7970 hashrate issues

[oroboras]

I just set up my new 7970 for hashing, but can only push up the clock speed to 1150Mhz (of a maximum of 1500Mhz), before my drivers start crashing.
This is keeping my hash rate for this card down to 500-620Mh/s.
Also, at this speed, my fan is running at 84% and GPU temperature is a constant 76c
I am running it purely for hashing, while I use my 7850 for standard use, AND hashing.

I have 3 x 16x PCIe slots, but if I put both cards together, the 7970 heats up the 7850 terrifically so I've had to put the 7970 in the bottom slot.

Also, has anyone else found that the last version of catalyst dropped hash rates? I used to get 305 from my 7850, now, since updating my drivers, I only get 280.

Does anyone have any tips on how to get the best out of this set up? All help is appreciated.

[Armchair Miner]

Same rig. Quite surprised to be getting only 230 Mhash/s on a 7850 despite tweaking with all cgminer parameters. Driver is 12.100.17.0 of 3/20/2013, Catalyst version 13.3

[Oldgamer]

My bfgminer shows 222 Mh/s average for 7850 and I can't make it better. I keep GPU running 1000 MHZ and memory 900. Temperature is 70-71C and fan 41% load.
Some miners post 320MH/s for this card, but I suspicious that it is not the average, or they abuse the card keeping temperature above 80C.

[oroboras]

Well, I honestly used to get a constant(ish) 306MH/s on my 7850, with no real fan noise, and a low temperature, until I updated my drivers - and that was with it mining 24/7, for weeks on end.
Now, with Catalyst 13.4, Drivers 12.104 - I get only 280MH/s
I have re-installed the OpenCL part of the drivers, but that hasn't fixed it at all.

I am loathe to delete the drivers, and re-install the old ones, as I tried before, and although everything seemed fine, GUIMiner would crash on startup, and I wasn't able to fix it. until I did a system restore.

I have resolved some of the 7970 issues, getting a good 660MH/s, and about 73c temp, fan speed 80% (by clocking the GPU at 1160MHz - which seems to be the fastest I can get with stability, and the memory speed down to 1000MHz) - but now the GPU usage keeps dropping from 99% to as low as 65%, and I have no idea why.
I have -v 1 -w 128 in the flags window, and the card is in my 3rd PCIe x16 (running at x8) slot, due to temperature issues if I put it right next to my other card.

I wish I had that extra 10% back, though, as I would be getting a decent 720MH/s from my 7970, and over 300MH/s from my 7850 if I did - or just over 1GH/s

[os2sam]

Q: Which AMD SDK is the best for cgminer?
A: At the moment, versions 2.4 and 2.5 work the best for R5xxx and R6xxx GPUS.
SDK 2.6 or 2.7 works best for R7xxx. SDK 2.8 is known to have many problems.
If you are need to use the 2.6+ SDK or R7xxx or later, the phatk kernel will
perform poorly, while the diablo or my custom modified poclbm kernel are
optimised for it.

Q: Which AMD driver is the best?
A: Unfortunately AMD has a history of having quite a few releases with issues
when it comes to mining, either in terms of breaking mining, increasing CPU
usage or very low hashrates. Only experimentation can tell you for sure, but
some good releases were 11.6, 11.12, 12.4 and 12.8. Note that older cards may
not work with the newer drivers.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

[oroboras]

Is it possible to run the older AMD SDK with the newer version of Catalyst, or do I have to roll back drivers too?

[archetyp]

set the gpu core to 1040 on your 7970.

[oroboras]

Will dropping my core speed increase my hashrate? It seems a backward step.

[Oldgamer]

Well, I honestly used to get a constant(ish) 306MH/s on my 7850, with no real fan noise, and a low temperature, until I updated my drivers - and that was with it mining 24/7, for weeks on end.
Now, with Catalyst 13.4, Drivers 12.104 - I get only 280MH/s

I use

Driver Packaging Version         12.104-130328a-155980C-ATI
Catalyst Version            13.4
OpenGL Version               6.14.10.12217

With intensity 10, GPU clock 1000, and memory clock 900 I have average 222MH/S only.
I noticed that thread 0 has 90.4 MH/S and thread 1 has 131.4 MH/S. It would be nice to have them both 131.
Changing intensity did not change this proportion. Intensity of 11 did not make speed better, but increased CPU load from 1-4% to 45-85%.
I use bfgminer 3.0.0.

oroboras, can you please post your mining settings for 7850?

Thanks in advance

[kxxxmxxx]

Hi!
660 Mhash for ~ 1150 Mhz seems about right.
I think with most of the cards it is hard to reach 1200 Mhz without water cooling. I have 7970 Ghz edition and the most I can get is 1170 at 80 deg C (in open case). With higher clock the card crashes and I think even at this frequency it is sometimes throttling down.
Most of the higher rates reported are problematic to run for long term, so I would accept 660 Mhash. If you need to invest money into cooling, then maybe it is better just to buy another card than max out the one you have.

[oroboras]

oroboras, can you please post your mining settings for 7850?

Sure.

7850 info:

I am using GUIminer, with no extra flags at all.
GPU clock speed is maximum (1050MHz), and memory at 1220MHz. Fan speed is set on auto (runs at around 64%) with CPU temp at 67-68c

It is a Sapphire HD 7850 OC (2Gb mem) model, and I'm running all 3 of my monitors (ok, 2 monitors and a TV) through it, with an active link cable, and using MSI Afterburner for overclocking.

7970 info:

I am using GUIminer, with the following flags; -v 1 -w 128
GPU clock speed is 1160MHz, and memory is at 1000MHz. Fan speed is set on auto (runs at around 85%) with CPU temp at 77c

It is a Sapphire HD 7970 (3Gb mem) model, and I have no monitors plugged in, and it is on an 8x PCIe slot.
Driver Info:

Driver Packaging Version   12.104-130328a-155980C-ATI
Catalyst Version                   13.4
OpenGL Version                   6.14.10.12217

I hope that helps you out.

[joulesbeef]

Is it possible to run the older AMD SDK with the newer version of Catalyst, or do I have to roll back drivers too?

no problem just when installing new drivers, select custom install and make sure the amd app crap is not checked.

[oroboras]

Well, uninstalled all my drivers, reinstalled the older driver and the 2.7 SDK, and hey presto! No difference....

I have no idea why it won't give me that extra 10% back. The big meanie!

[os2sam]

Well, uninstalled all my drivers, reinstalled the older driver and the 2.7 SDK, and hey presto! No difference....

I have no idea why it won't give me that extra 10% back. The big meanie!

If your using CGMiner you need to delete your .bin files and let CGMiner create new ones when you change drivers/SDK.

[oroboras]

I'm using GUIminer, but cheers for the advice. I'll remember it for when I change over to CGMiner - when my ASIC finally arrives, as I don't think GUIminer is compatible.

[Oldgamer]

oroboras,

Thank you for the info. Without intensity setting my card was only under 60-70% load. With intensity 10 load is 98-99%.
GUIminer is not really a miner but only a front end for the miner (it can work with bfgminer and some other). I downclocked memory speed to 900, as I heard that keeps temperature lower and not important for bitcoin mining. For litecoin mining it is important though.

Thank you again and keep a good mining!

[oroboras]

Oddly, I discovered that this evening - I set up CGMiner miners in GUIMiner - and my 7970 is now hashing at a lovely 690MH/s (or approx. 30MH/s more), but conversely, my 7850 loses about 40MH/s - but I expect that is as it is running my monitors too.
I'm happy to run one through CGMiner, and the other straight in the CLMiner ability of GUIMiner - I am now shy of 1GH/s by about 40MH/s

I will carry on tweaking it as I find out more

[Tywill]

Oddly, I discovered that this evening - I set up CGMiner miners in GUIMiner - and my 7970 is now hashing at a lovely 690MH/s (or approx. 30MH/s more), but conversely, my 7850 loses about 40MH/s - but I expect that is as it is running my monitors too.
I'm happy to run one through CGMiner, and the other straight in the CLMiner ability of GUIMiner - I am now shy of 1GH/s by about 40MH/s

I have several 7970s and was running about 730 MH/s when I was mining BTC, I switched to scrypt mining and I'm running 730 MH/s per card. I didn't have much luck with the newest catalyst drivers though. 13.1 seems to be working for me so I stick with it.

[archetyp]

Will dropping my core speed increase my hashrate? It seems a backward step.

please try it.

[oroboras]

Will dropping my core speed increase my hashrate? It seems a backward step.

please try it.

ok, tried it - it dropped my hashrate from 680MH/s to 580MH/s.
It's back to 1160 now. My hashrate has returned to 680MH/s