Cgminer vs Guiminer

[Jaden]

Noob here. Been using GUIminer for the last couple of months and I'm wondering if there is a benefit of going to CGminer? Thanks.

[SirMintALot]

Guiminer has some problems:
- After some time the hashrate often falls down to some kHash/s, not going back to normal MHash/s hashrate
- You can't tune you card to the maximum hashrate like you can do with cgminer or bfgminer
- You need for every card a worker
- You can't do load balancing, which means with this high difficulty it is possible that a pool has to chew a long time to solve a block. With load balancing you can mine on two or more pools and your daily income is higher (Example: Pool 1 is unlucky and chewing on a big block, but pool 2 is lucky with short blocks and pays you for solved blocks).

[Jaden]

Thanks. I'll take the time to figure it out this weekend.

[sockopen]

Guiminer has some problems:
- You can't tune you card to the maximum hashrate like you can do with cgminer or bfgminer

This is the biggest difference I noticed. With some of the parameter tweaking I was able to do with bfgminer I noticed a 20% hashrate increase from GUIMiner. I would not recommend using GUIMiner to anyone.

[Jaden]

I'm not having much success with CGminer. With GUIminer I was getting the following

5870: 415 MH/s
6870: 305 MH/s
6850: 250 MH/s

That was with driver 11.11 and SDK 2.5. With those same drivers and CGminer with the following config file I was getting slightly better performance, but the driver kept crashing. I tried lowering the intensity, but still no luck. So, then I tried installing 11.12 and 11.6 and both of those were worse. Any suggestions? What's the best driver/sdk for a mixture of 58xx's and 68xx's? Thanks.

"intensity" : "5,d,5",
"vectors" : "2,2,2",
"worksize" : "128,128,128",
"kernel" : "phatk,phatk,phatk",
"lookup-gap" : "0,0,0",
"thread-concurrency" : "0,0,0",
"shaders" : "0,0,0",
"gpu-engine" : "975,945,925",
"auto-fan" : true,
"gpu-fan" : "0-85,0-85,0-85",
"gpu-memclock" : "300",
"gpu-memdiff" : "0,0,0",
"gpu-powertune" : "20,20,20",
"gpu-vddc" : "0.000,0.000,0.000",
"temp-cutoff" : "95",
"temp-overheat" : "90",
"temp-target" : "85",
"api-port" : "4028",
"expiry" : "120",
"gpu-dyninterval" : "7",
"gpu-platform" : "0",
"gpu-threads" : "2",
"hotplug" : "5",
"log" : "5",
"no-pool-disable" : true,
"queue" : "1",
"scan-time" : "60",
"temp-hysteresis" : "3",
"shares" : "0",
"kernel-path" : "/usr/local/bin"
}

[Jaden]

GPU0 = 6870
GPU1 = 6850 connected to monitor
GPU2 = 5870

[os2sam]

I'm not having much success with CGminer.

"intensity" : "5,d,5",
"vectors" : "2,2,2",
"worksize" : "128,128,128",
"kernel" : "phatk,phatk,phatk",

I don't use the .conf file as I prefer using command line options.  But is seems you have way more stuff in there than you need.  Let CGMiner do it's thing and quit trying to micro manage it.

Your intensity is too low.  Set it to 8 or 9 for GPU's not driving monitors and keep the one driving your monitor set to dynamic like you have it.

Let CGMiner select the vectors, worksize and kernel so remove those from your file altogether, I think.

Enable auto-gpu and enter a range for your engine clocks starting at 600Mhz or so to your Max Overclock speed.
Sam

[_rusty_]

i use cgminer because it drasticaly reduces the temp at which my cards run.

with 50miner my cards ran at 85°C now they run at 65°C

i also had an increase from 390Mhs to 430 from one of my cards.


your intensity is kinda low. i know some people running at intensity 20....

[os2sam]

your intensity is kinda low. i know some people running at intensity 20....

That's probably for scrypt mining NOT Bitcoin.  Generally 8 or 9 is as high as you want to go for Bitcoin with 5 and 6xxx GPU's.  But trial and error is always recommended to get the best for your particular GPU as each is a bit different.

[Jaden]

os2sam, didn't even realize that I'm micromanaging. In researching how to us CGMiner I was told to use the config file versus the command line. So, all I did was start CGminer up and write the config file. I only changed a few settings. I'll remove the ones you suggested.

I'm back to using 11.11 and sdk 2.5 with GUIminer and everything is working great. I just don't see the advantage to CGminer, at least not yet.

[os2sam]

os2sam, didn't even realize that I'm micromanaging. In researching how to us CGMiner I was told to use the config file versus the command line. So, all I did was start CGminer up and write the config file. I only changed a few settings. I'll remove the ones you suggested.

I'm back to using 11.11 and sdk 2.5 with GUIminer and everything is working great. I just don't see the advantage to CGminer, at least not yet.

My point was that I don't know what all is in or required in a .conf file.  I just add the settings that I need in a command line.  It seems to me that the .conf files have gotten a bit bloated and difficult to know what does and doesn't need to be set.  I'll stick with my simple command line.

I don't know nothing about guiminer as I have never used it.  All I know is that there are things that only CGMiner would do such as overclocking the engine, underclocking the memory and managing temperature that I was unable to do with other miner and software configurations.

But hey, use whatever works good for you.

Good Luck,
Sam

[Jaden]

Sorry os2sam, didn't mean to come across that way. Everybody recommends CGminer over GUIminer, so it's something I'm doing wrong. In using the command line, do you type everything in each time? I see there is  a way of creating a .bat file. Is that what you're doing.

[os2sam]

Sorry os2sam, didn't mean to come across that way. Everybody recommends CGminer over GUIminer, so it's something I'm doing wrong. In using the command line, do you type everything in each time? I see there is  a way of creating a .bat file. Is that what you're doing.

Yep, I'm using a .bat file.

Nothing to apologize for, I wasn't sure if you were adding stuff to the .conf file or if it generated it itself.  Now I know it generated the extra stuff itself.  Still seems like allot of extra stuff though.  Others .conf file that people have posted don't seem to have that many settings.

If your driver and SDK combo is good for GUIMiner it should be good for CGMiner too.  You shouldn't need to change anything with your driver or OpenCL SDK.

I would increase your intensity to 9 or so and enable auto-gpu.
Sam

[Jaden]

Ok, been playing with CGminer for hours now and I think this is the best I'm going to do, which is about 100 MH/s more than with GUIminer. The driver starts crashing if I raise the intensity above these values. As it is, I'm getting an occasional HW error on GPU3. Are you supposed to set the intensity first and then adjust your clock speeds or vice verse? I initially left the intensity on dynamic, adjusted the clock speeds, and then increased the intensity until the driver crashed.

[Jaden]

Here's a screenshot:
GPU0=6870
GPU1=6850
GPU2=6850
GPU3=5870

[os2sam]

Ok, been playing with CGminer for hours now and I think this is the best I'm going to do, which is about 100 MH/s more than with GUIminer. The driver starts crashing if I raise the intensity above these values. As it is, I'm getting an occasional HW error on GPU3. Are you supposed to set the intensity first and then adjust your clock speeds or vice verse? I initially left the intensity on dynamic, adjusted the clock speeds, and then increased the intensity until the driver crashed.

I would raise the engine clock until it crash's and then back it off.  Intensity is usually fairly static at 8 or 9.  I would use 8 on 5xxx cards and 9 on 6xxx cards.  Dynamic is for use with the GPU that is running the display so that it can adjust intensity on the fly according to how much GUI interaction you need.  I definitely would not go over intensity of 9 on 5xxx or 10 on 6xxx cards

I adjusted my clocks till I didn't get any hardware error's.

Sam

[os2sam]

Here's a screenshot:
GPU0=6870
GPU1=6850
GPU2=6850
GPU3=5870

So are you saying that if you set your intensity higher than 5 or 6 it crash's?

Your hash rates for each GPU seem to be OK.  According to the hardware comparison chart you could probably do a little better.
Sam

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

[Jaden]

It seemed like it, but turned out I had one of the cards overclocked too much. Brought the 6870 down a bit and now it's stable. Raised the intensity levels to 6, 5, 5, 7 respectively and that seems to be the sweet spot. Higher levels start to cause rejected shares and HW errors. I'm running all of this from a EVGA 750w power supply. The fan on the power supply is screaming. Thanks for the help Sam.

[SirMintALot]

Set Powertune to a lower level, this helps to run more stable.

[os2sam]

I'm running all of this from a EVGA 750w power supply.

4 GPU's on a 750W P/S may be too much for it.  Maybe someone can chime in on that who has had that many GPU's.  I was running two 5xxx GPU's on a 600W and that seemed OK.

Sam