Topic: HD 6770 (Read 6848 times)

I'm running 5770's specifically because they play nicely with the 300W PSUs in the spare machines I had to plug them into.

6770s are the coolest running cards I own. They aren't powerhouses, but they are power efficient and reliable.

My testing rig runs 2 * 6770 for BTC & LTC mining in Australia.

The cards have been flogged for nealry 18 months now with card temps in the mid 80s celsius for a smooth 205MHs / 200KHs (BTC/LTC).

I have used cross-fire but then the slave cards only run at ~90% however, if crossfire is removed, they runn ~99%

I found cgminer was essential to smooth running.

Overall, they are very sturdy cards for Australian conditions.

The 5770's that I have had were stock cooling and running Boinc wide open and overclocked yet they stayed under 70c. (alt fan profile was used)
I believe they will withstand 100-104c before disaster strikes, just not sure how long one would last at that level. Cramped case or poor cooling perhaps? Lead free solder is crap IMO.

My 6770 was running about 76c at stock. This was okay back when we were allowed to use lead in solder! But a really hot summer killed it on that damn EU lead free solder that was also killing early XBOX 360s and PS3s with "ring of death".

My 5830's ran at 60c, and my 7850's run at 50c!

Really the 6770 sells for the same price as a 5830 and that's a much faster, cooler, quieter card with no OEM driver issues.

Video of a 5830 running Battlefield 3 in 1080p Ultra 0xAA with FPS and Temp counters.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjCOwK3VJDc

IIRC the 6770 is basically a rebadged 5770 with some minor updates. They normally run quite cool.

The 6770 was intended as an OEM ONLY RELEASE but XFX fecked up and boxed it for retail.

"6770 will not install"
>"From what I understand the 6770 is only supposed to ship to OEM's for use in Pre-builts, how did you get one from Best Buy?"
>>"Just to give everyone a heads up. I just spoke to AMD and they are not supporting the 6770 card for retail. Mark stated they have talked about releasing it to retail but have not made this step as of yet. He also checked all driver files to see if they had a driver for the 6770 and the 6750. He stated they do not have any support for these. He also checked the beta 11.4 and there is no plans to have a 6770 driver on there either."
>>>"Having just purchased this card and successfully installed it, I can say that there are drivers on the disc. One would assume the latest drivers straight from AMD would support this card, however that was not the case. I had to rollback my drivers to those from XFX's site to get the card working after I updated with AMD's most recent release."
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/314448-15-6770-install

When the GPU is seen as idle in the OS, it underclocks. I usually see half the core and memory speeds.

What?! I'm not saying I'm the know-all source for GPU drivers, but I've never heard of anything like that.

Some cards are OEM models and will only run half speed (or not at all) with AMD drivers. You need to use the driver from you card manufacturer.

Just got "OEM brown box" 7850 crossfire for Christmas and I was like WTF they run slower than my old 5830s!

After a while I figured out they were running 430/600 instead of 860/1200 and it was only fixed with the manufacturers driver disc.

The 6770 is not a good card, had one, it runs hot and dies if you get a hot summer. It too is an OEM card!  

In general, you should underclock your GPU RAM when mining BTC, and overclock your GPU RAM when mining LTC.


As for Nvidia vs ATI, see this article: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Why_a_GPU_mines_faster_than_a_CPU#Why_are_AMD_GPUs_faster_than_Nvidia_GPUs.3F

As for changing clocks while the card is in use: in general, yes, it's fine. Actually, CGMiner does this automatically, by changing your clocks on the fly with dynamic overclocking to prevent overheating (if you set it up). I have had some issues with MSI AB and unofficial overclocking locking a card into low power mode when you change a setting while mining, requiring a reboot.

Most cards will play nice with clock changing when there is a load on it. Some are temperamental, some damaged ones may throw a fit too. None of it with permanently damage a card though. Worst case your computer will freeze.

Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111!!!11!one!!11elleven!!!!! 

 

That's a bit too much work for me to do tonight, but I will definitely take a crack at it (prob tomorrow morning)!

Anyhow... I'm running this card with cgminer right now mining some Litecoin, and it's actually running more than 2x's faster than the GTX-580. I know Litecoin uses Scrypt and it's a different ballgame, so could anyone explain why it's performing so much better for LTC mining? And would over-clocking the card's memory speed it up for Litecoin?

Also... Is it safe to tweak clock settings while your GPU is mining?

Because you're using the newest AMD APP, which is probably 2.7. 2.7 and 2.6 blow HORRIBLY for anything that doesn't absolutely require it (see radeon 7000 series). Use 2.1, 2.4, or 2.5 (I recommend 2.1, but you won't be able to use it on that driver. I think the newest driver that supports 2.1 is 12.3, but you should still probably use 11.12 or 12.1).

Uninstall the entire thing, delete amdocl64.dll, amdoclcl64.dll, and OpenCL.dll from C:\windows\system32 and amdocl.dll, amdoclcl.dll, and OpenCL.dll from C:\windows\SysWOW64. For whatever reason, amd app and opencl aren't properly uninstalled when you uninstall the driver.

Download and install 11.12. Link is here. http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/previous/11/Pages/radeon.aspx?os=Windows%20Vista%20-%2064-Bit%20Edition&rev=11.12
Driver is mandatory as well as the amd app. Catalyst control center not necessary at all. Reboot for funsies.

Recommended to install SDK 2.1 as well, but you only need to install ONE THING from the package. Unfortunately I can't find a link on amd's site. You can either download and install the only package you need from my dropbox here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/9768004/ATIStreamSDK_dev.msi or you can google for ati-stream-sdk-v2.1-vista-win7-64.exe and extract contents and navigate to Packages\Apps\ATIStreamSDK_Dev_win764a\ATIStreamSDK_dev.msi. This will create a second openCL platform called "ATI Stream" that many have found a little faster than 2.4/2.5 (I believe 2.5 comes with driver 11.12). Note: Most miners will NOT find the ATI Stream opencl platform unless AMD APP is also installed. Also, ATI Stream -must- be installed after AMD APP is installed.

After you install ATI Stream, you should be able to mine at proper speeds. You should get something like 195 mhash on a stock speed 6770. 1GHz would push about 230 mhash. Make sure you select the proper platform with your miners settings. With CGminer or BFGMiner, this is with the "gpu-platform" argument, followed by a number. 0 is the first platform, 1 is the second platform, etc.

Make sure you are using the phatk (or phatk2 if you are using phoenix) kernel, BFI_INT if using something other than CGMiner/BFGMiner, worksize of 128, and vectors enabled or set to 2 (depending on miner). Also it is recommended to set memory low, usually in the area of 160-190MHz depending on core speeds; the optimum ratio is close to a 5:1 core speed to memory speed. It takes some fiddling around, but you will see much lower temperatures and likely higher mhash than stock memory speeds.

Maxed out the core clock @ 960MHz and the best it can do is 145Mh/sec... 

Ok, I re-installed AMD Catalyst package with .NET 4.0 support and now GUIMiner can detect "Juniper" (the HD 6770) again... Whew... Glad to have that fixed. Now I can get back to trying to over-clock at get > 200MH/sec performance...

Still open to suggestions on core clock speed and mem clock speed. Also, how about fan speed? Should I just leave it on "auto"?

Yeah, something is very wrong here... "Juniper" (the HD 6770) is no longer a detected device and I can't use it anymore... It was all working fine until I tampered with clock settings and my card crashed...

However, I'm using the card now and it does display and seems to be working ok.... WTF...

EDIT::

I ran a D3D11 sample (rendering rotating triangle) with my game engine to ensure the card still works for 3D/gaming... worked fine... Ran ArmA II: Reinforcements for confirmation and it also worked fine. So it doesn't appear that the card has been damaged at all. I also put everything back to factory clock settings. But it's still gone as far as GUIMiner, cgminer or any other mining app is concerned...

That's card specific and can vary wildly from card to card. That said, it's probably safe to assume they'll do 950ish. 6770s don't get very hot at all either.

Edit: The latest versions of BFGMiner are very nice, I tend to use it for BTC mining and have CGMiner set up for LTC Mining.

Uh oh... GUIMiner no longer detects my GPU... 

Ok, it makes sense to me why I should lower the RAM speed... Bitcoin mining uses SHA-256 and we barely even use our GPUs' RAM (quite the opposite with Litecoin/Scrypt) -- so lowering clock speed on the RAM will keep my card cooler and more efficient...

But... What settings do I need on my core? What's the "danger zone"?