23 MH/s (Ethash) with a XFX RX 570?

[MagicSmoker]

I just snagged one of these "on sale"* from Best Buy and popped it into my old desktop with Win 7 installed. Bone stock it was doing about 21.6 MH/s mining Ubiq (using ethminer 0.12.0) which seemed to be way, way less than what I've seen others report for various RX 570 cards.

Then I realized that Compute mode isn't available in Win 7 so I swapped it with the GTX 1050 Ti installed in my newer Win 10 desktop and put the GTX 1050 Ti in the Win 7 machine. After the laborious process of uninstalling and reinstalling the relevant drivers and such on each machine, I was once again getting 21.6 MH/s on the RX 570 before Compute mode was enabled; afterwards, my hashrate increased to 22 MH/s, so not exactly a thundering improvement. I then loaded up MSI Afterburner and increased the memory clock from 1750 to 1900 and that gets me to 23.2 MH/s, but at 375W total at the wall; cutting the power by 15% didn't affect the mining speed at all but dropped the draw to 345W or so (hmmm... just 8%...).

At any rate, I was thinking I'd be cruising at something like 28 MH/s with this card, and while 23 MH/s is a sight better than what the poor GTX 1050 Ti could do (13.4 MH/s), it's still somewhat disappointing. So what are other people getting with this card and what sort of O/C seems stable? Also, is there any advantage doing the BIOS mod now that the official AMD drivers have Compute mode?




* - I say "on sale" because while the "not on sale price" was $250US, MSRP is supposed to be under $200US...

[MagicSmoker]

WEll, a bit of a mea culpa for me. I actually looked up the SKU for my card and found out it has switch to select between two BIOS profiles: gaming and mining. So, flipped it over to mining and voila, now it is churning out 24.8 MH/s without any overclocking at all. Power consumption dropped quite a bit, too - now at 300W. I'm happy enough with this that I don't think I'll mess with it for at least a day... 

[Omg9500]

WEll, a bit of a mea culpa for me. I actually looked up the SKU for my card and found out it has switch to select between two BIOS profiles: gaming and mining. So, flipped it over to mining and voila, now it is churning out 24.8 MH/s without any overclocking at all. Power consumption dropped quite a bit, too - now at 300W. I'm happy enough with this that I don't think I'll mess with it for at least a day... 

change your bios and you should reach about 31ish.... https://anorak.tech/

[MagicSmoker]

change your bios and you should reach about 31ish.... https://anorak.tech/

Shh! I'm leaving it alone for at least a day!

I'm signed up on Anorak and modding the BIOS is definitely under consideration. If I was only going to get to 27-28 MH/s I probably wouldn't bother, but for 31 MH/s I am definitely game. Still, I'd like to earn a few coins with the card before potentially bricking it.

[Omg9500]

change your bios and you should reach about 31ish.... https://anorak.tech/

Shh! I'm leaving it alone for at least a day!

I'm signed up on Anorak and modding the BIOS is definitely under consideration. If I was only going to get to 27-28 MH/s I probably wouldn't bother, but for 31 MH/s I am definitely game. Still, I'd like to earn a few coins with the card before potentially bricking it.

you wont brick it so easily. trust me.

[MagicSmoker]

Well, an update for those interested... I *thought* my 1 week old RX 570 was dying because my screen started blacking out more and more frequently with artefacts (lines and blocks) showing up so I took it back to Best Buy to exchange it and, of course, they were all out (and the price went up to $299). So I had to RMA it, only to find out when I got home that my old GTX 1050 Ti was doing the exact same thing. Now I'm thinking the problem is either in the monitor or the HDMI cable. Cutting through all the hijinks and pratfalls which ensued, I determined the knockout tabs on the case were preventing the overly overmolded HDMI cable from seating all the way. Trimming the overmolding solved the problem, so I rushed back to Best Buy to see if I could un-RMA my card and it was too late, apparently, because the computer system said so.

They did offer to overnight me the replacement card which I dutifully installed yesterday and, well... now the dual BIOS switch does absolutely nothing, the Ethash hashrate is only 22 MH/s even with 1880 MHz memclock and Compute mode selected in Adrenalin, and power consumption is nearly 400W (with >10A being drawn from the PCIe-6 power adapter - measured with a very nice Fluke clamp-on current meter).

So now I am definitely going to flash the BIOS, because this is just crap hashrate vs. power, but GPU-Z is refusing to run on my Win 10 computer for some reason so I am not 100% sure this card also has Elpida memory just like the one I returned. I decided to just wing it and d/l'ed the "powersave" ROM for my made/model card from Anorak, anyway, so here goes nothing...

[MagicSmoker]

So, I successfully flashed the BIOS with some skanky ROM I found sleazing around teh webz (actually, at Anorak, so probably had all its shots, etc.). There was a real heart-stopping moment when the progress window for ATIWinflash said "Not responding" about 3 bars in... I decided to go do something else for a few minutes and when I came back it reported success. Here's the process I followed in case it helps anyone else:

1. Set BIOS switch to position closest to video port side of card (in my case, mining/clock speeds/etc. was exactly the same with either BIOS loaded, so I concluded that the same BIOS had been [inadvertently?] flashed to both positions).

2. Save BIOS using ATIWinFlash 2.7.7

3. Load "powersave" ROM for my specific card (XFX RX-570 Black Edition) onto ATIWinFlash and hit the program button.

4. Skip over the panic attack when progress window says it has stopped responding.

5. Reboot

6. Run ATI Pixel Clock Patcher to sign custom BIOS. https://www.monitortests.com/forum/Thread-AMD-ATI-Pixel-Clock-Patcher

7. Reboot

8. Profit

Now my card is running Ethash at 25.4 MH/s (using Ethminer 0.12.0) with MSI Afterburner reporting a core clock of 1050 MHz (down from 1286), a memclock of 1900 MHz (up from 1750), and a card power draw of 65W, down from ~100W (this, however, is not accurate, as the total current on the PCIe connector [yellow wires only] is 8.5A, down from 10A, and 8.5 x 12 = 102W right there; still, can't argue with the system power draw going from 400W before to 300W now...).

So these are pretty decent results, but not too different from what I was getting with the other RX-570 right out of the box (24.8 MH/s and a system draw of 300W), so I'm thinking that the custom BIOS I just loaded is what was supposed to be installed for the "mining" position of the dual BIOS selector switch... And I suspect that further monkeying around with the straps won't get me all that much, but I'll likely try the "One Click Timing Patch" feature of Polaris BIOS Editor anyway, I just want to make sure this BIOS runs okay for a couple days straight, first.