Building a 6990 Rig - Operating System

[mrb]

Linux is not an option for a 6990 rig. ATI has not released the Linux drivers yet.

Pretty damn important piece of information to know.

As stated numerous times, this is untrue. The 6990 is fully supported under Linux by the Catalyst 11.3 driver. I am mining with it!

The confusion comes from AMD's website that only lists Windows 7 drivers when selecting "HD 6990". Select "HD 6xxx" instead.

[Syke]

Linux is not an option for a 6990 rig. ATI has not released the Linux drivers yet.

Pretty damn important piece of information to know.

As stated numerous times, this is untrue. The 6990 is fully supported under Linux by the Catalyst 11.3 driver. I am mining with it!

The confusion comes from AMD's website that only lists Windows 7 drivers when selecting "HD 6990". Select "HD 6xxx" instead.

So if I go to http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx and select HD 6990 I see only Windows drivers. That's not fully supported, now is it? There are significant problems with the 11.3 driver, especially relating to OpenCL. So unless you plan on Open Sourcing your CAL miner, stop telling people that 11.3 is "fully supported".

[mrb]

I replied to you who stated "ATI has not released the Linux drivers yet" which is untrue:
- 11.3 was fixed to support the HD 6990 (previously aticonfig displayed "no supported device")
- There are people mining successfully, with poclbm and Diablo's miner (not only my miner), on Linux, on the HD 6990.

A glitch on the website doesn't mean it is unsupported. Like I said, select "HD 6xxx". You and I can argue about the meaning of "fully supported", but what I want to convey is that it actually works. Again, people are mining with it. You may want to try poclbm which runs faster than Dialbo's miner on the 6990.

[Veldy]

I'm getting between 450 and 500 mhash/s with my single 6990 in W7x64 with the latest Catalyst drivers and the latest AMD SDK and using poclbm-gui.  Anyone have any tips on how to improve my hashrate?  Should I have added anything to the 'Extra flags' box of poclbm-gui?

Pass -v -w 128 to your miner and you will see your 6990 increase without a doubt.  I am getting 333Mhash/s with my 6970 just installed yesterday.  I am not overclocking or underclocking anything as I don't want to generate more heat [so I left voltage locked] and changing clock speed for memory or core in either direction affected hash rate negatively.

I don't know if I'm doing this right, but in poclbm-gui I have two tabs open - one for each gpu of the 6990.  Each gpu is mining with deepbit.  Is there a way to just have tab, but have that tab using both gpus?

Did you setup the cards with the crossfire cable and setup crossfire in the motherboard BIOS?

[proudhon]

I'm getting between 450 and 500 mhash/s with my single 6990 in W7x64 with the latest Catalyst drivers and the latest AMD SDK and using poclbm-gui.  Anyone have any tips on how to improve my hashrate?  Should I have added anything to the 'Extra flags' box of poclbm-gui?

Pass -v -w 128 to your miner and you will see your 6990 increase without a doubt.  I am getting 333Mhash/s with my 6970 just installed yesterday.  I am not overclocking or underclocking anything as I don't want to generate more heat [so I left voltage locked] and changing clock speed for memory or core in either direction affected hash rate negatively.

I don't know if I'm doing this right, but in poclbm-gui I have two tabs open - one for each gpu of the 6990.  Each gpu is mining with deepbit.  Is there a way to just have tab, but have that tab using both gpus?

Did you setup the cards with the crossfire cable and setup crossfire in the motherboard BIOS?

Thank you.  Adding "-v -w 128" definitely made a difference.  I just have a single 6990, and a single 6990 has two GPUs, so I don't think I need to do anything with crossfire.

[Veldy]

Ah, for some reason I thought you built a rig with two 6990.  I looked at getting the 6990, but it won't fit in my existing case (the 6970 leaves about 1/4" to spare and creative cable management).  From what I have read, they had to do some trade offs to get the dual GPU to fit on that board, so you won't see double what the 6970 puts out in general, but it is cheaper than two 6970's in cross fire, so count your bitcoins one way or the other

[Syke]

Thank you.  Adding "-v -w 128" definitely made a difference.  I just have a single 6990, and a single 6990 has two GPUs, so I don't think I need to do anything with crossfire.

Can you get over 550 mhps?

[Veldy]

Thank you.  Adding "-v -w 128" definitely made a difference.  I just have a single 6990, and a single 6990 has two GPUs, so I don't think I need to do anything with crossfire.

Can you get over 550 mhps?

I am pulling 333Mhash/s with my 6970 for reference.  The 6990 is pretty much the same GPU, but two of them on the same board.  I also am curious what he is getting with the 6990.

[proudhon]

Thank you.  Adding "-v -w 128" definitely made a difference.  I just have a single 6990, and a single 6990 has two GPUs, so I don't think I need to do anything with crossfire.

Can you get over 550 mhps?

Since I added "-v -w 128 -f0" I've been getting ~620 mhps.  I've also noticed times when deepbit reports that I'm getting >700 mhps.  I haven't logged onto the mining machine to see if poclbm-gui reports the same, so I don't know if deepbit is misreporting my mhps.  





In this last screenshot you can see on the left some occasions where deepbit reports less than 600 mhps, but those were spans of time when I was actually working on the mining machine, and even moving the mouse around will sometimes drop the hash rate by 50 mhps; and I was using Internet Explorer and adjusting fan speeds.  If I leave the machine alone, it settles in at about 620 mhps.

My hunch is that deepbit is misreporting my hash rate.  There have been occasions when, from my laptop, I've seen deepbit report that I'm getting ~550 mhps, but at the same time, or over the same period of time, poclbm-gui reports that I'm getting ~620 mhps.  I'm not sure what to make of that.

[[Tycho]]

Since I added "-v -w 128 -f0" I've been getting ~620 mhps.  I've also noticed times when deepbit reports that I'm getting >700 mhps.  I haven't logged onto the mining machine to see if poclbm-gui reports the same, so I don't know if deepbit is misreporting my mhps. 

Deepbit can't see your exact mining speed, those numbers are guesstimated from number of submitted shares.
You can be more lucky in one minute and less lucky in another, but overall it's pretty close to real value.
Sometimes you may find a run of many shares in a few seconds - then the number on luck meter will be higher.

You can open advanced settings page and increase averaging window from 7 minutes to 30 minutes and this reported speed will be more precise. But since it depends on luck, it's not guaranted to be 100% accurate.

On the other hand, your reward depends on the speed reported by "luck meter", and not the real hashrate, because the number of submitted shares is what you get your money for :)

Looking at numbers in your history column i can say that your actual speed is ~622 MH/s, because those are calculated for all the block's lenght and thus more accurate.

EDIT: and you forgot to erase your login name in the upper right corner :)

[proudhon]

Since I added "-v -w 128 -f0" I've been getting ~620 mhps.  I've also noticed times when deepbit reports that I'm getting >700 mhps.  I haven't logged onto the mining machine to see if poclbm-gui reports the same, so I don't know if deepbit is misreporting my mhps. 

Deepbit can't see your exact mining speed, those numbers are guesstimated from number of submitted shares.
You can be more lucky in one minute and less lucky in another, but overall it's pretty close to real value.
Sometimes you may find a run of many shares in a few seconds - then the number on luck meter will be higher.

You can open advanced settings page and increase averaging window from 7 minutes to 30 minutes and this reported speed will be more precise. But since it depends on luck, it's not guaranted to be 100% accurate.

On the other hand, your reward depends on the speed, reported by "luck meter", and not the real hashrate, because the number of submitted shares is what you get your money for

Thanks.  That's good to know.

[ghost]

I just set up a dual 6990 miner and I'm not having much luck with performance. I've tried both Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.04. Currently using the 11.3 Catalyst drivers and 2.3 stream sdk.

Here are my current rates running poclbm:

Card 1 - core is at just over 300khashes/s, core 2 won't run (Verification failed, check hardware!)

Card 2 - just under 90khases/s, though I've seen this card exceed 200k per core

I may have to give Windows a shot until there is better driver support for the 6990s.

[proudhon]

I just set up a dual 6990 miner and I'm not having much luck with performance. I've tried both Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.04. Currently using the 11.3 Catalyst drivers and 2.3 stream sdk.

Here are my current rates running poclbm:

Card 1 - core is at just over 300khashes/s, core 2 won't run (Verification failed, check hardware!)

Card 2 - just under 90khases/s, though I've seen this card exceed 200k per core

I may have to give Windows a shot until there is better driver support for the 6990s.

I advise you go with Windows.  Much less of a headache.  I'm using 11.3 Catalyst drivers and Stream SDK 2.4 and at stock clocks I'm getting 307.5 Mh/s on each core.

[bahnfire]

I have a dual card (4 core) 6990 system going 24/7. I am seeing between 1200-1400MH/s on deepbit. I am running Windows 7 x84, 4GB RAM, 2 unmatched 6990s (XFX and a Sapphire), and a watercooling kit.

[chadqberry]

@bahnfire or anyone else who can help:
What is your setup with the dual 6990's w/ Win 7?  If you would please give me some details as I'm trying to get mine where it should be.
I'm also using Windows 7 with Dual 6990's.  Currently I have them in crossfireX, using the latest poclbm and catalyst 11.5.  I've played around with several clock speeds, etc but nothing really make a lot of difference.
I have all 4 cores mining, but (3) are mining at 325mhs while the 4th is only at 100mhs.  Can anyone offer me some advice?
I'm using -v -w 128 --platform=0 switches.
(without --platform=0 for some reason everytime I started the 2nd core the whole machine would lock up)
Thanks

[citizen]

@bahnfire or anyone else who can help:
What is your setup with the dual 6990's w/ Win 7?  If you would please give me some details as I'm trying to get mine where it should be.
I'm also using Windows 7 with Dual 6990's.  Currently I have them in crossfireX, using the latest poclbm and catalyst 11.5.  I've played around with several clock speeds, etc but nothing really make a lot of difference.
I have all 4 cores mining, but (3) are mining at 325mhs while the 4th is only at 100mhs.  Can anyone offer me some advice?
I'm using -v -w 128 --platform=0 switches.
(without --platform=0 for some reason everytime I started the 2nd core the whole machine would lock up)
Thanks

I was running 2 6990s in a machine with the sames results.  Cores 1-3 would work fine - getting about 320 mhash/s.  Core 4 would see around 100 mhash/s.  I too was using poclbm.  Has anyone gotten 2 6990s fully working in one machine with windows?  If so, could you tell us the details?

[bcpokey]

It's funny how this thread turned into a 6990 thread rather than an OS thread.

I had a quick question about the starting topic though heh. How much more stable is linux compared to windows in general? I'm currently running some dedicated mining boxes on windows and I am currently still working out the kinks of heat and whatnot, so I get about 1 crash per day.
Is that because of windows and I'd get better results in linux, or is my thermal / overclock too high and it's my fault? (running 3x 5870s in one box unspaced, OC'd to 975MHz, top card can getupwards of 90C, but I've also had occasional crashes in a spaced rig with temps closer to 80C).

[markietalkie]

Mining with one 6990, factory setting @GPU 830 MHZ, Memory 1250 MHz, 1.120V

Linuxcoin, Pheonix with poclbm

DEVICE 0: VECTORS AGGRESION=13 WORKSIZE=128 BFI_INT reporting 334Mhash/sec
DEVICE 1: VECTORS AGGRESION=13 WORKSIZE=128 BFI_INT reporting 323Mhash/sec

http://50.45.128.27/uimg.php?u=markietalkie



I hope I'm doing this right. If I'm doing it wrong, any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[655321]

I have a single 6970. In linux with worksize 128 and -v and overclocked to 950mhz, i only got 352Mhash.

Now I'm mining in Windows 7, with -w 128 -v and the like, overclocked to 950mhz and I am getting 412Mhash.

Go for Windows. The drivers are better and faster when it comes to the ATI cards.

[Wepp]

As others have stated, it really is a matter of personal preference. Or money, if you don't want to spend $$$ on Microsoft.
Personally, I'm using W7 x64 because this is my main personal computer. I'm getting a steady 375-385 MH/s per GPU with mild overclocking. I did have difficulty trying to reduce the Memory Clock, so I have that set at 1000Mhz and the Core Clock at 900Mhz.

If you do decide to go w/ Windows, I recommend using MSI Afterburner (it does work on non-MSI cards):
http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm

I use the latest Beta version with success.
https://i.imgur.com/yJSH0.png

Also, the fan on the 6990's is LOUD. Very loud. I mean it's so loud that I can hear it next door in my neighbor's apartment...
They also run quite hot. I fiddled quite a bit with the fan settings in MSI Afterburner to get the fan speed as low as possible. If you do not do this, and just let the hardware set the fan speed automatically, it will alternate between high and low speeds and probably annoy the piss out of you. Here are the settings I use to keep the fan at a very stable 65-67%:

https://i.imgur.com/MF4wD.png


I keep my interior room temperature around 75ºF. Your conditions may vary.