Unable to overvolt Sapphire HD5850 XTREME in Linux

[DBordello]

I am attempting to increase the core voltage on my three Sapphire HD5850 XTREME:


I am able to get 850MHz core, 300 MHz memory stable using the stock 1.088V.  However, I wouldn't mind increasing the core voltage slightly to increase my clock speed.  

I am running Ubuntu 11.04.  I am using Catalyst 11.6 with SDK 2.1.  However, nothing I do allows me to increase my voltage.  According to this page, Trixx should allow overvolting, so the card should be compatible: http://www.sapphireselectclub.com/ssc/TriXX/TriXX.aspx

I can increase the voltage using pyADL.  However setVoltage(2,1088) returns false (for anything over 1088).  aticonfig is then unable to set clocks:

btc@DJB-BTC1:~$ aticonfig --od-setclocks=900,300 --adapter=1
ERROR - Set clocks failed for Adapter 1 - ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series
        Please check that input values were valid

If I lower the voltage to 1088 or below, this command works great.  So basically, if the voltage is over 1088, the frequencies cannot be set.  

I have also tried AMDOverdriveCTRL.  

Does anybody have any ideas?  

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[Jack of Diamonds]

You can't increase the voltage past 1.088V (stock) with any program on the new batch Sapphire 5xxx cards except Trixx.

The voltage regulator on the new sapphire cards is a custom budget model (not made by Volterra but some random company in mainland China), as well as most other components on their shortened PCB. The design is entirely different from the reference 5830 and 5850 cards and is also used on some cheap motherboards.
http://datasheet.eeworld.com.cn/part/NCP5395T,ONSEMI,302990.html

Afterburner, aticonfig and other tools are not designed to support those components and probably never will.

Obviously, Sapphire was the only company with a vested interest in the matter (being that they made the cards) so they updated Trixx to allow access to voltage increases on the 'extreme' cards a few months back.

[DBordello]

You can't increase the voltage past 1.088V (stock) with any program on the new batch Sapphire 5xxx cards except Trixx.

The voltage regulator on the new sapphire cards is a custom budget model (not made by Volterra but some random company in mainland China), as well as most other components on their shortened PCB. The design is entirely different from the reference 5830 and 5850 cards and is also used on some cheap motherboards.
http://datasheet.eeworld.com.cn/part/NCP5395T,ONSEMI,302990.html

Afterburner, aticonfig and other tools are not designed to support those components and probably never will.

Obviously, Sapphire was the only company with a vested interest in the matter (being that they made the cards) so they updated Trixx to allow access to voltage increases on the 'extreme' cards a few months back.

I hope this is alleviated.  I did not ice that trixx had a special update.  I really don't want to have to run windows on my mining rig.  Any references to this information?  Or a thread discussing possible work around?

Thank you for the heads up.  Any information is great.

Dan

[m3sSh3aD]

Theres 2 revisions out there, 000SA and 230SA, Later been the new release and CANT BE VOLTMODDED YET! Well, i have one here that defies that but its only 1 of the 3 230SA's i have. All the 000SA (LIKE THE ONE PICTURED IN ORIGIONAL POST) are all volt moddable. There wilkl be a update im sure that will allow all these new 230SA cards to over volt. This one that does runs 1000/300 @ 1.193, but wont go any higher. No matter what. My older 000SA's run at at 1000/300 @ 1.193. Everyone of them, Good start point for OC'ing these cards I have them running around 1025/300 & 1030/300 @ 1.218Volts. Im happy with that. BUT.... i have a new 230SA that does 1020/300 @1.088 Stock but it wont over volt like this strange one i seem to have gotten to OC.

It all just seems like its going be luck of the draw as usual. All these cards should do 900/300 stock easy. 925-950 for most part. I first noticed the new revision with that 1020 and wanted know if they were as good as they seemed but it seems to be a gem

I used 10.4 which comes with 2.1SDK, try that. Dont use any GUI rubbish, use diablo miner. Phoenix as worse stales than diablo and GUI miner is just..... BAD!

Go here....


http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=31718.0

and ask catfish, he is using linux and is unix orientated. Im sure he may be able help with that part. Windows has better hash rates too. SOrry to say. Least 11.6b lets you have more than 4 cards on a system

@ jack of Diamonds - Your behind mate. Theres a new revision of 5850 xtreme that IS UN VOLT MODDABLE, change of design 230SA at the end of the P/N number. There also performing better than most cards that come before these sapphire xtreme cards so all i can say to your conclusion is cheap parts? who cares if there out performing the older 'more expensive' parts

[DBordello]

Theres 2 revisions out there, 000SA and 230SA, Later been the new release and CANT BE VOLTMODDED YET! Well, i have one here that defies that but its only 1 of the 3 230SA's i have. All the 000SA (LIKE THE ONE PICTURED IN ORIGIONAL POST) are all volt moddable. There wilkl be a update im sure that will allow all these new 230SA cards to over volt. This one that does runs 1000/300 @ 1.193, but wont go any higher. No matter what. My older 000SA's run at at 1000/300 @ 1.193. Everyone of them, Good start point for OC'ing these cards I have them running around 1025/300 & 1030/300 @ 1.218Volts. Im happy with that. BUT.... i have a new 230SA that does 1020/300 @1.088 Stock but it wont over volt like this strange one i seem to have gotten to OC.

It all just seems like its going be luck of the draw as usual. All these cards should do 900/300 stock easy. 925-950 for most part. I first noticed the new revision with that 1020 and wanted know if they were as good as they seemed but it seems to be a gem

I used 10.4 which comes with 2.1SDK, try that. Dont use any GUI rubbish, use diablo miner. Phoenix as worse stales than diablo and GUI miner is just..... BAD!

Go here....


http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=31718.0

and ask catfish, he is using linux and is unix orientated. Im sure he may be able help with that part. Windows has better hash rates too. SOrry to say. Least 11.6b lets you have more than 4 cards on a system

@ jack of Diamonds - Your behind mate. Theres a new revision of 5850 xtreme that IS UN VOLT MODDABLE, change of design 230SA at the end of the P/N number. There also performing better than most cards that come before these sapphire xtreme cards so all i can say to your conclusion is cheap parts? who cares if there out performing the older 'more expensive' parts

Well some good news.  All of my cards are 000SA.  It must be a configuration issue.  You are using Catalyst 10.4 for the driver?  That seems pretty old.  What program are you using to overvolt?  The issues seems to be to get a linux program that can change the voltage.

Dan

[Jack of Diamonds]

@ jack of Diamonds - Your behind mate. Theres a new revision of 5850 xtreme that IS UN VOLT MODDABLE, change of design 230SA at the end of the P/N number.

Heh, it's doable.. Up to 1.35V+
But the method was only discovered a couple weeks back by a german modder.  

You will have to make physical changes to the card so this is not for the faint-of-heart.

230SA variety extreme card's' voltage contr. can't be controlled by software atm, even Trixx.
So you are right they cannot be modified in any way via a program (until Sapphire or a 3rd party does something about it)

[m3sSh3aD]

ah, nice one jack. might have a go at that. did you mean 1.35v is safe with this mod?

[DBordello]

Well, I am glad I don't have to do that.  Now to figure out how to do it with a 000SA in Linux...

[Jack of Diamonds]

ah, nice one jack. might have a go at that. did you mean 1.35v is safe with this mod?

Only on watercooling or various types of extreme cooling on the VRM's, any realistic attempts at 24/7 mining will be limited to about 1.20-25 on air.

I don't think the mod is financially worth it, unless you have some cards to 'spare' or got one for free

The hardmod (or rather enhancement) does enable much higher stable max. voltage,
the problem is how do you transfer the heat when VRM temps shoot up to 150c

(and it still wouldn't help OP as he runs Linux on an earlier revision, so in essence his problem is unsolvable unless someone codes a tool like Trixx for Linux that accesses voltage regulators on the 5850 xtreme, as conventional volting tools don't work)

[m3sSh3aD]

coinsidently I do have a spare. blew a mobo, so have have 5 lined up and 1 over... and i know someone with the skills required here get on it at some point.

I can't help with Linux though so thanks for heads up. sorry I can't help more

[Transisto]

So no way to pen mod this to in-between value, like 1.2v ?

Can`t believe it`s that hard to reverse Trixx and intercept the command with an ASM debugger. (ida pro)

[Tx2000]

I got one of these 230SA revision cards but no luck so far.  Only stable at 810 core for bitcoin on default voltage.  Of course, waiting for new trixx to support it =/

[Dargo]

I got one of these 230SA revision cards but no luck so far.  Only stable at 810 core for bitcoin on default voltage.  Of course, waiting for new trixx to support it =/

Bummer. What's your hash rate at 810 core?

[Tx2000]

I got one of these 230SA revision cards but no luck so far.  Only stable at 810 core for bitcoin on default voltage.  Of course, waiting for new trixx to support it =/

Bummer. What's your hash rate at 810 core?

Actually, I am able to get it up to 880... I guess Trixx was causing issues when I manipulated the non-functional vcore settings so I uninstalled and reinstalled and now it's spanking.  I will try to see if I can push it further but I am waiting on my IR temperature gun to come in so I can keep tabs on VRMs.


Unfortunately, though, I cannot seem to get phoenix to be the "mining king" that it is on my other computer.  my other computer, I have a reference 5850 that at 880core/350mem (1.087 stock vcore), gets 374Mhash/sec.  This is with 11.4 preview and 2.4sdk, GUIMiner with all the kernel improvements (re: Diapolo, etc).

I tried the exact same setup on the other computer, the only difference being this non-reference 5850 Xtreme and phoenix seems to be awful.  At 880 core, it's getting 319Mhash/sec.   I tried fumbling around with SDKs/drives and so far it seems the best outcome is with 11.4 and 2.1 SDK.  Phoenix goes up to 329Mhash/sec but Poclbm is out in front at 360-366Mhash/sec.

I don't know why but that's the case.

[Dargo]

Thanks for the info Tx2000 - if you able to get 360 Mhps, that is pretty good. Strange that it doesn't like phoenix though.

[Reuef]

Strange,

Got 3 230SA's yesterday running at 900/300 on sdk 2.4 on ubuntu getting 374 on Phoenix stable at 68c avg.  I made my Amdoverdrivectrl voltage at 1.170 but I don't know if it actually overvolted.

[Tx2000]

Strange,

Got 3 230SA's yesterday running at 900/300 on sdk 2.4 on ubuntu getting 374 on Phoenix stable at 68c avg.  I made my Amdoverdrivectrl voltage at 1.170 but I don't know if it actually overvolted.

I was able to get phoenix to work now, btw.  I don't know what it was but after a lot of driver changing and removal and reinstallation, so to speak, of mining software, it works fine.  Currently at 975core/325m 1.088v and getting 404Mh/s with phoenix phatk 2.1

[Transisto]

Do we have an update on this ?
I'm ready to commit BTC for someone to find a solution.

(don't want to flash the bios)

[m3sSh3aD]

Do we have an update on this ?
I'm ready to commit BTC for someone to find a solution.

(don't want to flash the bios)

I find CGMiner is better than pheonix and updated weekely and more. It was designed for linux i believe to but works on everything. I actually use windows and the 10.4 with 2.1SDK ruled for a while but CGminer got better with the new drivers. 11.7 all my systems are now with 2.4/2.5SDK, the one that comes with 11.7 anyways

No trixx for linux? i thought catfish was able to overclock 5850's in linux though???

[Transisto]

Any update on this ? I can commit 5btc