Topic: Lets Solve the unreliable 7970 issues.... (share your observations/input) - page 3. (Read 25971 times)

Well thanks to the tips, I played around with my clocks a bit more and settled upon 1065 core and 1500 memory. This "sweet spot" gets me a pretty steady 138 - 142 khs readings. It is strange, as was with tytanick's case, if I go any higher than 1500 on memory (even 1501, I tried) it drops down to 550 khs.

My only concern now is stability, my temp is up to 73 degrees C, and is only that low as I took the side off my case and have a small desk fan blowing toward it (was pushing 80 when the case was closed up).

I will let this run for awhile before making any more changes. As I mentioned before, I am using the 12.1 drivers, but assuming my rig stays stable may try the 13.3 beta later to see if I get any more out of it. Right now I am pretty happy though, as I doing a good 50 khs more than when I started tweaking.

You stole the words right out of my mouth. I have the exact same card, the Gigabyte HD7970 OC 3GB. I found the same problem. I had to play around for an hour before I stumbled upon these same settings. except I didn't use export display=:0 or GPU_use_sync_objects=0. I used the Gigabyte OC Guru program because I couldn't get MSI afterburner working properly. Did I mention I am using catalyst 13.3 beta drivers?
Hope this helps.

PS. If I run this hotter than 83 C it craps out completely.

I have pretty nice 732Kh/s mining litecoins with 7970.
Below there are my specs and configs.
It is very important that you need to hit the "sweet" spot of Core MhZ and also Memory Mhz.
For me is 1045/1500
If i will change 1500 memory to even 1501, speed goes to about 550KH/s
(Please donate anything if i helped ANYBODY

Ubuntu
Catalyst 13.3 Beta 3
Gigabyte Radeon HD7970 OC 3GB DDR5 384bit (1000/5500) (GV-R797OC-3GD)



BTC: 14umHTZJ1dwjts4r5uEdzkFyjrgLEL5TzS
LTC: LZ1APfJWesDugPz1xvgbE8KvU8XT7oTvya
PPC: PWQzdvdg5JubY84JXEPPRtXrsagnSyQ8hW
TRC: 1JZHVDFYjyQtbVaVYq9PG6iabK7iu4WUEQ
NVC: 4H9TCyNMAWfNiKrvEw9evMU63sBVwEj9NM
BTE: 8GFofiaH5rQGi8HhGxP3o7XqKmKiUpMVxm

Thanks to your post BBQKorv, I adjusted my settings a bit (added lookup-gap 2 and bumped core up to 1060) and now getting a bit closer to your results, ~ 725khs.

Do you think going from the 12.1 driver to the 13.1 will get me the other 15khs? Anyone else have trouble with buggy installation of the 13.1's like I did?

Thanks

 cgminer version 2.11.4 - Started: [2013-04-14 08:40:42]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 (5s):724.9K (avg):724.2Kh/s | A:1272  R:4  HW:0  U:5.1/m  WU:690.5/m
 ST: 5  SS: 0  NB: 111  LW: 2322  GF: 0  RF: 0
 Connected to us.wemineltc.com diff 209 with stratum as user XXXXX
 Block: 9146cb525115b6d7...  Diff:19.2M  Started: [12:47:19]  Best share: 262K
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 [P]ool management [G]PU management [ S]ettings [D]isplay options [Q]uit
 GPU 0:  72.0C 3346RPM | 726.8K/724.2Kh/s | A:1272 R:4 HW:0 U:  5.07/m I:13
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Also for the last poster, the reason I went for the 7970 over the 7950 is I will occasionally use it for gaming. I do not have a dedicated mining rig, yet.

I never get why people are willingly to pay +50% more for a 7970  compared to 7950 while  technically -on paper- they gain 10% more performance. In reality, in LTC/NVC mining  I'm able to boost 700 Mhs on both my -Asus/Sapphire- cards with 2 clicks with moderate OC.
So with a 7950 OCed and  using  --scrypt algo  I can outperform any 7970. Not to mention price....

I just got in a Gigabyte HD7970 Rev 2.1 card. It is the 1000 MHz core, 1375 MHz memory model found here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125413

I am using the 12.1 driver as I had trouble getting the 13.1 to install properly (kept booting into a flashing screen on Win 8 ).

Anyway, I can get close to 700 Khash/sec using:  -I 13 -g 2 -w 256 --thread-concurrency 8192  leaving the core at 1000 MHz and upping the memory to 1425 MHz.

I would crash after 8 or so hours with memory set even at 1450, but it has been stable at 1425. I didn't see much improvement upping my core clock, although I was able to run it stable at 1050, I chose to keep it at stock as it lowered the temps by about 5 degrees C.

 cgminer version 2.11.4 - Started: [2013-04-13 16:45:08]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 (5s):690.5K (avg):689.5Kh/s | A:15130  R:50  HW:0  U:16.0/m  WU:632.1/m
 ST: 5  SS: 0  NB: 465  LW: 11724  GF: 1  RF: 1
 Connected to stratum.give-me-ltc.com diff 32 with stratum as user XXXXXX
 Block: 987e5b90e3fee78d...  Diff:19.2M  Started: [08:28:57]  Best share: 1.2M
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 [P]ool management [G]PU management [ S]ettings [D]isplay options [Q]uit
 GPU 0:  70.0C 3342RPM | 689.9K/689.5Kh/s | A:15131 R:50 HW:0 U: 16.01/m I:13

I have found that W7 Aero desktop does suck around 100khs on a 2560x1600 resolution with a dual link DVI. This system has 2x7970s and the GPU having monitor connected to is doing only ~600khs while the other GPU does +700khs.

My completely headless miner does 740khs on all cards. Gigabyte Windforce 3 OC 7970 (GV-R797OC-3GD) rev 2.1 volt locked cards here @ 1060/1460.

cgminer 2.11.4 --scrypt --lookup-gap 2 -I 13 -w 256 -g 2 --thread-concurrency 8192
Catalyst 13.1

Vapor 7970 pain in my ass. 550mhs on a good day. 13.3 beta 3. sha - rocks : scrypt - abysmal

I have a MSI 7970 reference card, man it took me the whole night just to tweak it, went from 580KH/s to 660KH/s now. I don't think I can do better with this card, if i need to hit 700+ I'm gonna need at least 1700 memory which my card is max out at 1575 .

My settings
Core@941 Mem@1574 -I 13 -g2 -w 256 --Thread-concurrency 8170 (yea even lower by standard but it perform the best.) So yea try to play with even lower Thread-concurrency, it might perform better like mine.

load up gpu-z and post up a screenshot.. that will show quite a bit more specific information regarding the chip/bios etc.

made a few adjustments on my locked gigabyte.  to bed now so will post info in the morning but seem to be hitting 650k atm.

computer will almost certainly konk out, is this happening to anyone else?

look forward to updates, gnight.

If the card is manufactured by Lightning, why not? It's a custom BIOS by the manufacturer.

Sorry I have nothing else, then.  Glad two of them are performing better, though

I only have two 7970s so my experience is limited.  I've just been trying to mention the -g2 option because it seems that many are unaware of or have not tried it.  Compared to GPU BTC mining, GPU LTC mining sucks.

I wish it would work it does not.  cgminer crashes on the 3rd card I listed when changing -g 2.  The second card is slower with 8192, g2.

--edit---

Said that backwards - 2nd card crashes, 3rd card slower - heh just got excited at making some progress with this issue.

Your post caught my eye because I installed a new Sapphire 7970 GHz edition card yesterday. I can't offer much information since the card is so new and my uses have been very vanilla so far. It's been mining BTC in Slush's pool as a background app concurrent with other routine desktop activity. Slush's pool reports around 550 Mhash/sec in that (completely stock) context. The card produces serious artifacting in Firefox, which was a big disappointment. I found lots of chatter about that flaw in various forums, and people suggested the beta 13.3 driver would fix it. I changed to that driver and it improved but did not completely fix the problem.

I'm planning to try the card mining LTC with cgminer Real Soon Now. Good luck tracking things down - you're obviously well ahead of me in digging into the issue, but if I find anything significant I'll post.

Thanks for the thread!

Edit: just to further confirm your pattern. MSI Afterburner shows my GHz card as "lightning" also.

Display device       : MSI R7970 Lightning BE on Tahiti GPU
Display driver       : 9.14.10.0968, Catalyst 13.3
BIOS                 : 015.022.000.001
GUID                 : VEN_1002&DEV_6798&SUBSYS_30001002&REV_00&BUS_1&DEV_0&FN_0

What thread concurrencies are you using for #2 and #3?  Try 8192 as #1 and #4.

I understand, why would one 7970 be reported as "7900 Series" and another supposedly more or less identical 7970 be reported as "7900 Lightning?"

card #1 and card #4 have hit 700kH/s!!!  Needed g 2 option.

However it hurts the performance of card #2 and #3 listed above in the case of #2 it crashed everything.

--edit--

cannot replicate the settings on card 2 or 3 either. 

guess I should be happy with two performing as expected - still it does not answer a major question about all of these....

OP, the reason MSI Afterburner reports the graphics cards by their series and not by exact model, is because the series share the same BIOS, and that is what Afterburner reads by mapping the ROM.

I will try with -g2

thx.

And yes the ONLY commonality is Intensity must be 13 and nothing else.  cheers.