Now trouble setting up my HD7850 GPU w/ SGminer (EDIT: was BFGminer)

[TrevorS]

The thing that's confusing is that for roughly a week at intensity "12", I made plenty of shares of several coins (I can list the results if you like)!  However, I'm now making none at all at the very same intensity, only significant difference (I'm aware of) being the higher concurrency parameter (originally defaulted) and the two command settings.  I'm thinking something's gone wrong, but I've no idea what!  If there's something amiss with the video card, does SGminer flag it?  There has to be an explanation for the change in results, I used to have a pool reported hash rate as high as 312 KH/s w/ GPU 0 only, now there's no reported hash rate at all -- I see that not as a question of optimization, but a question of function!

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[nsimmons]

If the pool is reporting the hash rate correctly and the pool is not showing rejects, everythings probably fine. Just seeing block updates means youre not finding anything in time. I used to see this when I solo mined litecoin. The network maybe finding a block every 10-30 seconds, depending on the coin, ad you are perpetually on old work. Ive had this happen before...by lowering

"queue" : "0",
"scan-time" : "1",

to these numbers you can mitigate it. I think cgminer originally had something huge like 60 second scan time, i don't know the default for sgminer,  you could be hashing old work for an entire minute wasting time.

scan time will constantly poll for new work, and queue wont buffer additional work, you dont want to buffer work that will soon be obsolete.

It looks like your using the exact settings from the litecoin hardware comparison. I have never seen any useful mining at such a low intensity. The lowest I have any cards set to is 18, a 5770, 6950, 5850 and a flaky 290. everything else has been cranking at 20 for at least a year and in some instances 2 years. I mined scrypt exclusively from april 2013 to about may this year.

If there was a problem with the gpu, you'd get hardware errors or it would crash the display driver eventually.

Increase intensity to 20 and report back.

also change these in your config. 7 seconds, plus queued work is a lot of wasted time for a slow card
"queue" : "1", -> 0
"scan-time" : "7", -> 1

[TrevorS]

Got it running again.  Tested the GPU hashing SHA256 to Slush's Pool and it's definitely working properly.  In fact, it's now hashing at 250KH/s rather than the previous 170KH/s, both with GUIminer.

Last conf file changes I made were to set shaders to the actual total and to delete three parameters that were causing load errors.  Here's the current parameter set:

Code:

],
"intensity" : "12",
"kernel" : "ckolivas",
"lookup-gap" : "0",
"thread-concurrency" : "8192",
"shaders" : "1024",
"gpu-threads" : "1",
"gpu-engine" : "860-930",
"gpu-fan" : "0-100",
"gpu-memclock" : "0",
"gpu-memdiff" : "0",
"gpu-powertune" : "0",
"gpu-vddc" : "0.000",
"temp-cutoff" : "90",
"temp-overheat" : "85",
"temp-target" : "75",
"api-mcast-port" : "4028",
"api-port" : "4028",
"expiry" : "28",
"failover-switch-delay" : "60",
"gpu-dyninterval" : "7",
"gpu-platform" : "0",
"log" : "5",
"no-pool-disable" : true,
"queue" : "1",
"scan-time" : "7",
"tcp-keepalive" : "30",
"temp-hysteresis" : "3",
"shares" : "0",
"kernel-path" : "/usr/i586-mingw32msvc/bin"
}

The higher I set the intensity, the more heat is generated and the fan can't keep up.  12 seems to be reasonable in terms of GPU temp and fan speed.  I don't want to push the GPU hard enough to risk damaging it -- trying to keep it under 80C.  Current SGminer reported hash rate is 250KH/s with temp at 76C.  R and HW are reporting 0 (A -- 4915).  Best of all, I no longer have to mess around with commands after starting SGminer, the conf file is taking care of it just fine as far as I can tell.  I previously had a few disconnects occur and I don't know the cause, it was like the server stopped talking.  Hopefully that doesn't repeat.  Got to just see how it goes now, fingers crossed.

[nsimmons]

Got it running again.  Tested the GPU hashing SHA256 to Slush's Pool and it's definitely working properly.  In fact, it's now hashing at 250MH/s rather than the previous 170MH/s, both with GUIminer.

Last conf file changes I made were to set shaders to the actual total and to delete three parameters that were causing load errors.  Here's the current parameter set:

Code:

],
"intensity" : "12",
"kernel" : "ckolivas",
"lookup-gap" : "0",
"thread-concurrency" : "8192",
"shaders" : "1024",
"gpu-threads" : "1",
"gpu-engine" : "860-930",
"gpu-fan" : "0-100",
"gpu-memclock" : "0",
"gpu-memdiff" : "0",
"gpu-powertune" : "0",
"gpu-vddc" : "0.000",
"temp-cutoff" : "90",
"temp-overheat" : "85",
"temp-target" : "75",
"api-mcast-port" : "4028",
"api-port" : "4028",
"expiry" : "28",
"failover-switch-delay" : "60",
"gpu-dyninterval" : "7",
"gpu-platform" : "0",
"log" : "5",
"no-pool-disable" : true,
"queue" : "1",
"scan-time" : "7",
"tcp-keepalive" : "30",
"temp-hysteresis" : "3",
"shares" : "0",
"kernel-path" : "/usr/i586-mingw32msvc/bin"
}

The higher I set the intensity, the more heat is generated and the fan can't keep up.  12 seems to be reasonable in terms of GPU temp and fan speed.  I don't want to push the GPU hard enough to risk damaging it -- trying to keep it under 80C.  Current SGminer reported hash rate is 250MH/s with temp at 76C.  R and HW are reporting 0 (A -- 4915).  Best of all, I no longer have to mess around with commands after starting SGminer, the conf file is taking care of it just fine as far as I can tell.  I previously had a few disconnects occur and I don't know the cause, it was like the server stopped talking.  Hopefully that doesn't repeat.  Got to just see how it goes now, fingers crossed.

What %fan are you running at to maintain 76C? My rigs are 5 cards 2" apart cranking and they only use about ~65% now.

The card is still running very slow. The idea is to keep the card at 80C, as long as the fan isn't cranking 100% all the time it should be fine. If its in a case, you can leave the side panel off, or even point an external fan at it.

Eventually you'd like to earn some money. That card should make you ~25 cents a day on x11 with current prices, depending on whether on not you pay for power. That might be peanuts now, but I experienced a 40x increase in earnings last winter during the bubble. All those 2-3 dollar a days became 100+ days.

[TrevorS]

[What %fan are you running at to maintain 76C? My rigs are 5 cards 2" apart cranking and they only use about ~65% now.

The card is still running very slow. The idea is to keep the card at 80C, as long as the fan isn't cranking 100% all the time it should be fine. If its in a case, you can leave the side panel off, or even point an external fan at it.

Eventually you'd like to earn some money. That card should make you ~25 cents a day on x11 with current prices, depending on whether on not you pay for power. That might be peanuts now, but I experienced a 40x increase in earnings last winter during the bubble. All those 2-3 dollar a days became 100+ days.

The fan's running at 100%.  I just lifted the intensity back to 15 like when I first got SGminer mining.  The hash went to ~300KH/s with a temp of 81C.  I tried pushing it to 17 which reached ~320KH/s and 83C.  Think my old 15 number is the better choice for me.  The upstairs room is pretty warm thanks to a bevy of SHA-256 miners downstairs.  The window's wide open plus there are windows open downstairs, but it translates into a warm ambient.

This PC wasn't actually intended as a miner, it's one I use for video rendering/burning and media serving and occasional game fooling around -- has an AMD FX8350, very large disc capacity, and restricted GPU fan air flow -- not a good box for mining.  Goal was to see if I could get Scrypt mining running and if it made sense to setup a PC specifically for it.  If it seems to work out, then I can throw together another machine from available parts including a dual fan HD7850 and a main board with three card slots and normal air flow.  Guess I'll ultimately be trying to compare the value of buying a couple more used video cards Vs buying dedicated scrypt miners (Gridseed?)  No, my electricity is definitely not free !

=====================================LATER=====================================

Had to drop intensity to 14 due to  low pool reported KH/s rate.  Also saw an unpleasant SGminer "R"eject rate.  However, "HW" remained 0.

[nsimmons]

[What %fan are you running at to maintain 76C? My rigs are 5 cards 2" apart cranking and they only use about ~65% now.

The card is still running very slow. The idea is to keep the card at 80C, as long as the fan isn't cranking 100% all the time it should be fine. If its in a case, you can leave the side panel off, or even point an external fan at it.

Eventually you'd like to earn some money. That card should make you ~25 cents a day on x11 with current prices, depending on whether on not you pay for power. That might be peanuts now, but I experienced a 40x increase in earnings last winter during the bubble. All those 2-3 dollar a days became 100+ days.

The fan's running at 100%.  I just lifted the intensity back to 15 like when I first got SGminer mining.  The hash went to ~300MH/s with a temp of 81C.  I tried pushing it to 17 which reached ~320MH/s and 83C.  Think my old 15 number is the better choice for me.  The upstairs room is pretty warm thanks to a bevy of SHA256 miners downstairs.  The window's wide open plus there are windows open downstairs, but it translates into a warm ambient.

This PC wasn't actually intended as a miner, it's one I use for video rendering/burning and media serving and occasional game fooling around -- has an AMD FX8350, very large disc capacity, and restricted GPU fan air flow -- not a good box for mining.  Goal was to see if I could get Scrypt mining running and if it made sense to setup a PC specifically for it.  If it seems to work out, then I can throw together another machine from available parts including a dual fan HD7850 and a main board with three card slots and normal air flow.  Guess I'll ultimately be trying to compare the value of buying a couple more used video cards Vs buying dedicated scrypt miners (Gridseed?)  No, my electricity is definitely not free !

=====================================LATER=====================================

Had to drop intensity to 14 due to  low pool reported MH/s rate.  Also saw an unpleasant SGminer "R"eject rate.  However, "HW" remained 0.

That all sounds good, I suspect you've figured it out the 'art' of scrypt mining. If you do get more gpus switch to x11, you wont even break even with scrypt anymore. Plus it runs way cooler. I think i'd be mining at a 20 dollar a day loss with scrypt.