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

[Beremat]

It would help yourself a ton if you used a cgminer.conf file, this way you can separate you card settings, rather having your 5870 setting being used for your 7850 as well. cgminer comes with an example.conf, rename it to cgminer.conf, and set the settings inside.

Don't use these, but here is the setting for my two same cards, but for yours, you would have settings to the left of the apostrophe for card 0 and to the right of the apostrophe would be for card 1. Example: Card 0 = 5870 Card 1 = 7850.

Once you have cgminer.conf configured, just double click cgminer.exe, and it will take off using the cgminer.conf settings.

As an example:
cgminer.conf left of the apostrophe for card 0 and to the right of the apostrophe would be for card 1

Thanks. I copied my settings into the .conf file and started cgminer again. I haven't changed any settings and now I'm getting 50khash on the card with really slow desktop responsiveness. What's even worse is that if I go back to the original shortcut I was using, I get the same exact thing.

This is so frustrating.

[1715060326]

1715060326

[pekv2]

Yes, because you need different settings for each card. You can't use the same settings for both cards. Need to follow this guide, get the settings for the 7850, and the settings for the 5870.

Check this out, see what other people use as for the settings.

https://github.com/litecoin-project/litecoin/wiki/Mining-hardware-comparison#wiki-ATI_AMD_GPUs

[Beremat]

Yes, because you need different settings for each card. You can't use the same settings for both cards. Need to follow this guide, get the settings for the 7850, and the settings for the 5870.

Check this out, see what other people use as for the settings.

https://github.com/litecoin-project/litecoin/wiki/Mining-hardware-comparison#wiki-ATI_AMD_GPUs

I know, I've already tried all sorts of thread concurrencies and intensities. I've tried every combination of settings there is, and I either get 30-50khash or 350khash with 50% HW errors. I've also tried tweaking clock ratios to no avail.

Edit: I... somehow fixed the issue. Didn't change any of my settings. Uninstalled all AMD drivers and programs, searched for any remaining AMD and OpenCL dll files (which there were a few of in system32) and deleted them too. Rebooted the computer, installed 12.8 drivers and the 2.5 APP SDK again. Rebooted again. CGMiner is reporting 265kh/s with no HW errors and a WU of 250, so I think things are okay now. Looks like it was a driver issue.

[pekv2]

Glad to read you got it sorted. .

[tiberiandusk]

I'm using GUIminer scrypt to mine with CGminer and I just got a 7950. On 5000 series cards GPU usage was always steady while mining but my 7950 jumps up and down all the time. Any idea what could be causing this? The big drop is me stopping mining for a few seconds. It jumps from around 64% up to 99% and back.

[cdog]

What are your overclock settings and temps? Any other cards/miners on this machines, and do they exhibit this problem?

[tacotime]

I'm uploading my reaper kernel for my 7950s because I'm wondering if some of the troubles people are having are related to poor compiling.  I noticed that if I recompile my kernel now I no longer get 1.8 MH/s but get more like 1.6 and I have no idea why that is.

http://multiupload.nl/EYQOQQVFXK

Settings are below

litecoin.conf

Code:

host yourpool.com ### Do not add http://!!
port 8344
user username
pass password

protocol litecoin

worksize 256
vectors 1
aggression 20
threads_per_gpu 1
sharethreads 32
lookup_gap 2
gpu_thread_concurrency 21712

[w0lfm4n]

When you use the --auto-fan and --auto-gpu features does your fan spike in speed and then fall back or run steady?  Mine will run low then spike to bring temps down then run low again.  Although annoying with the spikes all the time, I was wondering what was better on the fans.  Seems to me that constantly ramping up fan speed would burn out the motor faster than a constant speed.

Another question for Taco, how do you make guiminer-scypt run multiple cards, do you have to start multiple miner instances? (cgminer)

Great software bro, please keep the fork going, will send LTC once the rigs produce me some profits!!

W0lfm4n

[cdog]

Having a weird issue with one of my 5970s. Was working fine for weeks, hashing both cores, now one of the cores just crashes the driver.

Ive tried pretty much every setting in afterburner, going up and down with voltage, core speed, mem speed. But when it was hashing normal values worked fine, so I feel like its not my card settings. I had to reset all my systems at one point, since then the core hasnt worked.

GPUz still sees the core and it reports everything as fine. What other types of diagnostics/solutions/troubleshooting can you recommend?

[miter_myles]

I'm using GUIminer scrypt to mine with CGminer and I just got a 7950. On 5000 series cards GPU usage was always steady while mining but my 7950 jumps up and down all the time. Any idea what could be causing this? The big drop is me stopping mining for a few seconds. It jumps from around 64% up to 99% and back.

I am also getting this one one of my 7950s.. Used to get it on two.. dont know what I did to reduce it by 1 now..   

[skyhigh2004]

I'm using GUIminer scrypt to mine with CGminer and I just got a 7950. On 5000 series cards GPU usage was always steady while mining but my 7950 jumps up and down all the time. Any idea what could be causing this? The big drop is me stopping mining for a few seconds. It jumps from around 64% up to 99% and back.

I am also getting this one one of my 7950s.. Used to get it on two.. dont know what I did to reduce it by 1 now..   

I used to have really bad fluctuation with all four of my 7950's and I noticed it went away after I closed GPU-Z and all of my other monitoring software.  I don't know if it is a related issue to what you are having but maybe this will help.

[Beaflag VonRathburg]

I'm using GUIminer scrypt to mine with CGminer and I just got a 7950. On 5000 series cards GPU usage was always steady while mining but my 7950 jumps up and down all the time. Any idea what could be causing this? The big drop is me stopping mining for a few seconds. It jumps from around 64% up to 99% and back.

https://i.imgur.com/x6aNHJQ.jpg

I am also getting this one one of my 7950s.. Used to get it on two.. dont know what I did to reduce it by 1 now..   

I used to have really bad fluctuation with all four of my 7950's and I noticed it went away after I closed GPU-Z and all of my other monitoring software.  I don't know if it is a related issue to what you are having but maybe this will help.

My 4x7870 LE do that if I have the intensity set at 13, but not 20. Minimizing GPU-Z and Afterburner solve the issue for me as well.

[meebs]

I have free electricity atm, so the voltage etc dosent really matter for me.
Should i still go for the 7950? Kinda had my mind set on that 7970

your temps will drop like a rock if you get that voltage to the proper level.. typically i have it at 0.05v above my mhz level. its WAY better for your cards, you'll reduce how fast you heat up the room and it'll be quieter with the fans slowing down some

for example: 1.0ghz = 1050 (1.05) voltage in afterburner


also.. the 7970 is about 5-8% faster mining vs a good 7950.. but 33% more money (400 vs 300 usd in the states)

[bangarang]

I'm using GUIminer scrypt to mine with CGminer and I just got a 7950. On 5000 series cards GPU usage was always steady while mining but my 7950 jumps up and down all the time. Any idea what could be causing this? The big drop is me stopping mining for a few seconds. It jumps from around 64% up to 99% and back.

https://i.imgur.com/x6aNHJQ.jpg

I am also getting this one one of my 7950s.. Used to get it on two.. dont know what I did to reduce it by 1 now..  

i can resolve this problem just by set the power limit around 10-20%

[qbits]

i can resolve this problem just by set the power limit around 10-20%

what power limit? can you be more specific?

[Beaflag VonRathburg]

I can resolve this problem just by set the power limit around 10-20%

I tried that and it didn't work for me. The easiest thing is just to close or minimize monitoring software.

[paperkat]

I have free electricity atm, so the voltage etc dosent really matter for me.
Should i still go for the 7950? Kinda had my mind set on that 7970

your temps will drop like a rock if you get that voltage to the proper level.. typically i have it at 0.05v above my mhz level. its WAY better for your cards, you'll reduce how fast you heat up the room and it'll be quieter with the fans slowing down some

for example: 1.0ghz = 1050 (1.05) voltage in afterburner


also.. the 7970 is about 5-8% faster mining vs a good 7950.. but 33% more money (400 vs 300 usd in the states)

already ordered the 7970=P
Still have 2x pci-e16 slots over, so might go for those in the future.
Btw, are ALL of those cards voltage locked? Or just the newer editions? And what temperature are your cards at when mining?
Even if i manage to burn it out after a while, 2 year waranty should help, no?

[wacko]

Hi there. I followed the advice from the topic's "first post" and typed in "setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100" on my Windows 7 x64 machine, hoping that I would see higher speeds in cgminer, but now my hashrate has dropped. Instead of the usual 740-770K I was getting from my 7970s they're now hashing at 560-640K which is not cool at all. What exactly does that setting do and how do I undo it? Re-installed drivers already with AMD cleanup utility and Driver Fusion after that, but still not getting the usual hashrate..
UP: found a solution, after typing in "setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100" it's now mandatory to specify in cgminer's .bat-file "thread-concurrency 8192", otherwise the hashrate is lower. Apparently this playing with max_alloc only causes harm in some cases.

[xxToaDxx]

how to undo option setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100 ?

[Beremat]

In the start menu, right click on Computer, click Properties, click "Advanced system settings" on the left, click "Environment Variables" in the Advanced tab, find GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT and click delete. Reboot.