Getting ahead of arriving miner parts... (with 25LTC bounty)

[Ryu.Hayabusa]

rbbrdckybk,

If I have a few days off after training this week (before going offshore), I may give it another try. I had my #3 card go down in Windows and I'm not able to diagnose right now. Runs for a couple of mins and then the driver errors on it and GUIMiner says it crashes. Then the card only runs at 16kH/s until the program is restarted. It was fine yesterday for 18 hours until a power outage today. My lady got the other cards running and just has #3 stopped. Once I can check it out Saturday, I'll try and figure out what's up.

Either way, thanks for the tips. If I don't try it for rig #2, I definitely will by rig #6. Linux was interesting, but I need these things returning cash and Windows is quicker. GUIMiner isn't ideal, but I plan on attempting cgminer CLI or bfgminer in Windows again first. My lady needs to be able to take care of the rigs when I'm offshore, so Windows is ideal as she does ok in it but would take some teaching for Linux.

If there's a northbridge (depending on CPU, some PCI-E controllers are built into the CPU) voltage, give that a bump of 50mv, and/or if there's adjustable PCI-E voltages, give those a small bump as well and see if that 3rd card doesn't become more stable.

[cptmooseinc]

I have the Gigabyte UD-5 motherboard and the Powercolor AX7950s. If my 3G wasn't so slow I'd try to pull the specs on the motherboard now to see if it had a northbridge. Oh well. Added to the to do list. (:

[cptmooseinc]

Does the AMD Vision Center provide accurate temps? Yesterday it said my cards were 90C. The shrouds are off, better thermal paste was applied (MX-2 and -properly-, made an X on the cleaned chip), and have 2 7" fans running on high pointed at just the one miner. Bfgminer in Linux was reporting mid-70s, and I can't see there being a 20C difference now that I'm on cgminer in Windows. Any ideas?

Taking a trip into town since training ended early today to give it another look and switch the miners over to the stratum give-me-LTC address now that auth issues have been resolved. Very worried about these 90C readings. Plenty of airflow and apartment is kept at 73F.

[GForce]

Have you tried p2pool?

[Benny1985]

Does the AMD Vision Center provide accurate temps? Yesterday it said my cards were 90C. The shrouds are off, better thermal paste was applied (MX-2 and -properly-, made an X on the cleaned chip), and have 2 7" fans running on high pointed at just the one miner. Bfgminer in Linux was reporting mid-70s, and I can't see there being a 20C difference now that I'm on cgminer in Windows. Any ideas?

Taking a trip into town since training ended early today to give it another look and switch the miners over to the stratum give-me-LTC address now that auth issues have been resolved. Very worried about these 90C readings. Plenty of airflow and apartment is kept at 73F.

What are your fans running at, percentage wise?

My stock fans (Sapphire 4Ls) were default set at a maximum of 50%, which caused all kinds of problems. I downloaded SpeedFan, and tweaked the fans to run at 80% fixed. Card temps now range from 63-73C as of this second (and will drop considerably once I get my risers in).

FWIW, I have 2 rigs built (3x7950 and adding 2 more per rig once my PCIE risers get in). If you need any help, I can offer a bit of suggestions. Right now running 3,300 KH/s and will be looking at ~5,400 KH/s once the additional cards arrive. I use Windows 7 with headless rigs using TeamViewer 8.

Also, how are you handling thermal properties of so many rigs? I didn't see where you mentioned it, but you better prepare for a LOT of heat getting to your rigs.

[Ryu.Hayabusa]

Too much thermal paste can cause overheating, an X to me sounds like a bit too much.  I generally do for AMD cards less than half a BB (or ~1/3 of a pea) size dot in the center.  Even if the amount was correct in your application, it couldn't hurt to re-do it and see if anything improves.

[CoinSpeculator]

I can't imagine running AMD GPU's at stock voltage.  My 5830's are running ~1 V (from 1.2 V) and are at least 8 C cooler with no noticeable drop in hashing.  Lower temp cards will last longer, require less power to run, allow you to fit more in one space, and be easier to cool.

Don't listen to the people telling you to overclock them as much as possible.  You are going to eat up your profits in energy bills and burned out GPU fans.

[cptmooseinc]

Autotune is on for the fans. Yeah I guess it could be too much. I'll reapply a smaller amount on one card and see if temps drop. If so, I will do all the rest

CoinSpeculator, the Powercolor AX7950s I bought seem to be voltage locked. I can change the engine and memory clocks just fine, but Catalyst and Afterburner both won't let me unlock voltages. I assume there's no way to unlock it either? I wish I could find a way to undervolt and see what hashes I can get so I can get this 6th card on the board without overloading the PSU.

[Ryu.Hayabusa]

I believe powertune will let you change the voltage (I'm assuming, haven't used a newer card yet) down or up by a percentage.  Should be in the Catalyst Control Center.

[cptmooseinc]

Okay, I'll add it to the list for when I get home! (:

[zif33rs]

the Powercolor AX7950s I bought seem to be voltage locked. I can change the engine and memory clocks just fine, but Catalyst and Afterburner both won't let me unlock voltages. I assume there's no way to unlock it either? I wish I could find a way to undervolt and see what hashes I can get so I can get this 6th card on the board without overloading the PSU.

Change the settings in the CFG file to the following:

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 = 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6WOEIc5SM8


 

[cptmooseinc]

It's a Powercolor (not MSI) card. Will this still work?

[Ryu.Hayabusa]

Not all cards are voltage unlocked, so you could try those MSI Afterburner settings but if the voltage slider doesn't become enabled then the card is voltage locked.

[cptmooseinc]

Ryu, would you happen to know of any 7950s that -are- voltage unlocked? I'm most likely buying the Sapphire 7950s from Newegg next (the $289.99 ones) as I've heard they're really nice. Not sure if they're voltage unlocked, but if Powertune ends up letting me drop the power usage on it to get a 6th card on, then I'll be getting those for sure! (:

-Moose

[cptmooseinc]

Alright, now I'm starting to get a little pissed off at Windows...

I had 5 cards running nicely (albeit a little warm). Took out 1 card to change TIM and put it back in. A totally different card start randomly failing after that in GUIMiner (cgminer was crashing on it). It did this before I last fixed it, but to fix it, I had to upgrade to 13.1 drivers and then downgrade back to 12.8 (which I haven't tried yet but may). Went to add the 6th card as a -5% powertune reduced my energy consumption some (and coincidentally made one of the five cards run BETTER, but the other 4 stayed the same). The 6th card (which went in the PCI-e 1x slot) started conflicting and showing it had an error along with that OTHER card.

Maybe I should try upgrading all drivers to 13.1 and then revert them all back to 12.8 to see if it fixes the conflicts? Any other ideas before I go and do this???

-Moose

[cptmooseinc]

Upgraded the drivers and then came back down to 12.8. Nothing worked. Still have 2 cards conflicting and disabled out of 6 and one of the three "working" cards keeps crashing cgminer. I have tried bumping up the northbridge by .05V and it didn't make anything more stable. I reverted it back to auto setting because it made things worse.

Not exactly sure why I'm getting conflicts on the cards. I'm about to just wipe the whole system tomorrow and do a fresh install of Windows and install all drivers before Windows gets any kind of internet connection. It worked like that the first time I built it. If that doesn't work, it's back to the Linux suggestion I guess on the previous page.

This is getting -really- annoying.

[Benny1985]

The Sapphire 4Ls are voltage unlocked. I can confirm this - I have 10 of them. They take undervolting very well. But be warned: They come from the factory at 1.25v which is insane. They pull 210-240 watts when running... I dropped them down to 0.962 which has taken each card down to a far more manageable 180-190 watts.

[cptmooseinc]

Have 4 powered risers on order for rig #1 and 2 to try and get around the problem on Win7 not detecting the 5th card without error.

New problem though...

Built rig 2 and put 5 cards in it and installed Windows 8 64bit Pro. Windows recognizes all cards without error (which is why I gave it a try because I heard that it took 5 cards no problem). Here's the problem though, cgminer 2.11.3 crashes instantly, making GUIMiner unusable. I can't seem to get BFGminer working either. It loads at least, but no matter what settings I change, it doesn't hash anything from the pool (yes, I set --scrypt).

Is anyone running any mining software on Windows 8 64bit? If so, what miner are you using and what's your startup parameters? I don't care what card you use as I'll modify mine to make it for a 7950. I have to leave for another week of training, but might come home mid-week after class to work on the rig for a few hours if I can get the bastard mining! (:

Thanks in advance,

-Moose

[zif33rs]

yo moose...im using win8 64  cgminer 2.11.4  amd 13.2 and what ever the current SDK is..think 2.8 or 2.9  and this  for start up...even tho cgminer is so awesome it pretty much picks best settings..need only adjust gpu and mem speeds to your tastes.

 cgminer --scrypt -o stratum+tcp://coinotron.com:3334 -u USERNAME -p PASSWORD --thread-concurrency 8192,8192,8192,8192 -I 13,13,13,13 -g 2 -w 256

[cptmooseinc]

Thanks zif33rs! I'll try it when I return home later this week. Where is a zip file containing 2.11.4? I can only seem to find the github files and don't know how to even begin to compile it myself. You can use such a low thread-concurrency and get 500+kH/s??

I currently have 12.8 drivers but will upgrade if they prove problematic.

I haven't forgotten about the bounty by the way guys! I may end up splitting it up between some people. Just need to get some coinage generating. These two rigs will make it in about a day and a half once running right! (:

-Moose