Catalyst 12.8 Gave me 40mh/s on my 7950

[creativex]

The higher voltage will likely cost you more in electricity than the small uptick in hash rate will provide.

[1713492863]

1713492863

[Meatball]

Ah, I just got 12.10 today and it actually dropped my MH/sec a bit.

[Unacceptable]

Well then... Really? 1.25 and 1200 is feasable?
My (crappy) case has two intake fans at the front (that i put in), Two side panel outtake fans (that i dremeled on) 1 large reat outtake, 1 PCI slot cooler atop the 7950
then 1psu fan, 1gpu fan, 1cpuLCUradiator fan

ye should be able to handle it. havent heard off to manny failing failing with those settings, worst case scenario is that u get a bluescreen and you reboot with normal settings...
but like i said, start off with lower clocks and voltages, play around with your limits til you feel more confident. as long as you dont go nuts with the voltages you should be pretty safe.

u can use a tool like gputool to check for artifacts and stability in general if you are unsure.
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1383/GPUTool_Community_Technology_Preview_1.html

edit: to be able to do some voltage tuning etc u need to:


To enable the unofficial overclocking in this version it is necessary to edit the MSIAfterburner.cfg file located in the installation directory of AfterBurner (typically Program Files (x86) MSI Afterburner):


You need to alter the following:
Seek UnofficialOverclockingEULA field and add following text:
I confirm that I am aware of unofficial overclocking limitations and fully understand that MSI will not provide me any support on it
Set UnofficialOverclockingMode to 1 to keep PowerPlay active (may not work on old ASICs), 2 to traditionally disable PowerPlay or to 0 to temporary disable unofficial overclocking path
Using the unofficial overclock method opens up more freedom in terms of voltages and clock ranges, it however also can open a can of worms in terms of stability or weird issues.

Unofficial means unsupported -- we grant some extra tweak options to fool around with, but in no way, manner or fashion is it supported by Guru3D.com or MSI.

Here ya go,copy & paste this in the config,its down near the bottom of the list:

[ATIADLHAL]
EnableUnofficialOverclocking   = 1
UnofficialOverclockingEULA   = I confirm that I am aware of unofficial overclocking limitations and fully understand that MSI will not provide me any support on it
UnofficialOverclockingMode   = 2
AccessibilityCheckingPeriod   = 0

I tried 12.9 beta & was disappointed with it in BF3.As for mining I saw no gain or loss.

Went back to 12.8 & everthing is ok.

[Badonkadonk]

so your fps dropped with the 12.9 drivers?
pretty much everyone in my clan got a boost. got allmost 25fps more out of those drivers myself
not that it matters with ~165fps hehe

[muqali]

12.10 WHQL and 12.11 both launched today.

[crazyates]

Ah, I just got 12.10 today and it actually dropped my MH/sec a bit.

Funny, I'm getting the same if not slightly better on 12.10. This is on a 7970, cgminer defaults, 1050/410.

[Cablez]

Ah, I just got 12.10 today and it actually dropped my MH/sec a bit.

Funny, I'm getting the same if not slightly better on 12.10. This is on a 7970, cgminer defaults, 1050/410.

I am getting slightly better on 12.10 as well for BTC.  I seem to be getting way better numbers for litcoin mining but it is very unstable and locks my machine in cgminer.

[crazyates]

Ah, I just got 12.10 today and it actually dropped my MH/sec a bit.

Funny, I'm getting the same if not slightly better on 12.10. This is on a 7970, cgminer defaults, 1050/410.

I am getting slightly better on 12.10 as well for BTC.  I seem to be getting way better numbers for litcoin mining but it is very unstable and locks my machine in cgminer.

The only issue I've had is I used to be able to drop down to I: of anywhere between 4-6 and play swtor at the same time, with no issues. Now I get much lower fps, so I need to drop down to I:2, or just disable that GPU. Kinda annoying, but meh whatever.

[Meatball]

The only issue I've had is I used to be able to drop down to I: of anywhere between 4-6 and play swtor at the same time, with no issues. Now I get much lower fps, so I need to drop down to I:2, or just disable that GPU. Kinda annoying, but meh whatever.

I'm getting the same thing.  Used to run a cgminer with intensity of 5 and play Arma 2 and other games no problem.  Now anything more than Intensity 1 and it's a slide show in game with a 7970.

Update: I take that back.  Even on intensity 1, after about 5 minutes of playing my video driver crashes and wipes out the game and CGMiner.

[Cablez]

I have bailed back to 12.8. The others were just too unstable with crashing and you can't even watch a video while mining. 

[crazyates]

The only issue I've had is I used to be able to drop down to I: of anywhere between 4-6 and play swtor at the same time, with no issues. Now I get much lower fps, so I need to drop down to I:2, or just disable that GPU. Kinda annoying, but meh whatever.

I'm getting the same thing.  Used to run a cgminer with intensity of 5 and play Arma 2 and other games no problem.  Now anything more than Intensity 1 and it's a slide show in game with a 7970.

Update: I take that back.  Even on intensity 1, after about 5 minutes of playing my video driver crashes and wipes out the game and CGMiner.

I had it crash on me a few times, and I thought it was my undervolting gone too far, as that sometimes does it. I.e. I can mine at 1050MHz @ 1050mV, but can't use Chrome without crashing, even on 12.8. 1050MHz @ 1100mV always worked.

I've just resorted to disabling the GPU and letting the Single run while gaming, and that seems to work.

[Meatball]

I have bailed back to 12.8. The others were just too unstable with crashing and you can't even watch a video while mining. 

If you're talking Youtube, just right click on the video and in properties disable the hardware acceleration.  Should clear that right up.

[Shermo]

Getting about 10mhash/s more with 12.10 over 12.8, this is on a 7950 @ 1100mhz. Getting about 575mhash/s now

[Cablez]

I have bailed back to 12.8. The others were just too unstable with crashing and you can't even watch a video while mining. 

If you're talking Youtube, just right click on the video and in properties disable the hardware acceleration.  Should clear that right up.

I have it off for the browser entirely. I was actually talking about MPC-HC, 12.10+ does not play well with it, although 12.8 is fine.

[Shermo]

Actually whilst 12.10 seemed to have a higher hash rate than 12.8 it was actually producing less shares. CGMiner averaged at 7.2 per minute, as opposed to 7.9 previously. I've upgraded to 12.11 beta and that seems a little better than 12.10 but still not quite as good as 12.8 I don't think...

[kuusj98]

WOOT, 12.11 beta is out, you should expect 20% performance increase O-O *starts downoading immitdiatly*

[Fiyasko]

WOOT, 12.11 beta is out, you should expect 20% performance increase O-O *starts downoading immitdiatly*

A Wuhh?

[Meatball]

WOOT, 12.11 beta is out, you should expect 20% performance increase O-O *starts downoading immitdiatly*

That's a 20% performance increase in some games.  That has no bearing on mining performance, and in my experience, 12.11 is a buggy mess and worse than 12.8 for mining speed and causes crashes and video artifacts.

[Fiyasko]

WOOT, 12.11 beta is out, you should expect 20% performance increase O-O *starts downoading immitdiatly*

That's a 20% performance increase in some games.  That has no bearing on mining performance, and in my experience, 12.11 is a buggy mess and worse than 12.8 for mining speed and causes crashes and video artifacts.

What kind of buggy-ness have you found?

[Meatball]

WOOT, 12.11 beta is out, you should expect 20% performance increase O-O *starts downoading immitdiatly*

That's a 20% performance increase in some games.  That has no bearing on mining performance, and in my experience, 12.11 is a buggy mess and worse than 12.8 for mining speed and causes crashes and video artifacts.

What kind of buggy-ness have you found?

Well, here's a bit of background, I have a Sapphire 7970 that powers 3 23" LCD's and was running catalyst 12.8.  I ran cgminer (2.8.1 and then 2.8.5) in one of two modes, full bore or lightweight.  Fullbore would run at intensity 9 with 1070/950 clock speeds for about 650 Mh/s and I'd use that when I was doing basic stuff on the PC like web/email.  The lightweight config ran with intensity 5 and clocks of 1000/1450 and I'd use it if I wanted to play a game.  Speeds I'd see would vary from 100-400 Mh/s depending on how much the game was stressing the GPU at the time.  I was able to run the lightweight miner and play games like Arma 2, Company of Heroes or Mechwarrior Online without a problem and other than the drop in hash rate while I was gaming, I had no issues.

Once I moved to 12.10 (I skipped 12.9) that all went out the window.  Both those configs would work fine, but probably ran about 5% slower with speeds around 620-630 MH.  If I tried to run any games with the lightweight config, after about 5 minutes the video driver would crash and kill both cgminer and the game.  I even tried setting intensity to 1 or to dynamic and it still crashed if I tried to game.

The 12.11 beta was even worse.  Not only did it drop my speeds even more (there were times I was seeing 300 MH/s even with my 'fullbore' settings), but it basically would throw all sorts of graphical artifacts on my screens.  I also saw for the first time in 6 months an error message pop up in CGminer that my card wasn't responding and it was set to DEAD.  I didn't even try any games and just rolled back to 12.8.