3x7970 Mining Results.

[Roadhog2k5]

@Roadhog2k5: How did you manage to get the memory clocks so low? With my card I noticed that although the tool lets me select speeds down to 150MHz, it only actually respects speeds down to 975MHz, anything below that and it goes back to the default memory speeds.

I use msi afterbuner beta 10. Just set overclocking mode to 2, then set the slider to minimum for memory speed and hit apply. Then close and re open afterburner and repeat the previous step till you get your desired clock rate.

[1onevvolf]

I use msi afterbuner beta 10. Just set overclocking mode to 2, then set the slider to minimum for memory speed and hit apply. Then close and re open afterburner and repeat the previous step till you get your desired clock rate.

Many thanks! Took me a while to figure out that the overclocking mode was in the MSIAfterburner.cfg file, but its working like a charm.

[tacotime]

Wow, these cards are amazing in terms of mh/watt!

[Syke]

Wow, these cards are amazing in terms of mh/watt!

Huh? They're no better than the 5xxx series.

[sveetsnelda]

Wow, these cards are amazing in terms of mh/watt!

Huh? They're no better than the 5xxx series.

Are you sure you're not doing the math wrong?

Two of my 4 cards showed up today.  I've had these two installed for a couple of hours now.  Based on the measurements I've got so far, I'm confident that I can hit 2288 Mhash/sec at around 750 total system watts drawn from the AC side.  The machine I'm testing on right now has an i7 930 with 6 sticks of DDR3 (12Gb).  Everything is at stock clocks right now for testing.  This machine has a 160Gb Intel X25M SSD, water cooling with 3 120mm Scythe gentle typhoon fans.  It also has 3 additional 120mm fans spinning at low speeds.  Lastly, it has a 4GB Fibre Channel HBA connected to my SAN.  With two XFX 7970s in Crossfire, the machine idles at 170w on an Antec Signature 850 watt PSU.  This PSU is only around 83 percent efficient at this load.  At 3/4 load, it is only 85 percent efficient.  Here's what I've got so far:

Total idle wattage - 170w
Current settings -- 949mV, 950Mhz core/160Mhz memory
Mhash per card at these settings - 561Mhash/sec

Mining only on the primary card brings the wattage up by 118W (288W total)
Mining only on the secondary card brings the wattage up by 170W (340W total)
Mining on both cards brings the wattage up by 252W (422W total)

This means that I could add two more cards to this machine and it should draw 760-770 watts and get ~2244Mhash/sec.  That's 2.91 to 2.95 Mhash/watt.

Now remember that this machine is far from a dedicated miner.  A dedicated miner would easily shave 50 watts (or more) from idle power.  Combine this with a 80+ Gold rated PSU and you're easily above 3Mhash/Watt for a rig.  I'll bet I can come close to touching 3.25Mhash/watt on a dedicated rig.  Good luck getting that on a 5870/5970 rig.  My dedicated 5870 rigs are getting about 2.3Mhash/watt on 80+ Gold PSUs.  My dedicated 5970 rigs are getting about 2.5Mhash/watt.

If I can get a stable 3.25Mhash/watt tomorrow with 4 GPUs, That will be a 41 percent efficiency increase in comparison to my 5870 rigs...  on an un-optomized miner.  Even if these clock settings aren't stable and I end up with a 35 percent efficiency increase, this is substantial.

I've got a Seasonic 1250W PSU just begging to be tested tomorrow when the other two cards show up.

[Roadhog2k5]

Wow, these cards are amazing in terms of mh/watt!

Huh? They're no better than the 5xxx series.

Are you sure you're not doing the math wrong?

Two of my 4 cards showed up today.  I've had these two installed for a couple of hours now.  Based on the measurements I've got so far, I'm confident that I can hit 2288 Mhash/sec at around 750 total system watts drawn from the AC side.  The machine I'm testing on right now has an i7 930 with 6 sticks of DDR3 (12Gb).  Everything is at stock clocks right now for testing.  This machine has a 160Gb Intel X25M SSD, water cooling with 3 120mm Scythe gentle typhoon fans.  It also has 3 additional 120mm fans spinning at low speeds.  Lastly, it has a 4GB Fibre Channel HBA connected to my SAN.  With two XFX 7970s in Crossfire, the machine idles at 170w on an Antec Signature 850 watt PSU.  This PSU is only around 83 percent efficient at this load.  At 3/4 load, it is only 85 percent efficient.  Here's what I've got so far:

Total idle wattage - 170w
Current settings -- 949mV, 950Mhz core/160Mhz memory
Mhash per card at these settings - 561Mhash/sec

Mining only on the primary card brings the wattage up by 118W (288W total)
Mining only on the secondary card brings the wattage up by 170W (340W total)
Mining on both cards brings the wattage up by 252W (422W total)

This means that I could add two more cards to this machine and it should draw 760-770 watts and get ~2244Mhash/sec.  That's 2.91 to 2.95 Mhash/watt.

Now remember that this machine is far from a dedicated miner.  A dedicated miner would easily shave 50 watts (or more) from idle power.  Combine this with a 80+ Gold rated PSU and you're easily above 3Mhash/Watt for a rig.  I'll bet I can come close to touching 3.25Mhash/watt on a dedicated rig.  Good luck getting that on a 5870/5970 rig.  My dedicated 5870 rigs are getting about 2.3Mhash/watt on 80+ Gold PSUs.  My dedicated 5970 rigs are getting about 2.5Mhash/watt.

If I can get a stable 3.25Mhash/watt tomorrow with 4 GPUs, That will be a 41 percent efficiency increase in comparison to my 5870 rigs...  on an un-optomized miner.  Even if these clock settings aren't stable and I end up with a 35 percent efficiency increase, this is substantial.

I've got a Seasonic 1250W PSU just begging to be tested tomorrow when the other two cards show up.

Nice, you power figures for 7970 power draw are pretty close to mine.

[Syke]

Wow, these cards are amazing in terms of mh/watt!

Huh? They're no better than the 5xxx series.

Are you sure you're not doing the math wrong?

Let's see. I can get 1.7 GH/s at 625W with 3x5970. That's 2.72 MH/W.

You can get 1.122 GH/s at 422W. That's 2.66 MH/W.
Roadhog2k5 can get 1.65 GH/s at 624W. That's 2.64 MH/W.

2.72 > 2.66.
2.72 > 2.64.

This means that I could add two more cards to this machine and it should draw 760-770 watts and get ~2244Mhash/sec.  That's 2.91 to 2.95 Mhash/watt.

I'm not interested in any estimated power figures. Drop in 2 more cards and measure it for real and then post your numbers.

[Roadhog2k5]

Wow, these cards are amazing in terms of mh/watt!

Huh? They're no better than the 5xxx series.

Are you sure you're not doing the math wrong?

Let's see. I can get 1.7 GH/s at 625W with 3x5970. That's 2.72 MH/W.

You can get 1.122 GH/s at 422W. That's 2.66 MH/W.
Roadhog2k5 can get 1.65 GH/s at 624W. That's 2.64 MH/W.

2.72 > 2.66.
2.72 > 2.64.

This means that I could add two more cards to this machine and it should draw 760-770 watts and get ~2244Mhash/sec.  That's 2.91 to 2.95 Mhash/watt.

I'm not interested in any estimated power figures. Drop in 2 more cards and measure it for real and then post your numbers.

Are your 5970's at stock clocks too? If not why compare to my stock clock figure? Compare to my underclocked figure in the first post...

[sveetsnelda]

Let's see. I can get 1.7 GH/s at 625W with 3x5970. That's 2.72 MH/W.

Those are some pretty magical 5970s you've got there.

You can get 1.122 GH/s at 422W. That's 2.66 MH/W.
Roadhog2k5 can get 1.65 GH/s at 624W. That's 2.64 MH/W.

2.72 > 2.66.
2.72 > 2.64.

Again, this wasn't in a dedicated mining machine.  It has 4 cores, 6 DIMMs, a 4GB FC HBA, water cooling gear, and extra fans.  These draw significant power.  If I put just two of these cards in one of my dedicated rigs, it would be a little above 3 MH/W.  The extra DIMMs alone draw about 20 watts.  ...also, there aren't any miners that are heavily optimized for these cards.

I'm not interested in any estimated power figures.

I posted measurements and then posted figures based on those measurements.  This sentence was the equivalent of saying "yeah, I know that light bulb measured at 60 watts, but put two of those in there and see if it ACTUALLY measures 120 watts when you're done".

Drop in 2 more cards and measure it for real and then post your numbers.

Yep.  Let me go check with the 7970 fairy and see if she can get the cards to me tonight before the UPS guy shows up tomorrow.

[sveetsnelda]

Are your 5970's at stock clocks too? If not why compare to my stock clock figure? Compare to my underclocked figure in the first post...

^This.  If we're going to compare, let's compare "apples to apples".  Comparing to 5970's in general isn't realistic or accurate.  This is why I compared to 5870s.  When the 7990 comes out in March, THEN we can compare against 5970's with accuracy.

[Syke]

Are your 5970's at stock clocks too? If not why compare to my stock clock figure? Compare to my underclocked figure in the first post...

I don't see any underclocked numbers. I'd love to see your best MH/W for a complete system.

[Syke]

Let's see. I can get 1.7 GH/s at 625W with 3x5970. That's 2.72 MH/W.

Those are some pretty magical 5970s you've got there.

Nope, just a regular mining rig with 3 cards packed in directly next to each other. Not the best setup I know, but it works ok. I should pull one card out so the airflow is better and see if efficiency improves any.

If I put just two of these cards in one of my dedicated rigs, it would be a little above 3 MH/W.

Please do. Let's see what they can do!

[sveetsnelda]

Nope, just a regular mining rig with 3 cards packed in directly next to each other. Not the best setup I know, but it works ok. I should pull one card out so the airflow is better and see if efficiency improves any.

You'll certainly see a small improvement in efficiency, but that's never going to outweigh the additional overhead gained from having to use additional motherboards/CPUs/etc.  (This is obviously assuming we're talking about dedicated miners.  If you happen to have machines that are just always on anyways, it's not a bad idea.  This also assumes all of the PSUs are of similar grade.   )

Please do. Let's see what they can do!

Yeah, I'll do it tomorrow when the other two cards show up (so that I don't have to run through the same tests again).  I'm in the middle of hooking these up:   

[Roadhog2k5]

Are your 5970's at stock clocks too? If not why compare to my stock clock figure? Compare to my underclocked figure in the first post...

I don't see any underclocked numbers. I'd love to see your best MH/W for a complete system.

:|

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=57410.msg683755#msg683755

[sveetsnelda]

I think he is saying "not just undervolted", but underclocked too.  Underclocking at a given voltage doesn't really improve Mhash/watt, but dropping the clock usually allows you to drop the voltage even further.

The problem with doing this to a $550 dollar card though is that it'll take ages to pay off.  Fortunately, they'll hold their value for a while though since this was the beginning of AMD's "tock" cycle.

[Syke]

Are your 5970's at stock clocks too? If not why compare to my stock clock figure? Compare to my underclocked figure in the first post...

I don't see any underclocked numbers. I'd love to see your best MH/W for a complete system.

:|

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=57410.msg683755#msg683755

I don't see anything in there that is better than the 1.65 GH/s at 624W I quoted for you.

[DiabloD3]

Saving to porn folder.

[allinvain]

Holy crap! The GPU gods hath well endowed ye!

My guess is those are 5870's ..

[Mousepotato]

Let's see. I can get 1.7 GH/s at 625W with 3x5970. That's 2.72 MH/W.

You can get 1.122 GH/s at 422W. That's 2.66 MH/W.
Roadhog2k5 can get 1.65 GH/s at 624W. That's 2.64 MH/W.

2.72 > 2.66.
2.72 > 2.64.

And don't forget that your 5970s aren't even undervolted either.  The 7970s have to be undervolted to even get close to a 5970, and once they do so, they're down close to 200 MH/s compared to a 5970.  I wonder what kind of power a 5970 would use if you undervolt it and crank it down to 550 MH/s.  Hmm!

[Diapolo]

What Miner and what kernel was used here? I'm pretty interested in some numbers with my phatk_dia and Phoenix 1.7.3 ... anyone ?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=25860.0

Dia