CGminer + Radeon HD 7850: Hardware errors [0.002 BTC award for solving]

[hammereditor]

Although this story involves mining Litecoins, not bitcoins, I think that the logic here is the same.

I started mining Litecoins and Feathercoins about 5 days ago. I wondered why my mining pools, WeMineLTC and WeMineFTC, always showed my hash rate as 80 Kh/s, although GCminer 3.7.2 reported 330 Kh/s.
So today I made a small Node.js program to interact with the CGminer API, and it seems that the mine program has a large rate of hardware errors. There's about 2 new errors every second. Of course, no notifications about this appear in the console window, so I never knew about it. I also noticed that the amount crypto-coins I was earning each day were lower than expected.
I am not happy about what is happening to all of my hard work.

Command-line arguments:

Code:

start CGminer\cgminer.exe --scrypt -u Hammereditor.main -p 1357 -o stratum+tcp://stratum.wemineftc.com:4444 --intensity 13 --api-listen --api-allow W:192.168.1.2 --api-network

Regardless of which pool I use, the error amount remains the same. I thought this was due to overclocking, but I lowered the speeds to default, and then increased the voltage on top of that. But that changed nothing.

Video driver: AMD Catalyst 13.9
RAM: 4 GB
OS: Windows 8 x64

So how would I fix this
Edit: the person who gives a solution which fixes my problem will be rewarded 0.002 BTC ($2.00)!

[darksoft]

Use an older version of cgminer... 3.1.1 for example

[hammereditor]

Use an older version of cgminer... 3.1.1 for example

Do you know any versions of CGminer which are known not to cause a lot of issues?

[Ardolafat]

what's the temperature of gpu ?

[ahmed_bodi]

try cgminer 3.2 or increasing your system RAM

[thejepper]

Both pools have notoriously bad predictions of estimated mining power. I mine at 220 kh/s and it displays me at 50- 150 kh/s.
You should not trust them below 500kh/s.

I do get the expected amount of coins based on ltc and ftc calculators.
How far are you of of the estimate by the calculators?

Some points:
- Update video/open cl driver
- What are the PSU line variations
- PSU health?
- Revert to cgminer 3.1.1, most stable for me.
- What is the cpu load? Not cpu mining as well right? Try it without cpu loading.

What are the hardware errors btw?

[hammereditor]

Both pools have notoriously bad predictions of estimated mining power. I mine at 220 kh/s and it displays me at 50- 150 kh/s.
You should not trust them below 500kh/s.

I do get the expected amount of coins based on ltc and ftc calculators.
How far are you of of the estimate by the calculators?

Some points:
- Update video/open cl driver
- What are the PSU line variations
- PSU health?
- Revert to cgminer 3.1.1, most stable for me.
- What is the cpu load? Not cpu mining as well right? Try it without cpu loading.

if i fixed it: 14e4VVFM9eHdunHxpGgswBf4N4iiVdmeMD

The calculators say 0.15 LTC/day, but I think I'm earning about 1/3 of that.
The CPU load is always 5% when GPU mining. I don't CPU mine.
The system has 4 GB RAM, but only 2 GB is being used while mining.
And the PSU is a Raidmax 630w; never had any problems with it. How would I find the health of the power supply?

And here's CGminer with the --verbose argument:
http://www.hammereditor.net/images/mine_nonce_error.png

[ilostcoins]

I've run my 7850 with these settings on cgminer 3.1.0, 3.2.2 and 3.7.2:

-I 17 --thread-concurrency 20480 -w 256 -g 1
or
-I 13 --thread-concurrency 8192 -w 256 -g 2

Either are ok for me. I get around 300kh/s at GPU clock 860, memory clock 1150. People who are willing to overclock can get better results. I don't like how some things are displayed on 3.7.2 though.

Change the intensity (the -I #number) depending on how far your card can go and how unresponsive a PC yourself can put up with. 4GB RAM is enough, that shouldn't be the problem IMO. If you're running one or two 7850 card, that shouldn't be demanding on the PSU either.

Edit: In cgminer, A means accepted shares count, R means rejected count, and HW is the number of hardware errors. Your screenshot does show a lot of HW's.

[darksoft]

Use an older version of cgminer... 3.1.1 for example

Do you know any versions of CGminer which are known not to cause a lot of issues?

3.1.1

[thejepper]

Try this:
amd app sdk 2.7
catalyst 12.8
and cgminer 3.0.1 or 3.1.1

as in this thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179718.0

Other think to try is if the card is seated properly
You need a multimeter for the rails, but the software first.

[breakbeater]

Which version of 7850 graphic card do you have? If it's 1GB version (like mine) try "thread-concurrency 8196" , 8192 gives me a bunch of HW errors but with 8196 i have 330 kh/s and no errors.

[hammereditor]

Change the intensity (the -I #number) depending on how far your card can go and how unresponsive a PC yourself can put up with.

No matter what I set the intensity to, the amount of HW errors is the same.

[hammereditor]

Which version of 7850 graphic card do you have? If it's 1GB version (like mine) try "thread-concurrency 8196" , 8192 gives me a bunch of HW errors but with 8196 i have 330 kh/s and no errors.

Okay, I'll try this. I will also try 4100 and 4098.
I have the 1 GB version.

[tenice]

hi,

i had the same issues with my 6870's

try going to start -> run -> cmd.exe and  typing the following (should say value saved)

setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1


solved all my issues with what your getting right now

if still a few hardware errors are thrown up, try adjusting intensity manually between 10-19 and seeing if theres a sweet spot (mine was around 17)

best of luck

[hammereditor]

Try this:
amd app sdk 2.7
catalyst 12.8
and cgminer 3.0.1 or 3.1.1

as in this thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179718.0

Other think to try is if the card is seated properly
You need a multimeter for the rails, but the software first.

Okay, I'll first try the latest Catalyst driver, then go to 12.8.
I'll change the CGminer versions first.
And GUIminer is not helping the errors much.

[hammereditor]

hi,

i had the same issues with my 6870's

try going to start -> run -> cmd.exe and  typing the following (should say value saved)

setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1


solved all my issues with what your getting right now

if still a few hardware errors are thrown up, try adjusting intensity manually between 10-19 and seeing if theres a sweet spot (mine was around 17)

best of luck

Like I said before, adjusting the intensity and doing the 'setx' commands did not work.

[Brewins]

Okay this is what i use:
GUI-miner-scrypt
Download that and use the cgminer within it

create a .bat file with the following;

cgminer.exe --scrypt -o stratum+tcp://stratum.wemineftc.com:4444 -u Hammereditor.main -p 1357 -g 1 -w 256 --thread-concurrency 16000 --auto-fan --gpu-powertune -20 --auto-gpu -I 13

let me know if that works or not

[hammereditor]

Okay this is what i use:
GUI-miner-scrypt
Download that and use the cgminer within it

create a .bat file with the following;

cgminer.exe --scrypt -o stratum+tcp://stratum.wemineftc.com:4444 -u Hammereditor.main -p 1357 -g 1 -w 256 --thread-concurrency 16000 --auto-fan --gpu-powertune -20 --auto-gpu -I 13

let me know if that works or not

I am currently using GUIminer-scrypt, but I'm only seeing a 40% improvement in hardware errors.
So it's not helping a lot.

[Brewins]

have you tried the launch settings?

[hammereditor]

have you tried the launch settings?

What are these?