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

[tacotime]

The new version of cgminer, 2.11.3, with the scrypt updates is out:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=28402.msg1633258#msg1633258

Don't forget it was donations that made me improve it

Yeah, anyone using 2.11.3 please chime, mostly people are saying that either the program doesn't run or the kernel throws lots of invalids so I'm a little skeptical.

Quick test of scrypt mining on my Windows 7 machine.  Same everything.

2.11.2 - No HW errors.
2.11.3 - Lot of HW errors, very low accepted rate.

Don't have time to play with it so I sticking with 2.11.2 for now.

I've been playing a bit with cgminer (2.11.2 and 2.11.3) and scrypt during the last few hours.
So far the best performance I could achieve on my GV-R797OC-3GD on windows 7 x64 with catalyst 13.2b7 was around 720kH/s with the following settings:

Code:

cgminer.exe --scrypt -o http://xxx -u x -p x --intensity 13 -g 2 --thread-concurrency 8192 --lookup-gap 2 --gpu-engine 1044 --gpu-memclock 1500

a more conservative 620kH/s with

Code:

cgminer.exe --scrypt -o http://xxx -u x -p x --intensity 13 -g 2 --thread-concurrency 8192 --lookup-gap 2 --gpu-engine 900 --gpu-memclock 1155

and an even more conservative 550kH/s with

Code:

cgminer.exe --scrypt -o http://xxx -u x -p x --intensity 13 -g 2 --thread-concurrency 8192 --lookup-gap 2 --gpu-engine 800 --gpu-memclock 870

Increasing thread concurrency above 8192 with --lookup-gap 2 always returns an error like

Code:

Maximum buffer memory device 0 supports says 536870912
Your scrypt settings come to 1467482112
Error -61: clCreateBuffer (padbuffer8), decrease CT or increase LG

Lowering thread concurrency below 8192 always produces hardware errors.

With -g > 1 using any intensity higher or lower than 13 will result in lower hashrates.

With -g 1 higher than 13 intensities will more or less match -g 2 -I 13 hashrate at the expenses of system responsiveness.

Increasing lookup gap allows for higher thread concurrencies, but it won't improve performance.

Setting the correct core/memory ratio for your card is the most important tweak, even a small 10MHz difference can make you lose/gain 100-200kH/s.

[1714893553]

1714893553

[1714893553]

1714893553

[1714893553]

1714893553

[tacotime]

nope

[tacotime]

Try settings GPU threads to 2 instead of 1 for the 7970s.  That's the only thing I can think of.  If that fixes it, I'll update it in the next GUIminer release.

There are a lot of complaints about cgminer 2.11.3 right now, I need to verify it functions correctly before I will add it to GUIminer

2 threads = 421Kh/s

This may help

1 card, 16 gb system ram. Cgminer allocates only about 40MB, video memory usage is 1133MB.

Here are some hashrate numbers at different frequencies:

Gpu/Mem   Hashrate~
800/790   555kH/s
800/870   555kH/s
850/930   585kH/s
850/1065   585kH/s
900/1000   620kH/s
900/1155   625kH/s
900/1310   620kH/s
925/1000   635kH/s
925/1001   400kH/s
950/1205   655kH/s
950/1370   650kH/s
963/1375   665kH/s
963/1220   670kH/s
1000/1250   660kH/s
1000/1251   450kH/s
1000/1455   690kH/s
1024/1475   710kH/s
1044/1500   720kH/s
1044/1501   495kH/s

Klear, if you can verify any of these work let me know

[klear]

do you know if he was using 1 thread or 2?
thanks for that list I hope a find a magic one, nuts that 800/790 gives him that much!

16 gigs of system ram for him, wonder if that has anything to do with it... I currently only have 4gb in both 7970 systems until I can order more... I wasn't even able to hash using 1gb of ram.

[philips]

do you know if he was using 1 thread or 2?
thanks for that list I hope a find a magic one, nuts that 800/790 gives him that much!

16 gigs of system ram for him, wonder if that has anything to do with it... I currently only have 4gb in both 7970 systems until I can order more... I wasn't even able to hash using 1gb of ram.

cgminer.exe --scrypt -o http://xxx -u x -p x --intensity 13 -g 2 --thread-concurrency 8192 --lookup-gap 2 --gpu-engine 800 --gpu-memclock 870

[stevegee58]

Don't forget "--gpu-vddc x.x"  If you overclock you might have to overvolt as well.

[klear]

I am well versed in overclocking and I'm using afterburner for that, none of these settings do the trick, also i find that memory speed has almost no effect on hash rate.

[Grover]

Sorry if this is off topic,

I finally got reaper to compile, I think.  It said it was linking the CXX executable to reaper or something similar.

Now I cannot get reaper to run.  The readme.md seems to suggest I go to the build folder and run reaper.  I click on reaper, or try and run reaper from the root terminal and get a command not found error.

If you cannot tell I know zilch about Linux.  I'm using Debian squeeze 64 if that makes any difference.

Thanks.

[matauc12]

I am well versed in overclocking and I'm using afterburner for that, none of these settings do the trick, also i find that memory speed has almost no effect on hash rate.

There is certainly something wrong somewhere, because memclock tends to have huge effects.

Have you tried completely removing drivers and reinstalling?

[tacotime]

Sorry if this is off topic,

I finally got reaper to compile, I think.  It said it was linking the CXX executable to reaper or something similar.

Now I cannot get reaper to run.  The readme.md seems to suggest I go to the build folder and run reaper.  I click on reaper, or try and run reaper from the root terminal and get a command not found error.

If you cannot tell I know zilch about Linux.  I'm using Debian squeeze 64 if that makes any difference.

Thanks.

did you

Code:

chmod +x reaper

?

[Grover]

Sorry if this is off topic,

I finally got reaper to compile, I think.  It said it was linking the CXX executable to reaper or something similar.

Now I cannot get reaper to run.  The readme.md seems to suggest I go to the build folder and run reaper.  I click on reaper, or try and run reaper from the root terminal and get a command not found error.

If you cannot tell I know zilch about Linux.  I'm using Debian squeeze 64 if that makes any difference.

Thanks.

did you

Code:

chmod +x reaper

?

Thanks for the reply,

I just tried that from root terminal, and nothing happened.  I executed the command from the build directory where the reaper file is located.

[tacotime]

Nothing should change except the attribute on the file.  now,

Code:

./reaper

Should do something, because the FS recognizes it as an executable.

[Grover]

Nothing should change except the attribute on the file.  now,

Code:

./reaper

Should do something, because the FS recognizes it as an executable.

Sweet,

thanks.  It started in the terminal then quit cause I haven't specified a reaper.conf.    I'll go do that.  I forgot I unpacked the files again.

Do you have a BTC address you use for small donations?

[klear]

I am well versed in overclocking and I'm using afterburner for that, none of these settings do the trick, also i find that memory speed has almost no effect on hash rate.

There is certainly something wrong somewhere, because memclock tends to have huge effects.

Have you tried completely removing drivers and reinstalling?

Yeah, I have tried 12.8, 13.1, 13.2b7 and 13.3b2
I use the AMD uninstallation tool to remove them

[tacotime]

Do you have a BTC address you use for small donations?

This one is fine
17bmYcP6Vio6c1gnyPsaDSv4B11SLe81Ab

C:

[Grover]

Do you have a BTC address you use for small donations?

This one is fine
17bmYcP6Vio6c1gnyPsaDSv4B11SLe81Ab

C:

Just sent,

this is what I get in root terminal.  I input the sample configs you had listed for a 7950.

root@xxxx:/home/xxxx/Desktop/reaper/build# ./reaper
\|||||||||||||||||||||/
-  Reaper v13 64-bit  -
-       BETA 4        -
-   coded by mtrlt    -
/|||||||||||||||||||||\

/----------------------------------------------\
| Please donate to support Reaper development! |
|----------------------------------------------|
|   SLC: sdJMdNAEaJMVaxPFxaWibty9bec6Y4ubJK    |
|   BTC: 1DjMcD5oQUap7kXrwa9J8S5esMryUs777o    |
|   LTC: LZ5xurMLgdEzeuXuJvYB4DwyprCC1asfmp    |
\----------------------------------------------/


2013-03-17 16:37:00 Error: Config file reaper.conf not found.
root@xxxx:/home/xxxx/Desktop/reaper/build#

[efx]

Yeah....720 is decent from that GCN, though. Also, these memory management revisions they are supposedly working on and releasing in 13.2 might have strange results.


I'm going to test on the only vliw4 cards (not gcn though, so I doubt these 13.2 revisions will have any influence) I have and one 5.

[matauc12]

Just wanna report that 13.3 seems to yield roughly 15khs increase for me vs 13.2. On 7950s.

[tacotime]

root@xxxx:/home/xxxx/Desktop/reaper/build# ./reaper
\|||||||||||||||||||||/
-  Reaper v13 64-bit  -
-       BETA 4        -
-   coded by mtrlt    -
/|||||||||||||||||||||\

/----------------------------------------------\
| Please donate to support Reaper development! |
|----------------------------------------------|
|   SLC: sdJMdNAEaJMVaxPFxaWibty9bec6Y4ubJK    |
|   BTC: 1DjMcD5oQUap7kXrwa9J8S5esMryUs777o    |
|   LTC: LZ5xurMLgdEzeuXuJvYB4DwyprCC1asfmp    |
\----------------------------------------------/


2013-03-17 16:37:00 Error: Config file reaper.conf not found.
root@xxxx:/home/xxxx/Desktop/reaper/build#

This is with litecoin.conf and reaper.conf in the same directory? (you can see both when you run 'ls'?)

[efx]

13.3?

I can't find that one yet, I only see various 13.2 betas. Did it come from the main website?