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UPDATE 23.1.2014:  summary of the analysis in #103
Quickstart 1: "running cool" high efficiency optimum in #37. My favorite. We call it (C).    Quickstart 2: "running hot" optimum in #67. We call it (B2).
N.B.: If you have never flashed a BIOS, read the whole thread. It's all your own risk. You might brick your card. But tears are nice, too, sometimes.
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UPDATE 3.2.2014: Table of contents (only important pages):

Tweaking a 7970 xfx for more khash with less electricity. Your own custom BIOS!
No: Not simply more khash - that's easy. But more khash for less expenses.

#5 factory bios, overclocking with cgminer; no undervolting, no BIOS flashing - you can do this, for sure, everyone can 622 khash with 277W
#7 factory bios: CC, MC, VDDC for 7 settings - info, understand, decide
#9 undervolting success! Manual how to do it. But the settings are still unstable.
#13 stable settings. Through undervolting by 0.140 Volts, I save 10% electricity and gain 12% hashrate.
#25 How to measure Watt of only the GPUs. Manual
#28 Sweet spot was found. Amazing 3.78 khash/Watt. Lower memclock than engine clock! 578khash/s at only 153W
#34 Summary so far for another 7970 XFX DD (FX-797A-TDFC) owner.
#36 First published BIOS. Works perfectly with good cgminer settings, but crashes with bad cgminer settings.
#37 "THE" posting. Start here if you are in a hurry. - do not not read it.
#39 cgminer.conf - perfect settings, and with support mining for drakoin. Yes, you can pay a bit for my work.
#45 Second BIOS published. Enables undervolting of previously volt-locked GPU. Stable settings.
#50 (at end of the posting) pool settings for support mining - help drakoin to continue this
#56 Warnings explained. Your GPU can get destroyed by this!
#64 Watercooling (also #58 #68 #92)
#67 TheStilt + drakoin-undervolting + psw-kernel: 720 khash/s at 275W
#73 why underclocking?
#80 CELEBRATION :-)
#87 Some cards know their Ampere & Watt! Mine doesn't :-(
#91 Useful table, perhaps helps to find other sweet spots?
#93 long debate comes to an end: We were both right!
#98 Help me to find this hardware: Clamp + Board + USB
#99 Mathematical analysis of profitability-of-coin versus khash/s per Watt - Ferengi look here
#101 Numerical results: Costs & khash/s for 5 settings
#102 Depending on the market situation / profitability, choose the right settings!
#103 SUMMARY: HOW TO CHOOSE WHICH SETTINGS?

#108 TheStilt mod5: Elpida only!
#123 Checklist if it doesn't work as you expect.


#104 Donate. Give a tip. Leave some encouragement. Give me coin dust. Pay me for this work here.
#115 Or let one of your rigs run for me for an hour, a day, a week, a lifetime.

You will save tons of electricity, believe me. Think of me in 1 month, in 6 months, in 1 year, in 2 years.  


Happy mining!
(CLICK)


---
 P.S.: Let's spread the word, imagine the altcoin network starts saving 1/4, 1/3 or even 1/2 of electricity.

(use these graphics by pressing "quote")

END OF Table of contents. Time warp into the past:

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ORIGINAL 1.1.2014 "undervolting 7970 XFX with VBE7 & ATIWinFlash":
It started all with a question. I had well prepared it, but it was just a question:
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Do you have successfully undervolted an XFX card?
I am collecting all information I can before that open brain surgery :-)

It is a 7970 XFX DD (FX-797A-TDFC) with 68.6% ASIC quality.

Please help me avoid the stupidest mistakes. This is my preparation:

• GPU-Z for reading the ROM
• VBE7 for editing the ROM
• ATIWinfFlash for writing the ROM

Some questions:

• Why is the ROM that I exported with GPU-Z twice as big as the ROM inside the card? Problem?
• My main goal is setting another VOLTAGE, because cgminer cannot change voltages on this card (change clocks is easy). But still: Why not also change the engine-clock&memclock to what works best for me. Opinions?
• Which VOLTAGE do you suggest?

(How to calculate/guess an ideal voltage from ASIC quality and clockspeeds?)

Thanks a million!
  Happy New Year!

P.S.: HAVE YOU DONE THIS BEFORE?
Do I simply boot into Windows, and do the ATIWinFlash, or do I prepare the card somehow?

Thanks for your answer. I take your warning seriously. More research before I do the action :-)

Oh, sorry to hear that. Could you repair it?  Perhaps it's only the HDMI, try the DVI? Try booting with another GPU card, then flash the old BIOS back.

Thanks for the link.

Seemingly people just don't care what make and model it is. Interesting that you can flash an XFX with a gigabyte ROM.
It's not what I would try though. BIOS is not only about clocks and voltages.
I would like to keep my XFX ROM, just tweak a few values, with VBE7.


We pay 0.35 dollarcents per kWh, second highest in Europe, because solar power and wind energy is highly subsidized here, and all electricity customers have to pay for the "energy shift" to happen. It got us quite far already, over 20% are renewables. Slightly different political concept than funding a huge army to keep energy prices low :-) But what a coinmining paradise the US and Canada must be, at 30% of our kWh-prices.

Electricity costs eat up almost half of my profits.
Every Watt I can save, is really important.

It's a closed rig, so temperature builds up easily. Higher temperatures eat more Watt over-proportionally (so hotter with more khash might even get me less profit out), and high temperatures will destroy the hardware faster.

That's why I am keeping the temperature at ~74C.
With 277W, I still get 622 khash with these settings (after literally days of optimizing):


please please please when publishing your khash optimized settings, always mention the WATT of your settings, and the TEMPERATURE, thx.

And, for your own sake: Read the SCRYPT-README.txt in \cgminer\, it's what gave me ideas how to tune my card. Every card seems to be different.

Thanks a lot, Vizakenjack.
Do you also have the XFX R7970 DD (FX-797A-TDFC ver 6.0)? Mine has ASIC quality 68.6%.

Oh, cool Thanks. Finally a value :-)

Which improvements did that bring?


How hot, and how much Watt?


I am not sure that I want to afford the temperature resulting from such high clockspeeds. And before I get the riser cable, the cards are not venting well. But thanks - I can try, and that's easy because I can do that from cgminer later.

Please tell me more about that BIOS, what was the original, which settings did you change?

When I read my ROM into VBE7, I get the following values:

_______________________	________	________	________	___________________
State 0 - Boot	#0	CC 925	MC 1375	VDDC 1175 changeable
State 1 - Performance	#1	CC 300	MC 150	VDDC 850 un-changeable
State 1 - Performance	#2	CC 501	MC 1375	VDDC 950 un-changeable
State 1 - Performance	#0	CC 925	MC 1375	VDDC 1175 changeable
State 2 - UVD	#2	CC 501	MC 1375	VDDC 950 un-changeable
State 2 - UVD	#0	CC 925	MC 1375	VDDC 1175 changeable
State 3	#3	CC 300	MC 150	VDDC 850 un-changeable

What do you suggest for the updated ROM?

Thanks thanks THANKS  

SUCCESS!
Even a cheap XFX 7970 can be pushed to performance, and without burning it on 90C temperature!
This is not khash-optimization, but khash/Watt - optimization. So below 700khash/s, I am already very happy.


With VBE7 ... I changed only "State 0 - Boot":

Original:	#0	CC 925	MC 1375	VDDC 1175
MyChange:	#0	CC 750	MC 1050	VDDC 1025

Flashing the BIOS (with atiwinflash) took much more than 1 minute, and the progress bar got stuck at 20% and didn't move for ages - it was terrifying! Finally, it said: Successful; then reboot, no driver update necessary! New cgminer measurements (measured Watt are differences enable/disable, on top of small power for idle card):

The improvement is amazing:

Before:	1.175V	CC  907	MC 1450	72C	fan 75%	267W	619khash/s
1stOptim:	1.025V	CC 1000	MC 1585	72C	fan 59%	222W	691khash/s

So on the same temperature, with less fan speed, I get 12% more khash/s for 17% less electricity.
khash/Watt went up from 2.32 to 3.11 - that's like getting 4 cards coins value out of 3 cards power costs.

YIEHAH!

Now I let it run for a night, to see how stable it is.

This is the way:
0) Reboot, clean system, e.g. no cgminer started.
1) With CPU-Z read out the original ROM, make several copies.
2) With VBE7 change voltage & clockspeeds, save to new filename.
3) With ATIwinflash program the modified ROM, shiver for more than a minute. Reboot.
4) Tweak, fiddle, optimize. A Watt-meter costs 9 euros.

Disclaimer: At your own risk. Inform yourself well.
I spent 2 days of research before I dared to do this. But:

YIPPIEH, I DID IT.
 

P.S.: If you find this useful, you can tip me at: BTC 15UipUK3kGcArJzRyHbVKrwG5TsqYi1b9N

Can you push that ram a bit more? Hash rate tends to be proportional to ram clock, if the bios doesn't introduce higher latencies at higher clocks. Mine can handle up to 1800 Mhz (unstable) and 1750 (24h solid).

Could you post a screenshot of GPU-z "Sensors" tab, scrolled down to the bottom, while mining? Thanks.

Edit: with undervolting, you're pulling ~700 Kh/s out of a XFX? Hmm...

Almost there. Note to self: Don't try to tweak two cards at the same time  

The above 7970-XFX card (7970 XFX DD  {FX-797A-TDFC} with 68.6% ASIC quality)
seems stable now, 24 hours running without problems on these settings:


performing 692 khash/s at 240W above disabled GPU. 2.88 khash/Watt.
Instead of the 2.32 khash/Watt (already optimized but) with stock voltage 1.175 Volts.

Through undervolting by 0.140 Volts, I save 10% electricity and gain 12% hashrate.

   Juhu!



sure, is this what you are looking for? Why? What is your concern?


P.S.: If you find this useful, you can tip me at: BTC 15UipUK3kGcArJzRyHbVKrwG5TsqYi1b9N

I suggest try value like these....I'm pretty happy with them.....temperature and fan are quite and power usage is about 180W x card.
Voltage is ok on my cards but on yours could be different .....you have to try go down with Voltage until it doesn't work anymore.
I suggest using MSI afterburner to find best setting and yhen flash them with atiFlash+VBE7


GPU 1: 625.1 / 629.2 Kh/s | A:26823  R:231  HW:0  U:31.28/m  I:13
58.0 C  F: 51% (2055 RPM)  E: 915 MHz  M: 960 Mhz  V: 0.981V  A: 99%  P: 0%

Yes are my value (when i see them i did't belive myself).

My rigs are 3x VTX HD 7970 X-Ediction and 4x Sapphire R9 280x Dual-X.

The "U:" not sure what is....it is reported when u are mining and click "G" for modify Video cards setting.

I would point out that 6 month ago i could not get these value.Recently I reinstall the rig with new drivers and cgminer 3.7.2.

try to put Engine to 900 and Mem to 910, then you go up with Mem 920, then 930 ecc...you should find a spot where you are about 600 Khash/s.



280x rig is about 760 Watt
7970 rig is about 600 Watt

In the photo I' m not using 900 how engine but a little more....900 is just a point I use to start.

Hope this can help.

Here's how I do it on several XFX 280X :

1. After testing many different frequencies I found that my cards run best at 1050 core and default 1500 memory giving about 730kH/s. Yes some of them might be able to run at slightly higher frequencies but I think it is best to liming power consumption and temperatures instead of going for max performance.
2. Alter the voltage with Sapphire Trixx until I find a voltage at which the cards are stable (at 1050@1500), usually 1.15V, but one of the cards required 1.175V
3. Edit the bios and flash the cards with the modified bios using atiflash (under DOS).

My cards consume about 230W each and run at steady 730kH/s. Temperature is about 72-73C with fan at up to 80%. Note that every card is different and I found some of them running at higher or lower actual voltage at the same bios value. Also I found that some cards tend to show higher temperature readings without actually consuming more power, so this is definitely caused by differences in the quality of the cooling or how it contacts with the GPU.

If you found the above useful please donate!!