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

[tacotime]

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?

17bmYcP6Vio6c1gnyPsaDSv4B11SLe81Ab

Thanks C:

You shouldn't need a lot of RAM for cgminer, it offloads it to the GPU unlike reaper which for some odd reason keeps it in the system RAM.  reaper is coded really sloppily while cgminer is pretty immaculate.

You can probably optimize it further by trying some thread concurrencies between 5000-8000, I'm not sure 100% what the fastest is for 5970s.  You should get ~350kh/s per core depending on your clocks.  Just make sure to have your memory speeds high enough, my 6970 prefers mem speeds 20-30% faster than core speeds.

You can also try -g 2, although threads_per_gpu never seems to make a difference for me

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[Cablez]

Is there a reason why the 'main' card doesn't hash as well as 'slave' cards when using cgminer?

The slaves can do 500 easy while the main card barely can get to 100 all with I=13.

[CoinHoarder]

Is there a reason why the 'main' card doesn't hash as well as 'slave' cards when using cgminer?

The slaves can do 500 easy while the main card barely can get to 100 all with I=13.

On the ones that I have working so far, the main card runs exactly the same speed as the slaves.

Maybe because you are using the computer while it mines, so the graphics card needs to reallocate resources. My "main" gpu was slower until I was done configuring it, plugged a dummy resistor into it and rebooted the machine. Although I did not experience a 400Mh difference, so maybe it's something else.

[Nolo]

Is there a reason why the 'main' card doesn't hash as well as 'slave' cards when using cgminer?

The slaves can do 500 easy while the main card barely can get to 100 all with I=13.

You're going to have to play with the intensity level and the clock/memory speeds.  It took me forever to find the "sweet spot" on my rigs for LTC.  The main card would also mine slower, but I finally got it where it was just a little bit slower than the others. 

Without even adjusting your clock/memory speeds, first try adjusting your intensity level just for your main card.  Lower it, while keeping the intensity level for the slave cards at 13. 

[Cablez]

I am not sure what happened but now all the cards are behaving correctly.  I guess a restart was needed.  Thanks for the help guys.

[luffy]

what version of reaper are you using for 79xx cards? what op system and how many RAM?

[NASDAQEnema]

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.

See me on IRC on freenode - I get 770 khash overnight (desktop unusable, just enough to change cgminer settings in the morning) at aggression 20 on linux

[BitCoiner2012]

I am running Ubuntu 11.4 on USB, with 5870 cards, trying to utilize reaper to mine on a pool. Seems to boot up just fine, but won't find work. At first I thought to check pool-x, it seems to be down (or at least the website). So maybe that was why - so I tried connecting to Burnside's pool, but still get the same message, as though the connection isn't going out. Network is working, other headless ubuntu working fine... etc.. thoughts?

Edit

Just want to note that I fixed this by removing the "http". Now I am running 2x 5870 and 1x 5850, 600 khash or so. How can I improve that? I have tried increasing threads, but my khash drops to more like 400 450 when I increase threads per gpu. Running them lower (ie 3 nets 500, 1 per gpu nets 600khash total) seems to work better, but that can't be right.
Using

Aggro 16
worksize 128
sharethreads 1
per/gpu 1 (tried 3, 5)
gap 2
concur 8000 (seems to work less effectively lower)
longpolling yes


Any thoughts?

[SAC]

I am running Ubuntu 11.4 on USB, with 5870 cards, trying to utilize reaper to mine on a pool. Seems to boot up just fine, but won't find work. At first I thought to check pool-x, it seems to be down (or at least the website). So maybe that was why - so I tried connecting to Burnside's pool, but still get the same message, as though the connection isn't going out. Network is working, other headless ubuntu working fine... etc.. thoughts?

Edit

Just want to note that I fixed this by removing the "http". Now I am running 2x 5870 and 1x 5850, 600 khash or so. How can I improve that? I have tried increasing threads, but my khash drops to more like 400 450 when I increase threads per gpu. Running them lower (ie 3 nets 500, 1 per gpu nets 600khash total) seems to work better, but that can't be right.
Using

Aggro 16
worksize 128
sharethreads 1
per/gpu 1 (tried 3, 5)
gap 2
concur 8000 (seems to work less effectively lower)
longpolling yes


Any thoughts?

Install cgminer then use a command line.

Code:

DISPLAY=:0 cgminer --scrypt -o http://pool.to.mine:9332 -p password -u username --worksize 256,256,256 --thread-concurrency 8000,8000,8192 --vectors 4,4,4 -i 18,18,18 -g 1 

Change around the 8192 to reflect its (the 5850) position in the machine if first then it goes at start middle then in middle last like I have it now. Set the speeds to around 770, 1050 engine/memory on the cards and you should be getting ~1 mh/s combined.

Edit: The command to change the speeds.

Code:

DISPLAY=:0 aticonfig --od-setclocks=770,1050 --adapter=all

[BitCoiner2012]

I am running Ubuntu 11.4 on USB, with 5870 cards, trying to utilize reaper to mine on a pool. Seems to boot up just fine, but won't find work. At first I thought to check pool-x, it seems to be down (or at least the website). So maybe that was why - so I tried connecting to Burnside's pool, but still get the same message, as though the connection isn't going out. Network is working, other headless ubuntu working fine... etc.. thoughts?

Edit

Just want to note that I fixed this by removing the "http". Now I am running 2x 5870 and 1x 5850, 600 khash or so. How can I improve that? I have tried increasing threads, but my khash drops to more like 400 450 when I increase threads per gpu. Running them lower (ie 3 nets 500, 1 per gpu nets 600khash total) seems to work better, but that can't be right.
Using

Aggro 16
worksize 128
sharethreads 1
per/gpu 1 (tried 3, 5)
gap 2
concur 8000 (seems to work less effectively lower)
longpolling yes


Any thoughts?

Install cgminer then use a command line.

Code:

cgminer --scrypt -o http://pool.to.mine:9332 -p password -u username --worksize 256,256,256 --thread-concurrency 8000,8000,8192 --vectors 4,4,4 -i 18,18,18 -g 1 

Change around the 8192 to reflect its (the 5850) position in the machine if first then it goes at start middle then in middle last like I have it now. Set the speeds to around 770, 1050 engine/memory on the cards and you should be getting ~1 mh/s combined.

Edit: The command to change the speeds.

Code:

DISPLAY=:0 aticonfig --od-setclocks=770,1050 --adapter=all

Seems for some reason I couldn't get CGMiner to work, so that's why I ended up using Reaper. I will try CGMiner again with some suggestions !

[Cablez]

How do you guys get aggression so high?    If I try anything over 13, hash rate drops by at least 100 and doesn't recover with higher 'I' levels, even on slave cards.

[tacotime]

what cards?

[Cablez]

Sorry, they are 7970 with 12.8 driver using cgminer. Clocks 985/1425 and your settings from the OP. They only get 500KH though.

[tacotime]

you will only be able to hit aggression 13 in cgminer because the thread_concurrency is so low.  for really high aggressions you need to be using reaper.  in theory the card should do 600-650kh/s at ~1 GHz core / ~1500 MHz RAM but folks are having trouble achieving this.  i'm not totally sure what the problem is, the other GCN cards scale linearly with GCN cores when you get the speed settings correct (7770, 7870).  you may want to use reaper with a thread_concurrency of 21000 and plot a curve of the change in change rate with the change in speed of core and memory as I did.  i'm still waiting for someone to plot this out for a 7970 since i don't own one at the moment.

you can try adjusting gpu_threads to 4 or 5 too and see if that helps

[Cablez]

I will start playing around and get back to you with what i find.

[BitCoiner2012]

I play with almost every setting inside of Reaper's litecoin.conf and I can't get the speed to drop overall below 500 or above 600 on average, with occasional shoots to 700 temporarily.

I am wondering, is it even detecting all of my cards? Doing ati check on Ubuntu console seems to imply they are there, CGMiner picked them up befre when mining BTC. But there's only one display in reaper, so I assume it is all cards, but with three cards I don't see that as being my hash rate...

[tacotime]

you can select each card individually in cgminer with "-d #" where number is the # of the device if you wanna test them card by card

[Rjb82]

Sorry, they are 7970 with 12.8 driver using cgminer. Clocks 985/1425 and your settings from the OP. They only get 500KH though.

Try Lookup gap of 3 and concurrency of 12224. You should be able to set aggression above 13 (to 20) with no errors. you WONT get the speed of Reaper, but you get the flexibility of using cgminer.

(to note this was also posted on an Earlier page of this thread.)

[Cablez]

As soon as all these pools stop being down I will start testing.

[meebs]

It seems like the 7950 is the best of the best for single cards at a good price point.. 600-650 khash without much effort (1070/1500).. and heck it even runs cooler than it does mining btc at 600 mhash (1150/600)..