Phoenix - Efficient, fast, modular miner

[luffy]

Veldy and all the other co-miners,
i agree that phoenix has this sirious connection problem now and then. and i want also to go to poclbm (just for now)
but my problem is how to get phatk kernel to work without phoenix?
phatk is faster than poclbm and not just by 1-2MH (for example from 300 goes to 310 with 5850 and from 360 goes to 380 with 5870)

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[Veldy]

Thanks!

Using: -k phatk DEVICE=0 VECTORS BFI_INT FASTLOOP=false WORKSIZE=256 AGGRESSION=13 on a single 5830 and get 312MH/sec
 

I have always found phatk to be slower.  Why did you choose to use it?  Also, why WORKSIZE=256?  I have also found 128 to be faster on the 58xx and 69xx series.

I am using poclbm at the moment getting 0.2% stale rate [not using BTCMine at the moment though].

[dikidera]

Is this a bug i experienced?

When using these arguments

-k phatk DEVICE=0 VECTORS BFI_INT WORKSIZE=128 AGGRESSION=6 FASTLOOP=false

Specifically aggression 6 i see some weird hopping between 293.60 Mhash/s to 314 Mhash/s. When i put it back to aggression 9 it works ok at 290Mhash/s

Is this a bug?

[Veldy]

Veldy and all the other co-miners,
i agree that phoenix has this sirious connection problem now and then. and i want also to go to poclbm (just for now)
but my problem is how to get phatk kernel to work without phoenix?
phatk is faster than poclbm and not just by 1-2MH (for example from 300 goes to 310 with 5850 and from 360 goes to 380 with 5870)

I didn't get those results.  I see significantly slower results from phatk on my 6970 [I haven't tried on my 5850 ... but I am using poclbm to mine with now and not phoenix, so I won't be testing until an improved version of Phoenix is available].

[btcLeger]

I am getting 245 rejected shares with 4140 shares, from a HD5870 . I am wondering is it normal to have such high stale shares? EDIT: i am with btcmine pool

I also had >7% stale shares today at btcmine. That was during the block with 2446260 round shares this morning. Usally I have < 3% at btcmine with my 0.5Ghash. Mostly btcmine works very well for me but I will try another pool for a couple of days I guess....

[inlikeflynn]

Thanks!

Using: -k phatk DEVICE=0 VECTORS BFI_INT FASTLOOP=false WORKSIZE=256 AGGRESSION=13 on a single 5830 and get 312MH/sec
 

I have always found phatk to be slower.  Why did you choose to use it?  Also, why WORKSIZE=256?  I have also found 128 to be faster on the 58xx and 69xx series.

I am using poclbm at the moment getting 0.2% stale rate [not using BTCMine at the moment though].

I chose to use phatk because I saw some other posts recomend using it on 5830/5850 cards and it is faster for me by 9-10MH/sec. WORKSIZE=256 with phatk also is faster for me (by another ~4MH/sec)

Here are some results from my testing:
297MH/sec = pocldm & WORKSIZE=128
304MH/sec = pocldm & WORKSIZE=256
308MH/sec = phatk & WORKSIZE=128
312MH/sec = phatk & WORKSIZE=256

I am getting quite a few rejected blocks though, so i'm not sure if that has anything to-do with the above settings or something else.

[Veldy]

I am getting 245 rejected shares with 4140 shares, from a HD5870 . I am wondering is it normal to have such high stale shares? EDIT: i am with btcmine pool

I also had >7% stale shares today at btcmine. That was during the block with 2446260 round shares this morning. Usally I have < 3% at btcmine with my 0.5Ghash. Mostly btcmine works very well for me but I will try another pool for a couple of days I guess....

I was seeing such high stale rates myself for awhile with them (although, for me anything greater than ~1% is exceedingly bad ... at one time, I never saw anything above 0.4% ... but that was back in late April or even early May), so I took a break until they moved BTCMine to a new server. Having said that, I have found that poclbm miner (not phoenix with the poclbm kernel) does a much better job with stale shares, so clearly it has better long polling code.  I was getting about 0.2% stale all evening last night until about midnight CDT, but by about 8AM CDT, it had risen to 0.9%. I am sure that phoenix will get it worked out before long, but frankly, it better be close to or better than poclbm at this point [I like phoenix better overall].  I have solid scripts for both that allow me to quickly switch miners and/or pools at a few moments notice.

In the mean time, I have found BTC Guild to be quite intriguing.  The guy who built it is very enthusiastic [not so different than Tycho when he started deepbit.net] and his pool has grown in a very short period of time to exceed hash rate of BTCMine.  BTC Guild is running ~500GH/s now (I contribute 0.71GH/s on average right now and hope to bring that up to 1.02GH/s by tonight or tomorrow night ... I didn't buy new mining hardware, just updated some existing hardware I had in storage, but found my board wasn't compatible with the CPU I have, so it should arrive today ... only a $50 investment ... could have made that in earnings while waiting if my CPU had been compatible).

[Veldy]

Thanks!

Using: -k phatk DEVICE=0 VECTORS BFI_INT FASTLOOP=false WORKSIZE=256 AGGRESSION=13 on a single 5830 and get 312MH/sec
 

I have always found phatk to be slower.  Why did you choose to use it?  Also, why WORKSIZE=256?  I have also found 128 to be faster on the 58xx and 69xx series.

I am using poclbm at the moment getting 0.2% stale rate [not using BTCMine at the moment though].

I chose to use phatk because I saw some other posts recomend using it on 5830/5850 cards and it is faster for me by 9-10MH/sec. WORKSIZE=256 with phatk also is faster for me (by another ~4MH/sec)

Here are some results from my testing:
297MH/sec = pocldm & WORKSIZE=128
304MH/sec = pocldm & WORKSIZE=256
308MH/sec = phatk & WORKSIZE=128
312MH/sec = phatk & WORKSIZE=256

I am getting quite a few rejected blocks though, so i'm not sure if that has anything to-do with the above settings or something else.

Rejects are higher now with the incredible pool hash rates.  The answer is probably a new protocol to replace RPC+LP, but your rejected shares could be from your card faulting on calculations and giving you invalid hash results as well. 

I will have to play with 256 worksize on my cards again.  I never tried anything but 128 on my 5850, but when I tried 256 on my 6970, I had a noticeable decline in hash rate reported by the miner.  I will try that again too

EDIT:  I just tested 256 worksize with my 6970 and rate dropped from 393MH/s to 323MH/s.  I find it hard to believe that the 5850 would be better suited to 256 than the 6970, but perhaps so.  I don't have time to test on my other box with the 5850 at the moment.   BTW ... I get 319MH/s with my 5850 now ... stock with using 128 (pushed core speed to 850MHz and reduced memory speed slightly to 900MHz).  Identical with both poclbm and phoenix [using poclbm kernel].

[Obrzin]

There seems to be a memory leak somewhere (maybe not technically a 'memory leak' since you are using Python but), phoenix uses several hundred megabytes of ram after several days of running.  My guess is a failure to prune some sort of list of completed shares / console output / something.  I would simply quit and restart, but I've run into the previously mentioned bug where my normally stable system would completely freeze upon exiting phoenix.  This one I can't seem to reliably reproduce, it happens sometimes upon exiting but most of the time it's fine.

[jarekb]

I've been having problems getting any gpu miner to work consistently with my 4870x2, so I'm cross posting my tech support post here since most of my tries have been with Phoenix.
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=86cf6d7c91ca2a7bcd1c8b73edade733&topic=11312.0

Basically I get a lot of "Kernel error: Unusual behavior from OpenCL. Hardware problem?" errors along with a high rate of rejected shares. Catalyst A.I. is disabled and I've tried both poclbm and phatk kernels. Can anyone take a look at the above post to see if they can help me?

[phelix]

idle bug

if it is not possible to restart phoenix by itself whenever the miner becomes idle maybe it is possible to simply have it exit whenever that state occurs. It should be easy to restart it from a batch file as soon as it exits...

[Mops]

hello, i am new here.
i am having a wierd problem:

after a while my gpu will simply stop producing mhash. i have 2 computers, on one computer i got no problems ( 2*5850) , on the other one is the one taht i am having this issue i have a single 5850. it happens after 5-45 mins aprox.

oc does not seem to be the probleem
nor internet
nor the pool (have tried in btc/slush and it happens in both)
to momentarily fix it i have to close it and open up again, it will run fine till i get the same problem
i use the following bat: DEVICE=0 BFI_INT VECTORS askrate=12 FASTLOOP=false AGGRESSION=11 -k phatk

[shackleford]

There seems to be a memory leak somewhere (maybe not technically a 'memory leak' since you are using Python but), phoenix uses several hundred megabytes of ram after several days of running.  My guess is a failure to prune some sort of list of completed shares / console output / something.  I would simply quit and restart, but I've run into the previously mentioned bug where my normally stable system would completely freeze upon exiting phoenix.  This one I can't seem to reliably reproduce, it happens sometimes upon exiting but most of the time it's fine.

I have had that lockup issue for a long time and I think I just found a way arround it. I am guessing your using Ati11.4/.5? If so try 11.3. Have two machines that were having this issue with 11.4 and it has cleared up with 11.3. That bug is realy bad on a non dedicated miner..(other stuff has gotten corrupt for me because of lockups from loosing the app close russian rullett)

[nyargh]

Thanks!

Using: -k phatk DEVICE=0 VECTORS BFI_INT FASTLOOP=false WORKSIZE=256 AGGRESSION=13 on a single 5830 and get 312MH/sec
 

What driver / os / sdk?

[Mops]

Thanks!

Using: -k phatk DEVICE=0 VECTORS BFI_INT FASTLOOP=false WORKSIZE=256 AGGRESSION=13 on a single 5830 and get 312MH/sec
 

What driver / os / sdk?

w7 ultimate 64bits
catalyst 11.5
sdk 2.2

it used to work fie ( 3 days ). then i started having these problem, i have a pc next to me with same softs and bat and it works just fine

to momentarily fix it i have to close it and open up again, it will run fine till i get the same problem (5-45mins)

[Veldy]

Thanks!

Using: -k phatk DEVICE=0 VECTORS BFI_INT FASTLOOP=false WORKSIZE=256 AGGRESSION=13 on a single 5830 and get 312MH/sec
 

What driver / os / sdk?

w7 ultimate 64bits
catalyst 11.5
sdk 2.2

it used to work fie ( 3 days ). then i started having these problem, i have a pc next to me with same softs and bat and it works just fine

to momentarily fix it i have to close it and open up again, it will run fine till i get the same problem (5-45mins)

Catalyst 11.5 comes with stream, so do not install it separately.  Uninstall both.  Reboot.  Clean out ATI/AMD directories as applicable and then install the 11.5 drivers only.

I assume that your card is not over heating, the system and card is getting enough power [good PSU with enough steady power] and that you aren't overclocking it [or underclocking it ... like the memory clock] and you haven't touched any voltages?  You have been watching the temperature?  Proper ventilation in your case (you have good air flow).  If you can't answer these questions ... install MSI Afterburner for some help

[Mops]

Thanks!

Using: -k phatk DEVICE=0 VECTORS BFI_INT FASTLOOP=false WORKSIZE=256 AGGRESSION=13 on a single 5830 and get 312MH/sec
 

What driver / os / sdk?

w7 ultimate 64bits
catalyst 11.5
sdk 2.2

it used to work fie ( 3 days ). then i started having these problem, i have a pc next to me with same softs and bat and it works just fine

to momentarily fix it i have to close it and open up again, it will run fine till i get the same problem (5-45mins)

Catalyst 11.5 comes with stream, so do not install it separately.  Uninstall both.  Reboot.  Clean out ATI/AMD directories as applicable and then install the 11.5 drivers only.

I assume that your card is not over heating, the system and card is getting enough power [good PSU with enough steady power] and that you aren't overclocking it [or underclocking it ... like the memory clock] and you haven't touched any voltages?  You have been watching the temperature?  Proper ventilation in your case (you have good air flow).  If you can't answer these questions ... install MSI Afterburner for some help

first of all thxs for a proper answer
second:

good temps dont go above 70º with oc. with or without oc i got this problem.
600w psu, satellite, its argentinian , dont think you klnow it but its good enough to have 2*5850.
i will un install and reboot and see what happens

[Veldy]

My personal opinion is that 600W PSU, even a good one, is not good enough for a machine with two 5850s in it.  The motherboard, CPU, fans and probably one hard drive will be running that PSU near max.  I would expect the thing to fail over time.  Also, a PSU does fluctuate with it's ability to deliver power, and you can usually see stamped on the side of a decent PSU what that minumum 100% is [for 600W PSU, perhaps 568W or something like that].  Your 5850 probably burns ~200W each, CPU, ~100W depending on the CPU (could be a low power 65W or 110W i3,i5,i7 or more).  Case fans and hard drives ... not sure precisely, but I would guess on an average PC, probably 50W or so.  Your PSU may not be delivering optimum power at all times anymore since you have been taxing it so hard.  Personally, I would put a 750W in there ... or more if you think you will upgrade the cards at some point to a real energy hog .

[Mops]

My personal opinion is that 600W PSU, even a good one, is not good enough for a machine with two 5850s in it.  The motherboard, CPU, fans and probably one hard drive will be running that PSU near max.  I would expect the thing to fail over time.  Also, a PSU does fluctuate with it's ability to deliver power, and you can usually see stamped on the side of a decent PSU what that minumum 100% is [for 600W PSU, perhaps 568W or something like that].  Your 5850 probably burns ~200W each, CPU, ~100W depending on the CPU (could be a low power 65W or 110W i3,i5,i7 or more).  Case fans and hard drives ... not sure precisely, but I would guess on an average PC, probably 50W or so.  Your PSU may not be delivering optimum power at all times anymore since you have been taxing it so hard.  Personally, I would put a 750W in there ... or more if you think you will upgrade the cards at some point to a real energy hog .

i am only using one 5850 with the 600w psu, sorry for not being clear, have not speaked english in a while XD
ty for the advice though

for the rig that has 2*5850 i am using lianli 850w, (with this rig i am having no trouble at all )

[jarekb]

I got my issues with the 4870x2 resolved by updating to catalyst 11.5, but now my cores aren't processing as fast. One is in the mid 80's other is in the mid 50's. Any idea why the cores are running at different rates?