Any wisdom on optimizing 6970's? - page 2.

goxed

legendary

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Bitcoin / Crypto mining Hardware.

Quote from: -ck on January 21, 2012, 06:54:01 AM

Sapphire reference cards. They most definitely need a hardware modification to allow setting memory clock lower. There were some links showing how to do so with some wire and solder and shit and I decided against it <_<

You're most welcome and thanks for donations =)

Can you please post the link? I have a Weller soldering station, and would want to experiment a bit.

jake262144

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Try that.
Worry about the flashed card, not the whole machine. It's not like it'll blow up in your face or melt down.
Don't flash until you have made (and verified) backups of your existing BIOSes. Use ATIFlash's -s switch for that.

the joint

legendary

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Quote from: cypherdoc on January 30, 2012, 02:28:46 PM

Quote from: jake262144 on January 30, 2012, 02:22:04 PM

NP Cypherdoc.
Remember that the flashing utility will require admin rights and be sure to start with creating a backup of your old bios.
Best of luck.

thanks to you guys i'm now pulling 400 Mh/s per card Cheesy

Hey cyperdoc, may seem like a dumb question, but how did you back-up you old bios? In what folder are they located?

Also, after downloading the flash utility, what exactly happens?

I guess what I really want to know is this: What steps did you take from the moment you downloaded the flash utility to when you were able to successfully lower your mem clock to below a -125 differential?

The reason I'm asking is because it's a very expensive computer and I want to make sure I don't jack something up through trial and error.

jjshabadoo

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Which bios did you flash your 6970 cards to? just use the newest one or one in particular?

jake262144

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Is that bothering you? Wink

cypherdoc

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Quote from: jake262144 on January 30, 2012, 02:22:04 PM

NP Cypherdoc.
Remember that the flashing utility will require admin rights and be sure to start with creating a backup of your old bios.
Best of luck.

thanks to you guys i'm now pulling 400 Mh/s per card Cheesy

jake262144

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NP Cypherdoc.
Remember that the flashing utility will require admin rights and be sure to start with creating a backup of your old bios.
Best of luck.

cypherdoc

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Quote from: jake262144 on January 30, 2012, 02:05:33 PM

ATIFlash 3.89 @techpowerup.com

thanks Jake.

jake262144

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ATIFlash 3.89 @techpowerup.com

cypherdoc

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Quote from: sveetsnelda on January 21, 2012, 03:36:48 AM

Quote from: -ck on January 21, 2012, 02:38:08 AM

I tried flashing the BIOS but the last few generations are hardware limited, not software so it had no effect (this is why I put the gpu-memdiff option in cgminer)

Negative. The 6970 can have the memory clock changed easily with a BIOS flash. I have 42 more recent cards all flashed with lower memclock and voltage. There were problems with atiflash sending the correct commands to a certain ATMEL ROM though. For a few of the cards, I had to pull them apart and temporarily short 2 pins on the ATMEL to disable write protection while the ROM was flashed. This ATMEL chip was used on a lot of later 6970s. Maybe you ran into this problem? ATIFlash fixed this issue in 3.89:

Code:

Fix issue with flashing Atmel AT25F512B ROMs

With my XFX reference 6970s, I get 1580Mhash @ 683 watts on an OCZ ZX 1250W PSU. (900Mhz/340Mhz @ 1.050). They've been stable for months. If this is a dedicated rig and you underclock the memory/undervolt the core, you can run 6 cards. Definitely don't do this at stock clock/memory/voltage though. Your PSU will hate you.

Totally unrelated -- thanks for CGMiner! My mining operation would was so much more cumbersome before it existed. Now that it's scaled up to 40Ghash, it would be a nightmare without it. In fact, toying around with these 7970s has made me wonder how I dealt with it before. I've silently tossed some donations your way here and there, but I said nothing because I wasn't looking for recognition. Thanks for the good work!

can u give me a link to this atiflash utility for a cgminer rig with Win7 with 4 6970's please?

Fiyasko

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Okey Dokey Lokey

Quote from: sveetsnelda on January 28, 2012, 10:57:41 PM

Quote from: chiropteran on January 28, 2012, 10:08:19 PM

I can reduce my 6970's mem to 300mhz (or lower) just fine with clocktweak- does this mean I have an unusual card? Never did any BIOS mods or anything of the sort, just software OCing.

Clocktweak is for Windows. Changing the 6970 memclock in Windows has never been a problem. Linux is the issue...

K, Cause i have a 6990, (yeah i know totally different in the hardcore aspects) and i can drop it's mem clock to 333 with the core at 925, Been running solid for 8months now

jjshabadoo

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Guys, CKolivas knows what he's talking about when it comes to cgminer and since he says he wosn some 69xx series cards, you can take the rest tio the bank. Sveetsnelda is helping me with linux, not windows.

Also, just an update. I'm going with 4 6970's on the board with a 480 rad, nice standard, stable water cooled set-up. Got all the stuff cheap, so I really don't feel the need to "max" everything out. This thing is going to live at someone else's house and I suck at networking so don't even feel like dealing with remote access. So I need this thing stable as hell. I'm going to take the extra two cards and put them into my dad's already water cooled gaming rig. He has plenty of water cooling already set-up to handle crossfire and he's a gamer. So I'm going to set him up with a nice 6970 crossfire rig and sell his water cooled gtx 470. When he's not gaming he can crank up afterburner or whatever windows tool we use and start the miner to make a few bucks.

Should work out just fine.

Thanks for the help and I'll report back when I have it set up.

sveetsnelda

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Quote from: chiropteran on January 28, 2012, 10:08:19 PM

I can reduce my 6970's mem to 300mhz (or lower) just fine with clocktweak- does this mean I have an unusual card? Never did any BIOS mods or anything of the sort, just software OCing.

Clocktweak is for Windows. Changing the 6970 memclock in Windows has never been a problem. Linux is the issue...

-ck

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Ruu \o/

Quote from: chiropteran on January 28, 2012, 10:08:19 PM

I can reduce my 6970's mem to 300mhz (or lower) just fine with clocktweak- does this mean I have an unusual card? Never did any BIOS mods or anything of the sort, just software OCing.

There is a reason cgminer reports back the CURRENT settings after you change it: It's because the driver will often accept a value you give it, but the hardware will NOT. So you may set it to 300 and it will merrily ignore you and set it back to the default. Try setting it to only 125 lower than the gpu engine speed and if it suddenly starts running cooler than when you "set" it to 300, that is what's happened.

chiropteran

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I can reduce my 6970's mem to 300mhz (or lower) just fine with clocktweak- does this mean I have an unusual card? Never did any BIOS mods or anything of the sort, just software OCing.

jjshabadoo

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This new atiflash will work for linux, correct? It's one of those dos bios flash programs I assume. I usually have a hard time figuring out how to make it work, but I'll get it eventually.

I just want to be able to lower the memclocks and crank up the OC at stock voltage with cgminer like I do with my 5 series cards.

I'm building this rig for my dad and need it to be pretty stable so I don't have to go over there and work on it all the time.

Hell I can't see any stability issues with water cooling unless I go for a crazy overclock and I'm not going to do that. I jusy want some power savings with the lowered memclock.

jake262144

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I'll just do some math for our uninformed cuz0882:

OP is setting up a 6 GPU rig.
6 * 25W is 150W less of energy and heat. Still think it's not noticeable?

6970 are very hot GPUs. The 69xx family of cards are flawed products, having been meant to be manufactured at 32nm instead of 40.
Mind you, that it's supposed to be a water-cooled machine.
Removing such levels of heat requires a huge and expensive radiator complemented by a full battery of push-pull high-static-pressure fans and a very strong pump. I'm not sure even a 4*120 radiator will do the job with ease.
Since it's not going to be a walk in the park by any stretch of imagination, it is therefore crucial to minimize the heat footprint before the heat is transported away and dissipated.

Friendly suggestion: when posting on subjects you know little about it would be more appropriate for you to end your posts with a ? instead of a .

sveetsnelda

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Quote from: cuz0882 on January 22, 2012, 06:44:33 AM

there should be no reason to solder or use atiflash

This is only if you're using Windows. The ATI driver in Linux will not let you lower the memclock further than 125Mhz below core clock.

Quote from: cuz0882 on January 22, 2012, 06:44:33 AM

Lower the memory clock is simple but no very important.

Very wrong. Lowering memory clock will drop almost 25 watts (AC) per card and won't affect performance.

Quote from: cuz0882 on January 22, 2012, 06:44:33 AM

It won't be a noticeable heat difference.

Yes there will. 25 watts of electricity = 25 watts of heat. The energy has to come from somewhere.

Quote from: cuz0882 on January 22, 2012, 06:44:33 AM

I've also found it very useful to use afterburner for overclocking and running the fans. A lot of people claim to have trouble with it, but if you do it right it works perfectly.

Afterburner is Windows only.

cuz0882

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I have sapphire referenced 6970's, there should be no reason to solder or use atiflash. Lower the memory clock is simple but no very important. It won't be a noticeable heat difference. May as well lower it if the pc is only used for mining though. I was adding a new 5970 to a pc that already had 2 in it. And I could not get the voltage or clock speeds to change. I tried several cards and the newly added card would always refuse to change. I finally fixed it by removing all the cards, and running just the card that was giving me problems. It then overclocked fine, and when I put the other cards back in there all set to the correct clocks.
I've also found it very useful to use afterburner for overclocking and running the fans. A lot of people claim to have trouble with it, but if you do it right it works perfectly.

-ck

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Ruu \o/

Quote from: sveetsnelda on January 22, 2012, 02:10:39 AM

Quote from: -ck on January 21, 2012, 04:57:24 PM

So.. you're saying a newer version of atiflash is all I need now?

I believe so. Took care of it for me.

Thanks... whenever my freaking motherboard is replaced I'll see about it

Topic: Any wisdom on optimizing 6970's? - page 2. (Read 4663 times)