How to push my 5870 harder?

[ssateneth]

Basically trying to squeeze every ounce of power out of this 5870. I don't directly pay for elecricity; I just pay a flat amount for utilities every month, which doesn't change. Anything here I can do?
Windows 7 x64 Ultimate (Aero disabled), Catalyst 11.9 release, GUIMiner v2011-08-24, Phoenix 1.6.2 PHATK2 VECTORS AGGRESSION=14. Worksize defualts to 256 and BFI_INT is on by default as well.

[NeonFlash]

Your 5870 card was stock clocked at 1080 Mhz?

You are getting a great speed out of your 5870 already. 500 Mhashes/sec is awesome

I have a Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5870 running at out of the box settings, 850 Mhz/ 1200 Mhz and I get around 370 Mhashes/sec hashing speed.

I am interested to know which utility you used to tweak the core clock/memory clock settings for your GPU?

What temperature does your GPU operate on? From the screenshot, it looks incredibly cool. Only 57 degrees with 99% GPU load!

My 5870 runs at around 80 degrees. What cooling mechanisms do you use?

[ssateneth]

Stock speeds are 850/1200 @ 1.163v. It's OC'd to 1080/330 @ 1.237v.
I used Sapphire Trixx to set clocks (MSI Afterburner acts weird with multi GPU, and AMD GPU Tool messes with timings)
Used to have a reference-style cooler on it. 85-90C @ 1015/330 1.2v. Fan broke. Replaced with Zalman VF3000A. The temperature you see there is correct.

All I'm trying to do is eek out a few more scraps of speed, but if I can't, I can live with it knowing I broke the 500 mhash wall.

[NeonFlash]

Ok, thanks for the details. What was the maximum speed you got at the stock ratings of 850/1200?

So, there's a danger of operating at 85 degrees after overclocking this card and with a reference cooler?

On a side note, I thought the Sapphire TriXX utility was developed only for the ATI Radeon HD 68xx and 69xx series of GPUs. Among the 58xx series of GPUs, only the 5850 was supported.

Please confirm if this is the tool you used for overclocking?

https://www.sapphireselectclub.com/ssc/TriXX/TriXX.aspx

[ssateneth]

Yes, thats the tool I use.

At stock speeds of 850/1200 @ 1.163v (some cards have other stock voltages. I have an MSI in the basement that's 1.125v stock) using the same miner but WORKSIZE=128 (it works better at higher memory speeds), I get 386.2 mhash. Temperatures fall to 53c GPU core and 54c on the VRM.

[NeonFlash]

I can get about 380 Mhashes/sec at stock clocks with poclbm kernel and following flags:

-v -w 128 -f 1

However the temperature is too high which is bothering. Did your Zalman Cooling fan help you in bringing down the temperature by 25 Degrees?

That's awesome! I want to get a good cooling mechanism setup before I proceed with overclocking.

How effective would the cooling be if I had case fans instead of a VGA specific cooler?

[johnyj]

My solution is get another 5870, as long as the motherboard have enough slots.

Overclocked cards have a much shorter life span, after they start to fail,  even you lower the voltage/frequency, it does not help

[jjiimm_64]

Basically trying to squeeze every ounce of power out of this 5870. I don't directly pay for elecricity; I just pay a flat amount for utilities every month, which doesn't change. Anything here I can do?
Windows 7 x64 Ultimate (Aero disabled), Catalyst 11.9 release, GUIMiner v2011-08-24, Phoenix 1.6.2 PHATK2 VECTORS AGGRESSION=14. Worksize defualts to 256 and BFI_INT is on by default as well.

you might not pay for elec, but you'll be buying a new card......  pull back on the throttle and let them cruise.  If you floor an engine long enough, it will fail.  this goes for gas, diesel and vid cards.

[DeathAndTaxes]

I have a Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5870 running at out of the box settings, 850 Mhz/ 1200 Mhz and I get around 370 Mhashes/sec hashing speed.

Even if you don't want to overclock KILL THAT MEMORY SPEED.   1GB or 2GB at 1200MHz gulps the juice down and all that electricity becomes heat.  If nothing else your card will run cooler, quieter, and use less electricity for same number of hashes.

If you do overclock the core having lower memory gives you some headroom.

[abracadabra]

use cgminer.

that is all.