My initial Radeon HD 7970 mining benchmarks

[Zenitur]

I have a trouble with Radeon HD 5850 and 11.12 driver (with integrated AMD APP SDK 2.6). Linux. It is 360 MHash, but 11.10 + AMD APP SDK 2.5 gives 412 MHash. It can be a reason of slow speed of 7xxx.

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[teek]

We grabbed a 7970 today to play with.. still on the fence if I am just going to sell it or not.. but I can confirm that the numbers in this thread are in line with what we are getting..  I have only pushed it up to 1125mhz and that's about as far as I will take it and no overvolting, but I can confirm it seems to run quite nice there doing 670MH all day..

teek

[racerguy]

Doesn't seem worth it with those numbers, maybe an undervolt could improve the mhash/w.

[Starlightbreaker]

We grabbed a 7970 today to play with.. still on the fence if I am just going to sell it or not.. but I can confirm that the numbers in this thread are in line with what we are getting..  I have only pushed it up to 1125mhz and that's about as far as I will take it and no overvolting, but I can confirm it seems to run quite nice there doing 670MH all day..

teek

just wait until there's optimized miner & drivers.

[kano]

Doesn't seem worth it with those numbers, maybe an undervolt could improve the mhash/w.

Of course the initial price isn't really a major issue unless it is way above current hardware
It's the long term running cost (unless you don't expect to run it for very long)
Even these FPGA's are priced well above the ATI card prices for similar hash rates, but since the FPGA's use a fraction of the power, long term is the reasoning behind buying them.

[Mousepotato]

I've downloaded Sapphire's TriXX software and pushed the clocks even further, even managing to get the memory underclocked down to 150MHz:

	1150/150/1.17V	1175/150/1.17V	1200/150/1.17V	1225/150/1.175V	1250/150/1.2V
Idle                   :	118 W	118 W	118 W	118 W	118 W
Mining                 :	392 W	400 W	408 W	415 W	441 W
Difference_(gfx_card_W):	274 W	282 W	290 W	297 W	323 W
MH/s                   :	675MH/s	690MH/s	705MH/s	716MH/s	733MH/s
MH/J_(system)          :	1.72	1.73	1.73	1.73	1.66
MH/J_(gfx_card_only)   :	2.46	2.45	2.43	2.41	2.27
MH/$_(gfx_card_only)   :	1.23	1.25	1.28	1.30	1.33

Power draw reaches a tipping point around 1250MHz where the core voltage needs to start getting tweaked quite a bit for stable overclocks. I have a feeling that with more exotic cooling or insane fan speeds (I stuck with 60% which as I stated earlier is already quite obnoxious) that this card is sure to go much higher. The tool didn't let me lower the voltage either, which might be an interesting thing to do to increase efficiency.

1125Mhz still has the best efficiency with 2.51 MH/J.

Wow, that's pretty impressive!  733 MH/s is really close to what my 5970 puts down, albeit the 7970 is drawing over 100W more power at that hashing rate.  Still though, that's really good for a single GPU. I can't wait to see what a 7990 will do!

[DiabloD3]

Wow, that's pretty impressive!  733 MH/s is really close to what my 5970 puts down, albeit the 7970 is drawing over 100W more power at that hashing rate.  Still though, that's really good for a single GPU. I can't wait to see what a 7990 will do!

5970 does 300w stock on gaming, 7970 does 250w stock on gaming.  At ~300 watts, the 7970@1225mhz is doing 716 mhash, the 5970@725 on SDK 2.5 is doing 646, 671 on magical SDK 2.1. The 5970 has the advantage of being undervolted over the rest of the 58xx family and being able to run SDK 2.1.

Given that, I think AMD has produced a very impressive chip.

[Mousepotato]

Wow, that's pretty impressive!  733 MH/s is really close to what my 5970 puts down, albeit the 7970 is drawing over 100W more power at that hashing rate.  Still though, that's really good for a single GPU. I can't wait to see what a 7990 will do!

5970 does 300w stock on gaming, 7970 does 250w stock on gaming.  At ~300 watts, the 7970@1225mhz is doing 716 mhash, the 5970@725 on SDK 2.5 is doing 646, 671 on magical SDK 2.1. The 5970 has the advantage of being undervolted over the rest of the 58xx family and being able to run SDK 2.1.

Given that, I think AMD has produced a very impressive chip.

I'm not sure where you got that ”300W on gaming figure”, but I'm just going by my killowatt meter. At idle my system draws about 140W. Full out mining (810/200/1.050V) @ 740 MH/s it draws 350W, which tells me (using 1onevvolfs math of mining-idle=card wattage) my 5970 is pulling about 210W -- about 100W less than the 7970.

[project10]

Worth noting:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5261/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review/14

Other than being a bit larger than the 6970 the biggest difference is that AMD is now using the same higher performance phase-change TIM that they used on the 6990, which also means that AMD is highly recommending that the 7970 not be disassembled as the TIM won’t operate nearly as well once it’s been separated. Furthermore as we found out the specific TIM AMD is using is screen printed onto the GPU, so reapplying a new TIM in the same manner is virtually impossible.

[rastapool]

I'm not sure where you got that ”300W on gaming figure”, but I'm just going by my killowatt meter. At idle my system draws about 140W. Full out mining (810/200/1.050V) @ 740 MH/s it draws 350W, which tells me (using 1onevvolfs math of mining-idle=card wattage) my 5970 is pulling about 210W -- about 100W less than the 7970.

AFAIK, 5970 takes close to 50 W in idle, and 7970 takes 3 W.
7970@1225/150/1.175 = 415-118+3 = 300W@720 mhs
5970@810/200/1.050V = 350-140+50 = 260W@740 mhs

[DiabloD3]

Wow, that's pretty impressive!  733 MH/s is really close to what my 5970 puts down, albeit the 7970 is drawing over 100W more power at that hashing rate.  Still though, that's really good for a single GPU. I can't wait to see what a 7990 will do!

5970 does 300w stock on gaming, 7970 does 250w stock on gaming.  At ~300 watts, the 7970@1225mhz is doing 716 mhash, the 5970@725 on SDK 2.5 is doing 646, 671 on magical SDK 2.1. The 5970 has the advantage of being undervolted over the rest of the 58xx family and being able to run SDK 2.1.

Given that, I think AMD has produced a very impressive chip.

I'm not sure where you got that ”300W on gaming figure”, but I'm just going by my killowatt meter. At idle my system draws about 140W. Full out mining (810/200/1.050V) @ 740 MH/s it draws 350W, which tells me (using 1onevvolfs math of mining-idle=card wattage) my 5970 is pulling about 210W -- about 100W less than the 7970.

294 and 250 are the official AMD quoted figures for maximum draw on 5970 and 7970. Mining uses less power due to parts of the chip shutting off (texture units, etc), and I suspect GCN has superior power savings over 58xx in that area, if not, they're very similar (ie, 5970 doesn't draw 294 while mining at stock speeds, and 7970 doesn't use 250 by the same amount give or take).

[Megahalem1121]

Hello all, Got my 7970 but I'm a total noob to mining. Kiv's GUI miner won't work with the 7970 and I'd love to try Diablo3D's miner but can't figure it out, anyone willing to help me and I'll throw a few BTC their way when I can mine a few. Thanks.

[1onevvolf]

Chapter 4.16 of the AMD OpenCL programming guide has some optimization guidelines for GCN. This snippet explains why my vectorization experiment didn't help performance:

... "Vectorization is no longer needed, nor desirable." ...

Oh well, back to the drawing board! 

[Megahalem1121]

Chapter 4.16 of the AMD OpenCL programming guide has some optimization guidelines for GCN. This snippet explains why my vectorization experiment didn't help performance:

... "Vectorization is no longer needed, nor desirable." ...

Oh well, back to the drawing board! 

Hi, would you be able to help me set up my miner?

[bulanula]

Chapter 4.16 of the AMD OpenCL programming guide has some optimization guidelines for GCN. This snippet explains why my vectorization experiment didn't help performance:

... "Vectorization is no longer needed, nor desirable." ...

Oh well, back to the drawing board! 

Hi, would you be able to help me set up my miner?

What's in it for us ?

On another note, 7970 and I believe the rest of the failure that is CGN will be crap for mining as far as I can see.

More power usage than 5xxx series -> crap MH/s to power consumed ratio
Much more expensive than 5xxx series -> crap MH/s to price ratio

So much for AMD's "Fold and mine faster than ever with AMD App Acceleration powered by the unprecedented 28nm GCN Architecture."

I am waiting for Nvidia to finally step up their game and come to the mining table because they are totally missing out. Their integer performance just sucks !

Also, I am quite happy because my stock of 5870s is just getting more and more demand and valuation by the day with these CGN disappointments.

Roll on AMD, to your grave !

[kano]

Dare I state the obvious in reply to above ... the 7970 is a single GPU card ...

[DeathAndTaxes]

So much for AMD's "Fold and mine faster than ever with AMD App Acceleration powered by the unprecedented 28nm GCN Architecture."

There is nothing false about their statement.  It looks like the 7970 IS the fasted mining card.  AMD made no claims in terms of efficiency (MH/W or MH/$).

I mean it is like buying the fastest sports car and then saying the company lied because it costs more and has worse gas mileage than a Honda Civic.

[1onevvolf]

I've just found a forum post where someone reported stable performance with 0.939V core voltage at stock speeds. Stock voltage is 1.170V so if we ignore the other components of the card that would mean a ~20% power reduction (or more, due to reduced temps), and therefore a 20% efficiency gain as well (bringing the MH/J up from the 2.2-2.5 range to the 2.75-3.125 range). They also report a 7C temp drop which should let me reduce the fan speed from an annoying 60% to sub-50%, which is barely audible against the other case fans.

But this is all just theory until someone actually measures it, so off to find a BIOS that actually lets me lower the core voltage!

[DeathAndTaxes]

I've just found a forum post where someone reported stable performance with 0.939V core voltage at stock speeds. Stock voltage is 1.170V so if we ignore the other components of the card that would mean a ~20% power reduction (or more, due to reduced temps), and therefore a 20% efficiency gain as well (bringing the MH/J up from the 2.2-2.5 range to the 2.75-3.125 range). They also report a 7C temp drop which should let me reduce the fan speed from an annoying 60% to sub-50%, which is barely audible against the other case fans.

But this is all just theory until someone actually measures it, so off to find a BIOS that actually lets me lower the core voltage!

Actually power decreases at the square of voltage change.  A 20% undervolt is huge.  If true one would expect more like a 35% drop in power.  Now let me hedge that by saying dropping core voltage doesn't drop mem voltage so it is more like a 35% drop in CORE ONLY power.  Still overall power savings should be >20% for a 20% undervolt. 

If true that could make an undervolted 7970 (especially if someone can figure out how to undervolt the memory something I haven't been able to do on 5970) a hybrid between FPGA and GPU.

[Mousepotato]

So much for AMD's "Fold and mine faster than ever with AMD App Acceleration powered by the unprecedented 28nm GCN Architecture."

There is nothing false about their statement.  It looks like the 7970 IS the fasted mining card.  AMD made no claims in terms of efficiency (MH/W or MH/$).

I mean it is like buying the fastest sports car and then saying the company lied because it costs more and has worse gas mileage than a Honda Civic.

Nail, meet head.