Adjusting voltage with aticonfig for Sapphire 5850 Xtreme works, but!

[BenD]

Hi @ all.

I just noticed that adjusting the voltage of a Sapphire 5850 Xtreme seems to work correctly with aticonfig. This is what Windows-users without crossfire-bridge dream of.
How I noticed? I use a saved overdrive-profile

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<OVERDRIVE_PROFILE>
  <PERFORMANCE_LEVEL level="2" gpu="95000" mem="30000" voltage="1088"/>
  <PERFORMANCE_LEVEL level="1" gpu="55000" mem="90000" voltage="1038"/>
  <PERFORMANCE_LEVEL level="0" gpu="15700" mem="30000" voltage="950"/>
  <FAN_SETTING percentage="75"/>
  <FAN_CTRL enabled="no"/>
  <FAN_CTRL_CURVE type="0"/>
  <FAN_CTRL_POINT nr="0" temperature="2000" percentage="0"/>
  <FAN_CTRL_POINT nr="1" temperature="4000" percentage="2500"/>
  <FAN_CTRL_POINT nr="2" temperature="6000" percentage="5000"/>
  <FAN_CTRL_POINT nr="3" temperature="8000" percentage="7500"/>
  <FAN_CTRL_POINT nr="4" temperature="10000" percentage="10000"/>
  <MONITOR_SAMPLE_TIME interval="10"/>
  <COLOR_PROFILE enabled="no" longitude="-13,500000" latitude="52,500000" color_temp_day="6500" color_temp_night="4000" transition="30"/>
  <POWERTUNE percentage="0"/>
</OVERDRIVE_PROFILE>

and played with gpu and mem, because I don't like the GUI. The standard voltage in Performance Level 2 is 1088 (=1.088 V). When I have it like this, while mining, the rig will consume 454 W/h. With these settings, the 1st card gets 75.5 °C, the 2nd card gets 78°C.
Even the slightest change of the voltage, e.g. to 1094 will cause a heavy increase of consumed power: 515 W/h! Card temperatures rise to 78.5 °C and 83 °C.

Maybe someone is interested how this profile is executed. Save the profile as overdrive_settings.ovdr (or else). Create a bash-script named overdrive.sh and put in

Code:

#!/bin/bash
export DISPLAY=:0.0
aticonfig --od-enable
AMDOverdriveCtrl -b -i 0 overdrive_settings.ovdr
AMDOverdriveCtrl -b -i 3 overdrive_settings.ovdr

And run a chmod +x overdrive.sh - voilá. This is not new, found it somewhere in the forum. Interface numbers may vary for you - to check, run export DISPLAY=:0.0 (or what is right for you) and AMDOverdriveCtrl. It will show you which adapters are active.

But I think this is the proof, that voltage adjust works in linux. However increasing consumed watts and heat a lot.

Btw. I am using Linuxcoin 0.2a at this time with smartcoin r370. Combined hashrate with the settings above is between 815 and 940 MHash/s. Average is 860 MHash/s. Just noticed this is wrong. Smartcoin added 2 miners per GPU, the hanging calculation stretched the measured time and so it showed more than it actually hashed at. Configured it correctly now, getting 782,5 MHash/s. Not fluctuating this much anymore. This is still very good at these clockings and stock voltage. Compare the Table.

Good luck.

[Jack of Diamonds]

while mining, the rig will consume 454 W/h. With these settings, the 1st card gets 75.5 °C, the 2nd card gets 78°C.
Even the slightest change of the voltage, e.g. to 1094 will cause a heavy increase of consumed power: 515 W/h!

Voltage adjustments upwards increase energy consumption in an exponential scale.

I'm trying to tell this to people volting their cards to 1.2v (your power consumption will go up about 150-200 watts & you will gain maybe 30 mhash more) but nobody seems to care or they get 'free' energy.