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

[MaGNeT]

743 Khash/s, Gigabyte 7970

Code:

start /D "C:\cgminer" cgminer.exe --scrypt -o stratum+tcp://fc.altpool.com:3333 -u MaGNeT.1 -p x --thread-concurrency 8192 -I 13 --lookup-gap 2 --worksize 256 -g 2 -d 0 -d 1 --gpu-memclock 1500,1500 --shaders 2048 --gpu-engine 1080,1080 --gpu-fan 70,70

[1714814794]

1714814794

[Surpbitcoin]

Hey guys, We have a machine setup for mining with 3x MSI R7970 Power Edition 3GD5 cards.
The motherboard is a Asus Rampage IV Extreme
Running Windows 7 Pro 64-bit
Catalyst driver version 13.1
ATI SDK version 2.6.831.4

Current cgminer settings are:
  cgminer --scrypt --intensity 13 --worksize 256 --thread-concurrency 8192 -g 2 --lookup-gap 2 --auto-gpu

Using this configuration the system is stable and according to GPU shark
  -The GPU temps are around: 70-80 degrees
  -Fan speeds are around 80-85%
  -GPU: 945.0Mhz
  -Mem: 1375.0Mhz
  -VDDC: 1.170V
  -GPU Usage: 99.0%

Unfortunately our KH/s rates seem to be pretty low. They are getting about ~490-510KH/s per card.

I'd appreciate any help on getting our KH/s rates up to the theoretical 700Kh/s that we should be getting.

Thanks

[FiatKiller]

They are not unreliable if you buy the proper version to begin with. Never buy Gigibyte, XFX, but only Sapphire Dual-X 3gb OC with Boost. All latest non-beta drivers/software. Run afterburner first on startup with the "apply to like cards "setting. Core voltage ~1094, Mem voltage 1638
Clocks 1070/1500 (MUST be a 0.7 ratio or less)
Got 4 cards so far running at 740+ within 5 minutes! lol

Use this to run cgminer:

setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
CLS
COLOR 70

cgminer --scrypt -o <url> -u <user>.<worker> -p <pw> --failover-only -o <url> -u <user>.<worker> -p <pw> --intensity 13 --worksize 256 --thread-concurrency 8192 -g

[bowen151]

Got a good deal on new 7970s, that good I couldnt pass on them.

After around 24hours mining my rig gets unstable and the primary GPU starts throwing up artifacts. Reseat the card and also try in a different slot with different risers etc...
Problem persists
Underclocked the core and memory to around 90% of the factory clocks give me a stable and slightly usable card (no artifacts under moderate to high load)
Reboot and get my cgminer launch strings ready...
Problem persists - cgminer appears to crash on launch and the mining pool im with only reports around 33% of the shares I should expect. Artifacts are back and everything I try leads to miners crashing the entire OS on initializing.

Remove the card and all is well. Dropped a 5870 in its place, cut rate yes but effective

Waiting on my supplier to get back to me about a replacement card.

Have any of you guys received a dead or dying new card. Im thinking its all of these RMA's from miners that clock their bits a bit too hard. Have you seen some of the memory clock speeds for the 7970s people are using, are these safe?!? I diddnt feel comfortable OC'ing with cgminer to some of those speeds but I did try to find some decent core/memory ratios with afterburner. Will this have an affect on my ability to return the card to the supplier I got it from or can I just claim it under the XFX warranty/RMA procedure?

[FiatKiller]

Sorry for my last message, I can have 730Khs just by changing the core and mem clock, If i change the VDDC to 1256mV the hashrate dive.
MSI afterburner show me core voltage 1775mV by defaut setting and Sapphire TRIXX 1200mV ... ?
How I can now the true voltage ?

only Sapphire Dual-X 3gb OC with Boost. All latest non-beta drivers/software. Run afterburner first on startup with the "apply to like cards "setting. Core voltage ~1094, Mem voltage 1638
Clocks 1070/1500 (MUST be a 0.7 ratio or less)
Got 4 cards so far running at 740+ within 5 minutes! lol

What is the version of your bios ? Is it this one ?
http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/129658/sapphire-hd7970-3072-120926.html

How you can control the mem voltage ? On msi afterburner 3.0 beta 9 I can control only the Core voltage...

Thank you

I did not change the BIOS is all I can tell you. There is a setting to unlock the voltage under the advanced tab. You type in the new numbers and hit enter and then apply. After that, save the changes to a profile number. I don't have beta version of anything. Just the latest non-betas.

[Tornate]

My completely headless miner does 740khs on all cards. Gigabyte Windforce 3 OC 7970 (GV-R797OC-3GD) rev 2.1 volt locked cards here @ 1060/1460.

cgminer 2.11.4 --scrypt --lookup-gap 2 -I 13 -w 256 -g 2 --thread-concurrency 8192
Catalyst 13.1

Yeah! the same here (750@1080/1500). Love this card!!!

Using the same GV-R797OC-3GD and can't get higher than 550 kh/s... 
Have tried more than 100 combinations with Memory and Engine clocks, still nothing 
I have also tried to remove .bin files from cgminer directory to make cgminer recompile kernel with default clocks.. Still nothing, that shit sucks.



config is:

"intensity" : "13",
"worksize" : "256",
"gpu-threads" : "2",
"shaders" : "2048",
"kernel" : "scrypt",
"thread-concurrency" : "8192",
"gpu-engine" : "1080",
"gpu-memclock" : "1500",
"scrypt" : true

[FullLife]

My completely headless miner does 740khs on all cards. Gigabyte Windforce 3 OC 7970 (GV-R797OC-3GD) rev 2.1 volt locked cards here @ 1060/1460.

cgminer 2.11.4 --scrypt --lookup-gap 2 -I 13 -w 256 -g 2 --thread-concurrency 8192
Catalyst 13.1

Yeah! the same here (750@1080/1500). Love this card!!!

Using the same GV-R797OC-3GD and can't get higher than 550 kh/s...  
Have tried more than 100 combinations with Memory and Engine clocks, still nothing  
I have also tried to remove .bin files from cgminer directory to make cgminer recompile kernel with default clocks.. Still nothing, that shit sucks.



config is:

"intensity" : "13",
"worksize" : "256",
"gpu-threads" : "2",
"shaders" : "2048",
"kernel" : "scrypt",
"thread-concurrency" : "8192",
"gpu-engine" : "1080",
"gpu-memclock" : "1500",
"scrypt" : true

Copied this post from the Consolidated Litecoin Mining Guide for 5xxx, 6xxx, and 7xxx GPUs thread:

So after reading through this whole thead, I thought I'd contribute my setup and config.

Rig:
i3-3225
Gigabyte G1.Sniper 3 mobo (in hindsight, I should have bought a different board, this one is overkill)
8GB DDR3
(4) Gigabyte 7970s link (in hindsight, I should have bought either vanilla 7970s or 7950s, these are not worth the extra $$)
1200W Coolermaster Silent Pro Gold ps (I can't say enough about this power supply, it's excellent)
250GB Samsung 840 SSD
(2) WD hard drives (500GB, 2TB)
Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit

Setup:
So I had all 4 cards running in my case, but with them being all crammed together, it was way too hot.  So I pulled everything out and sat it on a rack.  I have 2 of the cards plugged into the board, a 3rd card plugged in via 16x riser cable, but couldn't get the 4th card to work with another 16x riser cable. So, I ordered a 1x to 16x riser cable and hopefully this will solve my problem.

In the meantime, I'm running 3 cards and getting pretty nice hashrates.  These are my settings and results using cgminer 2.11.3 and AMD Catalyst 13.1 drivers:

--intensity 13 -g 2  715/710 = ~1500Kh/s
--intensity 13 -g 2  925/1000 = ~1950Kh/s
--intensity 13 -g 2  1000/1206 = ~2100Kh/s
--intensity 13 -g 2  1022/1244 = ~2150Kh/s

Other settings:
--thread-concurrency 8192 -w 256

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.

[FiatKiller]

So you probably don't want to hear that I instantly got a 5th 7970 running at ~750 right from the start...

Are you guys using two 8-pin connectors? Single 12V rail PS? Powered-risers if you have them? What about
ram? 2 gigs per card minimum...

[Surpbitcoin]

I guess nobody has any advice for the question i asked a bt earlier in the thread?

 

[Surpbitcoin]

Hey guys, We have a machine setup for mining with 3x MSI R7970 Power Edition 3GD5 cards.
The motherboard is a Asus Rampage IV Extreme
Running Windows 7 Pro 64-bit
Catalyst driver version 13.1
ATI SDK version 2.6.831.4

Current cgminer settings are:
  cgminer --scrypt --intensity 13 --worksize 256 --thread-concurrency 8192 -g 2 --lookup-gap 2 --auto-gpu

Using this configuration the system is stable and according to GPU shark
  -The GPU temps are around: 70-80 degrees
  -Fan speeds are around 80-85%
  -GPU: 945.0Mhz
  -Mem: 1375.0Mhz
  -VDDC: 1.170V
  -GPU Usage: 99.0%

Unfortunately our KH/s rates seem to be pretty low. They are getting about ~490-510KH/s per card.

I'd appreciate any help on getting our KH/s rates up to the theoretical 700Kh/s that we should be getting.

Thanks

Try with Catalyst 13.5
If you need sdk use 2.8
In cgminer 3.1 for me it work better with --shaders 2048 than any --thread-concurrency.
Try with 950Mhz and 1500Mhz memclock.

If it don't work, flash your gpu bios with the classic 7970 sapphire bios.

I have 730Khs with a sapphire vaporx 7970 ghzedition flashed with the "classic edition 7970" bios.

Thanks so much for your help, I'm gonna have the changes made and post the results here.

Thanks again.

Surp

[xthestig]

Hey guys quick question, i'm using the xfx 7970 double d edition. stock 925/1375

My question, from doing my research online it appears xfx no longer use the reference pcb in these cards, cost saving, so the pcb isn't AMD any more. Would it be safe to flash the bios mentioned in this thread?

I'm struggling to get 550kh/s out of it at 1025/1375

[petala]

Hey guys quick question, i'm using the xfx 7970 double d edition. stock 925/1375

My question, from doing my research online it appears xfx no longer use the reference pcb in these cards, cost saving, so the pcb isn't AMD any more. Would it be safe to flash the bios mentioned in this thread?

I'm struggling to get 550kh/s out of it at 1025/1375

what can go wrong if you got the dual bios switch?

[xthestig]

When xfx changed the pcb on this model they didn't  put a dual bios switch on it   

[ruecanonrails]

Try bumping your clocks to 1030/1500
That seems to be a fairly standard 7970 clock ratio.

When flashing your GPU, you may not get any improved results.
Look up how to recover from a bricked or failed gpu bios flash. That way when something goes wrong you know how to fix it. You will need a dos boot disk with atiflash and a copy of your original bios. Make several copies of your original bios incase it somehow gets corrupted. (I don't mean make a backup then copy/paste, but make multiple backups directly from your card). If you only have one gpu, you will likely have to do a blind flash if your flash fails.

[MysteryX]

I have a Reference XFX card (925/1375)

If I let cgminer compile the kernel at default clocks, and then apply overclock, it reaches ~700kh/s

If I let cgminer compile the kernel overclocked, it won't go past ~500kh/s, with same settings/clocks

so I guess those ghz editions have to be downclocked to default speeds at first, and then overclocked after cgminer compiled the kernel

I ran a diff on both compiled kernels, and found binary differences.

OMG... this has helped me tremendously, you're absolutely right that if you let cgminer compile at default clocks it will go much higher with these XFX ref cards, just tried it out. Thank you! (edit: all i'm getting is rejects right now but i'm sure i will get it working and report back)

[Shallowgas]

CGMiner Settings for HD7970 GIGABYTE GV-R797OC-3GD - F80 BIOS

I've just bought 2 x GIGABYTE GV-R797OC-3GD cards and they have come with F80 bios.
Has anyone got a decent hash rate out of these cards?

CAT 13.4
CGMiner 3.3.1

GPU-Z reports the bios of the new cards as 015.034.000.002

My existing GIGABYTE GV-R797OC-3GD cards have an F71 bios - GPU-Z reports bios as 015.025.000.007
My existing cards run at 720kh/s at 1043 GPU and 1500 Mem.

Any clues as to the best settings for the new GIGABYTE GV-R797OC-3GD - F80 BIOS cards?
I cant get more than 550/600 kh/s out of them and the same 1043 and 1500 clearly does not work.
All my cards are Rev 2.1

Can I flash the F71 bios onto an F80 card? Gigabyte suggest only the same series can be flashed i.e. F70 to F79 can be flashed. F80 would have to be flashed with a bios between F80 and F89.
Have they changed memory supplier or something?

Thanks for any advice...

[pyromaniac]

That's my settings:
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
bfgminer.exe --scrypt --worksize 256 --shaders 2048 --vectors 1 --thread-concurrency 8192 --gpu-fan 100 --gpu-engine 1085 --gpu-memclock 1500 --lookup-gap 2 -d 0 -g 2 --intensity 13 -o mypool.org:9327 -u USER -p PASS

[walnutter]

I have two sapphire 7970 Vapor-X and they had below 400 kH/s out of the box. It took few days to tune them to about 540. Finally i found the topic talking about flashing dualX bios on vapor-X and that did it. Flashing drops the voltage to 0.950 and also unlocks the voltage change. I also changed from cgminer to bfgminer. Now i have 750 kH/s for both of them without crossfire cables and i use ati drivers 13.6. without CCC. Temps are 75C and 65C. Afterburner shows my cards as Lightning BE.

My setting are almost the same as pyromaniacs. These cards are quite moody. It always takes a little while before settling down to stable speed.
bfgminer.exe --scrypt --worksize 256 --thread-concurrency 8192 --gpu-fan 100 --gpu-engine 1070 --gpu-memclock 1500 --lookup-gap 2 -g 2 --intensity 13

Feel free to donate something to below addresses if this helped you. Thank you.

[emunebtk]

CGMiner Settings for HD7970 GIGABYTE GV-R797OC-3GD - F80 BIOS

I've just bought 2 x GIGABYTE GV-R797OC-3GD cards and they have come with F80 bios.
Has anyone got a decent hash rate out of these cards?

CAT 13.4
CGMiner 3.3.1

GPU-Z reports the bios of the new cards as 015.034.000.002

My existing GIGABYTE GV-R797OC-3GD cards have an F71 bios - GPU-Z reports bios as 015.025.000.007
My existing cards run at 720kh/s at 1043 GPU and 1500 Mem.

Any clues as to the best settings for the new GIGABYTE GV-R797OC-3GD - F80 BIOS cards?
I cant get more than 550/600 kh/s out of them and the same 1043 and 1500 clearly does not work.
All my cards are Rev 2.1

Can I flash the F71 bios onto an F80 card? Gigabyte suggest only the same series can be flashed i.e. F70 to F79 can be flashed. F80 would have to be flashed with a bios between F80 and F89.
Have they changed memory supplier or something?

Thanks for any advice...

I had same issue with I believe same GPU and flashed to this : http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/131592/gigabyte-hd7970-3072-121214.html
Now running 770 kh/s on 1100/1500 where before I couldn't break 550 to save my life. Just make sure you do at least a few backup copies of your working BIOS. From my understanding if you flash with wrong bios you can just re-flash it back but will need to have the saved copy to do so.

[tacotime]

Okay, I've fixed this.  It's extremely weird, though.

I had two cards, MSI 1 GHz and Sapphire 1 GHz.  MSI card was getting 450 KH/s, saph 700 KH/s.  Mucked around for 3 hours until I finally hit the solution below.

Catalyst 13.3, MSI AB 3.0.0 beta, APP SDK 2.8, cgminer 3.3.1

To get them both running at 700 KH/s:
1.) Create two instances of cgminer miner with -d 0 and the other with -d 1, on both: -g 2 --thread-concurrency 8192 -I 13
DO NOT RUN BOTH CARDS IN THE SAME CGMINER INSTANCE
2.) Go to MSI AB and hit reset for both cards to reset them to stock clocks.
3.) Start both cgminer instances.
4.) Apply your OC.