Just a little update of my 2 primary miners. Duct tape labels, sliiiiightly less messy wires (looks better from head on than before), and shows power usage of each. Warning, big images

I wouldnt put more than 1 graphics card on that power supply. It -should- be capable delivering power to just about any single gpu card though if the video card has proper core/memory clocks and core voltage. I got a junky 300W power supply that powers a radeon 5850 @ 1015MHz and stock volts just fine.

Anyways, you can probably pick up a radeon 5830 for about $100. If you undervolt it to 0.95v, you may be looking at about 235 mhash/sec. If you leave it at stock volts, you might be looking at 310 mhash/sec.  You might be able to pick up a radeon 5870 which is good for about 335 mhash/sec when undervolted to 0.95v, or 450 mhash/sec with stock volts. Newer generation cards will probably cost you much more. A radoen 7970 will probably set you back about $400 and you're probably looking at 500 mhash when undervolted, or 700 mhash at stock volts.

Gonna be a long post... I am going to assume you have just 1 5970 in your system.

For this I'm going to just go through the steps I use to set up my miners with a software over/under clock/volt on the Phoenix 2 miner. Things you will need...

11.12 or 12.1 driver. Looks like you are using Windows XP x64.
Here is 11.12 and 12.1. Take your pick. Both as far as I have seen do not exhibit the CPU bug. You don't need the catalyst control panel, it'll just hog system memory

Both of these come with 2.6 SDK though, which is bad for the Radeon HD 5000 series. You will want the 2.1 SDK. You can install it right along side of the 2.6 SDK without any issues. You can download it Here but really you don't need this whole package. It comes with samples and helpers and a bunch of other useless junk that you don't need. You can instead just install the required package, which is here. This is hosted on my dropbox, so if you are paranoid about 3rd party, you can get the exact same msi by downloading the Full Package but instead of installing it, you extract the contents somewhere (It's a self-extracting executable) and navigate to ati-stream-sdk-v2.1-xp64\Packages\Apps\ATIStreamSDK_Dev_xp64a and run ATIStreamSDK_dev.msi to install SDK 2.1.

Next you may want to verify that your SDK's are properly installed. Another handy tool I use is GPU Caps Viewer which you can download Here. Just scroll down to the Win32 installer to start downloading. After you install and open it, go to the OpenCL tab up top and you will see a dropdown box at the upper right. If you followed this guide word for word, you should have "1: AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing" as the first item and "2: ATI Stream" as the second item. If you only have "1: ATI Stream" this is fine, just note it. If you don't have an "ATI Stream", something went wrong. Try rebooting and seeing if it appears after rebooting.

Next, we'll work on a software-based undervolt and underclock. I think we'll start with something conservative and let you use higher/lower volts/clocks. For this, I like to use Sapphire Trixx 4.3.0. You can get it Here. After you install it, go to the settings portion and make sure "Disaple ULPS" has a checkmark by it, and if "Synchronize cards in Multi-GPU config" has a checkmark by it, get rid of it. You can also set a fan speed for your 5970 under fan control. I personally just use 100% because the noise won't be heard and I don't know any better . The main tab of interest is the Overclocking tab of course. Go ahead and adjust GPU clock to 700 and VDDC to 1000 (1v) (It might change to 999 and this is ok). The memory clock may be trickier. We want it to be at 150, but it won't go that far right away. Instead, drag it all the way to the left, and hit apply. Trixx will now allow you go a little lower. Drag it to the left, apply, and repeat until you get 150. The 5970 has 2 GPU's so we'll want to do to the dropdown box and select the other 5970 GPU core, and do the same this. Set GPU Clock to 700, memory clock to 150, and VDDC to 1000 (It might change to 999 and this is ok). Make sure that you applied, then you can close or minize Trixx to the tray.

Finally, the miner itself. I like to use Phoenix 2, mostly because of it's consistent hashrate display, plus it seems to be a little higher than other more popular miners. Go ahead and pick up your copy of Phoenix 2 Here. Phoenix 2 uses a config file, compared to Phoenix 1 which uses command line arguments. It is phoenix.cfg and it is in located in the same place as phoenix.exe. Now assuming that everything so far installed correctly and you have a "2: ATI Stream" in GPU Caps Viewer's OpenCL dropdown box, I have a pre-configured config file here in a codeblock. Just open up phoenix.cfg with notepad or your favorite text editor (If it is missing, create the file) and paste the following into file, replacing whatever may be in it. MAKE SURE TO REPLACE THE "backend" WITH YOUR POOL'S FULL URL! THE SAME GOES FOR "backups" iIF YOU HAVE ANY BACKUP POOLS! You may have as many backups as you want. If you DON'T have a backup pool, you may delete the entire "backups = http://user:pass@pooladdress2:port" line.


Save and close your text editor and run phoenix.exe. Voila, you should see about 650 Mhash/sec!

a 5970 @ 715 0.95v and 765 1v pulls 213 watts on an 80plus gold PSU and does 683 mhash/sec and 3.2 mhash/joule

The computer idles at 170W without the 5970 installed (it has 4 other vid cards but they were idling too).
With the 5970 installed but still idling, computer takes 233W (5970 takes 63W at idle)
With the 5970 installed and under load, computer takes 363W (5970 takes 213W under load)

I also have reference 5870 in the same system and reference 5850 in a different system, but will take time to get numbers figured out since it requires miner downtime.


Just so you know, setting at 0.96v isn't actually 0.96v. Volterra programmable voltage regulator operates in steps below the max voltage step. According to my XFX reference 5850 BIOS, the steps are 0.95, 1v, 1.0375, and 1.0875. Your 5850 is actually operating at 1v, not 0.96v.

No such thing as reference 5830. The sapphire 5830 extreme, however, does have proper voltage control. If you tell it to run 0.95v, it will run at 0.95v. It can also go as high as 1.195v.

Not really... i pretty much copy pasted the config and made a few changes based on how i want to mine, voila, runs fine..

config for one of my miners. user/pass is redacted

Just wanted to note that tgmarks and I have agreed on $375 USD paid in the equivalent amount of bitcoins as soon as my bank transfers the necessary funds.

$250 for the 5970, $125 for the 5870 shipped to 54501 USA.

Payable with dwolla/btc/mtgoxusd, or maybe paypal (but the fees make me sad). The first 3 will require time to transfer funds from my bank.

I see a computer behind the whatever is beneath the single and 2 card rig. That is probably his room.. Need it to be comfortable for him, not the pc equipment

you edit phoenix.cfg with notepad..

Should work fine. I think the earthwatts are multirail though, so be careful. You might have power locked to rails that won't be available for your vid cards.

Got 2 5970, 2 5870, and 1 5850 (all reference) on a PSU with a single 860 watt 12v rail. Draws about 900 watts at the wall. It's only 83% efficient though, so probably still has some wiggle room.

Ya, my 2 gbyte 5850's run really hot too, but I blame unadjustable voltage for most of it. The airflow is also pretty poor too, even at 100% fan. Virtually no pressure.

Bumping old thread, but didn't see everything is sold. Are the 5870's still for sale? Do they have a programmable VRM (volterra)? I have some gigabyte dual fan 5850's but they absolutely refuse to change voltage at all, even with bios flash (confirmed by kill-a-watt)

Still selling?

I've mined what I needed to afford another upgrade to my non-reference cards. I'm interested in the last 5970 for $250 shipped when it comes back from RMA.

Bumping an ancient thread. Is the board reference? That is does it make use of a volterra programmable VRM? I like to be able to adjust the voltages to whatever I need and not be lied to about it like many non-reference cards. hwinfo64 program will show a VRM name and sensor(s) if it has a programmable VRM.

Possibly interested.

pretty much this (sort of..). Wouldnt the cost in gas cancel out your profits?

Also offtopic, correct me if I'm wrong, but that signifies a deposit. That means you're paying that much extra per can/bottle when you buy them at the grocery store, and in order to get your money back, you have to bring them back to a proper recycling place?

Oh. Well then, seller still legit.

BTW, I don't suppose anyone knows if 6990s can be forced to run low memory speeds with high core speeds. I keep reading that VLIW4 architecture cards refuse to go 150 mhz lower in memory compared to core, yet I've seen posts here and there say they can with verified killawatt readings. Don't suppose BIOS flash would get past this limitation?

Also interested, but the shipping charge (and customs) scares me

Wow, nice catch.

phoenix 2 doesnt use command line anymore, it uses a cfg file. if you're using the old phoenix, you need 1 phoenix miner for each gpu core.

Assuming 725 core speed, you should be using driver 11.12 or 12.1, SDK 2.1, memory speed ~150MHz (give or take. play around with it), aggression 12 if dedicated miner (14 if you edit registry to increase tdrdelay to something like 10 seconds. google it. otherwise tdr might trigger because the higher aggression causes the gpu to work too long on each kernel run. Doesnt hurt shares, just gives the gpu higher activity = more mhash), worksize 128, phatk2 kernel, and make sure to use bfi_int.