Topic: 5870 running at 421 mHash/sec! (Read 23024 times)

That doesn't seem too unrealistic. For non reference that's definitely pushing the limit though. I believe the record for a reference is like 502 but that wasn't held for a long period of time. I'm sure you can easily get 460 stable in some cases when you use a reference card.

Yes but for how long?   I can push my saph vapor x 5870 to 975 for a while, but then drop out...  I run them at 950/300  get a constant 423-425 Mh out of them

my new record on non-ref xfx 5870 1.6 = 980/341 = 443mh/s

I have a noobish question.

When you peeps overclock, how do you see if the card is hitting the limit? I am using Win7 32bit with AOCLBF, monitoring load/temps with Afterburner, OC'ing with Trixx. Should I keep an eye on the GPU load graphs/AOCLBF for restarts? Or will the cards simply hang/reboot the system? (even if it's a multi-gpu setup, and I'm OC'ing one of the cards not hooked up to the monitor?)
Sorry if these questions are noobish, just trying to get the most out of my 5850's and 5870 on stock voltage.

Thanks in advance.

I'm also a fan of the 5870.

But I'm still curious how people are going above 900 mhz core under Linux.  Has to be a BIOS reflash, no?

Thanks for the feedback. I am still trying to get my head around all the mining info.  I posted my first comment after doing a lot of reading and researching. Then, this morning, I did some more reading and turned some of my conclusions on their heads. Ugh. Actually, the 200USD refers to the CPU, Mobo and RAM. I wanted them to be low cost and energy efficient for mining. Don't we all? The GPU can be a toy for later if I stop mining. Even though, I am just dabbling right now, I also want the GPU to be the best bang for my buck in case I decide to take it further.

To reply to both you and Being, yes, I am hoping to recuperate my costs after about a year. I would love to find a way to do it sooner.

It's been hard finding the sweet spot of high Mhash/s/W with a reasonable investment amount. There are so many variables.  I think I find a GPU I like, then other hardware is more expensive or unavailable. And why don't most people write their results in Mhash/s/W? Who really cares if they are getting 2Ghash/s if its costing them 1Mwatt in electricity?

EDIT: Also, I wanted to get opinions on  the GPU I listed in my earlier post. ASUS MATRIX 5870/2DIS/2GD5

This looks quite a bit different and definitely more expensive than other 5870s I've seen on this forum. For example: XFX ATI Radeon HD 5850 1 GB DDR5 2DVI/HDMI/DisplayPort PCI-Express Video Card HD585XZAFC

I haven't been able to find any mining results on the ASUS card. Any opinions here?

AMD Sempron 140 with the 2nd core unlocked.
2 solid state drives (1x Kingston 16 gB, 1x OCZ 60 gB)
4x case fans (3 230mm, 1x 140mm)
1000 watt PSU (Cooler Master Silent Pro, got such a massive one in case it ever expanded into dual 6990s)
4x GB RAM (4x 1 gig).

PSU: "2x PCI Express 6 pinů"

This will only allow for one Graphics card. I made the same mistake on my rig, starting with a HD 5870 and planning to expand, because I thought "oh, I have 2 PCIe power connectors, that would suffice for two cards". Nope, one card needs two connectors already!

Also, I would not buy that much RAM from the start. You can surely save some Korunas when you buy one slower 1 GB bar. Apart from that, it doesn't look too bad, but it will probably take 6-12 months to pay it off completely. Although if you only plan on recuperating the cost of the GPU (that's the 200 USD, I guess) it will be quicker.

Have you tried calculating, when this would pay off for you? -__-

Hey Gang,

I've been looking things over and I am aiming to build a light mining rig with hopes for future expansion. I am a self-professed newb and so I am hoping to get a little help from the community with my choices of hardware. As far as I know, the hardware I have chosen should work together, but if anything sticks out, constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated.

What I have here is a combination of what I found on these two well-known pages:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_rig and:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison#See_Also

Also, I am in Europe and some of the hardware is either unavailable to me or prohibitively expensive.  Links provided go to a Czech website, but I think the specs should still be intelligible even without translation.  Here is the list:

-Mobo: ASUS M4A87TD
    http://www.alza.cz/asus-m4a87td-d198797.htm#popis

-CPU: AMD Sempron 140

-GPU: ASUS MATRIX 5870/2DIS/2GD5
    http://www.alza.cz/asus-matrix-5870-2dis-2gd5-d164659.htm

-RAM: 2x 1024MB DDR3 1333MHz CL9 CORSAIR
    http://www.mironet.cz/2048mb-ddr3-1333mhz-cl9-corsair--xms3-kit-2x1024mb+dp80617/

-PSU: CORSAIR Builder Series CX600 V2 600W , 80 PLUS Certified
    http://www.alza.cz/corsair-cx600-v2-d237950.htmhttp://www.alza.cz/corsair-cx600-v2-d237950.htm

-Chassis: CoolerMaster HAF 912 PLUS black
    http://www.alza.cz/coolermaster-haf-912-plus-cerna-d189911.htm#foto

-Hard Disk: WESTERN DIGITAL Caviar Green 750GB 64MB cache w/ Advanced Format
    http://www.alza.cz/western-digital-caviar-green-750gb-64mb-cache-s-advanced-format-d245784.htm#popis

I know the HDD is quite an overkill on space, but it was one of the cheapest they had that appeared worth anything. My goal is to firstly have a machine that has high Mhash/J, which is more important to me in the long run considering the costs of electricity, and then secondly, to have an initial investment that gives me a high Mhash/$ invested. I figure with the HDD,  I can simply remote access it and use the extra space as storage.

Also, as I am just getting my feet wet, I do not want to immediately invest too much until I get a feel for the practical side of this operation. To that end, I have been planning on building my own PC anyway and so if I decide to bow out of mining, most of the components I plan to buy can be used for my home office/gaming rig. I calculate my bitcoin mining investment portion of this machine to be only about USD 200.

Based on the motherboard I have chosen, would it be possible to add another 1 or 2 of the same GPU if I decide to take this further? I would like to get close to the ~420Mhash/GPU that I have been reading in this thread and so I plan to have the appropriate software and configuration there.


Thanks for any pointers!

Crispin

You guys are making me drool.

Can't wait for my 6950 to get here...

I been testing my 5870 and 5970 alot iv managed to get my 5870 to 1060/600 on 1.225 and my 5970 to 960/500 on 1.149.  Im running windows 7 and i found my cards can be undervolted and still run great at high clocks with pretty low stales.  Im still gonna see how far i can push them also my cards are under water so temps not a issue just they heat up my room bad when its really hot out thats when i down clock them.  I think i might get 1100 out of the 5870 but the 5970 is pretty close to topped out.

I had major cooling problems with my 3 x 5870s due to the proximity of the cards to eachother's fans, meaning that I couldn't really overclock them significantly without hitting 90c and above. Fixed with clothes pegs...
http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/4290/201106251714402.th.jpg

I then got into flashing the BIOS for faster speeds so needed more cooling. Fixed with some dryer ducting with a 92mm fan jammed inside...
http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/8355/201107042308203.th.jpg

Running at the following settings:
Adapter0: 860/300 clock, 382MHash/s @ 69.5c
Adapter1: 920/307 clock, 411MHash/s @ 68.0c
Adapter2: 940/313 clock, 422MHash/s @ 62.0c

All voltages & fans are at stock setting, though I'm tempted to manually set the fans a bit faster for the higher temps. All cards are running Phoenix with Phatk configured with: AGGRESSION=10 WORKSIZE=256 VECTORS BFI_INT FASTLOOP=false -q 2

I can't really go above 960 core clock without the cards crashing, due to voltages probably - has anyone had any luck changing this on XFX 5870 under Linux? The setting is locked in RBE and I can't find any software option.

Nice to see high hashing power. How's the stability of these numbers over a longer time period? I find that if the core clock is 'too' high, instability can occur over time. I should know as I have 4 5870 cards.

So for a card to be running stable, it should at least run 14 days without freezes or crashes in my opinion.

What's your wattage running stock voltage?

I have 260 W for the whole rig, it does about 80 W during POST so I'm guessing 180-200 W for the GPU. Can I get below that if I undervolt? How far can I go?

2x ASUS Radeon 5870 (EAH5870/2DIS/1GD5/V2)

452 MH/s each

Card Settings
Core: 992MHz
Mem: 350MHz
Voltage: Standard
Temperature: 81c (top) 78c (bottom). Room temperature 20-25c. Fan @ 40-50%.

Miner Configuration
GUIMiner (07-01-2011)
Phoenix 1.5 (phatk 07-06-2011)
Flags: -k phatk VECTORS BFI_INT AGGRESSION=14 WORKSIZE=256

I get 430 Mhash/s with 945/300, and this phoenix script:

phoenix -u http://workername:[email protected]:8332/ -k phatk VECTORS BFI_INT AGGRESSION=7 WORKSIZE=128 DEVICE=0 FASTLOOP=false

That's on a Win 7 machine.

If you use that pre-built Linux OS/miner, that you can boot off of a USB stick, it is possible to get 450 - 460 Mhash/s

I killed my USB stick so ordering another one

Hai, I got my 5870 running at 425 MH/s with SDK 2.1 and the newest DiabloMiner (includes this tweak).

Now I know overclocking (won't be stable past 950 MHz, blame XFX) and I recently learned underclocking (memory is at 300 MHz), but what about undervolting? I am down to 1.15V with the 950/300 setup and it's already saved me 10 W. How far can one go? Should I just trial and error until the system freezes and use the last voltage known to work? Is that safe or can I effectively ruin my card?

If you are using Linux try AMDOverdriveCtrl. I could set the voltage lower at those speeds, so you have less consumption and less heat.

Yeah, I've tried 333 and, while it's a noticeable improvement over 300, it falls a few MH/s behind 350 memory clock.  Voltage is automatically set at 1.250 by the ATI GPU Tool, which I'm using to adjust the core/memory clocks.  I don't think there's a way for me to change the voltage with that tool.