760 do 750 khash each. 1050mv core voltge, 1550mv mem voltage

system pulls 570 watt, and de card won't go above 52 degrees.

Increase of 10 degrees results in ~75 watt more power out of the socket, so keep you cards cool people!

Nice thread!

Why dont you guys also lower your MEMORY voltage?
With only 799 mhz this should be easily possible and reduce wattage even more.

Or is the memory voltage not adjustable with these xfx models?


Besides that I assume that at memory clock of 800+mhz the TIMINGS of the memory go up.
See Stilts thread here for more info: https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=12369.0

Stilt can also tighten the memory timings so that you could maybe even go lower with your memory clock.
Tighter timings use less wattage than higher clocks so another factor you could reduce wattage with.

Very interesting read.
Mine are currently at 1.087 vddc, 1000 core and 1700 mem for 650kh/s (and top card is ~78c both with 100% fan).

I'm using Sapphire 7970s Dual-X OC with Boost.
I flashed them both and for ages couldn't find a rom that even worked, let alone gave me > 700 as everyone suggested was possible.

This looks really good for reducing wear on the cards and saving energy bills! Will take a longer look into this.

Do you think it'd be possible with these settings to have 4 cards on one power supply? Maybe even 5?
e.g. Get a 1200W/1500W? Platinum/Gold and it would be able to power all 5 + cpu/mobo etc?

You can use 5 of these cards with a 1200W PSU Easily when undervolted, maybe even with a 1000W PSU

because it sounds messy :-)  No, perhaps you are right, it's really a thing to consider. How much extra costs is it per rig, per card?

Comparing that to what marcje has posted:
is difficult, because your rig-consumption baseline might just be higher.

Can you please do one quick experiment for us, both of you, Aaroenz0r and marcje:
cgminer: (g)pu (d)isable   ... both cards, then wait 5-10 minutes for cooling down, slowing down of fan. Then measure the Watts.
that way we can actually compare your khash/Watt for the GPUs.

Wow. That is ... cool.


And 75 watt would be 14 euros per month for us over here. However, I see only about 15-20W less for 55C vs 65C when the card is heating up (difficult to measure as it is a rather fast transition) But for sure more heat equals more Watts.

Thx :-)


You did that? How?


With the stock BIOS, the voltage is not adjustable at all.
And in VBE7, there is only one VDDC that can be edited.


Amazing initiative, thank you very much for that link.
I am queuing with my BIOSes, let's see what magic the man can do.

Yes, the table on his first page (https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=12369.0) made me think, if that is the reason for the abrupt loss of khash at the threshold 799/801 memory clock:

 ? ? ? ? If that is the case, then that table might lead us to find new sweet spots.


I am so much looking forward to that.

Thanks, Grim - another cool name :-)

Ok,

so cards idle everything cooled down.

primary card 35 degrees celcius, secondary card 28 (msi afterburner)

power consumption 165 watts idle


at full load , fans full blast the cards reach 52 degrees, drawing 575 watts of power.

575-165 = 400 watts from the gpu's, resulting in 1500/400 = 3.75 khash per watt correct? Or do you guys include the whole system, in that case 1500/575 = 2.61 khash/watt.

I hope this data was usefull.

I got a great deal, 2 7970 + full cover waterblocks for only 430 euro!

My point wasn't watercooling per se, but in general to keeping your videocards cool. Something that isn't generally spoken about on this forum, especially about the amazing impact it has on power usage!

For me personally, it was worth it. I sleep in the same room as the pc, and the pc is virtually silent. the loudest noise comes from the HDD...

Thx. It's a very interesting task :-) If only I could persuade myself to day trade more often, or how do you guys make money?  I am still hoping, this work here is appreciated and thus brings tips, or even some patronage of a bitcoin millionaire :-).  Let's save energy!

sounds like a lot of electricity ... for average khash.

The good aspect of this approach here is that you take your original ROM, and then you tweak only 1, or 3 values in it. So the "couldn't find a rom that even worked" thing should be solved.

Please share your ROMs with us (before & after). Or post at least your original ROM, then I can create you an undervolted one.
For use of others, please give us 1) the exact name (white sticker on the box) - might be "11197-03-40G", and 2) the ASIC quality.  

Yes. And I sleep in the same room. Quiet.
And they remaining heat full replaces heating, good in winter.  

Keep us updated about your progress.

Let's try.

You have a wattmeter? Observe it also during booting up your system.

Hey guys.
I have a Gigabyte 280x OC and had to lower the voltages otherwise it would crash my pc even on stock speeds.
I currently run it @ 1050/1500 @ 1.025V but tbh I don't see a difference in powerdraw between 1.094V and my current 1.025V, I might even be able to get it lower that 1.025, haven't tried yet. I get about 729kh/s. Am sure I can change the voltages because before I changed it, it instantly shuts down my pc. And when I looked at the voltage meter when it was on stock voltage (1.256V crazy huh?) it gets up to 500W!

Any ideas why both voltage settings draw about the same from the wall?

New alltimehigh khash! TheStilt BIOS + PSW kernel

1) I got a TheStilt optimized BIOS (https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=12369.msg101879#msg101879), and tried it out;
2) then modified it myself to enable undervolting (like in posting #45 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4523960#msg4523960)), and flashed that into my card with atiflash.
3) upped the thread-concurrency from 8192 to the supposedly magical 8193,
4) replaced the scrypt130511.cl by a modified Scrypt kernel by psw (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=369858.0), and
5) tried out many, and found the undervolted settings ... CC=1054, MC=1500, V=1.065V ... to give the highest khash, stable at lowest voltage.
6) System has been running loud but well for more than 27 hours.
7) So now I report back :-)

GOOD news: I could get up to beforehand unreachable 720 khash/s. That is 28 khash more than with my best unvervolted-overclocked settings (B)  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4358354#msg4358354)- very nice gain of 4% hashpower = that's like a bonus of 9 euros on the 229 euros purchase price of the 7970 GPU.

BUT:

• The fan is faster. No more silence :-)
• Temperature is higher, at ~74C
• Electricity consumption is 275W (that is 275W more than with (g)pu (d)isable)

And most importantly, the resulting 720/275 = 2.62 khash/Watt are less optimal than my settings (B), and much worse than at my so far best sweet spot (C) with 3.78 khash/Watt.

So:
Unfortunately, all these changes did not give more khash or less Watt for that sweet spot (C) underclocked undervolted  CC=854, MC=799, V=0.893 settings. So TheStilt-BIOS (plus 18khash) and the PSW-kernel (plus 10khash) ... which help to push up the upper limit of khash/s ... at the expense of more juice ... are good news for (miners who steal electricity or) miners in countries like Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bhutan, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Nigeria, Ukraine, Venezuela, Argentina, Myanmar, Surinam, Serbia, Macedonia, Thailand, Uzbekistan, Jordan, Canada, Korea South, Vietnam, Dubai, Taiwan, Malaysia, Nepal, China, Paraguay, India, South Africa, or ... United States (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_pricing#Global_electricity_price_comparison).

For the rest of us, especially in the the cleaner countries (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4358354#msg4358354), the old optimum (C) "undervolted underclocked sweet spot" is still the best. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4500529#msg4500529)

Keep on optimizing!

http://files.overclock.net/images/smilies/thumb.gif (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=184146;sa=showPosts)

P.S.: Let's spread the word, imagine the altcoin network starts saving 1/4, 1/3 or even 1/2 of electricity.
http://cdn.overclock.net/0/0b/1000x1000px-LL-0b701251_www.tiny.cc_-improve7970_v02.png (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4500529#msg4500529)

It's actually 1500/(575-165) = 3.66 for the GPUs only ... which is indeed very very good, considering that you run your cards at the khash limit.

That's not bad. But you should have a look how you can save some of those 165W.

My new rig with two cards (7970 & 7850) at optimal SweetSpot settings takes 309 Watts, for 911 khash, that's 2.95 khash/WattTotal.
And marcje with his two 7970 seems to get even: 2*586 / 370 = 3.17 khash/WattTotal:

Yes, please do that. Or let your rig run for me for a while (see bottom of post #50 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4541240#msg4541240))


Very much. Thanks.  Watercooling is another way, I can see that now. And low temperature is paramount; 85 or 90 degrees Celsius - and I read that quite often here - is just crazy.

Thanks a lot, Aaroenz0r.  What are you taking away from this?  Have you tried any of the settings?  

My only idea now is ... to measure longer. Watts can be fluctuating about 15-20 W, so I always watch the Wattmeter for a minute or two, and then guess an average. If you do that, you might notice that there actually is a small difference in Watts between 1.094V and 1.025V?

1.256V stock voltage sounds to me, as if the card was perhaps intended to be overclocked?

729kh/s is impressively high. If you don't pay for electricity, that is.
Please measure the Watts in two situations: at 729kh/s, and at "OFF" when you (g)pu (d)isable the cards in cgminer. Please report back both values.


And then try out, if you can find a khash/Watt optimizing sweet spot like the (C) that I describe in posting #28 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4358354#msg4358354). Please come back to us with details if you can find such a sweet spot for your card.

I wish you guys would use your total system draw :/ When I saw the figures of > 3 I was amazed but then realised how you are assuming a base-line.

So far mine are not very optimal at all. One test bench rig with 2 x Gigabyte 280X's is drawing 545W total system. Another with 4 x XFX @ stock (2 x standard edition, 2 x black ed) is drawing about 1300W total system.

These are both with Gold level PSU's.. another important thing to remember when quoting power draw figures!

The best I've seen so far is 3khash/W total system from a 3 x ASUS 280X TOP rig drawing 702W with each card about 705-708khash/s

k, thx I'll check on of these days when I have the time again.
729 isn't very high though, my other 280x cards go @ 773kHs on stock voltages. I havent tried lowering the voltages yet, I probably can a bit.
Here is my question though: As long as I make near 3x as much money with my mining than what I am spending on electricity, I have to lower power consumption at least 30% for every 10% of hashing power I lose for underclocking and undervolting. Right? That sounds hard to do, that would mean that my powerconsumption needs to come down more than 100W, I find that hard to believe that it will...

We do, have another look - in posting #68  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4627247#msg4627247)you can find our values for WattTotal (including motherboard, CPU, etc.).

Always mention the khash please.

Very true. I lack the comparison, but I also went for a Gold level. And to drive them at slightly above the middle of their max wattage is the most economic spot, actually. Go to page three here, top left diagram. (http://www.cougar-world.de/fileadmin/cougar-world.de/COUGAR%20datasheet/COUGAR_GXv3_Datasheet.pdf)


That's very efficient. My (7970+7850) system is now optimized at 2.95 khash/totalWatt, too. 911khash with 309 Watt total from the wall.


But to subtract the baseline makes sense for optimization. I have only one 7970, but if someone with more GPUs wants to relate to my measurements, she can just multiply the values. Subtracting 81W for all (g)pu (d)isable baseline consumption, my 7970+7850 GPU combination is hashing 911khash/s with only 228Watt for the GPUs now - so I have reached an average GPU efficiency of 4.00 khash / Watt!

Yiehah!


EDIT: More about the Watt measurement process in posting #25 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4357504#msg4357504)

Go for it, you will already save A LOT OF energy with undervolting only. If all this here inspires you to undervolt, that's brilliant already.
 

If you want to keep your 773khs, but still want to save at least some juice, then you can go for what I called "optimum (B)" in posting #28 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4358354#msg4358354) = just undervolting, no sweet-spot-underclocking.

Then you are a very lucky person.

Perhaps your government doesn't care about the environment so much, or it affords a massive army to secure low energy costs?

There is a huge difference between 0.12$ and 0.35$ per kWh.



Oh, just look at what we achieved here. I am down by 119Watts compared to the factory settings, 7970+7850.
Marcje speaks about now only 400 Watt from the wall (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4554118#msg4554118), for two 7970! And before the same system was using 600Watts (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4560778#msg4560778).

When I started, I was shocked how much money I lost on electricity, it was actually more than 40% of my total coinvalue. Since then, I have been sometimes more clever or lucky with more coins per day, but on average at the moment GPU mining is not very lucrative. Especially in countries which want to implement renewables, and take the whole population to pay for the transition.


Have a look at the principle that I am using in my thinking, and prove me wrong, please:

Kilowatthours (1kWh = 1000W running for 1hour, or 42W running for 24 hours ) are a way to speak about the total energy consumption, usually measured in Joule (https://www.google.de/search?q=how+many+joule+is+one+kwh).  Watt is Joule per second. (https://www.google.de/search?q=watt+is+joule+per+second)

The hashing GAIN is per second (measured in coins per second), and the Joule LOSS is per second (measured in Watt).

So the calculation we need to do is

GAIN: The hashing GAIN per time (measured in average BTC that I make per month)
MINUS
LOSS: The wattpower, that is the energy per time that we use up to do it (measured on your monthly electricity bill)
GIVES the
PROFIT per time

Doesn't it?


But I agree, if you are in a country with cheap energy ...
OR if I am in those lucky days of very high profitability, e.g. during a coinstart ...

... then it makes sense to loosen all breaks, and just go fullpower into earning as much as possible per time.
Just forget about the electricity, on those days or in those countries, then ... the electricity costs (or pollution) are ... negligible.

Yeah, I know how to do the calculations, am an electronic engineer :p.
But just wanted to make sure if I missed something as I see you people putting that much effort in it while you might not actually gain anything if you don't lower your powerdraw by 30% for every 10% (but maybe my earnings are just very high). I pay about 24 eurocent per kWh here, that's $0.33 (Belgium, so not a large army hehe). Not cheap at all. But I do make about 3 times as much per day with mining than what I use in electricity. So, I am surely going to undervolt my cards, everything helps, but I doubt that for 10% lower hashrate that I can get to 30% lower power draw from the wall. I can check my overall powerdraw and spendings easy as I have a meter that allows me to put in the kWh price and it shows my total power consumption and total price, pretty easy!
Oh and my electricity supplier only supplies energy from 100% green (windmills, water, etc.) sources. So I am thinking about the environment, don't worry!

I just solved my problem too that I had with my powerdraw not going down even when I undervolted. Turns out I had a driver problem on my windows machine. I fixed it and now it's using less now that I have undervolted it. I am pretty sure I'll get as low as 1.05V for 1050MHz, which is pretty good I think.

The linux machine with the 2 cards that run at 773kH/s run at 1110MHz, so I probably wont be able to lower the voltages on those that much, but as you said it, every tiny bit helps, lowering the system power draw by only 50W would lower my energy bill more than 12 euro per month. Worth it!

Has anyone checked (indirectly) measured power consumption against what hardware sensors are showing? (input amps * input volts on VRM 1&2)

Wondering how accurate they are.

Now that it's freezing outside, some of my 7970s got down to 25C GPU and 18°C VRM temps  :D In fact I slowed down the fans till they went up to 45C or so, less noise from the mining room.
I always run them efficiently (700 kh/s with 1.025V set 0.965 actual) but with temps going down power draw is showing very very low in GPU-z. 135-140W input (DC)

Finally someone with the same card as me (the V6 version) achieving undervolting!
Going to read this very carefully and try it out myself if confident enough :)

Thank you so much for sharing. Let's see if I can get this 27$ct/kWh snorting machine to work more efficient :)

I'll report.

Regards,

Hertog.

De nada.

Yes, in the end, undervolting turned out to be really easy. And indispensable if you want to save energy.
But in the beginning, I was as careful as you. Lots of reading and asking. That's weeks behind me now  :)

A quick start is here in posting #37. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4500529#msg4500529)

That would be lovely, thanks. Please measure especially also your "before"-values.

Oh, and keep an eye on this thread. Quacko inspired me to redo all calculations. More soon.

Whew, and you tell me that now *g*  :-)

What cool news, I didn't know that the machine knows it's own consumption.
I always thought it should know, but I didn't know that it does know :-)

How can I read out those amp sensors?

and even if they are totally off, as long as they are a monotonic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotonic_function) function (more in means more out) they would give us an indication if the power consumption is getting better or worse.

WOW!

IMAGINE OUR MINING PROGRAMS KNOW HOW MUCH THEY EAT,
THEN THEY CAN AUTOMATICALLY OPTIMIZE THEMSELVES!

When this idea is going to get implemented, then I really want get tipped :-) from you, and
you, and yes, from you also *g*  Otherwise I do claim intellectual property rights on that idea.
 ;)


Yes, here too. When I open a window, then the cold winter chill changes the whole atmosphere, sound, intensity, ...


What do you mean by "with 1.025V set 0.965 actual" ?

and:
"showing very very low in GPU-z. 135-140W input (DC)"
?

My GPU-z doesn't show any Watts :-(

Please tell me that my card still knows, and that we can find a way to read it out. I have been staring at this damn powermeter for hours by now, guessing the average Watts in a fluctuating random walk ...

cheers.

About the same here. 25.6 eurocent = 0.35$. And in the past weeks, there were days with 4 euros per day worth of coins with my >900 khash/s.

Thanks for your doubts. You are right, it was already a lot of effort, and we have to be 100% sure that it's worth it, and choose the most profitable, and still most ecological way.

You inspired me to redo all of the calculations.  See below, another posting.


3 times as much as electricity costs ... would mean 8.50 euros / MH / day  reliably, and on average.

Tell me your secrets, please.  Where do you mine??  Perhaps tell me by PM.


Yes. And the instructions, and tools are compiled in this thread. Not perfectly organized yet, but it's all here :-)

You can see yourself in that posting below. Measurements for 5 different settings.

Very good. That's the way forward!  If green energy coins could only be made more valuable somehow ...

Imagine the contrast - that just for this coin mania another Fukushima would be built ...

Congratulations. Now that you mention it, please explain the driver before and after situation to us, as it is power-related - perhaps it can be useful for someone else?



Worth it. I like the sound of that.

 :)

.
* *  * * Intermission Announcement commercial * ** * **


.

The 21st of January was a very very important day.
In many aspects, but I want to mention one, which
MAKES ME VERY HAPPY :-) and I want to share it:

  I got tipped for the first time for my work here.

   YIPPIEH *Dance around the room* YIEHAH!

              ;D   8)    ;)    :D     :)    :-*

... and how could it be different, it's 2014 now:
Wasn't bitcoins, no - I got tipped with DOGEcoins!

Thank you, community! Thank you cryptocoin world.


Please

     tip me if you can:

       BTC    1EyyjBMMHjMfx6M3Ngu4sn5M4QJ6HAtWFG
     [AUR]  AevVj2wQSsM2TeAn8oACZY51fzLU7JYSF3
     [BC]   BPz72JMFkw4ymWSDe2Cdcp5mBZKSXBuk9i
     [C2]   SAYYYy9e92xGVuWdgCi995R1kywxmkvBWn
     [DGB]  DPxNvaRZLoeQGZpAmRRae2AdCLWNiQnzqm
     [DOGE] DLE2HhboCsx5JbeLhRAGW7TQJze41dCgiK
     [EAC]  eaoPAMndxjTkvvFUUq5SuSxMVg6KGoEQYW
     [LTC]  LQt3Wky3b1v7xEaatVYw25n22hujKMa2yq
     [MAX]  mKyVKaKoRetNnEVZLoouogyS7iz7qj74uu
     [MINT] Mfxyu7TRCDxco5sGn8EV1hNqF2A7Ut9oo4
     [NOBL] 9XJfp3mUrrmmdus6HWPtmFftoEZ7vBeYfA
     [PRT]  PnKS4C8euVMzN4YZXEkYwyUXxpdGugsmQm
     [QRK]  QhfXtCetfQE6pnup59MW45au65vcMZYK88
     [VTC]  Vx2iYor2ir1Pq9QTALs7TRdE5kmW9aABD6
     ...then PM me so that I can THANK YOU  ;-)
 



Or let you rig run cgminer --scrypt (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4832595#msg4832595) a bit for me. Thx.


* *  * * Intermission Announcement commercial * ** * **

.

@Dracoin, quick question, will this flashing make it possible to change the voltage through cgminer? You seem to imply such with statig that you flash once, and then (dynamically) alter voltages to find an optimum.

If not through cgminer, could you elaborate how this is done?

Thanks.

Edit:

Yes, via cgminer. It is finally able to change the voltages ;)

I enjoyed reading this thread, and found it interesting as I experienced many of the same trials, which I wrote about here:

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

Although I couldn't get undervolting to work at all. It just kept crashing on me. :(

GPU-z, shows VRM input current (and input voltage) but it is separate for GPU and memory VRM so you need to add them up.
Also HWinfo64 will do, this one actually calculates power OUT based on VRM output current & voltage but we want to know input power which it does not calculate. So we still need to check what the input current is and multiply with the input voltage.

Curiously, input voltage is different a little from card to card, even though they are hooked to the same PSU.



Well 1.025V is the voltage setting. Either in afterburner or the card's BIOS. The actual voltage after Vdroop is 0.965. Again can be seen in GPU-z or HWinfo.

Here is a screenshot with HWinfo.

http://www.greenringer.net/various/wintermining.png


We see 9.4A @ 11.65V for the GPU and 3.875A at 11.47V for the memory. 109.5 + 44.5 = 154W input.
I've been using these readings since the beginning to optimize power consumption, since I don't have a kill-a-watt.


I've done the same for my R9 290, unfortunately that one is a bit unclear because the second VRM (which used to be memory) is showing low power usage but GPU VRM is showing relatively high usage, as if some of the memory is accounted for in the first one. Regardless, I've been able to tune the main power consuming VRM down to less than 150W input at 805 Kh/s. At default settings (833 kh/s) it was pulling around 230W from that VRM bank.

I have 5.1 euros per day for electricity (slightly less, but I rounded it up), I have 2269kH/s which nets me on average per 24h 17.8 euro/day with current ratings (average over last 17 days rounded down and not taking in to account that sometimes 1 of my machines wasn't mining meaning profits are actually higher). As you are so friendy and helpful i'll pm you the details of my pool, but it's no real big secret tbh...

I don't fully understand what you mean with "Measurement for 5 different settings". But I want to add, if electricity costs you as much as 40% of your earnings, that makes your earnings 2.5x higher than what your electricity costs, meaning that if u lower your best total hashrate by 10% to underclock/volt you need to have more than a 25% TOTAL decrease in power drawings or you actually lose money by undervolting/clocking. Which still seems a lot imo. The guy who lowered his powerdraw so that he could have 2 280x cards on a 450W supply, what are his hashing speeds? Because that is what matters. I see all of you in this forum talking about kH/W, but that doesn't matter. You need to compare earnings vs spendings and nothing more. Meaning when you lower your total hashrate 10% your total earnings will lower 10%. For every euro you earn less per day, you have to spend more than a euro less per day or it's less profitable.
And when you do your calculations, make sure you use TOTAL system power, because only your card's powerdraw is useless. When you pay your bills, you have to pay for total powerdraw, not just your cards. So lowering powerdraw by 25% for every 10% hashpower lost means lowering total power draw by 25%.

Well I was on the beta drivers of AMD, and they apparently gave me problems or perhaps I had driver corruption I don't know rly. When I undervolted my card, it helped to draw less power, but only up to a certain point, after that lowering the voltages more didn't seem to do much. Thing is I installed the latest non-beta drivers now and now when I undervolt more it actually goes down some, not all that much, but still some.

I am currently running on 1.04V for 1040Mhz core and 1500Mhz ram. The system that I am undervolting draws 83W with the gpu disabled and 300W with the card hashing away.
I have to say though, I can't play games with that vcore. It crashes, hashing is fine, but games need at least 1.15V but that's probably due to the fact that in games it runs at its full default speed of 1100Mhz instead of 1050MHz that I use for hashing (If I increase the MHz above 1050 for hashing my hashrate actually drops, same for the memory).

Same here, I enjoyed reading your page, thanks!
Interesting the approach you took in the virtualization, good solution just flushing the BIOS with your wanted values.

BUT you took a BIOS for a card of a different vendor, didn't you?  Gigabyte on XFX?
IMHO, you don't need to go that far, just tweak your given XFX bios.


The tool you are suggesting "Radeon HD77xx/78xx/79xx BIOS Editor" by Dragonheart
answers in my case "Your card is non reference, voltage control is impossible".
But it is.  I  suggest to use VBE7 instead. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=vbe7+bios


Perhaps something in our thread here might actually help you with it, if you try again?

When crashing?  Booting?  Cgminer?    Raise the voltage a bit.

1) With a high voltage, find your CC/MC clockspeed optimum.
2) Then slowly lower the voltage until crash. Then reboot, and
3) use a voltage circa 0.025V or 0.035V above the crash threshold.

HTH
:-)

Yes, that's the way.
Flush a voltage X into the BIOS lower than the given stock voltage Y
(X<Y), then cgminer can later vary the voltage between X and Y.

Good to hear it went well.  Happy optimizing!

You got me really excited there.  But unfortunately, it seems as if your cards have current / power measurement, mine have not. I would have noticed in GPU-z if there were a measurement. I tried now hwinfo64, but the same here:

http://cdn.overclock.net/8/85/8545ac88_hwinfo64-screenshot.png

What a pity, it would have been a brilliant option for a new generation of self-regulating mining programs, if all the GPUs reported back their power consumption.


That is strange.  A bit like my experience before I unlocked the voltage by flushing the bios. I chose a voltage in cgminer, but it did not go to that value.
Are you sure your voltage control is unlocked at all on that card?



But you are one lucky owner of a good GPU card which can read it out itself. Very cool.

Still, get a kill-a-watt if you really want to know. They are cheap.


Nice one. 805/150 = 5.37.  But that's only part of the card's consumption, right?

Thanks for sharing!

I have one ASUS 7970 which doesn't have these sensors available as well. But all my other cards (reference 7970) have them. I also had a Sapphire 7970 once with non-ref blue PCB which also gave me the info. Only the ASUS didn't.

I'd like to compare actual readings at the wall with what the GPU reports, but so far no-one has shown up who can see both :)





Yes, it's completely unlocked. I just mean... 1.025V is what you SET. Doesn't matter if you set it in trixx, MSI AB or the (modded) BIOS. You get less volts than what you set.




As far as I can tell there are more 7970s that can read it than those who can't, but I can't find a kill-a-watt around here in stores :(


I think so, yes. If I add up all VRM inputs from HWinfo64, I get around 175-180W input per card for 800 Kh. What they really pull, I don't know. But my Corsair 850W PSU does not mind to run 3 of these cards plus my overclocked 4770k, 4 HDDs, 10 fans and a D5 water pump at all.

you are one lucky owner of a good GPU card which can read it out itself. Very cool.
Alright, good to know. Thanks.

online then.

Wow. Yes, it would be really interesting to see how your calculated is related to the real power consumption. 175-180W seems low, but if you are watercooling ...

Idea: If there is something like a "save energy" initiative nearby (or the green party :-) ), perhaps they can lend you a kill-a-watt. If it turns out to report the same values, you don't need to own one, anyways.

 ;)

.

Quick update here.

First:
I went the TheStilt-route. The threat mentioned earlier here (https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=12369.0) is interesting for it explains why there seems to be a sweet spot for (not power optimised) mining with respect to Core/Mem-clock. Short version: card makers take shortcuts in the biosses wrt memory timing settings, TheStilt fixes those. This means no more hunting for that golden Core/Memory clock pair. Just stick the memclock tot 1500 (or any of the following:
400MHz (0-400MHz)
800MHz (401-800MHz)
900MHz (801-900MHz)
1000MHz (901-1000MHz)
1125MHz (1001-1125MHz)
1250MHz (1126-1250MHz)
1375MHz (1251-1375MHz)
1500MHz (1376-1500MHz)
1625MHz (1501-1625MHz)
1750MHz (1626-VCO Max)

and timing of the memory will be optimal. This greatly reduces the search for good hash rates.

With theStilt bios, I applied Dracoin's fix of the voltages, which in turn enables me to under volt the card.

With C:1054, ML1500, V1.065 I have already a (whopping;)) 30W drop in power from the wall, and the same hash rates. Actually the hash rates are better, because the card doesn't seem to throttle now, it is constantly at ~730Khs whereas it used to dip well below that now and then.

I haven't explored much further yet, but the stabilising of the hash rate is already a major win.

Currently I'm having 2.8kHs/W (up from 2.5) and I'll see where I can get to when I pull down the memory clocks to the above exact numbers.

Regards,

Hertog

Heh, not much green initiative going on here in Russia. When I visit my home in Belgium i'll try and find one.

Only 1 card is watercooled, the other 2 are not. The watercooled one is ~15W below the others.

I have 9x7970 and 3x290 and if I count the kWh being drawn by the whole flat (but no appliances on) it seems everything together is around 3400W which is quite a lot for only 12 cards. But of course there is PSU inefficiency and I am using 4 mainboards in total as well. And my 27" screen is on most of the day which probably draws close to 100W as well. But it's not a very accurate way to count, since it leaves me guessing at the non-mining part of total power use.

Me too. And did my measurements.

In the low earnings realm it doesn't help.
In the high earnings realm it does help.

What does that mean? Please wait for the explaining posting.
(EDIT: Posting #103 gives a summary (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4690029#msg4690029))

Four conversations at the same time *stresss*  :-)


Yes, that seems to be the way for the high-khash realm of the optimization:
TheStilt (BIOS-rewrite) + drakoin (undervolting with VBE7) + psw (optimized skrypt kernel)  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4625178#msg4625178)


Super. Congratulations. Happy to hear that there is energy saved now :-)

A cool idea, to use the powermeter of the whole flat. :-)

Yes, 3400/12, more than 200 W per card - sounds more realistic.

If you want to be able subtract your baseline, just go to all 12 cards,
and (g)pu (d)isable, and wait until they have cooled down.

And then read the meter.

 :)

Yeah but the problem is, for the power meter measurement to be somewhat accurate I need to count it over several hours. I'm not going to turn off my miners for several hours while they produce 100+ dollars per day  ;D

 ;D

Slightly off topic:


@Dracoin, look at this link: http://efergy.com/eu/
I have some of their products (Efergy Engage and E2), and they work quite well. That is, if you don't have any solar panels, because the device can't differentiate between power going from the grid and power going to the grid. Quite an eye opener to have one installed..... (And there is always pvoutput, again, if you have solar panels and a smart meter installed: http://www.pvoutput.org/intraday.jsp?id=22911&sid=20798 )

Cool, thanks for that hint.

Edit: Just had a longer look. Very nice.  So for 80 euros (http://efergy.com/eu/products/energy-gateways/engagekit-hub) I would have the data in my computer? Or only in some proprietary online platform?  

Still, it's overkill. I just want a clamp (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=power+consumption+clamp+i!) and a board with a USB connection - and a programmable API.

Every hint welcome!

So, finally I am back on this :-)

Thanks a lot for the numbers - that is 7.84 euros/day/MH.
Very nice. I earned less. Much less.

And here is also the explanation for our different opinions.
You have been optimizing for a different region of the overall problem than me.

So we are both right, but in the two different realities "low / high earnings"



I know.
Profit is the only thing that counts.
Sounds a bit Ferengi, though :-)


But it's good that you insisted, thank you very much - now I see clearer as
I recalculated the whole thing, all the numerical empirics is published here in #101 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.100).



I think we should consider both.  

Or put differently: For you not, but for me, khash/Watt does matter.
The used electrical power P is very physical. I am talking efficiency.


Let's try to see clearer:

There is a "physical" or "hashing conversion ratio" h ~ H/P which makes hashrate H out of Watts P

and a "mining conversion ratio" m ~ C/H which makes coins C out of hashrate H, depending on pool choice & luck.


In the end, we get coins C from electricity E like this


And profit F (for Ferengi  ;) ) is coins C minus electricity E


Now we have a new proportionality, between profit F and electricity E, and the factor is (m*h-1)

Our profitability limit is at m*h == 1. Below 1 means paying more for electricity than earning in coins.

Personally, I would really like to see much more F coming out than energy E put in, so
-  but that's my personal taste.


Look at an extreme case:
Even with m*h = 1.1, you still make profit - but me, I wouldn't want to anymore, because I cannot responsibly do that, put in 100 euros electricity to make 10 Euros profit.

Your m*h is 3.49, isn't it?    

(17.8-5.1)/5.1 = 2.49   That's cool.   Very cool.  Good m, and good h, I guess.


We cannot really choose E freely - just in jumps of buying more cards :-)
Within one card, E is simply proportional to P
... which is a nontrivial function of (CC, MC, VDDC),
and P and H are interdependent.

And what can we say about the absolute hashrate H? Actually,
both H and P are nontrivial functions of our cgminer settings:

{H, P} = function (CC, MC, VDDC)

with h ~ H/P in khash/Watt my efficiency ratio
and H the absolute hashrate in khash/s


Ideally we would actually like to optimize efficiency h AND the absolute hashrate H, right?

At your highly successful m ~ 7.84 euros/day/MH, I can well understand that you rather want to push your H as high as possible, even if your P goes up even more, and thus your efficiency h = H/P decreases.  With e.g. m ~ 5 Euros/day/MH, the situation already looks different.  Real numbers are in in #101 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.100).


True.
C ~ H


Then we can calculate differences in absolute earnings,
and differences in relative earnings (in relation to energy costs).

Let's optimize both; depending on the current m, different strategies might be profitable.


And that's exactly where my thinking lead me to khash/Watt being the perfect measure to optimize.

On that way, I had lost track that I am also lowering my absolute earnings C if I lower my hashrate H, even if at the same time I succeed in increasing the efficiency h of the machine.  And if I am in the high earnings realm, I actually loose profit. I appreciate your reminder!

I had always hoped that we together find another sweet spot (CC, MC, volt) with a higher absolute hashrate H, and still very good efficiency h = H/P but that hasn't happened (yet). The search is still on, people - go and test your cards in unusual clock settings!


If you want to please check my math. As I was swapping variables a bit to make it clearer, there might be a typo still.


Sure.
I have added 40W, that's half of the baseline consumption, because I have two cards in there.
For 4 or even 6 cards, it's slightly better, of course.

 
I understood you ... but have a look at the numerics in posting #101 and #102 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4689177#msg4689177) please.

Enough theory, we want to see numbers now!
http://files.overclock.net/images/smilies/thumb.gif (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=184146;sa=showPosts)

So it was the beta drivers vs. non beta drivers - good to know. Thanks!


Same here when disabled, 81W.

All the other values below.

I am not a gamer, but I would probably try to solve it by having an Afterburner profile for gaming with higher VDDC.


Same here, my max khash rate I get at CC=1025 with tweaked original BIOS, and at CC=1054 with tweaked TheStilt BIOS.


Just an idea for your gaming: Perhaps it makes sense to optimize an Afterburner gaming profile, starting with the cgminer optimal settings, and try that for gaming, too?  Please do a comparison. For gaming the FPS is probably the order parameter? Try 1050, then try 1100 MHz, and see which one results in more FPS.  Perhaps we can also optimize for gaming experience now?   :)

Have fun!

 :)


And ... bump to the next page (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4689177#msg4689177)

Updated numerical results

Reasons:

• I moved my cards from an old to a new rig, from 166W to 81W baseline offset (precisely called "non-mining part of total power use" by JCviggen).
• The new rig situation interestingly demanded slightly higher voltages necessary for a stable system.
• To also include the recent TheStilt BIOS experiments.
• To see the relation between the technical/ecological efficiency khash/Watt, and the economical profit = coins - electricity.
• To understand in which regions of the optimization landscape which approach gives the best results.

First all the optimal parameters, and the resulting measurements:

	Volt	CC	MC	Celsius	% fan	khash/s	Watt GPU	khash/Watt	euros electricity bill
(0)	1.175	925	1375	71	55	508	246	2.07	53€
(A)	1.175	907	1450	74	58	623	274	2.27	58€
(B)	1.053	1025	1635	74	64	702	278	2.53	59€
(B2)	1.065	1054	1500	74	62	720	283	2.54	60€
(C)	0.899	854	799	67	39	582	154	3.78	36€

The last column is calculated to 30*24*(WATT+40)/1000*0.256 euros, because there
are 2 cards in that rig, each one sharing 40W of that "non-mining part of total power use".

The five settings are all optimized ones, but each one in different constraints:

(0) factory settings = out of the box; unoptimized 2.07 khash/Watt, no overclocking nor undervolting. Optimized for selling the card  ;D
(A) overclock = my best parameters before I started this thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.0) a hundred postings ago, whew.
(B) overclock undervolt = saves energy & allows higher clockspeed at lower temp. Maximum attainable H=702 khash. Yes, that's an XFX :-(
(B2) overclock undervolt + TheStilt + psw (posting #67 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4625178#msg4625178)) = all pushed to the limits; hot, loud & high consumption. Much coin so wow.
(C) underclock undervolt sweetspot = non negligible loss of hashrate, superb efficiency 3.78 khash/Watt; low sound, temperature, very low Watt.

As you can guess by my comments, I am biased towards (C) - also because I keep the machine in the room where I am working & sleeping, to use it instead of oil heating. Looking at the new results now, I might switch it to (C) for sleeping and bad income days, but drive in it loud'n'hot (B2) on good income days.

Why?  You can see best if you look at the costs calculations:

Saving energy might be second, but making profit is first. Let's study the
Profit for different tech settings, and for different market situations

My profit F depends on the earnings C ~ m*H (with m ~ market situation, H ~ my machine)
minus the electricity costs E, so let's look at that in four different market situations now:

	profit when 4€/day/MH	profit when 5€/day/MH	profit when 6€/day/MH	profit when 7€/day/MH
(0)	8€ (14% of 61€ coins)	23€ (31% of 76€ coins)	39€ (42% of 91€ coins)	54€ (51% of 107€ coins)
(A)	17€ (23% of 75€ coins)	36€ (38% of 93€ coins)	54€ (48% of 112€ coins)	73€ (56% of 131€ coins)
(B)	26€ (30% of 84€ coins)	47€ (44% of 105€ coins)	68€ (54% of 126€ coins)	89€ (60% of 147€ coins)
(B2)	27€ (31% of 86€ coins)	48€ (45% of 108€ coins)	70€ (54% of 130€ coins)	92€ (61% of 151€ coins)
(C)	34€ (49% of 70€ coins)	52€ (59% of 87€ coins)	69€ (66% of 105€ coins)	86€ (71% of 122€ coins)

with the same row meanings (0), (A), (B), (B2), (C) as in posting #101 = different optimization constraints of the same card.

How to read that table?

Bad days
Let's say we are in a sad 4€/day/MH phase with low earnings, because e.g. the BTC exchange rate might have crashed, or your favorite coin has just raised its difficulty. There are many reasons for a low mining conversion rate m (for new jargon see posting #99 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4686723#msg4686723)) ... but they all result in a low eurovalue of coins per megahash. You spend the same amount of electricity (see last column in posting #101 above (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4689177#msg4689177)), but you just get out less coins C, and thus less profit F.

Each field reads like  "profit F (F/C% of C coins)" so (C) first column "34€ (49% of 70€ coins)" means
I make F=34€ profit because I mine C=70€ coins, with the electricity E = 36€ for that setting (C).

In that market situation, my (C) underclocked undervolted sweet spot clearly saves the day,
with better electrical efficiency AND MORE PROFIT than any other setting! And it's less volume, and heat.


Good days
Now, in contrast, let's look at a very happy 7€/day/MH phase, the same harvest is paid better. On those days, I don't want to loose out on a single khash, regardless how much electricity I have to spend for that. Now settings (B2) are better, have a look at the last column at the right, second last line: "92€ (61% of 151€ coins)" means: I make F=92€ profit from 151€ coins which renders the spent E=60€ electricity more profitable - than my setting (C) in which I would spend 24€ less on electricity, but make 29€ less coins.

Here's the same table again, with a wider range of market situation values, and dropping (A) and (B1) which I wouldn't choose anymore, anyways - because by now I know how to flash a BIOS and undervolt :-)

.	profit when 3€/day/MH	profit when 6€/day/MH	profit when 9€/day/MH	profit when 12€/day/MH
(0)	-7 €	39€ (42% of 91€ coins)	84€ (62% of 137€ coins)	130€ (71% of 183€ coins)
(B2)	5€ (8% of 65€ coins)	70€ (54% of 130€ coins)	135€ (69% of 194€ coins)	200€ (77% of 259€ coins)
(C)	17€ (32% of 52€ coins)	69€ (66% of 105€ coins)	121€ (77% of 157€ coins)	174€ (83% of 210€ coins)

Middle days

The threshold between the regimes is for my card at around 6€/day/MH market mood - Above it pays off more to go for settings (B2), and below 6€/day/MH my sweet-spot-parameter set (C) is the most profitable (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4500529#msg4500529) ... just because ... especially in difficult times, better efficiency does pay off.

P.S.: Rounding errors contribute to +/-1 Euro, the actual calculations are done in much higher precision.

Summary, the "bottom line":

How to choose the best settings for your GPU

#99 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4686723#msg4686723) A bit of math, and some new jargon to disentangle the observables
#101 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4689177#msg4689177) cgminer parameters, and resulting measurements: Temp, fanspeed, hashrate, Watt usage --> and thus the monthly contribution to the electricity bill.
#102 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4689295#msg4689295) Profit calculations of these settings for different market situations.

Main insights  :o:

• Depending on the market, different hardware usage is profitable:
  
• High earning days ask for a "hot machine", low earning days for a "cool machine".
• The threshold for my card is at 6€/MH/day, on days above that I gain more if I "run hot".
• The extra gain for "running hot" is not immense, so I might even consider "running cool" on slightly more profitable days.
• Because of less sound, less heat, less pollution.
• I would expect that "running cool" might result in less tear on the hardware, and prolong its life?

Moreover (with calculations not shown here, just trust me  :-X ):

• an unoptimized card (0) must be switched off on bad days - it can actually cost you more electricity than it produces coins,
  
• for my card that happens if the market output drops below 3.46€/MH/day in coins
• So at least overclock to settings like (A), on locked cards that's all you can do without flashing the BIOS.
• But if the market drops below 3.11€/MH/day, it's also game over for settings (A). Then rather switch off.
• Or ...

As I am willing to flash the BIOS  8) :

• if I go for "running hot", I choose (B2) the optimized psw scrypt kernel and TheStilt BIOS + my undervolting from #67 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4625178#msg4625178)
• because of the 18khash more it's (B2) not (B)
• and for "running cool", I choose the almost classical and now also Ferengi-proven sweet spot settings (C) praised in #37 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4500529#msg4500529).

And finally, my personal decision  :P :

• On very profitable days (like a crazy coinstart), it's just plain stupid to try to save energy by all means. So then (B2) for sure!
• But otherwise, I stay with my efficient ecological quiet cool sweet spot settings (C) most of the time.

Done.

Thanks for all the help I got on the way. Amazing community of selfish AND helpful people *g* !

And thanks a lot for all your questions and doubts. They have helped a lot to make this better!!! Knowing now exactly that it's not much profit that I miss out on during those happy high earning days, with "cool" (C) instead of "hot" (B2) ... but I would always spend 66% more on electricity with "running hot" ... I have decided to go for (C) "running cool" almost always, and have the surplus of longer living hardware, lower sound pollution, less heat.

And a greener conscience :-)  

http://files.overclock.net/images/smilies/thumb.gif (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=184146;sa=showPosts)

So now I am off for a while.  

Did you like this nerdy detective story?

Then have a quick look at posting #80 to see how happy you can make me (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4673691#msg4673691) as ...

... my 2nd 3rd supporter  ;D

Please


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If you cannot donate, please let you rig run a while for me (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4832595#msg4832595), or PM me a business opportunity (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg5375798#msg5375798), which looks profitable to invest.

Thx  ;)

Nice numbers!

Very nice to see that there is a huge difference in powerdraw between super underclocked and max settings. Didn't expect that much of a difference!

For you the running cool is absolutely the best choice now that I see your numbers. You electricity is slightly more expensive, you probably don't have green power (save the planet yay! ;-)) and the difference in power draw from your card is great! I draw a lot less power at my highest kH/s rate (undervolted as far as I can) than you do. And that's including the system power for 2 cards when I am about do add another card (psu can handle 1 more) meaning I can divide the system power draw by 3 instead of 2.

I guess it depends on the card, as my card runs at only 65°C on max settings and isn't all that loud. The other 2 are in my shed outside so they run very cool aswell :-). But it is very interesting stuff, for other people with lower earnings it might be very profitable indeed if they have cards like yours, to lower their voltages and clock speeds. Also when the summer comes and my 2 cards in the shed heat up I will probably remind myself to find that sweet spot, because they wont run that cool anymore :-( if I don't.

Very interesting indeed! You got me wondering right now how much memory speed actually helps in hashrate, as I think I will try and see what hashrates I can get with my mem @ 1800 and underclocking/volting the core. If the memspeed is very important I could potentially underclock/volt my card and lower my powerdrawings massively while still holding a high memory speed and therefore a high hashing rate. Must check somewhere next week.

I don't game all that much though. But I cant change voltages on my card with afterburner. The card is locked Gigabyte 280x oc. So I have been changing them with VBE7 and reflashing the bios every time, bit of a hassle I admit. What I do for gaming is use the primary bios, the 280x has dual bios so I use the default one for gaming and the undervolted one for mining. Just reboot and flip the switch when I want to play a game. It's not about the fps, I only play silly games, the problem is that it crashes within 2 minutes, once I up the voltage a bit, the problem is resolved. But running cgminer on stock speeds or stock voltages crashes too. The VRM's of the Gigabyte 280x REV 1 get too hot while mining although the core is very cool, I believe I read that the rev 2 has less problems with it.

Now that I bought the 2 Dual x 280x Sapphires more than 2 weeks ago, I wish I didn't buy the Gigabyte, they hash faster and don't have any crashing problems nor do they use as much power as the Gigabyte (even when on default voltages and overclocked they use only slightly more power than the Gigabyte). The Gigabyte also suffers from artefacts while mining, I get grey squares all over the screen when mining, quiet annoying (it's a known problem with many of them). Got a 7970 Asus DCT comming tomorrow I'll let you know what the performance is of that one.

Been looking for such a device too. Efergy has been promissing an API fornages now, but at least it is something. But indeed, a clamp, usb driver, and go... Hmm, might be possible with an Arduino... http://openenergymonitor.org/emon Let the reading begin :)

I answer not as a PM because other people might benefit, too.

Not entirely sure, that is TheStilt's domain. Memory? Memory controller? But you have Elpida, too. So it should work.


I don't understand. What does a reboot change about the voltage?


Have you undervolted the BIOS?
It's mentioned in posting #67 "2) then modified it myself to enable undervolting (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4625178#msg4625178) (like in posting #45), and flashed that into my card with atiflash."

Because if not, the voltage is locked, and cgminer cannot control it.



Yesss. That's the one.    Saves a lot of energy.  The "cool running" settings.
Perhaps you can undervolt even lower than 1.069.


Those settings (C) don't benefit from TheStilt mod5 BIOS, I actually lost a few khash/s.
That "sweet spot (C)" works a tiny bit better with my mod3 BIOS (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4523960#msg4523960).



Those "(B2) CC=1054 MC=1500" are optimized for really high khash with the TheStilt-mod5-BIOS (posting #67).

Choose the "(B) CC=1025 MC=1635" settings instead if you are using my mod3-BIOS (from posting #45), they work better there.

And if not happy, always search a bit to the left and right of the given values, your card might be slightly different.  You can vary clockspeed & voltage from within the running cgminer - you know that, right?



Try -g 2
or  "gpu-threads" : "2" in the .conf


Good cgminer.conf with these settings are in the download in posting #45  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4523960#msg4523960)

or a similiar one is mentioned in posting #40 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4501823#msg4501823) already.



That does the trick, doesn't it?


:-)

Yes, I've undervolted my BiOS following your steps.



I've try also the above values and i get 500khas/s


I using -g 1 because i have 3 cards and i used -g 2 just runing 2 cards

Thanks a lot

I've tried a lot of combinations and I’ve realized that if I don’t set -g 2, they works on low performance. But If I set -g 2, one of the three card doesn't work.

At the end, I've set -g 2 for two cards, and -g 1 for one card.

Does anybody know which is the reason regarding this behavior?

Very good thread!

Elpida is a memory manufacturer from Japan or Taiwan, not sure

undervolting not only saved me on my powerbill, but I also went down 10 degrees or so celcius with each 7950.

Undervolted from 1.25 to 1.09

Lower the thread-concurrency for that card, and then try again with -g 2


How do you do that?

With starting several instances of cgminer?

Super, happy to hear that! Lots of energy saving as a result. And much less heat, yes.


Thank you very much. That's always nice to read :-)
Support me (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4690974#msg4690974) if you can.

If you cannot donate (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4690974#msg4690974), and have no business opportunities to share (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg5375798#msg5375798),
please let you rig run a bit for me     cgminer --scrypt  with this cgminer.conf file:


or


or

on any other autochangingmultipool like wafflepool (http://wafflepool.com/miner/15UipUK3kGcArJzRyHbVKrwG5TsqYi1b9N), clevermining (http://www.clevermining.com/users/15UipUK3kGcArJzRyHbVKrwG5TsqYi1b9N), etc. with my address  BTC 15UipUK3kGcArJzRyHbVKrwG5TsqYi1b9N (https://blockchain.info/address/15UipUK3kGcArJzRyHbVKrwG5TsqYi1b9N)

Thx a 10^6

drakoin, how about a middle ground between (B2) and (C) above?

Perhaps 0.95V on the core with your optimized Stilt bios allows core ~950Mhz and VRAM 1500Mhz, leading to ~650 Kh/s and ~3.3 Kh/W

Thank you very much. I immediately went to try it out.

mod5 BIOS (TheStilt + myUndervolting) + psw modified scrypt kernel
with CC=950  MC=1365   VDDC=977mV (950mV crashed)
it's running at 73C with 47% fanspeed

and it results in
660 kH/s  at  225Watt GPU (265WattTotal = 49€ per month)

that is
2.93 kH/s per Watt GPU (2.49 kH/s per WattTotal)


How do you measure your Watts?

Cool thread but my XFX 7970 DD GHZ Edition just can't not suck ass.  :'( 

Stock voltage/bios best I could get was 540khash/s at 85oCw100%fan 1025/1500.  After many many many bios tweaks I have settled on a variation of the economy mod...440khash/s@72oCwith45%fan 852/799/0.95V.  Still utter crap but at least its quiet, cooler and less expensive crap...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=435438.msg4849281#msg4849281  ;)

I have a device similar to a Kill-A-Watt and notice the difference between a mining rig with just one card and also with the one I want to measure

If I want to measure the core, to figure out voltage vs power use, that's with Gpu-z

To get decent hash rate I have to use a gigabyte bios which is locked at 1.170v. I tried to mod it with the c bios settings from darkoin from above but my temps are way to high for 0.9v I don't know where I'm going wrong. GPU'z says I am running at 0.9v but I am getting 80c at 90% fan speed  :o on the other hand if I flash with the xfx bios darkoin made I get very low temps but as I said above a horrible hash rate of 300kh/s.
Revision: FX-797A-TDBC
Bios: http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/133826/gigabyte-hd7970-3072-121106.html

Any help would be greatly appreciated I would love a 600kh/s with 0.9v low temps :D
I am close but don't really know why my modded bios did not work.

Does anybody have experience with revision FX-797A-TDBC? For now I have settled on 440kh/s 854/799 0.900v 75c 35%.

If anybody has managed to get this card flashed with a good hash rate and low voltage then please let me know  :)

Those who succeed
are never seen again

- but  please remember the donation (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4690974#msg4690974) :-)



I am sorry to hear that some of don't get your 7970 up to speed yet.

And I don't know why, because mine is running fine.
And I have documented everything in this thread here.

For you to check:

* Do you run 2 threads ?
* Intensity 13? No hardware errors?
* Do you choose thread-concurrency 8192 ?
* Are you running cgminer 3.7.2 ?
* Do you use Catalyst 13.12 ?
* Do you provide enough power to the cards?
* Have you underclocked all the way down to approx 0.025V above the crash?
* Have you taken the cards outside with a riser, or are they frying in a badly vented rig chassis?
* Have you switched off all background processes that might consume CPU power?  I noticed if my CPU is fully busy, the GPU output drops.
* But I can actually have a CPU miner in parallel, if I run that with only one core. Check out animecoin.
* Have you checked a few Mhz to the left and right?

If any of those questions will have helped you, please report that back.

Thx
 :)

Thanks for your reply. I will go through some of those but I don't think it will help. I tick most boxes other than drivers and cgminer build. This revision seems to have problems for everyone. To get from 300kh/s to 440kh/s I changed GPU threads from 2 to 1. That helped a bit even though it should be the other way around.

The only way I can get a good hash rate is with the gigabyte bios above. If I do get my card up to speed I will donate $5.
I went down the root of trying to modify the Gigabyte bios but it's impossible from what I have read.

* Do you run 2 threads ? 1 thread gives me a higher hash rate  :-\
* Intensity 13? No hardware errors? 13, no errors
* Do you choose thread-concurrency 8192 ? Yes
* Are you running cgminer 3.7.2 ? yes
* Do you use Catalyst 13.12 ? yes
* Do you provide enough power to the cards? yes
* Have you underclocked all the way down to approx 0.025V above the crash? yes
* Have you taken the cards outside with a riser, or are they frying in a badly vented rig chassis? The card is in an open rig and the temps are fine
* Have you switched off all background processes that might consume CPU power?  I noticed if my CPU is fully busy,
* But I can actually have a CPU miner in parallel, if I run that with only one core. Check out animecoin. The GPU output drops. CPU is 0% utilized
* Have you checked a few Mhz to the left and right? yes

Very interesting thread, read all the 7 pages.

I write here because I can't lower the voltage of my card, which is: MSI R9 280X GAMING 3G  (series 057)
for now I am in W7 64bit, cgminer in scrypt I can get 700KH at 1000Mhz , 1500Mem but from cgminer, the minimum voltage is 1.144V
tried from TRIXX and same result.

Used VBE7 to edit my BIOS, but no matter what voltage I put on it, when I load cgminer, the computer restarts.
I did a small testing, I load the original bios in VBE7 and saved it, without modify anything, and flash that, and the card works as usually at 1.144V so it must be something related to the voltage regulator this card has, that is not included in the VBE7 program :(
I even tried 1.134 and 1.155V , same result, the computer restarts as soon as loads cgminer.
tried to lower settings (GPU 900 Mhz, mem 1250Mhz) same, restarts.

any idea what can I try?, I have none, and buy three of these cards for a new rig :( every card is eating 290W at the wall at 700 KH (bronze PSU at 50% load).
thanks!
Idkt.

I opened it in VBE7.

Compared to my XFX factory BIOS which you see here:
tweaked #45 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4523960#msg4523960
and here original #7 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4276709#msg4276709


that Gigabyte Bios is exclusively for "Hynix" while my card definitely has "Elpida" (see #108 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4778658#msg4778658) ).

I don't like to flash my XFX with a random BIOS of another vendor, anyways. Like so expressively described here, it's just crazy. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=435438.msg4849281#msg4849281)

I much prefer to work with the original, either through VBE7 undervolting,
or through asking TheStilt and then VBE7 undervolting.

That's why I will send you that BIOS now only by PM.
I don't want it here in this thread. If it should destroy your card, I cannot be held responsible.


Still, as you ask so urgently,
I took that BIOS, and lowered these values:
vddc=850 so that you can undervolt now
CC=404 MC=555 so that with that low voltage the card still starts up.

The clockspeed values themselves are nonsense, but you change them later in cgminer anyways.

I don't know if that is enough, if it still crashes, then also lower the #5 clockspeeds.

Please update us.

I am flattered, thanks :-)


Sorry, no idea. Until I have such a card, I cannot really say what to do.

Perhaps, if here in BTCT noone can help you, the guys over there can?
http://www.overclock.net/t/1432035/official-amd-r9-280x-280-270x-270-owners-club

perhaps you need a special BIOS editor for the R9 s ??


Edit: Just checked, TheStilt in his thread (https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=12369.0) says
"Only Radeon 7900 and 280X cards are currently supported."
so for his strategy they seem to be alike.

You might not be able to get above 600 khash/s with 1 thread.

I couldn't.

one important remark to all the people who have so far
not yet been successful at raising the khash/s or or khash/s/Watt:

this whole thread is intended to document well my progress with this
one particular GPU. And I do give parameters values which work well - for my card.

Please you experiment yourself, and explore the parameter space.
I want to inspire you to "crawl into your own card" by following this manual.

But those parameter values that I have found out
to work best ... might only work best with my card.

Capice?

I have put another big chunk of effort into this,
scrolled through the whole thread,
and made you a

table of contents of this thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4260763#msg4260763)

Oh, and by the way:

I have tuned my 2 cards (7970 & 7850), and measured several optimized values for the

ultracoin (UTC) miner (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=413978.msg4902845#msg4902845)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=413978.msg4902845#msg4902845

I still don't know what to think about that coin. The premine could destroy the price even more?

But the UTC difficulty (http://bitgo.pw:3731/chain/Ultracoin) has just dropped to 5.55, which with my "COOL" settings equates to 7.21 in scrypt difficulty.
Even with an exchange rate of 0.0093 LTC (https://freshmarket.co.in/index.php?page=trade&market=135), that should at the moment give >20 euros per day per MH/s?

UTC Donations please: UQ3eqjGqBycgLKuaMeA6kKnoTHp4eENYuo
or other currencies: www.tiny.cc/drakointip


EDIT 20 minutes later: diff is at 9.533 now --> 13 euro / MH/s / day.

Tried another bios...this time I flashed it with one for an XFX R9-280X that has same memory type.  720 khash/s at 1000/1500 1.2V!!!  Alas temps climbed to 99oC within minutes of mining so I had to shut off.

So tweaked that bios in VEB7 and lowered the voltage.  701 khash/s at 1000/1500 1.1V but again 99oC within minutes. 

Then I tried an underclock at 854/799 at 0.9V and even at that it would heat up to 99oC within minutes.

DAMNIT!!!!!

So back to stock bios and spending my time paying Assassins Creed instead!   ;D

wow.

first of all: Congratulations!

You have been successful with tweaking your card, undervolting it, perfect.  Yiehah!

What is weird is the boiling temperature with 854/799/0.9V - my system is at lazy 67 degrees Celsius then.



Ideas for the temperature:

* don't plug the card inside the chassis, directly into the PCIe slots.
    Inside a closed box, it's just too hot.   Instead using a riser cable.

* use an extra fan to blow away heat

* check if fan is working well, and the heatsink sits properly on the GPU
   ( I actually wouldn't know how to do that because I never had to,
     but that could actually be a reason, right? )

* undervolt even more.
    I can get it down to 1.065V at approx those clockspeeds

* intensity 13 ?

* have the right drivers installed.


Still: 99C, there is something wrong. But I don't know that card. I'd say:
Ask in the 280x owners thread (http://www.overclock.net/t/1432035/official-amd-r9-280x-280-270x-270-owners-club) about it, there are not only gamers but also miners.

Hello Drakoin, Thank you for the modded MSI R9 280X bios that you made for me.
I tried last night, the card works with your mod, and I can change the voltage from CGMINER, i can see it on cgminer itself and in GPU-Z changing as well.

but the heat and power consumption doesn't change at all (I measure at the wall with a tool similar to kill-a-watt but for 240V).
I think that the card is just making me believe it is changing the voltage but it does not.

I am exactly at 340W (with motherboard and HDD) with the original bios at 1.144 and with the modded, I tested going from 1.200V to 0.900 V and nothing changes, the power consumption is exactly the same and the temperature of the card remains at 70 C with the fan at 100%. :(

I believe this is something specific for this card, maybe it is simply impossible to modify the voltage in this card, dunno.
I will keep reading in the forums if I can find something specific for the MSI R9 280X Gaming 3G card, still, at 1.144 the power consumption is not terrible, but, we can always do better (well, almost hehe)

Thank you for this guide, I have save over 800 watts of power from my electric bill just from under volting all my video cards. I am running on BAMT miner for Litecoin and under-volt was not there so I found this guide.


All my hashrate are still the same or higher :D

WOW WOW WOW.  That makes me proud.

It's soooooo cool what is happening here. I could only afford two Radeon cards so far - so my electricity savings are not even 200 Watts. But by documenting here what I learnt - and passing on this knowledge, it's going into the thousands of Watts now.  We save energy!

Happy happy happy!

Anyone
got good 7970 and 7850 settings
for the maxcoin cgminer already?  

--> http://max.1gh.com/


EDIT: MAXCOIN

* Afterwards, I wrote a longer text about my half sad half fascinating days in the purgatory of maxcoin (http://www.overclock.net/t/1465273/guide-solo-mining-and-being-a-baller-example-today-is-maxcoins/410#post_21747230).

* In the first launch attempt Maxkeiser DDoS'ed bitcointalk - we actually spent time outside BTCT :-) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=438150.msg4959651#msg4959651)

* The next day they were far from ready with their coin - but forced the birth. Ugly violent angry crazy night. Working through a tunnel is a weird kind of fun. Seeing other people reap profits is really frustrating.  CPU and Nvidia only.  In the end, I bought servertime, whew expensive. But learnt so much in the process, great!  Stratum code was faulty, but cudaminer & #1ghcom got it right.

* During the stormy birth then, I made this collection of BATCH files to call RPC-API functions of the wallet
  (posting #4425 & #4131 - only 5 hours between 300 postings!! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=438150.msg4991387;topicseen#msg4991387))
   Very helpful for newbies, who before only knew the GUI windows wallet, and were going nuts with maxcoind.exe.
   Caldeio over at overclock contributed a superb manual and a whole thread to my idea to make the maxcoind.exe clickable by batch files. (http://www.overclock.net/t/1465273/guide-solo-mining-and-being-a-baller-example-today-is-maxcoins)

* Difficulty through the roof. Pools collapsed under the load. Very few pools known.
We did a crowdsourcing of known & stable pool servers (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=453850.msg5004079#msg5004079). Relax.

* The only exchange, corrupted into this coinstart, failed us bitterly. "Orders are queued".
   About a dozen attempts to sell just failed.  Then I had to have a pause for REAL LIFE, not in my power.

   When I came back, and saw the ignored sell orders, and the dropped price ... I stopped my purchased servers.
   Almost made losses in this.  Got no profits for all of my work out.


That's life, you cannot always win.  
Especially not with hard work.

Gained a LOT of experience. For next time.

Come on, Max Pumper, drown your 2nd baby - and start stacycoin.

/sarcasm

Not working?:

https://mega.co.nz/#!x8g1WJ4Z!D8Sw9Ue3MRxhYpUBmY3GbA8MGl862caCZfREg8dj47g (https://mega.co.nz/#!x8g1WJ4Z!D8Sw9Ue3MRxhYpUBmY3GbA8MGl862caCZfREg8dj47g)
 message 45
only when logged in ?


edit:
 now above link works.... :)

If that happens, there is probably a comma too many / few, or any other syntax error.
If you don't find it, try a json validator like http://jsonlint.com/



If your voltage is locked, you need to flash the vgaBIOS of your card.

Extract the vgaBIOS ("ativwinflash" or "gpu-z") and backup it in a safe place, then (in a copy) lower the voltage with "VBE7" and save your new vgaBIOS to a USB-stick, to boot with, and flash the card with atiflash (how-to-flash is described in download in posting #45 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4523960#msg4523960) ). Most people then report that they can now vary the voltage.

If you have never done BIOS flashing, it's recommended to read the whole thread, and other info pages about it. It's your own risk.

I suggest to study at least the postings #45 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4523960#msg4523960), #67 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4625178#msg4625178), #37 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4500529#msg4500529) , #56 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4559626#msg4559626) - and more which is linked from the "table of contents" on page 1 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.0)

HTH
 :)

Can someone confirm its worth reading because it works for my XFX R9 280X BLACK OC DD "TDBD" model and XFX R9 280X DD "TDFD" model?, I'm ready to tip you! ;D

To drakoin:

Thank you big time!! You did an awesome job. Because of this thread I bought 2x 7970 XFX and I got it all done in a snap. Right now I will mine for some hours as a thank you. I get some rejections on your mining pool. On my own I don't (or maybe 1-2%).

http://i62.tinypic.com/vyb05t.jpg

I used your (C) settings and have put my vddc on 0.925 right now. Will try to lower it later.

Thanks again!!

thanks for this post in particular, and this thread. i've got an XFX 795A TDFC and i had a mare getting it to work properly. your post about using VBE7 to edit the BIOS boot state as that allows you to unlock the voltage was helpful, as my card was running toooo hot; then these odd settings with the memclock lower than the engine clock helped more. the card is now producing a few less kh/s but at a much lower wattage and heat. good thread!

I have not been able to post on this site for a while now due to the site thinking my IP is posting to much.

The stilts bios worked for my revision TDBC. So anyone having the same issue, whatever the stilt did worked. Just download his bios then mod it with VBE7 to undervolt.

Darkoin I promised you $5 if you helped me fix the card so please send me your paypal address.  :)

Is anyone able to download the stilts bios files? All his dropbox links seem to be broken.

Can someone help me here please
This is the setup I have

My pc spec
win 8
8G RAM
7970 XFX
650w XFC power supply

,
"intensity" : "13",
"vectors" : "1",
"worksize" : "200",
"worktime" : true,
"kernel" : "scrypt",
"lookup-gap" : "2",
"gpu-threads" : "1",
"thread-concurrency" : "8192",
"shaders" : "2048",
"gpu-engine" : "925-925",
"gpu-fan" : "0-100",
"gpu-memclock" : "990",
"api-listen" : true,
"gpu-memdiff" : "0",
"gpu-powertune" : "0",
"gpu-vddc" : "0.000",
"temp-cutoff" : "95",
"temp-overheat" : "85",
"temp-target" : "75",
"api-mcast-port" : "4028",
"api-port" : "4028",
"expiry" : "120",
"failover-switch-delay" : "60",
"gpu-dyninterval" : "7",
"gpu-platform" : "1",
"log" : "5",
"log-dateformat" : "0",
"no-pool-disable" : true,
"queue" : "0",
"scan-time" : "30",
"scrypt" : true,
"temp-hysteresis" : "3",
"shares" : "0",
"kernel-path" : "/usr/local/bin"
}


http://imageshack.com/a/img46/7379/kae4.png

I get 420-520 KH/s

http://imageshack.com/a/img20/4209/bs4g.png

How do you get it to 700+ KH/s ><?

Thank you very much. Please consider cryptos instead of fiat: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4690974#msg4690974

Happy that it worked out for you in the end!

First try out settings (A) from posting
#5 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4276538#msg4276538 and again
#28 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4358354#msg4358354
for a starter.   You can do that without undervolting.

I guess your low performance is mainly because of 1 instead of 2 threads.


Then read everything about undervolting & BIOS flashing, because you want to reduce temperature & power consumption, too.
The table of contents in posting #1 will help you https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4260763#msg4260763


Finally, it will be easy to max it out to really high hashrates - but that turns out to be actually quite stupid.
Why? Read my standpoint about it there:  http://ecoiner.org/mining-hardware/save-electricity-save-money-undervolting-7970-xfx-self-vbe7-bios-1017

 :)

any way i can sit at 600-650 KH/s without tweaking with Bois or undervolting?
I'm sorry kind of a noob in this ... what setting can i have on conf file.

how much is the consumption at 1v vcore?

how do you find that out?

This is what i got right now on cgminer-3.7.2-windows

PC spec

window 8

8gb Ram

7970 XFX

This is the setting i have for example.conf

{
"pools" : [
   {
      "url" : "stratum+tcp:--------",
      "user" : "LZ8tvXYFsJCfpmUDbG7tSZoL45kRJ68ZcQ",
      "pass" : "-----"
   }


],
"intensity" : "13",
"vectors" : "1",
"worksize" : "200",
"kernel" : "scrypt",
"lookup-gap" : "2",
"thread-concurrency" : "8192",
"shaders" : "2048",
"gpu-engine" : "1044",
"gpu-fan" : "0-95",
"gpu-memclock" : "1600",
"gpu-memdiff" : "0",
"gpu-powertune" : "20",
"gpu-vddc" : "0.000",
"auto-fan" : true,
"temp-cutoff" : "95",
"temp-overheat" : "85",
"temp-target" : "75",
"api-port" : "4028",
"expiry" : "120",
"gpu-dyninterval" : "7",
"gpu-platform" : "0",
"gpu-threads" : "1",
"log" : "5",
"no-pool-disable" : true,
"queue" : "1",
"scan-time" : "60",
"scrypt" : true,
"temp-hysteresis" : "3",
"shares" : "0",
"no-submit-stale" : true,
"kernel-path" : "/usr/local/bin"

setting i have for My Miner.bat file are

setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
cgminer --scrypt -o stratum+tcp://------- -u LZ8tvXYFsJCfpmUDbG7tSZoL45kRJ68ZcQ -p -----
-I 20 -g 1 -w 200 --thread-concurrency 40960

getting 14-20k KH/s now ...

http://imageshack.com/a/img607/4225/jz7v.png

i flashed it at 1v

it really depends on the clockspeed.

Have a look at postings #37 and #101


For higher clockspeeds that's not enough to have a stable system, but you can always put it higher from within cgminer.

If you are planning to run in "COOL settings "(C) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4500529#msg4500529)" then 1.0 V is for sure enough to have a stable system, and still save some energy.

Any of these will help you to find the error in your config file:
https://www.google.de/search?q=json+validator

Will this work with a 7950 FX795ATDJC?

EDIT (LOTS OF READING LATER)  all seems cool, some updates are below (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg5376433#msg5376433). Still, as this posting that started off just from a speculation, has a general truth in it, I leave it unedited - for now:

--- --- - - -- -- - -- - - - -  - ----------- -- - - - -- - ------------ - - - - - -- - -- - - -- --- ---- - --

TheStilt's magical modded BIOS files


Oh man, that is bad news. Very bad. I am really sorry.

Petitbas in posting #145 mentioned it already, but I was busy, haven't been over at his thread in a while, and it's over a hundred pages long - so I don't know. Thanks for bringing that explanation over :-)

What a pity. TheStilt is a jewel. Such an important contribution to the whole scene.


And has he taken all his modded BIOSes with him?  
None of the links working anymore?  
Ouch.


I see two paths of actions now:

PLAN 1) Let us try to seduce him into coming back!!

by money. (I have just done that right now! It's easy, it takes not even a minute!)

by sweet words (TheStilt, if you read this: Weeee loooooveeee yoooouuu  :-* Come back please! )

by hints "hey, I see a profitable opportunity here, invest in this, and you can make some money"

Why do I say that?  
Because there is a third way of helping each other out. I made it into an extra posting, have a look below (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg5375798#msg5375798)...


PLAN 2) Let us together find all TheStilt BIOSes that we can collect.

So - get everyone in that thread who downloaded his BIOS to now post it somewhere. Then we at least have TheStilt's past work. It's much worse than Plan (1), but it's much better than having-no-plan.

I would prefer (1) very much.



About my (2), and your question - yes, it's already high on my priority list. I had not put it online, because I wanted people to go and visit TheStilt, and say thank you and pay some tip - and not everyone might have Elpida anyways.  So I never published my derivative of his work, but instead described how to do it yourself, in posting #67  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4625178#msg4625178)

But with these news, I will publish it. Soon. I have tweaked his result even further, anyways, to be able to undervolt that much, so I guess it makes sense to publish my version of his version of XFXs version of the ATI GPU :-)

As soon as I find the time, I will pack a parcel and upload it into the interwebs.  Sorry for the delay.

A third way of compensation - please consider to help drakoin a little bit

1) send some money, a dozen currencies (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4690974#msg4690974) are at your disposal
2) let your rig run for me for an hour / day / week / month (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4832595#msg4832595), electricity costs are 5-35 cents (THANKS A LOT, flowerpots (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg5108194#msg5108194), you were the first one!)
3) Give me investment hints: Where can I play and earn superb profits?


Why this third idea?

... because honestly ... when I started all this, I also thought this community might have understood that SHARING this incredible wealth that is created in cryptocurrencies is the best way to go forward, with such a revolutionary tool. And I still don't get it, why not. Why isn't there a million of transactions between us every day - just because we can now?  Cryptocurrencies make it so easy to send each other a few coins, but hardly anyone is actually doing that?  If I see a cool text, a nice idea, a useful download - I can send some donations in 30 seconds. But if almost no one else seems to be doing that, it feels less and less beautiful to give away some of my "hard earned cash" ... and here we go, it's a vicious circle. Ouch, and I am in it. Have to be more aware of it, and start giving more myself, regardless of what the sheep do. Resolution: I will, from this moment on, press the "donate" button more often again!!! Even if it's only very little, every bit counts.

BUT all this described reluctance to share ... also means, that I myself, I have recently spent much less time with this energy-saving-thread here, and much more time chasing profit opportunities. I am trying crypto full time, so I have no option but to ask for tips, dig through garbage, seek chances, and be lucky :-)

So, if you are not the donate type of guy - or girl (the only girl I met here, actually donated me ... some Doge)...

... I have come up with a new idea:

I am encouraging you, to at least share some secrets / insights / experiences with me. TELL ME WHERE I CAN GET RICH RIGHT NOW - that's a nice way for compensating me if you like my work. There is so much going on here, and I hardly can see 1 % of it.  It might be a fantastic new coin, like Vertcoin; or an amazing game, like Insanitycoin; or the FAS-shares that I could buy with cheap C-Notes. The duckduckcoin IPO hasn't worked out for me, because I was not ruthless enough to just dump in the first moment (and I still hope for a future-in-the-pond, actually, hodling my duckduckcoin).
I found all those four chances myself, after a lot of digging - and I am sure there is more around, so please share your newest opportunities with me when you read this, and send me a PM.. Thanks a 10^6!

(TheStilt, when you read this: Check out InsanityCoin, it was a crazy Saturday & Sunday last weekend, and I made a pretty profit after thinking about it for many hours; you might also simply like the challenge of the game, it's a bit crazy, but it's very exciting. Be careful especially this next weekend, and don't be too greedy. It will run 8 more weeks, but earlier = better, is my guess.)


So, TLDR - to cut this short:

PMESSAGE ME PROFITABLY LOOKING OPPORTUNITIES IF YOU SEE ONE.
Perhaps that's weeks from now - but then remember me, please.

Thx   8)

There is no way of contacting TheStilt right now, he has blocked PMs in litecointalk.

But I dug around a little bit:

Interesting explanations about cheap cards, and the need for undervolting, here:
https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=15579.msg125979#msg125979

"Memory latency tuning on Radeon 290 series cards, guinea pigs wanted" is his new project
https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=12830.0

Some insight into how he works:
https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=12830.msg100881#msg100881


wow, that thread about the R9-290 is also already 59 pages long.


What does "Don't rehost anything" mean?
https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=12830.msg128606#msg128606


Good news:
"I will sort and post ALL of the bioses posted in the original thread. Some of the first bioses get an additional overhaul & adjustments as some of the tricks were not available in the beginning. [...] I have released 297 different bioses until today. Sorting, recompiling, dumping their information and reuploading (thanks Dropbox  >:() will take SOME time. How long I have no idea at the moment, but I will be uploading the files as soon as they are done. There is obviously no ETA I can give as this is 95% pro bono."
https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=15902.msg128577#msg128577



So I guess, your speculations about "lack of appreciation for his work" are fortunately not true - yet :-)

If anyone wants to start drilling into the GPU itself, this seems to be a useful tool:
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~mhopf/AtomDis/
AtomBIOS disassembler for ATI R4xx and up.

keep us updated!

Unfortunately, I was unable to disassemble the pertinent memory timings block, so I couldn't figure out the exact locations where to hex edit the bios of my cards, and I'm too chicken to test based on guesses. I have however a semi-damaged 7870 card (locks up systems) and I'm willing to try when I have peace of mind, on the next weekend or so ...

about VBE7

Some postings about this:
#7 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4276709#msg4276709)
#36 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4499607#msg4499607)
#37 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4500529#msg4500529)
#45 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4523960#msg4523960)
#67 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4625178#msg4625178)
#127 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4906385;topicseen#msg4906385)




It's mainly about the voltage in #0 (sometimes there is also a #6), I changed
mine to 850 mV, and since then, I have the full range of voltage available in cgminer.

#0 appears in several of the tabs, but is identical (change one, and have a look in the other tab)


BUT:
That voltage of #0 is relevant for several modes, so if with a strongly
undervolted BIOS you start cgminer without setting any clockspeed
(or start anything else that pushes the GPU, e.g. a game, or a renderer)
it will crash, because that voltage is not enough for the clockspeed it chooses.

So I have now simply set all clockspeeds to 404/555.
It works perfectly for me, but I am using that machine for nothing else but cg/sgminer.

I had a play around with it last night and tried flashing various bios settings. The same problem occured where by after 2/5/10 mins the card throttled and went straight into 300/150 throttle mode and won't come out until after restarting cgminer.

I think it's time to put it on eBay lol

i can run it at 780 kh/s with vcore at 1

clock 1125

That's a lot.  Stable 24 hours?

What is the reading of the wattmeter?

yeah it's stable, i don't have for now a wattmeter, that's why i asked in the last post

proof

https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi59.tinypic.com%2F5ul2j4.png&t=537&c=zeGJYJEKZviOZg

gpu 1 in cgminer is an old 7950, the number are switched between cgminer and hw64, so the gpu 0 is actually gpu 1 in hw64

That was running for 3 mins :P

was just a screen, it's stable trust me, and unfortunetly i don't mine the same coin for too long...

but if you don't believe me i can do another test, but not for 24 hours i mine only for 15, i think they are enough for a test

anyway it crash if i open some heavy graphic google tabs

here one hour

https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fs2.postimg.org%2F54yqiwv2x%2FImmagine.png&t=537&c=fL6YzsBMLE1yMg

Drakoin,
Thank you very much for your continued work!! You're a great value to this community :-)  If/when I get my new XFX 280x's up and running at 700kh/s I'll throw you a few hashing hours :-)

Now on to my situation. I just bought a pair of XFX DD R9 280x's (non black edition) . Sadly it looks like they're not going to push over 550-575 kh/s out of the box without modification. I've tried every 280x config I've found on bitcointalk with no luck.  I've also tried to adjust the voltage in cgminer and cgwatcher with no luck (fixed at 1.200).

I'm running Catalyst 13.12, and haven't touched the bios or voltage at all. I read most of TheSilts epic post at http://www.overclock.net/t/1432035/official-amd-r9-280x-280-270x-270-owners-club/2050 (https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=12369.0), but I'm hesitant to flash my bios (possibly to a non-xfx modified bios) if there's a chance to brick it.

What's the safest place to start on my quest to ~700kh/s ? Sapphire TRIXX? Afterburner? VBE7? Is there a "safest" way to flash my bios?  Are there other XFX 280x (non black edition) bios out there that helped people in my situation?  I've read lots of posts about people adjusting voltages and flashing 280x bios to get 700kh/s, but I haven't read one yet that confirms it for a DD XFX 280x.

At this moment I'm slowly crawling through the http://www.overclock.net/t/1432035/official-amd-r9-280x-280-270x-270-owners-club/2050 (http://www.overclock.net/t/1432035/official-amd-r9-280x-280-270x-270-owners-club/2050) thread in hopes of finding some help.

My card may be getting throttled. It never heats up above 75C to 76C, but the hash rate will jump/drop as much as 30 to 40 kh/s every few seconds.  


Any info or links would be much appreciated.  
Cheers,
- VR69


UPDATE: I realize this is a 7970 undervolting thread, but I posted here because of relevance and previous posts/replies.

System specs:
Amd 8320, 8 gigs ram, win 7 64bit, ssd boot drive, 750w 80+ gold rated psu, running cgminer 3.6.6

One of the only XFX (black edition) bios posting Ive found:
 https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=9482.0 (https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=9482.0)


Update 2:
I ended up finding a reply ( reply #134 see below) where The Silts modded a bios for XFX 280x (non black edition), but all his dropbox links lead to a "deleted or moved" error page.  Was anyone able to save or archive the bios that he created for the community?

VBE7 shows:
Bios version 015.041 
VRM: CHL822x
Mem type: Hynix H5GQ2H24AFR AND ELPIDA EDW2032BBBG


]Re: Poor hash rate on Radeon 7900 / 280X series cards? Here is the fix
« Reply #134 on: January 08, 2014, 09:56:35 PM »
Quote from: madnod on January 08, 2014, 03:56:02 PM
hi, i have 2 models that are known to suck for mining, vapor X 7970 GHZ 3 GB with Hynix AFR, and XFX DD R9 280X 3 GB with elpida.  would u please assist?

below is the bios link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/soq7nmzd59cr3rq/bioses.zip

Both optimised.
Sapphire should see a hefty boost as it was completely messed up to begin with.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/iz27w4h0l179v2h/Sapphire_E21000-X0B_AGR.zip
https://www.dropbox.com/s/g97lejzwo2f3fcy/XFX_797A_3DF_GD5_AGR.zip





[/size]

Thank you very much. It feels so nice to read this. Today I realized that I had passed 500 postings, whew.

And thanks for your loooooong posting. I recognize myself in you :-)

Let me see how I can help you.

And I might be of so little help in that topic - because I only own 7xxx cards?  Someone else, please?  And/But:

Firstly, I guess, this whole thread here contains most the principles you need to understand, and can apply to the 280x, and secondly, you have already started to follow TheStilt. Check out his latest postings (https://litecointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;area=showposts;u=23741).

Thirdly, I was in the same situation as you. And then (after even reading less than you have already read, judging by your long study list  ;))  I took all of my courage ... and flashed my card.  I had a high heart beat but never had any problems. I read somewhere, if you brick the card, you can flash it back to the old BIOS, as long as you get a picture with another card. So extra careful have to be only the people who only own one graphics card.

> I've tried every 280x config I've found on bitcointalk with no luck.
And I guess, you also got creative, and tried out your own CC/MC combinations? I got mine up to over 600 without BIOS tweaking / undervolting. See one of my very first postings here in this thread.


> I've also tried to adjust the voltage in cgminer and cgwatcher with no luck (fixed at 1.200).
Yep.

Modify your BIOS.

In almost all cases that I know of now, that helped.  Suddenly you can undervolt all the way down to 850 mV. Which as it leads to crashing, is not your target - but it's good to be able to go the full range, for testing.


>  haven't touched the bios or voltage at all.
I fear to tell you ... you will have to :-)


> hesitant to flash my bios (possibly to a non-xfx modified bios) if there's a chance to brick it.
Come one, you even have SEVERAL cards, right?  ;D


> What's the safest place to start on my quest to ~700kh/s ?
to 720, I only got with TheStilt BIOS, and modified CL files.

But after a few days of being proud (and sweaty) with such hashrates, I went down to economy mode again.

I hate the heat, the noise, the wasting.  I am not promoting maxed out hashrates.
What all this here is about, is getting out as much kHash/s out of as little electricity as possible.
See the next posting.


> Sapphire TRIXX?
> Afterburner?
I don't think they can undervolt if your BIOS is locked within a narrow voltage window, or on a single voltage.


> VBE7?
yes.


> Is there a "safest" way to flash my bios?  
yes:
* Not with atiwinflash, but with atiflash. Making that USB stick, and booting into w98 DOS is not as difficult as I thought before.
* Read before until you know what you are doing.
* Flash only one card, try it out for a while.
* Stick to your own BIOS, just tweak some values. Don't go for BIOS of other vendors!
* Make two copies of your original BIOS, on two different harddisks, if you ever want/need to go back.
* If your BIOS is not yet there, you could also upload your original BIOS into the database at http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/ then you have a copy there, too.
* Your two cards might differ in their BIOS!  Use "GPU-Z" to find out.

Anyone else got ideas to add to this?


If you really want to go high, it's also important to undervolt, otherwise the cards get too hot.
 

I have seen a similiar behaviour, when in the beginning I was wandering through the CC/MC plane for days. I always thought it means that the engine clock rate is too high for the memory clock rate, because when I lower the engine clock a few MHz, it calms down a lot.


Perhaps you can write to the owner ('madnod'?) of the card ... who uploaded the BIOS? He will have it, right?

As far as I understood it, TheStilt wants to re-upload and re-index all the BIOS, but it might take a while.

Means that BIOS supports Hynix and Elpida. There is a tool which reads out which memory your card actually has.



Whatever you find, please compile, report it back. ...

Hey, what about this idea: You seem to be a reading and writing guy, who has a lot of persistance, and understand technology.  So: Just start your own thread, modelled after this one, but about your quest to optimize your  XFX DD R9 280x cards. I'd be happy to help, and read, and contribute.

http://files.overclock.net/images/smilies/thumb.gif (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=184146;sa=showPosts)

I believe you.

I tried your settings.

I cannot get my card to 1125 core clock, it crashed above CC=1115, but that is quite similiar I guess. (I used a voltage of 1.09V, because I know my card needs a voltage of 1.06V already for CC=1037 to not crash).

All the hashrates I saw were under 600. But I didn't try long enough, and I believe that some cards can be optimized to produce that much kh/s.  I just wanted to see the consumption.

One thing is for sure: You will be using incredible amounts of electricity.  Get a Wattmeter, they are cheap!

At CC=1115, MC=1750, V=1.09 I measure a WattDelta of 267W (between enable & disable that GPU).
At CC=854,   MC=799, V=0.912  I measure a WattDelta of 153W, my superdooper "cool" settings. 590kH/s.

The highest I have ever seen with my card was 720kH/s.
Are these 130kH/s more hashrate really worth 114W more electricity?  For me not.

By now, I quite hate the heat, the noise, the wear and tear of the hardware, and the unneccessary wasting of energy.


An analogy to maxing out the kH/s of your GPU: Efficient car driving

Imagine you have a car that is built to do 140 kilometres per hour.
And you constantly push it to 149 kilometres per hour, instead of the most efficient let's say 115 km/h.

Where will you notice the effects?  
Yes, you will be at the destination a little bit earlier.

But with louder noise, inside and outside your car.
Probably a bit more stressed, too.

You might visit the mechanic earlier, or more often, and most of all:
You need more stops at the petrol station, for the same distance.

Your choice :-)

Thank you Drankoin, you help me very much... i promise donate you doges when finish your method... now i am learning about bios flash and make a usb boot Ms-dos...etc etc... but only with your cgminer.conf... now i have 650 khs aprox stables and only 74c... one day ago i was crazy with cgminer because i  only got 400k and 80c... but now ( if not consider bills) all is running ok. My rig are a 3 "cheap and fresh" shappire 7970... but one is on RMA  ::) ( RMA can confirme that it is imposible put 3 in motheboard without riser, bruteforce power  ;D ;D ;D ;D lol )In the next days post more info... sorry for my english..,

Drankoin you might be interested in the nvidia GTX 750 Ti - people are reporting 250khash from only 28W and 300khash from 38W

I wonder if this will work as well on other cards? I have 280x VaporX and 2x VTI 6950's

how long did it take for your flashing process below to complete?

De nada. Good luck, happy to read that all this is useful for you.

Wow, that would be 8-9 khash/Watt, so 2-3 times better than ATI. Almost as little as the GRID asics.
And the card costs less than 200 dollars (https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=nvidia+750ti&tbm=shop)? I have no experience with Nvidia cards,  and the 750 Ti is not yet in the hardware comparison list (https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison#NVIDIA). Does anyone actually know about such a list with also all the Watt consumption values? 

Please post more such information. Thx.

Every now and then someone asks about 280x, and then they disappear forever. Just put 280x into the search box on the top right of this page, then you search within this thread.

About 3 seconds.

Or forever, with atiwinflash :-)

I just ordered 2 of those GTX 750 Ti's. Will get them next week. If anyone wants to play with them on teamviewer: let me know! :)

I did read that 265 khash on 28W was possible with CudaMiner. Can't wait to put 5 of those in my rig!  ;D

Cool. Looking forward to seeing your results! 
Do you own a wattmeter? If not, get one now, they are cheap.
I don't trust the internal power sensors, please measure the Watt differences on the wall plug (between: no card, card disabled, card full power)

thx

Hey fellow miners. Ive got a question about one of my rigs.
Its a gigabyte 7970 and his r9 280x. both are undervolted drawing 575 from the wall on a gold psi unit. do you guys think there's more room for undervolting
and keeping roughly 700 kh/s?
https://i.imgur.com/Y3WQhCsl.png
https://i.imgur.com/sZrIHzFl.png
https://i.imgur.com/S7VJxdgl.png

What settings did you use for this?

575w for both cards including the MOBO and peripherals?

Your temperatures are high.

Thanks for your posting, it allows an interesting comparison, because our khash are almost the same:

I run two 7970 (that's like your two cards)
and one 7850.

But in much lower clockspeeds, voltage and thus lower temperature. See posting #37 of this thread.

I get about 1513 khash, so about 4% more than you.
BUT I use only 516 Watts incl. everything, you use 11% more electricity than me.

However, of course, I had to invest 87 Euros more into my 2nd hand 7850.
Depending on the electricity prices sooner or later - but one day I will be better off :-)
 

> do you guys think there's more room for undervolting
> and keeping roughly 700 kh/s?

Just try it. Lower the voltage, until your system crashes,
then go up until you get a stable system.

Drakoin, in all honesty, scrypt PoW is a dead-end for the ones like us that pay through the nose for electricity, specially after ASICs and multipools.

Alongside with undervolting, it's actually interesting to look at coins that do not use scrypt or even worse scrypt-N.

I live in a super hot climate. i need to work on the temps.

I added a 7870 to the mix. undervolted to 1.030 as well. its seems like 1.030 is the the lowest for one gar and 1.060 for another at 1050 engine 1500 memory.
715 from the wall now
https://i.imgur.com/IyTRHQ7.png

[/quote]

What settings did you use for this?

575w for both cards including the MOBO and peripherals?

[/quote]
Im running 1050 engine clock and 1500 memory.
 with seminer. the 575 was the whole system.
psu: evga 750 gold
chip: intel g 1830 lga 1150
mobo: msi z87m-g43
drive: 2.5 sata 3 320gb

Now i need to get 6 r9 270 under bolted a bit better.
1000 from the wall.

https://i.imgur.com/AhWNPfM.png

Drakoin dude your work has inspired me.

have a couple shitty HIS 7970 reference cards that arent totally reference. Cant seem to hash over 570 (925/1375) on one and 710 (1024/1750) on the other.

Anyways I was running both with powertune +20, the 710 had 4500rpm fan speed at 1.256v while the 570 was taking 1.17v stock.

the 570 card is still hashing at 570 but at (812/1375 mhz) and a cool 1.025v with a powertune -20 .. fan is at 43% (2700 rpm). I might try and lower the v more but going to pick up a killawatt meter and give it a scan.

the 710 card is now hashing at 610 but at (885/1500 mhz) and a lower 1.200V with a powertune -20.. fan at 49% (3200rpm).

Will get the meter and post my results.. very interested in knowing the benefit and if I can maximize that spread further.

Updated by bios' again. Dropped the voltage on one card to 1.0v flat. (812/1375) .. 560khs. Powertuned -20.

The other 710khs, powertune 0 (-20 takes it to 610khs).. 1.125v (1024/1735)

in both cases powertune +20 helps nothing.

https://i.imgur.com/EA6GQqh.png

Should mention also that I use a thread concurrency of 10240 and -g 2

Just inserted them on my motherboard. Both cards do around 260 khash on cudaminer.

My system with 2 cards in idle: 75W.
Both cards full power: 200W.

So each cards around 62/63W and getting 260khash/s.

Edit: I tried to run it with 1 card:
My system with 1 card in idle: 62W.
1 card full power: 128W.

Keeping with a 0.59 ratio. I increased the cpu/mem clocks from 1024/1735 to 1060/1795. Kept the same voltage of 1.125 and boosted the powertune to +20. Now hashing away at 735+ khs. Incredible. To think I was running this at 1.256 and barely scratching 700. The GHZ reference bios is great. All it needed was to be tweaked down. Hashed all day with 1024/1735. Will continue hashing at 1060/1795 and see where it takes me.

To look at it from another angle: Now with the low profitability it is more important than ever to save electricity (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4686723#msg4686723).

It was still not a dead-end, when I started in December, but by now - I agree with you. A sad story it has become with scrypt coins on GPUs.

Why do you say "even worse scrypt-N" ?  I thought scrypt-N is ASIC resistant?

I tried vertcoin for quite a while, but never published my settings & measurements, sorry. And now the price is uninterestingly low.
Also tried ultracoin, and published my settings and measurements here in this thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395004.msg4940958;topicseen#msg4940958), and in the ultracoin thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=413978.msg4902845#msg4902845).

So yes, let's move on! Optimistic: Hey, what we've learnt here with scrypt ... will help us with other coin systems.

Which are interesting coins systems to look at, and optimize our cards for?

about undervolting: http://ultracoin.net/undervolt.html

hex editor BIOS modifications - might be interesting for you if VBE7 doesn't help with your card.

No, I mean in the sense of scrypt-n using more power than scrypt. Now, I have no data to back up my claim, and it was a bit of apples and oranges, but vertcoin lead my cards to higher temperatures.

I'd like to see proof of 250kh/s on < 30 watts.  Pic (or reliable source) or it didnt happen.




How long did you run the 750's? What temps are they posting? Did you undervolt at all?  If you didnt undervolt, test it our and let us know the kh/watt jump.

The low wattage (assuming stock) is nice, but the price of the card seems a bit high ($159 on newegg) right now.  Sure at 62 watts and 260kh the 4.2 kh/watt is nice, but with 6GPU's being the most supported by any consumer mobo at the moment I'm not excited.

I'm running 6 mildly undervolted (1.100v) 270's on one rig and they're also pushing 4+kh/watt (440 kh/s on 108 to 109 watts each).  From what I've read they can push 445kh/s rock solid on 1.000v which would likely drop them to under 100watts = almost 4.5 kh/watt!!

Even with the slightly less kh/watt on my rig you'd need more than 10 750 ti's to get the same hash rate.  So you're saving a fractional amount of electricity, but to get the same rate you'll need another CPU, mobo, ram , risers, psu (which could total almost $200). 

Can anyone argue that R9 270's are not the sweetest performance per dollar card?  Sub $200 investment for over 4kh/watt at around 450kh/s rock solid.

* Side note, the Asus R9 270's I got were at the price drop and averaged $179 per (thanks to open box finds) and will likely re-sell for around or over $200 in a few months when I upgrade.


- VR

Oh snap, I forgot the 750ti is TINY at just  6.7 x 1.5 x 4.4 inches and no additional pci-e power needed. 

This could yield some sick new rig builds.  Anyone got an uber small foot-print 6 x 750ti build? Post pics or PM me please, I'd love to see them!

how do you get vb37 to run in dos mode?

I created a bootable dos stick, backed up my bios and when I tried to run the lastest version of vbe7 it said : cannot be run in DOS mode....

hmmmm

I'm not sure who you're refereing to, but I run VBE7 in regular old windows (not dos mode).  The Actual flashing of the Bios is done in DOS mode. I use ATIflash, which from what I read is THE best method out there.

Cheers,
- VR 

thanks = must have had a brain fart this morning - forgot I could go back to my pc and edit the rom file there using VBu7 then take it back to my miner and upload the modified rom file.

Ive been very motivated by this thread to save electricity. Here's my latest under volt setting..
Im running  7970,280x,7950,7870. All running in the mid 800 clocks and 900 memory.
.950mv across all gpu.
https://i.imgur.com/NmJHbKcl.png

Here's my total system pulling 666 watts.

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

You are a god among men.  Please post more on your config for each card please.  One of these days my 280x's are going to burn the house down at 1070/1500, but they throttle hard at most of the lower settings I've tried.

Any good undervolting guides for linux out there? My 280x's at stock voltage seem blazing hott running in mid 70. I've been very happy with all my undervolted cards running on windows.  


UPDATE:
The UPS and PSU on my rig with 6 x R9 270's LOVES you (800/900)! I drop under 200kh/s (about 6-7%), but its consuming 110+ LESS watts (about 12-13%). Haven't done the exact math yet, but I'm liking the numbers so far

Do you have any lesser underclocked settings I can try on my 280x's? They really drop kh/s hard at 800/900. I'm not surprised though because they really spaz on most other settings besides 1070/1500. I'm testing ok around 825/1000, but its not as great as I'd like.


UPDATE AGAIN:
Power Color 280x's like 1020/1250 i19 and will run around 680 which is godly compared to the old 1070/1500 i19 getting 720.
Temps are down a bit with 1.100V, cant wait to measure the wattage from the wall and try to push 1.075!

Hello.. Here's my config file for sgminer. It just takes time to find the sweet spot of most gpu. i start at a low memory clock and go the full range of engine clocks looking for a sweet spot. Low engine speeds is what really saves power. Also find the sweet spot before under volting. I don't have any guides. I use the normal vbe7.
https://i.imgur.com/D4GtGOql.png

Ive got my 6 270's running 700 watts or so now as well. take a look

https://i.imgur.com/udVQvH8l.png

https://i.imgur.com/LAuiAqP.png

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

Very nice on the 270's!  .955v is very good!

You must have some really good cards. Some of mine were unstable below and around 1.0, but they're all very stable at 1.100. I'll have to go another round of testing to see if I can get them stable at 1.0.

My biggest problem now is that they're running on Linux, which I haven't found a good under-volting guide for. So if I wanted to do some testing I'd have to pull them out of the rig I made and put them in a windows box to flash with ATIflash.

Great work!
- VR

Are those, Gigabyte 270's?

Thanks.
what engine clock and memory speeds are you using at 1.0mv?

Yes, three of them are. Undervolted via hex edit.

Amgclk65,
Thanks for updating the post!  You made me re-visit my 6 x 270 setup and realize that I was pushing WAY too hard for those final few Khash.  Running slightly lower hash rate (5-8%) and consuming significantly less power (20-30%) IS THE WAY TO GO.

I'm now running 900/1080 intensity18, powertun -18%, with an expectedly lower hashrate (380 kh/s avg), but surprisingly close work units per minute (350wu/m) to what you're getting.

The rig hasn't been running long enough for exact results, but I'll update in a day or two with additional figures. Initial power consumption has been around 690 Watts (linux usb flash drive build, no HDD, no optical drive, no case fans).

If testing at 1.000V @ 900/1080 goes well I'll push for under 1.0.  Last time testing 1.000 volts I suspect my core clock and memory clocks were too high causing instability. 

If anyone cares I'm running Asus D2C R9 270's.

Cheers,
- VR

Thanks virtualreality69 !
Yeah at one point I was doing the same. Trying to squeeze every last hash I could out of my 270. I finally got smart and starting playing with a ltc calculator and realizing the it really wasn't netting much income/ltc coins for the extra 300-350 watts. What's really cool now is that I can keep mining ltc with the difficultly increase in the last week or so. I guess what's hard to grasp is that in the gpu mining game, is the hash/watts is a huge factor. Most small gpu mining people like me want the most hash rates we can get off your hardware.
Low clock speeds and under volting is where it is at.

Hey guys

I also been going through my GPU based rigs trying to eek out another month or so before shutting them down for good. I have started buying the gridseed based devices, but like many of you I still have a significant investment in GPU rigs and would like to keep them up running as long as possible/profitable to gain back as much ROI as I can.

I have a 5 X 270x box with XFX cards that I have flashed to use an even 1.000 voltage and I have been running them at 950/1225. This nets me about 400 khash per card for a total of 2 Mhash for the rig. The power draw at the wall is just about an even 600 watts (jumps around 595-605). The cards are also running much cooler (around 50 C) which will help with the coming summer heat. This setup also brings me back to the realm of earning roughly $2 for even $1 in electricity I consume.

For a bit of history, I had flashed this rig before to around 1.1 volts or so, but as others already mentioned, when pushing the cards to hit 450 khash each I could not go lower on the voltages and remain stable. Thanks for the suggestion to try running at lower clock speeds to get the lower voltage settings to run stable. I do not quite have 24 hours yet on my newly configured rig, but will report back once I am confident in its stability. I have 5 more rigs like this to go and as I said earlier I would like to keep them going as long as possible.

Good to hear Number6!

Try playing with intensity as well. I've found that just because you increase the intensity (and get a few more kh/s) you dont necessarily get more accepted shares.  On my 6 x 270 rig I found that intensity 18 gets almost the same amount of work units per minute (and accepted shares) as intensity 19 (dispite running at 4% lower hash rate).  

Power savings on intensity 18 vs 19 is  minimal (but existent). Power savings on i18 vs i20 is enough to call "significant" (without doing the exact numbers).

Look into intensity vs power savings vs accepted shares.

Cheers,
- VR

Yes, I have also been playing around with the Intensity setting too. I do have it at 18 right now, but as I mentioned I have only been doing this under 24 hours so no real data to compare with yet. I am flashing another rig at this moment, and will then have something similar to compare with.

What is the lowest voltage you been successful with? I am still running a bit higher clock rates than you have posted, but if I can shave another 100 watts off somehow I would be happy, even if it means going down to 1800 khash which at 500 watts would be sweet.

1.000V is the lowest I've gone on my 270's, but that's due to their setup which discourages changes.  Its a Linux rig in a closet under the stairs with no monitor/keyboard/mouse access.  To test a new voltage I have to shut it down, pull it out, hook it up to the closest monitor, flash, make sure nothing was bricked, and then stick it back in the closet.  

I think Amgclk65 has his at 0.955 which would be a big power savings over my 1.000 (possibly up to another 100 watts).  That might get my rig down to the low 600 watt range.

I may test the 270's this weekend depending on how much time I have. My 280x's are all at 1.100v, I'd love to test them again soon too.  

UPDATE:
So far, from stock Ive gotten:
2 x XFX 280x's. 680 watts to 450w (with 4 case fans, 2 HDD, and CPU water cooling on my 8350) only dropping 125 kh/s from stock.
6 x Asus D2C 270's. Down from 875 to 690 (currently only at 1.000v)
3 x PowerColor 280x's. 900 watts to 700 (while only dropping 90kh/s)!! 5C to 8C temp drop for all cards. I love these cards!

- VR






[/size]

virtualreality69..
I had the same problem as you. I hated flashing the bios on my headless rigs. Till I discovered ati_win_flash. It allows you to flash the cards within windows. So I just team view into my rigs and and play with different voltage and bios with VEB. There so easy to use guides online regarding it.

Amgclk65,
All but the rig I use for gaming are running linux :/

UPDATE:
Dropped my PowerColor 280x's down to 1.075V and that system's now pulling 700 watts and pushing just over 2Mh/s.
Now the PowerColor's aren't too far from the 6 x 270's @ 1.000v = 2.25mh/s pulling 690watts!  Its a race to the best kh/watt!!!

UPDATE:
The 270's have been running @0.955V stable for a while now.  Full system load is down to just ~630 watts!!  I even managed to pull a few more kh/s with the lower voltage (900/1080 @i18).  

~540watts (for just the GPU's) = 4.256 kh/w!!. Wattage is down 30% while only loosing around 10% hashrate.  Theoretical profits are up over 30%!

How about posting a picture of your 6x270 rig?  I'd love to see it!

Have you tested a voltage below 0.955? Mine have been rock solid there, and I'm interested in trying something lower. I'm going to test 1.038v on my XFX 280x's. 

Cheers,
- VR

If anyone is interested, I'm upgrading from my undervolted 270's and they're for sale.  

Keep in mind these cards are pulling 35% LESS power (88watts vs 133 watts) than stock 270's, and getting well over 4.0 kh/watt.


I've created a full post on the marketplace forums:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=645037.msg7400018#msg7400018

Feel free to bump or comment/question in that thread.

Cheers,
- VR

Anyone else have good luck running a super low voltage on their cards?  I'm curious to hear what others have been able to run.