HD 5970 under Windows 7 - Forcing 3D clocks

[commlinx]

I've just bought an HD5970 and the miner is working OK, although I'm getting about half the performance I expected. I realised it's because the clock is stuck at 400MHz for 2D mode instead of the default 725MHz for 3D mode. It's a little OT but I was hoping someone might have had the problem in the past and know the solution for the latest drivers and Catalyst 11.3?

A few suggested solutions I found Googling where creating a profile and changing the 2D setting to match 3D mode, that didn't work and I saw a few recent forum posts where others had the same problem so maybe a recent update stopped that working. I tried MSI Afterburner which also didn't work, and I found a few complaints about Flash / YouTube putting cards into 3D mode so tried a few Flash games and watching a YouTube video on the same monitor / GPU and that didn't alter the clock rate either.

[ataranlen]

Did you try changing the Power settings on your desktop to Performance instead of power saver?

[commlinx]

Thanks ataranlen, after trying various things I think this may have simply been a reporting issue in Catalyst Control Center that an extra reboot has fixed. Now when I fire up the miner it went to 750MHz, but the hash rate was the same as before, however if I clock it up to 850MHz I get about the 13% increase you'd expect.

However the 300M/hash at 850MHz is still about half what I was expecting based on what's posted on the GPU comparison Wiki. I might switch back to the puddinpop thread where I'd posted some more information to see if he has any ideas. It still only shows one GPU being used, but I saw a few things via Googling that hinted that's OK and the single GPU should be able to use the resources of the other, but must admit I have no real idea how GPU architectures work.

[goatpig]

Thanks ataranlen, after trying various things I think this may have simply been a reporting issue in Catalyst Control Center that an extra reboot has fixed. Now when I fire up the miner it went to 750MHz, but the hash rate was the same as before, however if I clock it up to 850MHz I get about the 13% increase you'd expect.

However the 300M/hash at 850MHz is still about half what I was expecting based on what's posted on the GPU comparison Wiki. I might switch back to the puddinpop thread where I'd posted some more information to see if he has any ideas. It still only shows one GPU being used, but I saw a few things via Googling that hinted that's OK and the single GPU should be able to use the resources of the other, but must admit I have no real idea how GPU architectures work.

It's half cuz there are 2 gpus, you need to run a miner per gpu oO"

[ataranlen]

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3878.0

This bit of software will help you in getting 2 separate miners (one on each of the 5970's two GPU cores) running without too much setup.

While it is true that for most games and such, CCC should manage to crossfire the dual cards and use the combined power to render from both cards. For Mining, you have to tell the miner to use both GPU's by running multiple instances of the miner and assign one miner to each GPU, or using the aforementioned mining software.

[commlinx]

Thanks I'll try that software in a moment. When I was getting about half the performance that was my initial thoughts so I tried one miner using -gpu=0 and another using -gpu=1 and when the second fired up it halved the speed of the first so total was about the same . Anyway will try that now, maybe I had some other option set incorrectly.

[goatpig]

You have to turn off crossfire in CCC. 5970 is by definition a crossfire device.

[ataranlen]

You have to turn off crossfire in CCC. 5970 is by definition a crossfire device.

I have crossfire enabled across 2 5970's, and I can still mine just fine across all 4 cores. Of course that could be thanks to my motherboard. It runs a special Fuzion chip for SLI/crossfire on a driver set called Hydralogix. But Crossfire is enabled in the CCC and Hydralogix is disabled, so I dunno.

Depending on the miner you are using, you need to use a different flag to set which GPU to use. One uses -d, one uses -gpu. check the readme that came with your particular miner.

[commlinx]

Thanks goatpig, I'd noticed that earlier while Googling as well but it seems like with the latest version of CCC that's not so easy. Anyway I'm not sure what I did wrong with my manual configuration but ataranlen's wizard software has done its magic and up to 540 M/hases .

Just noticed your followup ataranlen - I did use the readme with the distribution which said -gpu so who knows, but anyway your software looks cool so problem fixed and will stick with that

Edit - just noticed you didn't write the software, but many thanks for the pointer

[ataranlen]

Thanks goatpig, I'd noticed that earlier while Googling as well but it seems like with the latest version of CCC that's not so easy. Anyway I'm not sure what I did wrong with my manual configuration but ataranlen's wizard software has done its magic and up to 540 M/hases .

Just noticed your followup ataranlen - I did use the readme with the distribution which said -gpu so who knows, but anyway your software looks cool so problem fixed and will stick with that

Edit - just noticed you didn't write the software, but many thanks for the pointer

haha, yeah, I was gunna say, its not mine. You should totally tip the creator!(there's a bitcoin address in HIS signature on that link I gave you)

[commlinx]

Will do for sure .