CCminer(SP-MOD) Modded GPU kernels.

[sp_]

whe you have good quality risers - you have much less strain on the bus ...

Most of my risers are non powered because the asus rock board have 2 extra powerplugs on the mainboard(picture below). I have no problem to fit
6 cheap non powered china riser cables with this setup

[bathrobehero]

i think its time to step up to a 980ti and have a look at how this thing works .. is it better? ...  and im not asking about the hashrate ...
#crysx

Looking at the BIOS of that card it has an absolute maximum of 366W power consumption limit if I'm reading it correctly which aligns perfectly with a techpowerup review.
Of course that's with some crazy synthetic test like FurMark and the usual peak consumption is about 300W. But even that is a lot.

I think these bigger cards are all about scaling; they get somewhat inefficient hash per watt at full speed but get pretty great if you decrease the power target like I found with the 970 a while back (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1091755.msg11636995#msg11636995).
With downvolting it could be much more significant but I haven't tried it. So on one hand low profit margins warrants efficiency with lower power target but then the initial card price is too much but from another point of view if the profit margins were to increase in the future pushing the cards to hash as fast as they can would be more profitable. Also, different prices; in my case with the prices I'm presented with it doesn't worth it for me to go for anything above 970s.

I agree: I was just saying that there is no difference, power related, when using a 16x slot or a 1x one.
About broken fans, I assume it's because they are not supposed to work at >40C for months :-D
The plastic parts will deform, even just fractions of millimeters, enough to stop rotate. Seen tens of times ;-)

100% correct ...

it seems those 'windforce' setups are the worst of the culprits ...

i would pay an extra few dollars for cards that just run ... whether they bring out these things in hardened plastic or thin metal / allow to dissipate heat properly ...

i think its time to step up to a 980ti and have a look at how this thing works .. is it better? ...  and im not asking about the hashrate ...

#crysx

As much as I love Gigabyte OC cards I hate their cheap plastic toy quality fans especially on the 780 Ti's.
They don't deform in my case and they are pretty good at cooling but damn they slow down and get noisy in a few months.
Cleaning and oiling them every few months is making them as good as new... but only for a while. I don't have the same problem with any other fans.

Regarding ribbon risers, I only had terrible experience with them and I personally would never use them again - of course that just might have been a bad batch or something.
And I love that I can put my cards fairly far from each other with USB risers, keeping everything nice and breezy with DIY wooden crates. And if you buy powered USB risers in bulk they're not much more than ribbon risers.

About PCI-E splitters, someone said a while back that it would most likely require modding the BIOS to be able to handle it which is not very promising but one can dream.
While I'm at dreaming... imagine if we could connect cards with simple USB ports without PCI-E. 

[pallas]

DIY wooden crates? aren't you afraid of them catching fire? :-)
I guess aluminum is a better choice.

[chrysophylax]

whe you have good quality risers - you have much less strain on the bus ...

Most of my risers are non powered because the asus rock board have 2 extra powerplugs on the mainboard(picture below). I have no problem to fit
6 cheap non powered china riser cables with this setup

the reason i dont use them is purely because there have been a LOT of issues with these boards and the onboard power connection ...

through various forums ( uncluding the asrock one - which doesnt have much to do with the mining arena any longer ) the boards have been brought up as being a way of warming your house by means of fire rather than hot air ... apparently that if the sockets and cables supply dont get the power they require for any reason - they ignite in the worse cases ... the least cases ( which is the common one ) is that they burnout your cards or the board itself ...

if yours are running well - then kudos mate ...

i wont risk it ... not even for my little gigabyte 750ti oc lp cards ...

but thats the main reason - otherwise 'theoretically' they should run flawlessly ...

and with the 34 cable risers that i had to toss for faults - i refuse to use the cheap cable risers ... i suppose if its a couple that you have running - they wouldnt be exposed to the same heat / stress as in thefarm ... but i wont use those cables any more - only quality usb one ... if we were living close - id give you all the others that are laying here for free ... ...

#crysx

[sp_]

the reason i dont use them is purely because there have been a LOT of issues with these boards and the onboard power connection ...
through various forums ( uncluding the asrock one - which doesnt have much to do with the mining arena any longer ) the boards have been brought up as being a way of warming your house by means of fire rather than hot air ... apparently that if the sockets and cables supply dont get the power they require for any reason - they ignite in the worse cases ... the least cases ( which is the common one ) is that they burnout your cards or the board itself ...
If yours are running well - then kudos mate ...

If you use this board with 6 non powered risers, it's very important to blug in the extra 2 power slots I marked in the picture. It can also be good to add a couple of cards with a 6pin power connector.

[bathrobehero]

DIY wooden crates? aren't you afraid of them catching fire? :-)
I guess aluminum is a better choice.

No, they aren't connected to anything even remotely hot. Besides, I use 65°C temp target limit on all my cards and measured pretty much every inch of the rigs with an IR gun a few times.
Even with the limit, VRMs are around 70°C which is still low considering.
I think plastic would melt way before wood catching on fire.
And these crates are big and breezy as I have plenty of space. But of course the main pro was that wood is dirt cheap unlike aluminum.

[chrysophylax]

i think its time to step up to a 980ti and have a look at how this thing works .. is it better? ...  and im not asking about the hashrate ...
#crysx

Looking at the BIOS of that card it has an absolute maximum of 366W power consumption limit if I'm reading it correctly which aligns perfectly with a techpowerup review.
Of course that's with some crazy synthetic test like FurMark and the usual peak consumption is about 300W. But even that is a lot.

I think these bigger cards are all about scaling; they get somewhat inefficient hash per watt at full speed but get pretty great if you decrease the power target like I found with the 970 a while back (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1091755.msg11636995#msg11636995).
With downvolting it could be much more significant but I haven't tried it. So on one hand low profit margins warrants efficiency with lower power target but then the initial card price is too much but from another point of view if the profit margins were to increase in the future pushing the cards to hash as fast as they can would be more profitable. Also, different prices; in my case with the prices I'm presented with it doesn't worth it for me to go for anything above 970s.

I agree: I was just saying that there is no difference, power related, when using a 16x slot or a 1x one.
About broken fans, I assume it's because they are not supposed to work at >40C for months :-D
The plastic parts will deform, even just fractions of millimeters, enough to stop rotate. Seen tens of times ;-)

100% correct ...

it seems those 'windforce' setups are the worst of the culprits ...

i would pay an extra few dollars for cards that just run ... whether they bring out these things in hardened plastic or thin metal / allow to dissipate heat properly ...

i think its time to step up to a 980ti and have a look at how this thing works .. is it better? ...  and im not asking about the hashrate ...

#crysx

As much as I love Gigabyte OC cards I hate their cheap plastic toy quality fans especially on the 780 Ti's.
They don't deform in my case and they are pretty good at cooling but damn they slow down and get noisy in a few months.
Cleaning and oiling them every few months is making them as good as new... but only for a while. I don't have the same problem with any other fans.

Regarding ribbon risers, I only had terrible experience with them and I personally would never use them again - of course that just might have been a bad batch or something.
And I love that I can put my cards fairly far from each other with USB risers, keeping everything nice and breezy with DIY wooden crates. And if you buy powered USB risers in bulk they're not much more than ribbon risers.

About PCI-E splitters, someone said a while back that it would most likely require modding the BIOS to be able to handle it which is not very promising but one can dream.
While I'm at dreaming... imagine if we could connect cards with simple USB ports without PCI-E. 

i agree with the fan garbage that gigabyte put on the cards ... the quality of the card is good - but the fans are just rubbish ... and they REFUSE to accept them for warranty returns unless you return them to the place of purchase ... some of mine were purchased privately and NOT form a shop - what then? ... their response was - return them to your place of purchase ... dumbasses ...

ribbon risers - i think we had the same batch ...

pcie splitters exist and work well in a 'few' card scenario ... you can only use more than 8 gpus with heavy modiing ...

there is a company in the USA that manufactures external gpu 'boxed' that are specialized in for mining - and connect using a usb connection with an internal board to split / multiply the number of pcie slots ... when i asked the question ( like one would of any solicitation ) 'how much' ? ... they promptly answered - 'as many as the bios allows, which in some cases is up to 12 - like the supermicro hpc server boards' ... so their external box can be daisy chained to allow for 16+ gpus - but unless you have a $900.00AUD supermicro hpc server board ( thats WITHOUT cpus and ran - which are also specialized AND expensive ) you cant run more than about 8 ( without heavy modding ) ...

as for the wooden crates ... ummm ...

...

#crysx

[chrysophylax]

DIY wooden crates? aren't you afraid of them catching fire? :-)
I guess aluminum is a better choice.

No, they aren't connected to anything even remotely hot. Besides, I use 65°C temp target limit on all my cards and measured pretty much every inch of the rigs with an IR gun a few times.
Even with the limit, VRMs are around 70°C which is still low considering.
I think plastic would melt way before wood catching on fire.
And these crates are big and breezy as I have plenty of space. But of course the main pro was that wood is dirt cheap unlike aluminum.

i originally used a computer case with two gigabyte 7970 oc cards when i first started out ...

i looked at using wooden frames ... got scared - decided to use aluminium instead and never looked back ...

if the temp is not the issue - 'acts of God' just may be ... but then - i guess in any situation there will be an issue with something ...

dont forget - aluminium conducts electricity ... dont want any of the cards faulty for any reason - do we? ...

:| ...

#crysx

[sp_]

Another board I am happy with is the msi gaming z97:

The bios has a card overview, so you can easily see if the card is connected properly in the bios:

[pallas]

I wouldn't use wood near any electronic equipment, unless the insurance agent is a friend of yours ;-)
(In event of fire, regardless how much care you took, the insurance will not pay if they know you used wood)

[chrysophylax]

I wouldn't use wood near any electronic equipment, unless the insurance agent is a friend of yours ;-)
(In event of fire, regardless how much care you took, the insurance will not pay if they know you used wood)

insured or not - i think id cry ... honestly ...

#crysx

[bathrobehero]

I wouldn't use wood near any electronic equipment, unless the insurance agent is a friend of yours ;-)
(In event of fire, regardless how much care you took, the insurance will not pay if they know you used wood)

To each his own I guess but I'm absolutely confident the wood wouldn't make any difference that aluminum would in case of major failure.

I can't take pictures at the moment but it's similar to this random picture but bigger and mine doesn't have a wood panel on the bottom: https://i.imgur.com/njJH6sT.jpg

[PVmining]

I wouldn't use wood near any electronic equipment, unless the insurance agent is a friend of yours ;-)
(In event of fire, regardless how much care you took, the insurance will not pay if they know you used wood)

To each his own I guess but I'm absolutely confident the wood wouldn't make any difference that aluminum would in case of major failure.

...you never saw components catch fire, I think. In that moment you could see the difference if you have bad luck.

reminder to all. wooden rig or not. a fire detector in a mining room is not the worst investment.

[AliMan]

i think its time to step up to a 980ti and have a look at how this thing works .. is it better? ...  and im not asking about the hashrate ...
#crysx

I am happy with my card but it has 2 8 pin pci power connectors and can draw as much as 250-300W. Quark is hashing at 26,7 and x11 13 Mhash.

thats nice ... but the draw seems to be huge ...

i have been looking at the gigabyte g1 gaming card ... its a beast ...

http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5472#ov ...

factory oc with BETTER cooling - though the twin 8pin connector will be an issue with the psu selection ... maybe need to redesign the frame specifically for this card - as it will take two large 1500W psu ...

big issue with this is that to buy 6 of these cards in one hit is a wallet suicide - when each card sells here at almost $1200.00AUD ...

BUT - the one machine would generate more hashrate than 3 / 4 of thefarms hashrate ...

ill have to decide what needs to be done soon ... i dont want to buy one card at a time - so that doesnt leave me with many options ...

see what happens - the power draw is the main conern here ...

tanx ...

#crysx

I went with the reference design, as that gives the best power draw. Even the reference ACX's have 1 6-pin and 1 8-pin pci-e connector.

One thing I've learnt is the extra juice doesn't really help at all.

I'm doing 30 mh/s on one of my ti's and 29 mh/s on the other (Quark). 1481 Mhz and 1477 Mhz respectively.

[joblo]

the reason i dont use them is purely because there have been a LOT of issues with these boards and the onboard power connection ...
through various forums ( uncluding the asrock one - which doesnt have much to do with the mining arena any longer ) the boards have been brought up as being a way of warming your house by means of fire rather than hot air ... apparently that if the sockets and cables supply dont get the power they require for any reason - they ignite in the worse cases ... the least cases ( which is the common one ) is that they burnout your cards or the board itself ...
If yours are running well - then kudos mate ...

If you use this board with 6 non powered risers, it's very important to blug in the extra 2 power slots I marked in the picture. It can also be good to add a couple of cards with a 6pin power connector.

I would not use unpowered risers in any case. There's just no good reason to run 450W through the MB
if it can be avoided.

I haven't found a power spec on molex connectors but the adapters that came with my GPU mapped
2 molex connectors to 1 8 pin PCIe power connector. 2 extra molex connectors on the MB to power 6
slots just doesn't seem adequate.

[scryptr]

the reason i dont use them is purely because there have been a LOT of issues with these boards and the onboard power connection ...
through various forums ( uncluding the asrock one - which doesnt have much to do with the mining arena any longer ) the boards have been brought up as being a way of warming your house by means of fire rather than hot air ... apparently that if the sockets and cables supply dont get the power they require for any reason - they ignite in the worse cases ... the least cases ( which is the common one ) is that they burnout your cards or the board itself ...
If yours are running well - then kudos mate ...

If you use this board with 6 non powered risers, it's very important to blug in the extra 2 power slots I marked in the picture. It can also be good to add a couple of cards with a 6pin power connector.

I would not use unpowered risers in any case. There's just no good reason to run 450W through the MB
if it can be avoided.

I haven't found a power spec on molex connectors but the adapters that came with my GPU mapped
2 molex connectors to 1 8 pin PCIe power connector. 2 extra molex connectors on the MB to power 6
slots just doesn't seem adequate.

MOLEX to PCIe ADAPTER--

If you have anything bigger than a 750ti, the 2-MOLEX to 1-PCIe adapters are dangerous.  I used one to power an AMD 280x and it melted.       --scryptr

[djm34]

the reason i dont use them is purely because there have been a LOT of issues with these boards and the onboard power connection ...
through various forums ( uncluding the asrock one - which doesnt have much to do with the mining arena any longer ) the boards have been brought up as being a way of warming your house by means of fire rather than hot air ... apparently that if the sockets and cables supply dont get the power they require for any reason - they ignite in the worse cases ... the least cases ( which is the common one ) is that they burnout your cards or the board itself ...
If yours are running well - then kudos mate ...

If you use this board with 6 non powered risers, it's very important to blug in the extra 2 power slots I marked in the picture. It can also be good to add a couple of cards with a 6pin power connector.

I would not use unpowered risers in any case. There's just no good reason to run 450W through the MB
if it can be avoided.

I haven't found a power spec on molex connectors but the adapters that came with my GPU mapped
2 molex connectors to 1 8 pin PCIe power connector. 2 extra molex connectors on the MB to power 6
slots just doesn't seem adequate.

MOLEX to PCIe ADAPTER--

If you have anything bigger than a 750ti, the 2-MOLEX to 1-PCIe adapters are dangerous.  I used one to power an AMD 280x and it melted.       --scryptr

and make sure it is a "one rail" psu with only one line otherwise cable/power usage won't be sufficient... (molex/sata are mostly to power hdd/fans...)

[jjjordan]

I saw couple of guys mentioned here PCIe port multipliers.
Does anybody have a first hand experience with them?
I tried this one: http://www.amazon.com/PCI-E-Express-Port-Riser-Switch/dp/B00TR01QJ8
and it didn't work for me (Win8.1x64 ASRock Fatal1ty Z87 Killer 7xPCIe) so I ended up returning the switch/port-multiplier.
The goal was to have a 10x GPU miner but I had to settle with a 7x GPU one.

[sp_]

I have a 200KHASH lyra improvement ready for the 750ti. (+5%)

but it is slower on the 970. Need to tweak it some more

[scryptr]

I saw couple of guys mentioned here PCIe port multipliers.
Does anybody have a first hand experience with them?
I tried this one: http://www.amazon.com/PCI-E-Express-Port-Riser-Switch/dp/B00TR01QJ8
and it didn't work for me (Win8.1x64 ASRock Fatal1ty Z87 Killer 7xPCIe) so I ended up returning the switch/port-multiplier.
The goal was to have a 10x GPU miner but I had to settle with a 7x GPU one.

I have one, it is a 1x PCIe slot to 4x 1x PCIe slot multiplier.  It worked in one of my motherboards.  I was able to mine script with CudaMiner and a GTX 520 (21kh/s) in the motherboard, and a GTX 550ti (90kh/s) and a 9800+ GTX (14kh/s) on the multiplier.  Unfortunately, I have not been able to get any cards of the 700 series to work with it, nor any AMD cards.  I may experiment some more, but it was sent with no documentation, and I have small expectations.  The adapter that you linked appears to be the same model that I have, or very similar.

If you look, there is a manufacturer of these items that tailored their product specifically for GPUs and mining.  The price, however, is much higher.

--scryptr