Brand new 290x memory clock stuck

[OllieB2000]

Hi guys, I'm absolutely at a loss with this one so I'm reaching out in the hope that someone can help.

Basically I've just bought a MSI 290X Gaming and am having issues getting it to mine, hopefully it's something I'm doing wrong but I'd tried for hours now with no luck. As the topic title suggests the memory clock seems to be stuck at 150mhz when I try to mine anything giving me around 17khash or something stupid, I've seen many different numbers but nothing over 70.

The core clock goes up to the normal max (1030mhz) and so does the memory clock (1250mhz) while gaming, when attempting to mine however it just sits there at 150mhz. I've tried forcing the card to stay at the standard clocks but it still gets the ridiculously low hash rate.

Well there's my issue, hopefully one of you smart folks has seen this before or something similar and can show me the error of my ways.

Thanks

[1715608142]

1715608142

[TookDk]

Hi guys, I'm absolutely at a loss with this one so I'm reaching out in the hope that someone can help.

Basically I've just bought a MSI 290X Gaming and am having issues getting it to mine, hopefully it's something I'm doing wrong but I'd tried for hours now with no luck. As the topic title suggests the memory clock seems to be stuck at 150mhz when I try to mine anything giving me around 17khash or something stupid, I've seen many different numbers but nothing over 70.

The core clock goes up to the normal max (1030mhz) and so does the memory clock (1250mhz) while gaming, when attempting to mine however it just sits there at 150mhz. I've tried forcing the card to stay at the standard clocks but it still gets the ridiculously low hash rate.

Well there's my issue, hopefully one of you smart folks has seen this before or something similar and can show me the error of my ways.

Thanks

Maybe I can help (I am asuming you are using cgminer), can you post your configuration file (if you use one) and the bat file that launches the miner?

(I have been tuning and tweaking MSI R280X a lot)

[OllieB2000]

I've tried so many different configurations that I wouldn't know which to send, did start with this one however and modified it accordingly:

setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
cgminer --scrypt  -o stratum+tcp://stratum.dogehouse.org:3334 -u Weblogin.WorkerNAME -p Worker password --failover-only -o stratum+tcp://stratum3.dogehouse.org:993 -u Weblogin.WorkerNAME -p Worker password

I've tried forcing the gpu clock and fan with the batch file and that works but trying to set the memory clock through there doesn't. I'm also using this on a fresh install of Windows 8.1, not sure if that matters but I'll include it anyway.

[TookDk]

Make a screenshoot of you cgminer and post here.

Post the whole configuraiton file here.

Then lets take from there, it sounds like a configuration problem.

[OllieB2000]

https://i.imgur.com/Y7HKwmV.png


setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
cgminer --scrypt  -o stratum+tcp://stratum2.dogehouse.org:943 -u username -p password --failover-only -o stratum+tcp://stratum3.dogehouse.org:8080 -u username -p password -I 20
timeout 60

[TookDk]

I suggest that you try the following:
Use a configuration files for all your settings, that will make it more easy to troubleshoot

Make a file called, something like "miner280x.conf":

{
“pools” : [
{
"url" : "stratum+tcp://yourrpool1.com:3334",
"user" : "<USER>.<WORKER>",
"pass" : "<PASS>"
},
{
"url" : "stratum+tcp://yourpool2.com:3333",
"user" : "<USER>.<WORKER>",
"pass" : "<PASS>"
}
],
“intensity” : “20″,
“vectors” : “1″,
“worksize” : “256″,
“lookup-gap” : “2″,
“thread-concurrency” : “32765″,
“gpu-engine” : “1000″,
“gpu-memclock” : “1350″,
“gpu-powertune” : “20″,
“temp-cutoff” : “99″,
“temp-overheat” : “95″,
“temp-target” : “90″,
“expiry” : “120″,
“failover-only” : true,
“gpu-threads” : “1″,
“log” : “5″,
“queue” : “1″,
“scan-time” : “60″,
“scrypt” : true,
}

Then called the miner with:

cgminer.exe -c miner280x.conf"


Try to exclude the enviroment setup to begin with so you you only call the miner with your configuration file.

The following should force your GPU to i high clk freq:
 “gpu-engine” : “1000″,
“gpu-memclock” : “1350″,

- If you get the same result (or simular) try to decrease intensity (I know that a 290X should be able to run i = 20, but just for the trouble shot)

Report back

[bobasaurus]

Try uninstalling then re-installing the catalyst driver, unchecking all other weird programs it tries to install (including the catalyst control center), only selecting the VGA driver if possible.  Then run gpu-z to see your clocks, or afterburner to try overclocking. 

[sighle]

Try uninstalling then re-installing the catalyst driver, unchecking all other weird programs it tries to install (including the catalyst control center), only selecting the VGA driver if possible.  Then run gpu-z to see your clocks, or afterburner to try overclocking. 

Hey bob. What are the actual *required* option in the AMD catalyst package installation for mining? I was look at it last night because I'm running into some problems and it occurred to me that there seems to be a lot of fluff that comes along with the drivers and OpenCL software for Windows.

[OllieB2000]

I suggest that you try the following:
Use a configuration files for all your settings, that will make it more easy to troubleshoot

Make a file called, something like "miner280x.conf":

{
“pools” : [
{
"url" : "stratum+tcp://yourrpool1.com:3334",
"user" : "<USER>.<WORKER>",
"pass" : "<PASS>"
},
{
"url" : "stratum+tcp://yourpool2.com:3333",
"user" : "<USER>.<WORKER>",
"pass" : "<PASS>"
}
],
“intensity” : “20″,
“vectors” : “1″,
“worksize” : “256″,
“lookup-gap” : “2″,
“thread-concurrency” : “32765″,
“gpu-engine” : “1000″,
“gpu-memclock” : “1350″,
“gpu-powertune” : “20″,
“temp-cutoff” : “99″,
“temp-overheat” : “95″,
“temp-target” : “90″,
“expiry” : “120″,
“failover-only” : true,
“gpu-threads” : “1″,
“log” : “5″,
“queue” : “1″,
“scan-time” : “60″,
“scrypt” : true,
}

Then called the miner with:

cgminer.exe -c miner280x.conf"


Try to exclude the enviroment setup to begin with so you you only call the miner with your configuration file.

The following should force your GPU to i high clk freq:
 “gpu-engine” : “1000″,
“gpu-memclock” : “1350″,

- If you get the same result (or simular) try to decrease intensity (I know that a 290X should be able to run i = 20, but just for the trouble shot)

Report back

I've tried that but unfortunately I get the error

https://i.imgur.com/LQXwXQA.png

The different errors are me trying to save it in ANSI and Unicode after notepad complained and then I tried with notepadd++

Try uninstalling then re-installing the catalyst driver, unchecking all other weird programs it tries to install (including the catalyst control center), only selecting the VGA driver if possible.  Then run gpu-z to see your clocks, or afterburner to try overclocking. 

I'm actually on a fresh install for the 3rd time, I will try just the drivers again to check, are there any preferred versions I should be using. Also which version of AMD SDK should be installed?


Thanks for everyone's input so far. 

[TookDk]

try the same configuraiton without
“thread-concurrency” : “32765″, (just delete the whole line or set to "8192" instead)

If that do not work, then try to strip down the configuration file until it runs.
Should be able to work with only:


{
“pools” : [
{
"url" : "stratum+tcp://yourrpool1.com:3334",
"user" : "<USER>.<WORKER>",
"pass" : "<PASS>"
},
}
],
“scrypt” : true,
}

(If you don't specify a parameter then is the default value used)

[OllieB2000]

try the same configuraiton without
“thread-concurrency” : “32765″, (just delete the whole line or set to "8192" instead)

If that do not work, then try to strip down the configuration file until it runs.
Should be able to work with only:


{
“pools” : [
{
"url" : "stratum+tcp://yourrpool1.com:3334",
"user" : "<USER>.<WORKER>",
"pass" : "<PASS>"
},
}
],
“scrypt” : true,
}

(If you don't specify a parameter then is the default value used)

Same error I'm afraid, I'm at a loss to know what to do next. Everything that works fine for others is just not working when I attempt it.

[TookDk]

What puzzles me in screen shot: https://i.imgur.com/Y7HKwmV.png

Is that after GPU 0: is normaly temp and fan speed for the GPU:

GPU 0: 75.0C    2133RPM

That make me think that it might be a driver/comminication problem after all.

But you say that the card work perfect when gaming?
Have you tried anything heavy, like Combuster or a 3D game?

(you are not using PCIe raiser, right? and you power supply are good, just to exclude those things)

[sighle]

Ollie, what's your hardware setup? Do you have a monitor plugged into the card you're trying to mine with?

My first suggestion would be to do a full power drain. Shut down the PC, turn off the PSU, unplug it and hold the power button in for a few seconds to discharge your system. Plug it back in, turn on the PSU and boot the system. It should work. (My system has had that problem after hardware errors or dead cards from overclocking too much.)

If it doesn't, you want to eliminate as many factors as possible. If you have it on a riser, plug it directly into the MoBo for testing.

You also want to check your power settings and make sure that you don't have your card set to idle when it's not in use.
Some cards will go into idle mode when they're not "in use" and will only get about 10% of the hash power that they should be getting normally.
(However, this is probably not your issue.)

[atp1916]

I had this same exact problem with my 290s, and it turned out that cgwatcher was the culprit. 

I found this out by running the miner directly from a batch file and all 4 cards spooled up fine.  Turned on the miner through cgwatcher, no dice.  So i deleted the profile, made a new one.. same problem.  So i put in a fresh cgwatcher folder, and the darn things ran.

I will also recommend you manually save your cgwatcher profiles into a text file.  Don't bother porting the profiles.dat file out, that was one of the issues.

[OllieB2000]

Ok to try and answer some of those questions, firstly my specs are as follows.

Machine 1:

i5 3570k @ Stock
z77 Sabertooth
16gb RAM
Xigmatec 700w psu

Machine 2:

AMD Phenom 2 X6 @ 4ghz
Asus M4A89TD Pro
8gb RAM
Corsair HX650

The 290X is currently in the AMD machine plugged directly into the board (don't have a riser) as I had no luck in the Intel one, I've been trying this with the monitor attached as when it's not the card shuts down so I need to make a dummy plug at some point.

I've tried with 13.12 WHQL and 13.11 Beta drivers on both windows 7 and 8.1 and still the same issue, I've also been installing the AMD SDK 2.9 as someone else told me I needed. Something strange happened on Windows 7 however, to begin with it would actually boost the memory clock up to the correct value but the driver would crash after like maybe 5-10 seconds. Now for some reason I'm back to the old problem of being stuck at 150mhz.

atp1916 I wish I was using cgwatcher and that was the culprit but I'm just trying to run this using a batch file. I've tried using the config method but I'm getting an error that reads "cgminer: --config: JSON decode of file 'mine.conf' failed.

sighle I actually tried the method of switching everything off and draining the power which seemed to get the card working again for a brief period of time before the AMD driver crashed and now I'm back to where I started.


Seems to be that the card will actually work briefly before the driver crashes and then I'm stuck at 150mhz until I power off and start again. I guess I'll have to try and find a config that doesn't stress the card too much but that's going to be quite difficult as I'm guessing the defaults aren't maxing it out.

[sighle]

A couple things:

You shouldn't need a dummy plug for 290x so don't bother with that.

The SDK software is of no use to you if you're using Catalyst 13.11 Beta or 13.12.

If you're eliminating all peripheral components(including other video cards) and risers, doing a power drain, wiping your drivers with either Display Driver Uninstaller or a sweeper and reinstalling and still having problems, you might have something corrupted in your OS or a MoBo issue.

Both of those issues would typically give BSODs.

If you're not getting any crashes, just weird hash rates, try a different cgminer version. Don't forget to eliminate cgwatcher for now and don't use GUIminer ever. 

[OllieB2000]

A couple things:

You shouldn't need a dummy plug for 290x so don't bother with that.

The SDK software is of no use to you if you're using Catalyst 13.11 Beta or 13.12.

If you're eliminating all peripheral components(including other video cards) and risers, doing a power drain, wiping your drivers with either Display Driver Uninstaller or a sweeper and reinstalling and still having problems, you might have something corrupted in your OS or a MoBo issue.

Both of those issues would typically give BSODs.

If you're not getting any crashes, just weird hash rates, try a different cgminer version. Don't forget to eliminate cgwatcher for now and don't use GUIminer ever.  

Thanks for the tips, I shall give those things a try and see how I get on.

Update: I seem to be getting on ok now, not great but 800 k/h. I started with 1030mhz and intensity 13 getting me 500 k/h, I then lowered my gpu clock to 950 and upped the intensity to 20 getting me 800 k/h. Not sure what I can do next but I guess there's going to be a lot of messing around to get the kind of speeds that others are seeing with their 290Xs.

Thanks to everyone for their input, probably would have given up a while back otherwise.

[TookDk]

Great! 800 Kh/s is not too bad.
Good place to start, now that you got the fundamentals right.

It takes some tweaking to find the sweetspot.

[sighle]

A couple things:

You shouldn't need a dummy plug for 290x so don't bother with that.

The SDK software is of no use to you if you're using Catalyst 13.11 Beta or 13.12.

If you're eliminating all peripheral components(including other video cards) and risers, doing a power drain, wiping your drivers with either Display Driver Uninstaller or a sweeper and reinstalling and still having problems, you might have something corrupted in your OS or a MoBo issue.

Both of those issues would typically give BSODs.

If you're not getting any crashes, just weird hash rates, try a different cgminer version. Don't forget to eliminate cgwatcher for now and don't use GUIminer ever.  

Thanks for the tips, I shall give those things a try and see how I get on.

Update: I seem to be getting on ok now, not great but 800 k/h. I started with 1030mhz and intensity 13 getting me 500 k/h, I then lowered my gpu clock to 950 and upped the intensity to 20 getting me 800 k/h. Not sure what I can do next but I guess there's going to be a lot of messing around to get the kind of speeds that others are seeing with their 290Xs.

Thanks to everyone for their input, probably would have given up a while back otherwise.

I'm glad you got it working! What did you do that solved the hashrate problem?

Also, I may be able to help you with tweaking if you like. What brand/model of 290x do you have?

[OllieB2000]

I'm glad you got it working! What did you do that solved the hashrate problem?

Also, I may be able to help you with tweaking if you like. What brand/model of 290x do you have?

I think what went most of the way towards solving the problem was trying your suggestion of powering everything off completely, this helped me to realise that my card actually did work if only for a second. I then tried putting much less stress on it (by taking the intensity down to 13) and working my way back up from there.

I have the MSI Gaming OC Edition with the twin frozr cooling and I'm currently using the following in my batch file:

cgminer --scrypt -o stratum+tcp://stratum.netcodepool.org:4093 -u user -p pass -I 20 -T

My core clock was being throttled for a while at 850mhz @ 94c but I've since moved the pc downstairs which is much cooler, now I can get the clock up to 950mhz @ 86c without much problem. I'm hovering around the 850 k/h figure right now but I feel there's more to be had out of it yet with a bit of tweaking the config. Unfortunately that's where my skills fall a little short.

Also I'm thinking of moving that machine out to the garage tomorrow which I've read other people have done without issue, the rather chilly UK weather should drop the temps another 5-10 degrees which should allow me to go up to or maybe above 1000mhz core clock.

[TookDk]

As you properly have realized you have a serious temperature problem.
I would recommend that you keep your average temperature under 80C (My target temp is 75-78C, and my cut-off temp is 85C).

You can properly get away with running the rig at 85C, but that will significantly reduce the lifetime of you graphics cards.
It is NOT recommended.

1-2 extra fans can normal do the job to bring down the temp.

[OllieB2000]

As you properly have realized you have a serious temperature problem.
I would recommend that you keep your average temperature under 80C (My target temp is 75-78C, and my cut-off temp is 85C).

You can properly get away with running the rig at 85C, but that will significantly reduce the lifetime of you graphics cards.
It is NOT recommended.

1-2 extra fans can normal do the job to bring down the temp.

Yeah that's a good point, I have adjusted some settings and get about 850 k/h @ 80c. It's not maxing the card out but then again I can at least mine 24/7 with reasonable temps.

[aigeezer]

A couple things:

You shouldn't need a dummy plug for 290x so don't bother with that.

The SDK software is of no use to you if you're using Catalyst 13.11 Beta or 13.12.

If you're eliminating all peripheral components(including other video cards) and risers, doing a power drain, wiping your drivers with either Display Driver Uninstaller or a sweeper and reinstalling and still having problems, you might have something corrupted in your OS or a MoBo issue.

Both of those issues would typically give BSODs.

If you're not getting any crashes, just weird hash rates, try a different cgminer version. Don't forget to eliminate cgwatcher for now and don't use GUIminer ever.  

Thanks for the tips, I shall give those things a try and see how I get on.

Update: I seem to be getting on ok now, not great but 800 k/h. I started with 1030mhz and intensity 13 getting me 500 k/h, I then lowered my gpu clock to 950 and upped the intensity to 20 getting me 800 k/h. Not sure what I can do next but I guess there's going to be a lot of messing around to get the kind of speeds that others are seeing with their 290Xs.

Thanks to everyone for their input, probably would have given up a while back otherwise.

I didn't notice this thread when it was fresh, but I was having similar problems both then and now with a 290X. As far as I can tell, the memory clock throttle-down to 150 occurs after a "driver has crashed and has recovered" message. From then on, cgminer and sgminer commands to set memory clock speeds are ignored. You can tune all the other arguments, intensity and so forth, and get more-or-less expected results, possibly not noticing that the memory clock has stayed locked at 150.

A reboot always seems to fix the problem until the next "recovery". Sometimes I may be tweaking settings and it is obvious that something has happened. Other times the mining program might become unstable while unattended, with no eyes to see the (faux) recovery message. As far as I can tell, the issue is present for all the recent AMD driver versions, including the latest 14.2 beta.

OllieB2000 - my interpretation of what is happening may not seem consistent with the breakthrough you reported back in January. I could just be wrong or perhaps your detuning prevented any further failures and their "recovery" messages, along with their memory clock locking. Do you have any new insights on the phenomenon? Anyone?

Thanks!

[m0nz]

try the same configuraiton without
“thread-concurrency” : “32765″, (just delete the whole line or set to "8192" instead)

If that do not work, then try to strip down the configuration file until it runs.
Should be able to work with only:


{
“pools” : [
{
"url" : "stratum+tcp://yourrpool1.com:3334",
"user" : "<USER>.<WORKER>",
"pass" : "<PASS>"
},
}
],
“scrypt” : true,
}

(If you don't specify a parameter then is the default value used)

This is completely on point. Thank you.  I have 290x's and when i switched the crashed gpu down to 8192 tc, it was immediately fixed.

Thanks.

[m0nz]

A couple things:

You shouldn't need a dummy plug for 290x so don't bother with that.

The SDK software is of no use to you if you're using Catalyst 13.11 Beta or 13.12.

If you're eliminating all peripheral components(including other video cards) and risers, doing a power drain, wiping your drivers with either Display Driver Uninstaller or a sweeper and reinstalling and still having problems, you might have something corrupted in your OS or a MoBo issue.

Both of those issues would typically give BSODs.

If you're not getting any crashes, just weird hash rates, try a different cgminer version. Don't forget to eliminate cgwatcher for now and don't use GUIminer ever.  

Thanks for the tips, I shall give those things a try and see how I get on.

Update: I seem to be getting on ok now, not great but 800 k/h. I started with 1030mhz and intensity 13 getting me 500 k/h, I then lowered my gpu clock to 950 and upped the intensity to 20 getting me 800 k/h. Not sure what I can do next but I guess there's going to be a lot of messing around to get the kind of speeds that others are seeing with their 290Xs.

Thanks to everyone for their input, probably would have given up a while back otherwise.

I didn't notice this thread when it was fresh, but I was having similar problems both then and now with a 290X. As far as I can tell, the memory clock throttle-down to 150 occurs after a "driver has crashed and has recovered" message. From then on, cgminer and sgminer commands to set memory clock speeds are ignored. You can tune all the other arguments, intensity and so forth, and get more-or-less expected results, possibly not noticing that the memory clock has stayed locked at 150.

A reboot always seems to fix the problem until the next "recovery". Sometimes I may be tweaking settings and it is obvious that something has happened. Other times the mining program might become unstable while unattended, with no eyes to see the (faux) recovery message. As far as I can tell, the issue is present for all the recent AMD driver versions, including the latest 14.2 beta.

OllieB2000 - my interpretation of what is happening may not seem consistent with the breakthrough you reported back in January. I could just be wrong or perhaps your detuning prevented any further failures and their "recovery" messages, along with their memory clock locking. Do you have any new insights on the phenomenon? Anyone?

Thanks!

In case I missed the point directed to you as well, the trick for me was to turn thread concurrency off or to 8192, change I=13 and run... you should get about half your normal - mine is ~480ish... then i put tc back to 32765 and I=20 and i'm cooking back at full speed. Weird why it works, but it does.  NOW, i haven't done it many times just today.  The other thing that worked for me once was to enable crossfire and then disable it... another thing worth the try.