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

[pox67]

Thanks mmitech for the config. I just purchased 2 x Sapphire 7970 Dual-X cards.
I see you undervolted and overclocked, I hope those settings work for me as well. Biggest mining hurdle for me will be electricity at 26c kWH.

Before I try mmitech's config though:
I have a question about Reaper and using two cards: should I use two instances of Reaper, one for each card?
I read somewhere else that running two separate instances of Reaper was better when there were two GPUs in the same computer.

With the below config I am getting around 700KH/s for both cards as reported by the mining pool (Burnsides).
host ltc.kattare.com
port 9332
user ####
pass x

protocol litecoin

worksize 256
aggression 15
threads_per_gpu 1
sharethreads 32
lookup_gap 2
gpu_thread_concurrency 24000
long_polling yes

[pox67]

it is better to use 2 different instances only if you have 2 different graphic cards models for example 6970 and 7970 , if not , just use one otherwise who uses Reaper today... Reaper will die soon anyways , because it doesn't support stratum .

Just starting out and I quickly found some good info on setting up Reaper through the mining pool's help webpage.

I'll get started on setting up CGminer, thanks mmitech.

[Tejsei3]

I've literally spent most of a entire week playing around with settings and trying to find the sweet spot and I feel like I'm pretty much there.  As you can see, I actually underclocked my cards to get these hashrates.  Stock clocks are 1100 core/1500 memory.  Unfortunately the default voltage is about 1.2 volts on my cards and its locked (@#&($$^(@&$!!), otherwise, I'd be able to save 100-150W easily by undervolting.

https://i.imgur.com/rzwfhgI.png

I'm seriously thinking about getting rid of these cards and getting 7950s or 7970s that don't have the voltage locked.  Having the voltage locked is such a huge drawback, I'm just wasting too much power right now.

Is there a list of which cards are voltage unlocked anywhere? If not, would be a useful list to start, especially for LTC mining.

[FullLife]

I've literally spent most of a entire week playing around with settings and trying to find the sweet spot and I feel like I'm pretty much there.  As you can see, I actually underclocked my cards to get these hashrates.  Stock clocks are 1100 core/1500 memory.  Unfortunately the default voltage is about 1.2 volts on my cards and its locked (@#&($$^(@&$!!), otherwise, I'd be able to save 100-150W easily by undervolting.



I'm seriously thinking about getting rid of these cards and getting 7950s or 7970s that don't have the voltage locked.  Having the voltage locked is such a huge drawback, I'm just wasting too much power right now.

Is there a list of which cards are voltage unlocked anywhere? If not, would be a useful list to start, especially for LTC mining.

I know any Gigabyte cards from late 2012 onwards (i.e. any 7970 after rev 1.0) have their voltage locked.  It's a hardware lock to, no new bios is going to unlock it as far as I can tell.
Honestly, the easiest way to tell if a card is locked or not is to go on Newegg and find the card you want.  Then read through the feedback for that card.  There's usually people commenting on how well it overclocks and what they were able to achieve with voltage/core/memory settings.  Pay close attention to the date the feedback was posted though, because cards get new revisions and the new rev. might be locked whereas the older rev. wasn't locked.

[redmist]

Can anyone help me fix a problem that I have whilst mining?
In the top left of the cgminer window at the <5s>, I'm getting really jump hash rates.
I have one 5850 at the moment, and I'm pulling around 370kh on average, but can anyone tell me why the <5s> is showing values ranging from 100-550 kh?

[Bitinvestor]

Can anyone help me fix a problem that I have whilst mining?
In the top left of the cgminer window at the <5s>, I'm getting really jump hash rates.
I have one 5850 at the moment, and I'm pulling around 370kh on average, but can anyone tell me why the <5s> is showing values ranging from 100-550 kh?

That's the way it is. It's your average hashrate over the last 5 seconds.

[redmist]

That's the way it is. It's your average hashrate over the last 5 seconds.

Yeah but shouldn't it be more stable than that? I mean, I've seen videos and pictures of people who have steady values next to the <5s> part.
Surely if that part was more stable I'd get more LTC per day, as I wouldn't be mining at 115kh and then switching between a higher value and that.

[HyAfo]

i finally got my 7970s working at 740+ KH/s it is now running for few hours, they were crashing at the start till i got the right voltage with the right Freq. i have 3 rigs which has 5x 7970 and 2x 5970 and 6970 i am pulling a total of 5700 Kh/s , i use around 2400 W/h for all rigs together so this puts me at  2.375 h/w, for the rig where i have 4 x 7970s it runs about 3000 kh/s and consume about 1100 w/h so it is about 2.72 h/w which is some how fear , the 7970 temp are around 55 C° with 3 C° ambient , i have all fans running at 85%.

the only thing i hate about the cards i have are the fans , they are a sapphire Dual-x, each card has 2 fans , and they are really shitty fans , they are around 6 months old, they were used only for mining (btc , now LTC) and  2 fans in different cards has already failed, for that reason i do not recommend this model , sometimes i wish if i bought the reference cards as my 5970 are and 6970 are reference cards and they were heavily used but didn't have any problem with them yet.

care to share or just wanna brag?

well if you follow the instruction was given on the thread you would achieve the results that i did, it may deffer from a model to another, the thing that was not mentioned here was the importance of the motherboard , for some reason i cannot get the same results with the same settings in different motherboards with the same model of graphic cards.


i wont be an ass-hole i will put my settings here , try them if they work for you , try to play around if you are crashing to get them stable but my machines are now working without a problem after having a hard time trying to get them stable.

i have a Gigabyte GA990FXA-UDP5, 4 x ATI sapphire DUAL-X, Windows 7 Ultimate X64 , AMD Catalyst 13.3 Beta, AMD FX6100 Six-Core, 8GB 1600 MHz DDR3, OCZ 64 GB SSD

1- first download Driver Fusion to get completely rid of your old drivers (even from registry) than install your new drivers
2- this is an important step as well , go to control panel and to power options and choose High performance (so you can eliminate PCI-E power limitations)
3- set your cards with MSI after burner at these settings core 1070MHz/1060mV , memory 1750Mhz/1640mV.
4- Use cgminer 2.11.2 with this command : --shaders 2048 --thread-concurrency 8192 -I 13 -g 2 -w 256 (make sure to delete any .bin before starting)

5- enjoy your hash rate , and threw some LTCs on me address:  LguVfG3Q4yW5LTDuaqrszCDFCh9RoCo46g

I will donate to this genius cfg 1000ltc if he/she can boost my 7970 to over 8xx khash 

[Delarock]

Just using trixx, slowly lowering core voltage until the system becomes unstable. I found 1.025 to work the best with my 7970s.

https://i.imgur.com/VNgaEQg.png

I'm trying to do the same thing with Afterburner, I can't get it to work. Afterburner reports that the voltage is correct, but there is no change in CGminer.

CGminer 2.11.3, Afterburner 2.3.1, Catalyst 13.3 with 7950's. The graph in AB reports a drop in voltage, CGMiner reports that it is the same.

Any help with this?

[tacotime]

Ignore cgminer and go with whatever the temperature in gpu-z is.  That is correct.  You can also tell if the voltage changed by changes in temperature.

[mmitech]

i finally got my 7970s working at 740+ KH/s it is now running for few hours, they were crashing at the start till i got the right voltage with the right Freq. i have 3 rigs which has 5x 7970 and 2x 5970 and 6970 i am pulling a total of 5700 Kh/s , i use around 2400 W/h for all rigs together so this puts me at  2.375 h/w, for the rig where i have 4 x 7970s it runs about 3000 kh/s and consume about 1100 w/h so it is about 2.72 h/w which is some how fear , the 7970 temp are around 55 C° with 3 C° ambient , i have all fans running at 85%.

the only thing i hate about the cards i have are the fans , they are a sapphire Dual-x, each card has 2 fans , and they are really shitty fans , they are around 6 months old, they were used only for mining (btc , now LTC) and  2 fans in different cards has already failed, for that reason i do not recommend this model , sometimes i wish if i bought the reference cards as my 5970 are and 6970 are reference cards and they were heavily used but didn't have any problem with them yet.

care to share or just wanna brag?

well if you follow the instruction was given on the thread you would achieve the results that i did, it may deffer from a model to another, the thing that was not mentioned here was the importance of the motherboard , for some reason i cannot get the same results with the same settings in different motherboards with the same model of graphic cards.


i wont be an ass-hole i will put my settings here , try them if they work for you , try to play around if you are crashing to get them stable but my machines are now working without a problem after having a hard time trying to get them stable.

i have a Gigabyte GA990FXA-UDP5, 4 x ATI sapphire DUAL-X, Windows 7 Ultimate X64 , AMD Catalyst 13.3 Beta, AMD FX6100 Six-Core, 8GB 1600 MHz DDR3, OCZ 64 GB SSD

1- first download Driver Fusion to get completely rid of your old drivers (even from registry) than install your new drivers
2- this is an important step as well , go to control panel and to power options and choose High performance (so you can eliminate PCI-E power limitations)
3- set your cards with MSI after burner at these settings core 1070MHz/1060mV , memory 1750Mhz/1640mV.
4- Use cgminer 2.11.2 with this command : --shaders 2048 --thread-concurrency 8192 -I 13 -g 2 -w 256 (make sure to delete any .bin before starting)

5- enjoy your hash rate , and threw some LTCs on me address:  LguVfG3Q4yW5LTDuaqrszCDFCh9RoCo46g

I will donate to this genius cfg 1000ltc if he/she can boost my 7970 to over 8xx khash 

if I would care about your money i would take your offer right away, but i will honestly tell you that you can achieve 800+ kh/s (tested) but for the sake of the lifetime of your cards i wont do it , what is  800+Kh/s or even 950Kh/s if you push your cards way over limits causing them to die after few days, if your attention is to mine LTC for long time and be able to sell your cards for a decent price than just stick to this  config. even if you tell me do not take responsibility for it. i just cant see causing damage for your self without knowing.

But i promise if i will find a better settings which will allow to get 800+Kh/s without risking your cards i will share it with everyone here.

[flound1129]

What does sharethreads do?  It doesn't seem to make much of a difference in hash rate if any.

[flound1129]

Those are really good GPU temps mmitech, what's your case and cooling setup?

[mmitech]

Those are really good GPU temps mmitech, what's your case and cooling setup?

those are bad temps if you ask me , the GPU with 70C° got only one fan working as the first one did fail, other 2 GPUs are in good condition this clarify the low temps , the last GPU got both fans turning but one will fail soon as i can see that it run slower than the first one , these cards were heavily used for the last 8 months for mining , just to clear something the temps i got there are low just because i have my rigs in the basement with open window and big fan blowing air to the rigs . ambient temp around 2-10 C°

[flound1129]

OK that makes sense then, my ambient is around 60F/15C and I've got one card at 70 and the other at 83..

[Tejsei3]

Noticed that just about everyone on this thread is using Windows, except for Grover who had a few Linux questions. As someone thinking of building a LTC rig, why is everyone using Windows instead of something like BAMT, Linuxcoin, or Debian?

Thanks,

[matauc12]

Noticed that just about everyone on this thread is using Windows, except for Grover who had a few Linux questions. As someone thinking of building a LTC rig, why is everyone using Windows instead of something like BAMT, Linuxcoin, or Debian?

Thanks,

simplicity.

[flound1129]

Noticed that just about everyone on this thread is using Windows, except for Grover who had a few Linux questions. As someone thinking of building a LTC rig, why is everyone using Windows instead of something like BAMT, Linuxcoin, or Debian?

Thanks,

Linux Driver Hell

[philips]

Noticed that just about everyone on this thread is using Windows, except for Grover who had a few Linux questions. As someone thinking of building a LTC rig, why is everyone using Windows instead of something like BAMT, Linuxcoin, or Debian?

Thanks,

There are Linux users mining LTC all right, just that they don't usually ask so many questions.
You can mine just fine using both systems.

[-ck]

Noticed that just about everyone on this thread is using Windows, except for Grover who had a few Linux questions. As someone thinking of building a LTC rig, why is everyone using Windows instead of something like BAMT, Linuxcoin, or Debian?

I primarily develop cgminer on linux so it definitely works fine there. I make it work on windows as well since so many people use windows. The fact is it works just as well on windows, and most users already are running windows, so that's how they get started, and they never even bother considering linux. Add to that extra overclocking and voltage control applications in windows that linux doesn't have, making it hard for them to care for the stability, security and other features that make linux suitable for dedicated mining rigs. However, linux users tend to read documentation and experiment for themselves till it's all working fine.