Topic: 2x6970's Crashing Repeatedly with GUIMiner (Read 7735 times)

Okay, so I've switched to Pheonix miner minus the GUI, I increase my Mh/s by 20 by using Diapolo's modified kernel for SDK 2.6.

But anyway, I'm still experiencing the issue with the lockup or the driver crashing and recovering. I have discovered something new. I can run the card at stock settings when solo mining without a crash. :/ But pool mining and/or playing games causes a lockup or driver crash.

I tried to sell some of mine on eBay and ultimately got frustrated.  I priced them at $290 + shipping and was still having a hard time moving them.  I don't get it.  I sold 3 and got a slew of messages asking if I would cut them deals on multiple cards or if I would save one for them so they could buy it a month later.  The 3rd guy wanted to cancel his order almost immediately after he bought & paid for it.  He changed his mind 6 times (yes...  six) between wanting and not wanting the card (and sent me a message for each one).  eBay is turning into a complete joke.

me...  runs to ebay looking for MSI Lightning 6970 

Yeah.  The switch is fan control and it also raises the overdrive limit (to 2000/2000).

You can move the BIOS switch while the machine is on, but it wont do anything until the card resets and reads the BIOS from the other ROM bank.  Powering off a rig to make a change certainly isn't a bad idea though. 

You are quite mistaken. That switch there be fan control (Silent = higher temps). Switch it to Performance and rejoice much lower temps.
Just make sure you power off the rig. It's all too easy to make a costly boo-boo when messing around with a live machine.

The MSI R6970 Lightning card is clocked at 940 MHz, it's already factory overclocked.

I'm not sure if it is the middle but it is the position labelled "Silent". Should I switch to "Performance"? I was under the impression that "Performance" allows for higher voltage ranges and clock frequencies. I just want to run the cards at stock, that's all. This is a gaming rig, not a dedicated miner, but I'm running into these issues with gaming and mining.

I'm glad someone else uses these cards to mine.  

For what it's worth, I have 32 of these cards (MSI Lightning 6970).  All of them are mining at 950Mhz core and 340Mhz memory clock.  The voltage is reduced to 1.050V on every card and they are *all* rock solid stable.  To change the memory clock and voltage for Linux, I had to flash the BIOS on all cards (which isn't as time consuming as it sounds.  Maybe 10 minutes with a properly built flash drive.)  MSI Afterburner is able to change all of these in Windows without a flash though.

Another thing -- running these fans at 100 percent will *not* kill the fan.  These aren't reference cards with reference fans.  The fans are a dual ball bearing design by Power Logic.

Lastly -- if you're managing to hit 100C on these cards, you've got some *unbelievably* hot air in your case.  Granted, my cards are dedicated rigs with good cool airflow, but the 4 cards at the top of my shelf are currently running at 76C with 29% fanspeed.  The heatsinks on these cards are *phenomenal* at removing heat.


Bananington, what position is the BIOS switch in on your cards?  The middle?

p4......  you may be right. I have been running these for months with gui and afterburner. so the memclock might not be down to what I think it is...  arrrgg  time to work on that box a little.

I'm using GUIMiner and when I try to mine I get this message.

One reason I sold all my 6950 & 6970s.  Bleh.  No idea why AMD did that.

OMG, I just looked at my settings, and both cards are like that with 125Mhz difference between the core clock and the mem clock. I never noticed that. This'll help me hone in cards much faster. Thanks mate.

Both of these cards have been running since the beginning of this thread at 920Mhz and 894Mhz. The 894Mhz is the highest clock the troublesome GPU will not crash at. 920Mhz is stock for Lightning edition 6970's.

But anyway, my point being is that the burn in period has gone and past.

"gpu-memclock" : "300" could be a problem on a 69x0 card though, no? I thought you couldnt clock the memory more than 125Mhz below the core.

usually any brand new gpu I like to burn in for a day at a lower clock.  820 or 850 would be good to burn in for a 6970.  I have 2 6970's and I run them at 900/300. they get about 409Mhash

I see you have the GPU engine set to 820Mhz. The 6970's I have are lightning edition from MSI. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127581 Can you look at those default specs and tell me what I should input? I know I can try and substitute, but I don't think I have enough experience yet to tweak it.
I'm also having trouble with step 7.

I use linuxcoin and do fresh boots all the time.  here are the steps:

1.  create a brand new linuxcoin on a stick with persistence
2.  need a way to get a couple of files to the new box. I have a gmail account with a  draft email with file attachments. the file you need is :  http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/cgminer-2.1.2-x86_64-built.tar.bz2
3. boot new box with new stick
4. navigate.  start -> system tools -> ATI SDK Licence   and follow prompts to accept
5. open browser / email and download file from step 2 (choose save file to /home/user)  or go to this thread and download the file https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/official-cgminer-mining-software-thread-for-linuxwinosxmipsarmr-pi-4110-28402  (file cgminer-2.1.2-x86_64-built.tar.bz2)
6. open shell (nav start -> Accessaries -> root terminal
7. bunzip cgminer-2.1.2-x86_64-built
8. tar xf cgminer-2.1.2-x86_64-built
9. cd /lib64/
10. ln -s libncurses.so.5 libtinfo.so.5  (this is because some libraries have been changed since old version)
11. cd /home/users/cgminer-2.1.2-x86_64-built
12  create a conf file to use, my simple sample file that I use is listed below as myconf.5970.conf:
13.  ./cgminer -c myconf.5970.conf


some handy things to know with linuxcoin:
1.  if you move or change the gpus in any way, this will delete and reload the drivers for the vid cards

• rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf
• reboot

2.  keep your mouse in the main screen. if you move mouse too far to the right, operating system will 'switch ' on you and show you a different session screen.  I haven't figured this out yet, I just reboot and start over.
3. if, when you first boot up you see this 'other' session screen, be patient, the main linuxcoin screen will appear
4.  dont hesitate to do the steps in step 1
5.  if machine locks, or kill power  linuxcoin will usually boot up OK. but if you kill power while it is shutting down, you may corrupt files. I have had many linuxcoin sticks 'freak out'.  dont hesitate to just make a new one and start over. it will be faster then trying to fix what is wrong.  (this is my preference, I am sure there are ubuntu experts here that would disagree with this step. but I can have a brand new one up in 5 minutes)
6.did I say dont hesitate to do step 1
7. here are some handy aticonfig commands (although, if using cgminer, probably wont need these)
list gpus:  aticonfig --adapter=all --odgc
get fans: for i in 0 1 2 3 4; do   DISPLAY=:0.$i aticonfig --pplib-cmd "get fanspeed 0"; done


enjoy

Thanks a bunch.

Just tried it and get the same here. Linuxcoin is a bit of a mess, or I dont know how to use the default miners either, cant get any of them to work 
and installing/compiling cgminer isnt all that easy either.

You could use bitminter from a webpage (see my sig), but even that requires you do something, because the default the browser in Linuxcoin doesnt know how to handle java webstart. I think you only have to configure the mimetype, not quite sure

I dont have remote X access to my miners atm, perhaps someone else can say how to get this man mining on linuxcoin?

If not, Ill prepare and boot a fresh linuxcoin on my machine and talk you through it tomorrow.

Do I replace "youruser" and "yourpass" with the miner username and password?

I get this

I have NO idea what I'm doing here. There's a reason that I use GUIMiner. I'm sorry you guys have to hold my hand with this.

Dont know GUIminer, so try this;
open a terminal (shift control T)
Then type or copy paste these commands (careful, case sensitive! you can paste with right click or shift+control+v):



But IIRC you first have to agree to the AMD license... Its been a while, but isnt there a shortcut for that in the menu or on the desktop somewhere?

As for the USB stick; its entirely possible its defective.  Something you may not notice when just throwing small files on it.
Another possibility is that you have one of those U3 infected sticks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U3