Lets Solve the unreliable 7970 issues.... (share your observations/input)

[peacefulmind]

I own a few 7970s, all made by Sapphire.

The generic version 7970s all do 700kH/s out of the box within 20mins of tuning - they LOVE big thread concurrency (.57 ratio, all that, works perfect!).

The 7970 "GHZ editions" do about 550kH/s out of the box with hours of tuning and no two are alike, they HATE big thread concurrency.  In fact I cannot even duplicate results across these "GHZ" cards as each one must be fine tuned by hand painfully to get it to 600kH/s.  One of them is maxed out at 1022c/1244m.  The next one will max out with completely different settings.

All the bad cards can ONLY work well with Intensity/Aggression of exactly 13, move it up and kH/s dives.

One thing I have noticed - MSI Afterburner ALWAYS "sees" the good 7970s as "MSI 7900 Series" on the top of the app.

MSI Afterburner sees the "bad" 7970s as "MSI 7900 Lightning"

So - There is a definable difference, and why is the premium card performing worse?  Is this a software issue?  Was there a revision made to the GHZ editions that is freaking out cgminer and reaper?

What is different about a card that Afterburner defines it as "7900 Series" vs. "7900 Lightning?"

Please share your 7970 experience - there is NO reason GHZ and premium editions should under perform stock standard versions - I and many others here judging from PMs I have gotten about this would love to see it solved once and for all.

My theory at this point is that there is a bug in reaper/cgminer as they just don't like the premium iterations of 7970s.  The reason I state this is I cannot duplicate results across multiple "bad" 7970s, but results are immediately duplicated on the "good" older models.

[meebs]

I have a 7970 dualx sapphire and it does fine, will hit 700-720 when pushed hard.

afterburner shows it as a "7900 series"

my cgminer settings:

--thread-concurrency 21712 --intensity 20 -g 1 -w 256

[ocminer]

Same here with XFX 7970.. PITA to get 550KH/s out of them.

I think it's BIOS related but i'm currently not willing to take the risk and flash a wrong/other bios onto a 300$ card...

I'm not sure if they are technically all the same.. Someone with a fast card should flash the same bios onto a slow card and compare.. IF they are technically 100% same..

[peacefulmind]

I have a 7970 dualx sapphire and it does fine, will hit 700-720 when pushed hard.

afterburner shows it as a "7900 series"

my cgminer settings:

--thread-concurrency 21712 --intensity 20 -g 1 -w 256

All of my "good" 7970s show up in Afterburner as "7900 series." - easily hit 700k.

All of the "bad" ones show up as "7900 Lightning" in Afterburner. - at least so far.

If we can find out what Afterburner is seeing to make this difference we will be on our way to solving the problem.

[peacefulmind]

Same here with XFX 7970.. PITA to get 550KH/s out of them.

I think it's BIOS related but i'm currently not willing to take the risk and flash a wrong/other bios onto a 300$ card...

I'm not sure if they are technically all the same.. Someone with a fast card should flash the same bios onto a slow card and compare.. IF they are technically 100% same..

This is EXACTLY it.  

I have both versions (good/bad) but would hate to fubar a $400 card if there is some critical difference.

Can you install MSI Afterburner and share what it titles the card on the headline of the GUI?  Is it "7900 Series" or "7900 Lightning?"

[ehiv]

For the "bad" performing card(s), have you tried using smaller thread concurrencies and two threads?  That is, --thread-concurrency=8192, -g2, -I13?

I have two Gigabyte 7970 GV-R797OC-3GD cards and can't get the high-concurrency, single-thread, settings to work.  With every version of cgminer that I've used in the 2.11.x releases, the above settings give ~750 khps.

I know this is not exactly what you were looking for, but from what I've seen, not many people are trying similar settings.  I'm curious if it works for anyone else.

[tycho]

For the "bad" performing card(s), have you tried using smaller thread concurrencies and two threads?  That is, --thread-concurrency=8192, -g2, -I13?

I have two Gigabyte 7970 GV-R797OC-3GD cards and can't get the high-concurrency, single-thread, settings to work.  With every version of cgminer that I've used in the 2.11.x releases, the above settings give ~750 khps.

I know this is not exactly what you were looking for, but from what I've seen, not many people are trying similar settings.  I'm curious if it works for anyone else.

I've got the same card and had the same experience. 700kh/s not overclocking at all with your listed settings, I can push it higher, but maybe only to 725 or so. I'm just leaving it at stock clocks now, since it draws considerably more power for essentially the same hash rate otherwise.

Not sure why, but if you use anything other than -I 13, the hashrate takes a nose dive.

[peacefulmind]

Really thinking it has something to do with the BIOS.  

Here are settings:

Good cards (all the exact same x 4, repeatable settings on each one) - core 980, mem 1720, concurrency 24000, intensity 19, worksize 256 = ~700kH/s

Bad cards (all different, if I switch the settinsg between cards they will NOT DUPLICATE)

#1) core 1022, mem 1244, concurrency 8192, intensity 13, worksize 256 = 590kH/s
#2) core 1048, mem 1692, concurrency 16384, intensity 13, worksize 256 = 578kH/s
#3) core 1102, mem 1580, concurrency 12480, intensity 13, worksize 256 = 580kH/s
#4) core 1122, mem 1364, concurrency 8192, intensity 13, worksize 256 = 606kH/s  <---- best performing of the "bad" cards I received.

There has to be a logical answer for this weirdness.

[peacefulmind]

I will try with -g2

thx.

And yes the ONLY commonality is Intensity must be 13 and nothing else.  cheers.

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

OP, the reason MSI Afterburner reports the graphics cards by their series and not by exact model, is because the series share the same BIOS, and that is what Afterburner reads by mapping the ROM.

[peacefulmind]

card #1 and card #4 have hit 700kH/s!!!  Needed g 2 option.

However it hurts the performance of card #2 and #3 listed above in the case of #2 it crashed everything.

--edit--

cannot replicate the settings on card 2 or 3 either. 

guess I should be happy with two performing as expected - still it does not answer a major question about all of these....

[peacefulmind]

OP, the reason MSI Afterburner reports the graphics cards by their series and not by exact model, is because the series share the same BIOS, and that is what Afterburner reads by mapping the ROM.

I understand, why would one 7970 be reported as "7900 Series" and another supposedly more or less identical 7970 be reported as "7900 Lightning?"

[ehiv]

card #1 and card #4 have hit 700kH/s!!!  Needed g 2 option.

However it hurts the performance of card #2 and #3 listed above in the case of #2 it crashed everything.

What thread concurrencies are you using for #2 and #3?  Try 8192 as #1 and #4.

[aigeezer]

Please share your 7970 experience

Your post caught my eye because I installed a new Sapphire 7970 GHz edition card yesterday. I can't offer much information since the card is so new and my uses have been very vanilla so far. It's been mining BTC in Slush's pool as a background app concurrent with other routine desktop activity. Slush's pool reports around 550 Mhash/sec in that (completely stock) context. The card produces serious artifacting in Firefox, which was a big disappointment. I found lots of chatter about that flaw in various forums, and people suggested the beta 13.3 driver would fix it. I changed to that driver and it improved but did not completely fix the problem.

I'm planning to try the card mining LTC with cgminer Real Soon Now. Good luck tracking things down - you're obviously well ahead of me in digging into the issue, but if I find anything significant I'll post.

Thanks for the thread!

Edit: just to further confirm your pattern. MSI Afterburner shows my GHz card as "lightning" also.

Display device       : MSI R7970 Lightning BE on Tahiti GPU
Display driver       : 9.14.10.0968, Catalyst 13.3
BIOS                 : 015.022.000.001
GUID                 : VEN_1002&DEV_6798&SUBSYS_30001002&REV_00&BUS_1&DEV_0&FN_0

[peacefulmind]

card #1 and card #4 have hit 700kH/s!!!  Needed g 2 option.

However it hurts the performance of card #2 and #3 listed above in the case of #2 it crashed everything.

What thread concurrencies are you using for #2 and #3?  Try 8192 as #1 and #4.

I wish it would work it does not.  cgminer crashes on the 3rd card I listed when changing -g 2.  The second card is slower with 8192, g2.

--edit---

Said that backwards - 2nd card crashes, 3rd card slower - heh just got excited at making some progress with this issue.

[ehiv]

card #1 and card #4 have hit 700kH/s!!!  Needed g 2 option.

However it hurts the performance of card #2 and #3 listed above in the case of #2 it crashed everything.

What thread concurrencies are you using for #2 and #3?  Try 8192 as #1 and #4.

I wish it would work it does not.  cgminer crashes on the 3rd card I listed when changing -g 2.  The second card is slower with 8192, g2.

Sorry I have nothing else, then.  Glad two of them are performing better, though

I only have two 7970s so my experience is limited.  I've just been trying to mention the -g2 option because it seems that many are unaware of or have not tried it.  Compared to GPU BTC mining, GPU LTC mining sucks.

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

OP, the reason MSI Afterburner reports the graphics cards by their series and not by exact model, is because the series share the same BIOS, and that is what Afterburner reads by mapping the ROM.

I understand, why would one 7970 be reported as "7900 Series" and another supposedly more or less identical 7970 be reported as "7900 Lightning?"

If the card is manufactured by Lightning, why not? It's a custom BIOS by the manufacturer.

[iruleeveryone28]

made a few adjustments on my locked gigabyte.  to bed now so will post info in the morning but seem to be hitting 650k atm.

computer will almost certainly konk out, is this happening to anyone else?

look forward to updates, gnight.

[meebs]

OP, the reason MSI Afterburner reports the graphics cards by their series and not by exact model, is because the series share the same BIOS, and that is what Afterburner reads by mapping the ROM.

I understand, why would one 7970 be reported as "7900 Series" and another supposedly more or less identical 7970 be reported as "7900 Lightning?"

load up gpu-z and post up a screenshot.. that will show quite a bit more specific information regarding the chip/bios etc.

[hinouchie]

I have a MSI 7970 reference card, man it took me the whole night just to tweak it, went from 580KH/s to 660KH/s now. I don't think I can do better with this card, if i need to hit 700+ I'm gonna need at least 1700 memory which my card is max out at 1575 .

My settings
Core@941 Mem@1574 -I 13 -g2 -w 256 --Thread-concurrency 8170 (yea even lower by standard but it perform the best.) So yea try to play with even lower Thread-concurrency, it might perform better like mine.