(LTC Reward) Gigabyte 7950 - Settings Nightmare

[TheJuice]

I heard of having to do the flash F43, doesn't that unlock the voltage ability or undervolt it? What exactly does it do.

F43 does not unlock, it just locks the load voltage to 1.09V instead of 1.25V.

But 1.09V is much more reasonable than 1.25V for mining.

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[Chiz]

Pretty sure my card is voltage locked, cause It's the newer 3 fan one with a 8 pin and a 6 pin, I don't know what this means. Sure would love to know how to back up my Bios and then flash them so I could get my card running cooler. It's around 85c on average giving me 605 K/hash, also like I said anyone know whats up with the memory clock problem? If I change it in CGMiner or even Catalyst, it makes my monitor go black then locks up. Really would love to get the most hash out of this card and I know I need to tweek this if I want that. Thanks everyone.

Also. BONUS POINTS! Whoever can help me get CUDAminer running at the same time as CGminer, so I can mine with my GTX 570 as well, when I launch CUDAminer, while CGminer is already mining my 7950, it's like it steals away from CGminer, my card gets cooler, the hash rate drops to like 40 k/hash, it's like CUDA takes priority or something. Really need this one resolved! Thanks guys

[mr.n00blar]

Pretty sure my card is voltage locked, cause It's the newer 3 fan one with a 8 pin and a 6 pin, I don't know what this means. Sure would love to know how to back up my Bios and then flash them so I could get my card running cooler. It's around 85c on average giving me 605 K/hash, also like I said anyone know whats up with the memory clock problem? If I change it in CGMiner or even Catalyst, it makes my monitor go black then locks up. Really would love to get the most hash out of this card and I know I need to tweek this if I want that. Thanks everyone.

Also. BONUS POINTS! Whoever can help me get CUDAminer running at the same time as CGminer, so I can mine with my GTX 570 as well, when I launch CUDAminer, while CGminer is already mining my 7950, it's like it steals away from CGminer, my card gets cooler, the hash rate drops to like 40 k/hash, it's like CUDA takes priority or something. Really need this one resolved! Thanks guys

Don't use CGminer to control your GPU, it's not built for that. You're card is heating up because your ambient is probably high and your fan control speed is either low, or the program that is telling you how fast the fan is spinning is lying to you, it happens to me. Can you hear the fans on this card only spinning when you're at 60%+? You should if the fans are really going that fast. I use a combination of MSI after burner and trixx to control my fans, it's a pain but worth it.

How much system RAM do you have and how much VRAM total do you have? I'm told this ratio plays a huge role in hte thread concurrencies you are able to run which impacts your hash rate.

I bet your CUDAminer program is not using hte nvidia card, it sounds like its using hte ati. When I had a mixed system I needed to run two instances of CGminer, one for ati and one for nvidia. I had to add this flag for nvidia - "--gpu-platform 1". I would assume your CUDAminer config is wrong / missing a key flag?

[Chiz]

Fans are at 100% cauase I use several programs and they all show it and I can hear it lol they are on MAX.

Idk really how to change the CUDAMiner config to specify a card, if anyone knows please let me know.
Also my card has 3 gigs of RAM while my rig has a 2 gig stick in it.

[logicus]

Put BIOS Switch on the GPU to number 1
You can backup VGA BIOS with GPU-Z
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac348/civato/GPU%20NVIDIA%20BIOS/GPUBIOS1.png

Now you have original bios,and you can flash it back if something gone wrong

[mr.n00blar]

Fans are at 100% cauase I use several programs and they all show it and I can hear it lol they are on MAX.

Idk really how to change the CUDAMiner config to specify a card, if anyone knows please let me know.
Also my card has 3 gigs of RAM while my rig has a 2 gig stick in it.

Wow, that's really hot.. Take a picture of your card / case / set up. What is the ambient temperature? In the 80s? Can you set thread concurrency in the twenty thousand range or are you limited to 8192?

[Chiz]

Logicus, can you also show me how I go about flashing to the new bios for my card that I wish to use. I don't have a USB thumb drive laying around :\

Also no, my thread count is 10k, I cant even go above 16k for whatever known reason, I did the MAX ALLOC PERCENT 100 thing, still just this. Plus the memory clock issues, not letting me change it.

[logicus]

You need DOS bootable drive.With usb is easy way.Also you may use floppy .

1. Download F43 Bios: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4121&dl=1#bios
2. Download atiflash: http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/2230/ATIFlash%204.07.html
3.1 You need DOS bootable USB drive. I used this tutorial: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/46707-ms-dos-bootable-flash-drive-create.html
3.2 If use floppy - format  with option "Create an MS-DOS startup disk"
4. put F43 Bios and ati flash to USB drive/floppy disk
5. Turn off the computer
6. Put BIOS Switch on the GPU to number 1 http://www.jagatreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/gigabyte-amd-hd-7950-dualbios-switch.jpg
    If anything goes wrong you can just put switch back to number 2 and you have factory default BIOS.
7. Boot DOS from usb/floppy
8. Flash to F43 BIOS version:

 atiflash -p 0 xxxxxx.F43

9. Reboot

P.S.
Under Win XP you can download files in one folder(F43 Bios atiflash),open start button,type "command" in run - it will start dos .Now go to folder and  Flash to F43 BIOS version:
atiflash -p 0 xxxxxx.F43

[cimpex]

Logicus, can you also show me how I go about flashing to the new bios for my card that I wish to use. I don't have a USB thumb drive laying around :\

Also no, my thread count is 10k, I cant even go above 16k for whatever known reason, I did the MAX ALLOC PERCENT 100 thing, still just this. Plus the memory clock issues, not letting me change it.

use ATI Winflash for Windows.

[cimpex]

I heard of having to do the flash F43, doesn't that unlock the voltage ability or undervolt it? What exactly does it do.

F43 does not unlock, it just locks the load voltage to 1.09V instead of 1.25V.

But 1.09V is much more reasonable than 1.25V for mining.

yep, I'm running all my 7950 at 1.09V too now.

[logicus]

Tutorial how to flash the bios of your ati cards for Windows  http://www.overclock.net/t/1353325/tutorial-atiwinflash-how-to-flash-the-bios-of-your-ati-cards

[Chiz]

My Gigabyte 7950 is the three fan one with I believe a locked voltage, will flashing the bios still help? No one told me how important System RAM was, I couldnt get thread concurrency over 10k with 2gigs, put a 4gig stick in and I am at 21712 and now I get no HW errors which is great. But card still runs at 84 degrees to pull around 600 K/hash, probably cause of the voltage and I still cannot change the memclock without the card crashing, maybe I have to overclock it in MSI, catalyst worked I think but when I put those same overclock settings (and even without) in CGminer, soon as I launched it the card froze up and I had to reboot.

[Ryu.Hayabusa]

You're better off using the ATI control panel or another tool such as Sapphire TRIXX or MSI Afterburner IMO.  Try setting the Core to 1100 MHz and Mem to 1500MHz, and set the powertune to 20%.  Set thread concurrency to 23777 or 22111.  Also set Intensity to 20.

[Chiz]

Well right now my intensity is 19 and my thread concurrency is 21712, Intensity isnt 20 cause the card pushes 90 degrees if I go that route, righyt now its 86 at 19. I used AMD catalyst to change the engine and clock settings, thats the problem, maybe MSI Afterburner will work better. Or maybe I have to do this bios flashing thing first to help resolve these issues.

[Ryu.Hayabusa]

I'm thinking there might be an issue with the cooler on the card.  What temps do you get at Intensity 20 for stock clocks?

[Chiz]

I'm thinking there might be an issue with the cooler on the card.  What temps do you get at Intensity 20 for stock clocks?

Well since it has to run on stock clocks, at 20 it will get to 93-95, I can hear and see the fans running. But the voltage is stock to at 1.225 I believe.

Also problem if you anyone can help me, sometimes letting it run all night, I wake up and I noticed my screens have frozen ( only assume the card has crashed) but the PC doesnt shut down, is there a way to set it so my PC resets or CGminer resets when this happens (which doesnt really help cause if the card is crashing, I cant see it opening CGminer again) any help in this field helps a lot

[Ryu.Hayabusa]

Those temps sound insanely high for stock.  The only thing I can recommend beyond getting a replacement card is to get some high quality thermal paste and replace the crap that is currently on it.

[logicus]

No one told us how many System RAM you have  
here is some info https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=117221.msg1256502#msg1256502
"The memory requirements for 7xxx cards are also higher because of larger thread_concurrency values, for instance a thread_concurrency of 24000 means 1.5GB system RAM per card is required"
"Set thread_concurrency to somewhere slightly below 64 * bus_width_of_card_in_bits.  So, for a 7950, that would be 64 * 384 = 24576; ideal values are 21712 or 24000"

Are you flash you cards?

[Cryptocables]

25 LTC reward to whoever gives me the best solutions (if its a tie I'll split it up accordingly)

OP, are you backing out of the reward? :P

[Spetznaaz]

I would almost guarantee this will solve your problem, a thread i wrote yesterday: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=200777.0

If it works don't worry about the reward though cause i'm not the first to suggest this