Consolidated Litecoin Mining Guide for 5xxx, 6xxx, and 7xxx GPUs

[CoinHoarder]

I've been having trouble getting cgminer to work... I can get reaper to mine LTC at faster speeds (still not as fast as it should be), however I prefer to use cgminer because it has many more features. Cgminer will mine bitcoins at proper speeds, getting over 2.5 Gh. However when I launch cgminer, I am stuck at really slow speeds (10-15Kh per core of a 5970).

5 BTC goes to anyone that can get me running at full speeds.

Specs:
Three 5970s & Two 5870s
Windows 7
Installed the latest version of AMD APP SDK & latest AMD drivers
Using 2 powered extenders and dummy plug resistors on all cards.
4Gb RAM (I tried up to 8Gb, but it made no difference)

What am I doing wrong? I've tried everything I can think of.

[1714189992]

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[jasinlee]

We have been toying with 16gb ram and that seems to be ok.

[CoinHoarder]

We have been toying with 16gb ram and that seems to be ok.

16Gb RAM? Holy hell, please tell me this is not a requirement~! Were you having the same symptoms as me before you added the extra RAM? really slow hash speeds?

[jasinlee]

We have been toying with 16gb ram and that seems to be ok.

16Gb RAM? Holy hell, please tell me this is not a requirement~! Were you having the same symptoms as me before you added the extra RAM? really slow hash speeds?

Yes sir, I think it has to do with the vram having to be equivalent to the ram on board. 16gb is a bit of overkill really I think though. But if you factor in the OS running and such it kinda makes sense that 8gb wont cut it, perhaps a configuration to put 10gb would cut it, but its far easier to pick up 2 8gb sticks.

[CoinHoarder]

Yes sir, I think it has to do with the vram having to be equivalent to the ram on board. 16gb is a bit of overkill really I think though. But if you factor in the OS running and such it kinda makes sense that 8gb wont cut it, perhaps a configuration to put 10gb would cut it, but its far easier to pick up 2 8gb sticks.

Ok, wow, that's much more than I anticipated. Thanks for the help. I will try this soon and ship you the BTC if it works. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to order new RAM   as I only have 2Gb sticks.

Maybe the OP should be updated, it says the same RAM amount as GPUs for Reaper miner only, but it appears you need the same with cgminer.

EDIT- ooo today IS black friday, maybe I can pick up some cheap RAM here locally!

[jasinlee]

Yes sir, I think it has to do with the vram having to be equivalent to the ram on board. 16gb is a bit of overkill really I think though. But if you factor in the OS running and such it kinda makes sense that 8gb wont cut it, perhaps a configuration to put 10gb would cut it, but its far easier to pick up 2 8gb sticks.

Ok, wow, that's much more than I anticipated. Thanks for the help. I will try this soon and ship you the BTC if it works. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to order new RAM   as I only have 2Gb sticks.

Maybe the OP should be updated, it says the same RAM amount as GPUs for Reaper miner only, but it appears you need the same with cgminer.

EDIT- ooo today IS black friday, maybe I can pick up some cheap RAM here locally!

Yeah lots of ram on sale at compusa. If you look back a couple pages I posted about the ram, I think someone needs to sit down and do a spreadsheet on how much per card so we can get an accurate number to tell people wanting to mine LTC.

[CoinHoarder]

I could work on something like that. I will be switching most of my rigs over to LTC in the coming weeks, so I will make sure to post my findings here.

[tacotime]

How much ram are you running on that machine for the 3 cards?

8Gb

[tacotime]

I've been having trouble getting cgminer to work... I can get reaper to mine LTC at faster speeds (still not as fast as it should be), however I prefer to use cgminer because it has many more features. Cgminer will mine bitcoins at proper speeds, getting over 2.5 Gh. However when I launch cgminer, I am stuck at really slow speeds (10-15Kh per core of a 5970).

5 BTC goes to anyone that can get me running at full speeds.

Specs:
Three 5970s & Two 5870s
Windows 7
Installed the latest version of AMD APP SDK & latest AMD drivers
Using 2 powered extenders and dummy plug resistors on all cards.
4Gb RAM (I tried up to 8Gb, but it made no difference)

What am I doing wrong? I've tried everything I can think of.

8gb of ram is more than enough, cgminer barely uses any RAM.  The problem is probably your cgminer configuration; you should post it.

[CoinHoarder]

8gb of ram is more than enough, cgminer barely uses any RAM.  The problem is probably your cgminer configuration; you should post it.

my cgminer input is:

cgminer --scrypt -o http://coinotron.com:8322 -u user -p passwd --shaders 1600 -I 13

[tacotime]

Use the command line I specified on the original post and thread-concurrency=7168 instead of shaders

[CoinHoarder]

Use the command line I specified on the original post and thread-concurrency=7168 instead of shaders

I just tested it out on 3 5970s with 8Gb RAM on the mobo, windows 7:

When I used --shaders 1600, I got 10-15Kh each core.
When I used --thread-concurrency 7168, I got almost 300Kh each core!!

So maybe this was my problem earlier! Thanks a lot Tacotime... I should of payed more attention to your OP!

I am still testing things out, but I will ship that bounty your way if this keeps working as is.

According to my task manager, I am only using 1.32Gb RAM for 3 5970s + the operating system... this seems really low. I'm going to test out smaller RAM amounts.

EDIT: I'm getting the same speeds (~300 Kh per core) using only 2Gb RAM, hooray! It seems to be using under 1 Gb RAM now, so I could probably add another 5970 with no problems. I don't have time to test right now though. You tha man, tacotime, whats your BTC address?

[jasinlee]

can you copy your exact string of commands here so I can take a stab with them hopefully I can lower the amount of ram I am using :p

[CoinHoarder]

I'm using this right now. I haven't had time to tweak it yet, there's probably a faster syntax. I'll play around with it a bit.

cgminer --scrypt -o coinotron.com:8322 -u user -p passwd --auto-fan --auto-gpu --thread-concurrency 7168 -I 18 -g 1 -w 256

[jasinlee]

See that is the issue I have, I will use that exact string and get

Error -5 Enqueueing kernal onto the command queue.

[CoinHoarder]

Did you reinstall sdk & drivers? 

[SAC]

See that is the issue I have, I will use that exact string and get

Error -5 Enqueueing kernal onto the command queue.

Try removing the .bin files the program creates more specifically the ones with 7168 in the file name then start it up to let it create new one for use.

[jasinlee]

Yep, just tried again, deleted them all, same issue.

[jasinlee]

What version of sdk are you using? And driver version? Perhaps I can try an older one or something.

[CoinHoarder]

All my drivers are the latest non beta drivers. I'm not sure what your problem is man