Topic: Getting ahead of arriving miner parts... (with 25LTC bounty) - page 3. (Read 9646 times)

I have anywhere from 3% to 10% depending on the pool.

What's an acceptable level of stales when running LP instead of stratum? I'm on give-me-ltc and getting around 5% for my first rig. I haven't optimized anything yet and I think they're still having trouble with their stratum server so that's why I'm not on it yet. Just want to know so when I come back next week I can tweak everything and make sure to get it down to an acceptable level.

-Moose

Rig #1 is online with 5 cards running on GUIMiner for LTC. Can't get card #6 online because the LEPA 1600W PSU I bought doesn't have enough power cables for it. Going to order a molex->PCI-e cable to get that one working. All cards are running 500kH/s+ each with just using GUIMiner's "high usage" settings for the 7950.

Question, can I create 1 miner and have it set to 5 GPU threads and it will utilize all 5 GPUs on that 1 miner thread? I currently have 5 different miner tabs inside GUIMiner with each GPU selected individually. Next week I'll stop using GUIMiner and actually go into cgminer and play around so hopefully I can change the engine/memclock settings and get each GPU pushing over 600kH/s.

Also, I think I need something bigger than the 7" Honeywell fan I bought to put on each rig. It's doing well for now, but I don't think it's quite big enough for the milk crate miner to span all 6 cards.

-Moose

Hey moose...from what Ive read mining with scrypt is just the opposite of sha256.  bitcoin = massive gpu core clocks litecoin = massive gpu memory clocks. my 7950s will run for sure at 1500mhz and I hear up to 1900mhz  I think the 1700ish range should be pretty easy to reach.

For scrypt mining (LTC, etc) you don't drop the memory. If anything you increase the memory and drop the GPU core. Depending on your card you want a specific core to memory ratio. For my 7970's that is 945 core, 1575 mem. Once I did that my KH went from the low 500's to ~650kh.

BTW, aftermarket thermal paste does very little in the grand scheme of things. Cards will last forever with the stock paste. It anything it is the fans that will go out while mining. If it is a choice between applying thermal paste to rig #1 or getting rig #2 up and running before you leave for a week, getting rig #2 running is by far the best option.

It does no good to get the GPUs online before getting better thermal paste on as they'll run cooler and it'll prolong the life of the card. Thanks for the tip on the remote login. I definitely planned on getting something but wasn't sure which one it'd be yet.

I forgot to change the power settings in Windows last night before going to be and the computer went to sleep after a half hour. It's back up and running now. I can't seem to get GUIMiner (running cgminer) to get above 542kH/s. I tried getting bfgminer to work, but it won't let me drop the memclock below 1250 (I want it to be 1000) unless the GPU engine is at 1000 as well. I'm trying to have engine 1175 mem 1000. I may attempt running cgminer directly and seeing if it will let me tweak the settings.

When I was running Ubuntu, bfgminer let me set the engine to 1175 and the mem to 1000 and I was getting 620kH/s. Not sure why it won't when I'm on Windows. Any suggestions? I might try taking the line out from the startup command for trying to preset the engine and memclock.

-Moose

IMO, you should be getting those GPU's online instead of worrying about better thermal paste, etc. BTW, make sure you have something like Teamviewer or Logmein installed on each mining rig. You will be able to login remotely to restart the miners, etc. Of course if the power blinks 5 minutes after you walk out the door for a week you are kind of screwed. Logmein does have the ability to start up PC's that are powered off. I assume it has something to do with the wake-up packet. It's worked maybe 50% for me although I have not really investigated how to make it work reliably. Probably something that you should get working.

I have riser cables so I can fit 6 GPUs on this board. I don't have them attached to the board directly.

A friend of mine suggests against the Motherboard cited in original post. Apparently the slots are too close together to fix x3 dual slot cards. Something to keep in mind when shopping around, Could fit 2x dual slot and then a single slot...

If I unlock the 4th core on my cpu it will bluescreen shortly after booting. Most of the time they are disabled because they didn't pass testing at standard clock speeds.

Swapped over to Windows and after a few installs and upgrades I had 1 GPU miner at 542kH/s with TacoTime's GUIMiner port (using cgminer and not reaper)!!!

Currently I have the GPU settings at 1175/1000 +10 power and an intensity of 20 (based on TacoTime's high usage defaults). I found the sweet spot for me on bfgminer under Linux was I=13, but I can't seem to figure out how to calculate the Thread Concurrency rate to adjust it down for a lower intensity and try different settings. I've seen this thing do 620kH/s under Linux/bfgminer, so I just need to figure out now how to tweak the intensity some and see what it produces.

Also, is there a tool I can download to monitor temps? I can't see the temps with MSI's AfterBurner it looks like, so I'd like to at least make sure this thing is staying at a decent temp. With it running at 100% earlier and an additional fan pointed at it, I was getting low 70C temps. So far I see a tip going towards TacoTime and laSeek both separate from this bounty. Help me get up to 610+kH/s using GUIMiner (don't care if I have to switch to reaper over cgminer) and I'll tip you the 25LTC bounty once it's hashed.

Tomorrow will be all about disassembling GPUs, reapplying better thermal paste, and then installing them (w/ no shroud) into this first rig. If there's time left, I'll build rig #2. About to go on some Rope Access training for some upcoming offshore work, so I won't get to play with my toys for a whole week. I want at least 1 rig generating LTC while I'm gone. (:

-Moose

Please make sure you consider cooling of the room(s) you plan on having epic rigs in. you will be producing a LOT of heat, and espescially with summer coming up you will need to factor in how much AC capability is around or if you happen to be in a very cool environment, if you have the ability to have some very powerful window fans to keep the place ventilated.

You can skip the Windows 7 key during install. Then it will run for 30 days before it starts to nag. Nag is just that. Annoying popups that don't effect mining functionality. Will work fine even non-activated.

Best of luck to you. You are definitely taking some risk, especially if you are going to start renting office space. You will have Internet expense, greater risk of theft, etc. Have you though about how you are going to keep the miners going in the office if they lock up, power goes out, etc while you are at home? Just stuff to think about.

No pics just yet. Rig is built with 1 GPU on it and I spent all day attempting to get bfgminer to work on that son of a bitch. Even worked with laSeek for hours through PM and finally threw in the towel. It was get ~620kH/s but only when trying to solve for SHA on a scrypt coin. When I loaded it as scrypt, the bastard was only getting 30kH/s.

So screw Linux, I'm loading Win7 now and getting TacoTime's GUIMiner port and going to see if that runs any better. I have no doubts it will. Once I get 1 card working fine, I'm putting the other 5 on the one rig and then I'll start with rig #2. It's been an annoying ass day...

OK, if it helps here is what I do for Ubuntu. First I install ubuntu server 12.04.2 LTS 64-bit. The only thing you actually need to enable on the install is ssh server (when it asks what services you want). The box will DHCP and get an IP as part of the install process.

Right after the install you no longer need a local monitor or keyboard, you can login via ssh.

SSH to the ubuntu box with ssh program of your choice (putty is a good free windows client).

Personally I now set the root password as I dislike sudo.

sudo bash
(type password for the account you created at login)
passwd root
(type new root password)

Then log back in as your user, then type "su" and enter the root password you just set.

Then add the following as root:

apt-get install screen
apt-get install emacs
apt-get install rcs
apt-get install bzip2
apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev
apt-get install libncurses5-dev
apt-get install pkg-config
apt-get install libtool
apt-get install xserver-xorg-core
apt-get install xinit
apt-get install make

Install Catalyst Drivers (I use 13.1 currently).
Reboot
Install AMD APP (I use 2.8 currently).
Reboot

aticonfig --list-adapters
(this should show a list of your install gnu cards)

aticonfig --adapter=all -f --initial

Download cgminer source. Uncompress and untar.

Download AMD ADL SDK, install *.h files into ADL_SDK dir in cgminer directory structure.

cd back into cgminer main directory

./configure

Ensure GPU support and ADL are detected.

make

Then start x (on another console or remote type "startx" as root).

./cgminer -n

You should see both of your cards.

Now run cgminer with appropriate config file and you are mining, ie:

./cgminer --config /path/to/your/file.conf

That's it! I do this all via remote scripts but it works fine typing the commands by hand as well.

Ubuntu is giving me tons of problems. Mostly because I just don't know Linux. I have almost all the dependencies installed, but can't figure out where to get the json-dev (not exact name) dependency to install to. I figured out how to pull it off of GitHub, but don't know which directory to be in to do it. Linux is definitely not for the faint of heart I'm seeing. Not exactly sure why programs have to be all spread and and needing compiled and shit. It's fucking ridiculous.

Have a hacked Win7 64bit OS torrenting right now that I'm about to attempt to swap over to as I'm running on empty trying to figure out how to get cgminer or bfgminer running.... Mostly it's just because I don't know the commands and how to compile all this shit and get the last two dependencies I need downloaded because they don't show in the Ubuntu Software search :-/

-Moose

I'm surprised you had issues with Ubuntu 12.04. I am running 12.04.2 LTS and am not having any issues (cgminer, Cat 13.1, 7950's). Where did you get hung up?

Yea..all and all very happy with the 5800k..its perfect for htc set ups.  At 1175mhz on that core as well..average hash is 132mh/s. Have been able to hit 5ghz overclocking. Runs at 4.7mhz at 1.4625v. Prime95 stable.



Not sure how true this is..and im sure many will jump in here with opinions but FWIW...I noticed a SLIGHT increase in the work done per minute when I have my cpu overclocked from 3.8ghz to 4.7ghz. My average per minute share goes from 18.7 to 19.5ish.  YMMV.
 

Moose...post some pics dude..cant wait to see. it.  Working on a deal for 3 6870's right now....another 900mh/s added to the farm I hope.    *crosses fingers*

Those cores are locked because (afaik, this is how it was explained to me) those cores are either bad, or it was cheaper to just lock one core and rebadge it to a lower version, so its like a lottery core.

For thermal paste I would recommend Prolimatech PK-3, long lasting, great thermal conductivity, not electrically conductive, and I have been using PK-1 for years now (PK-3 is the latest product, PK-2 is an adhesive version).  I'd also suggest using it or whatever you decide on for the GPUs as well. 
PK-3 Review: http://pro-clockers.com/thermalcompound/2393-prolimatech-pk-2-and-pk-3-thermal-paste.html?start=3

+1 for Sapphire!

@zif33rs: Thanks for posting the result of the A10-5800k, I was considering this for a rig and that extra 150 sold me on it.

I thought it might need the help with 6 GPUs running on one board. I did disable the onboard audio already though. If I get the system running and see it not using much CPU, I may just do as you suggested. (: