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Topic: Litecoin build for noobs: 3x 7950s (1.8 MH/s) in a $10 crate case - page 6. (Read 78987 times)

member
Activity: 112
Merit: 10
You can run sshd and screen in Cygwin, and several flavors of VNC run on Windows, too.

legendary
Activity: 1274
Merit: 1050
Nice guide, tacotime! I've got two rigs humming along that are very similar to the ones described in this guide.

I made a few changes that should save folks a bit of money.

1.) Use an AMD CPU and motherboard. The ASRock FM2A85X Extreme6 paired with an A4-5300 is a very good, cheap choice (~$150). The mobo contains 5 pcie slots and a 4 pin xfire power connection right on the board to prevent power issues caused by drawing too much power through the pcie slots. The xfire power connection on the board should eliminate the need for powered pcie risers, and allow folks to run with more than 3 7950s. I'm going to see if this setup can handle 4 or 5 7950s soon.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157339

2.) Install Linux Ubuntu 12.04 instead of Windows.

3.) Install the OS, Radeon drivers, AMD APP SDK, and cgminer on a fast USB drive instead of a harddrive. Installing Linux on an old, slow USB driver was painful, but a fast USB drive should work fine. The drive below works fine (SDCZ80-016G-A75) for me and is ~$25:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820171647&Tpk=SDCZ80-016G-A75&IsVirtualParent=1

4.) Use 4 gigs of ram instead of 8 gigs. 4 gigs of ram works perfectly running 3 7950s on Ubuntu 12.04, AMD APP SDK 2.8 64-bit for Linux, Catalyst 13.1 drivers, and cgminer 2.11.4 using high thread concurrency (24000). Each gigabyte 7950 gets ~600Kh/s running at 1000 core / 1250 memory.

Take care

Good post. I'm interested to see how your planned setup will pan out. I build Tacotime's build, but if there are safe ways to add more cards then I'm listening.

You suggest putting Linux on it. I'm considering trying that out, mostly because it's easier to use remote acces to.
hero member
Activity: 742
Merit: 500
Nice guide, tacotime! I've got two rigs humming along that are very similar to the ones described in this guide.

I made a few changes that should save folks a bit of money.

1.) Use an AMD CPU and motherboard. The ASRock FM2A85X Extreme6 paired with an A4-5300 is a very good, cheap choice (~$150). The mobo contains 5 pcie slots and a 4 pin xfire power connection right on the board to prevent power issues caused by drawing too much power through the pcie slots. The xfire power connection on the board should eliminate the need for powered pcie risers, and allow folks to run with more than 3 7950s. I'm going to see if this setup can handle 4 or 5 7950s soon.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157339

2.) Install Linux Ubuntu 12.04 instead of Windows.

3.) Install the OS, Radeon drivers, AMD APP SDK, and cgminer on a fast USB drive instead of a harddrive. Installing Linux on an old, slow USB driver was painful, but a fast USB drive should work fine. The drive below works fine (SDCZ80-016G-A75) for me and is ~$25:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820171647&Tpk=SDCZ80-016G-A75&IsVirtualParent=1

4.) Use 4 gigs of ram instead of 8 gigs. 4 gigs of ram works perfectly running 3 7950s on Ubuntu 12.04, AMD APP SDK 2.8 64-bit for Linux, Catalyst 13.1 drivers, and cgminer 2.11.4 using high thread concurrency (24000). Each gigabyte 7950 gets ~600Kh/s running at 1000 core / 1250 memory.

Take care
sr. member
Activity: 378
Merit: 250
Seems like I can mine TRC on GuiMiner but at half the kH/s as the card is capable.
legendary
Activity: 1484
Merit: 1005
Not sure, this happened with cgminer to me using 3x 7970s.  I'm replacing the board to see if that's the problem.
sr. member
Activity: 378
Merit: 250
After trying the mining proxy, my display GPU which isn't even being used to mine crashed completely. I reset and now none of my miners work. Not Guiminer-scrypt (CG), reaper, Guiminer, etc. And the display gpu crashes constantly.
jhd
member
Activity: 63
Merit: 10
very beautiful mod. Love 7950 :-)
sr. member
Activity: 378
Merit: 250
If it's stratum you must use the mining proxy (see sig threads)

Thanks, I missed that.
legendary
Activity: 1027
Merit: 1005
I did have slightly better luck with reaper vs cgminer, however I could not figure out how to setup a backup pool with reaper. That alone is worth the few kh/s loss in switching to cgminer.
legendary
Activity: 1484
Merit: 1005
both XFX and gigabyte cards, brand doesn't seem to make any difference as both hash at exactly same rate
newbie
Activity: 35
Merit: 0
You have to imagine that many of these stories about higher than normal hash rates are just that - that is how message boards are, there are always those Keyboard commandos that can do the most amazing feats.  
Balthazar:


Me:



Posted my reaper kernel here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1834570

what brand and model card are you using?? I've tried a ton of combinations and i seem to get best khs from stock clocks. I'm using the sapphire 4L
legendary
Activity: 1484
Merit: 1005
If it's stratum you must use the mining proxy (see sig threads)
sr. member
Activity: 378
Merit: 250
Attempted to use your settings but Reaper won't connect to my pool.
legendary
Activity: 1484
Merit: 1005
You have to imagine that many of these stories about higher than normal hash rates are just that - that is how message boards are, there are always those Keyboard commandos that can do the most amazing feats.  
Balthazar:


Me:



Posted my reaper kernel here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1834570
sr. member
Activity: 378
Merit: 250
I have two 7950s and I am able to get between 550-600 kH/s using GuiMiner-scrypt's default 7950 settings. Usually, it is around 560 kH/s. Once it was running stable at 605 kH/s but that was the first time I used it and haven't seen that consistently since, even though I think I am using the same settings.

You have to imagine that many of these stories about higher than normal hash rates are just that - that is how message boards are, there are always those Keyboard commandos that can do the most amazing feats. 
newbie
Activity: 35
Merit: 0
Hey, trying to stay out of here for a bit, but someone brought these cards to my attention and I thought you guys might want to know about them if you're still building rigs

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202030
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202031

They are AMD 7970 reference boards and thus have really solid voltage regulation and RAM, VRMs are all really well cooled.  As such they should all also have voltage control.  Once these go out of stock they will likely not be replaced, so grab them while they're still around.

edit: voltage control confirmed with sapphire trixx http://www.overclock.net/t/1378557/sapphire-100352-4l-and-21196-00-20ghd-7950-the-final-holy-grail-of-hd7950s

ok so i picked up 3 of the 7950 4L models for my 2nd rig. I can't get these suckers to go past ~530kh/s i've tried a ton of different settings and configurations with no go. Anyone have any luck getting 600kh/s+ on these??
Per my post earlier. I have these same cards and can get a max of 530kh/s. If you find any settings that can get you up to 600, let me know!!!  Grin

Yea i'm kinda pissed. i was expecting to get AT LEAST 600 out of these
legendary
Activity: 1027
Merit: 1005
Hey, trying to stay out of here for a bit, but someone brought these cards to my attention and I thought you guys might want to know about them if you're still building rigs

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202030
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202031

They are AMD 7970 reference boards and thus have really solid voltage regulation and RAM, VRMs are all really well cooled.  As such they should all also have voltage control.  Once these go out of stock they will likely not be replaced, so grab them while they're still around.

edit: voltage control confirmed with sapphire trixx http://www.overclock.net/t/1378557/sapphire-100352-4l-and-21196-00-20ghd-7950-the-final-holy-grail-of-hd7950s

ok so i picked up 3 of the 7950 4L models for my 2nd rig. I can't get these suckers to go past ~530kh/s i've tried a ton of different settings and configurations with no go. Anyone have any luck getting 600kh/s+ on these??
Per my post earlier. I have these same cards and can get a max of 530kh/s. If you find any settings that can get you up to 600, let me know!!!  Grin
newbie
Activity: 35
Merit: 0
Hey, trying to stay out of here for a bit, but someone brought these cards to my attention and I thought you guys might want to know about them if you're still building rigs

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202030
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202031

They are AMD 7970 reference boards and thus have really solid voltage regulation and RAM, VRMs are all really well cooled.  As such they should all also have voltage control.  Once these go out of stock they will likely not be replaced, so grab them while they're still around.

edit: voltage control confirmed with sapphire trixx http://www.overclock.net/t/1378557/sapphire-100352-4l-and-21196-00-20ghd-7950-the-final-holy-grail-of-hd7950s

ok so i picked up 3 of the 7950 4L models for my 2nd rig. I can't get these suckers to go past ~530kh/s i've tried a ton of different settings and configurations with no go. Anyone have any luck getting 600kh/s+ on these??
newbie
Activity: 53
Merit: 0
I'd also like to use the rig for some computing. Thinking of getting an i7-3970k with 64GB of RAM. Should I get a bigger power supply for them?
newbie
Activity: 25
Merit: 0
How much does the build quality vary on 7950s? Wondering whether I should get an XFX HD7950 or get more of the Saphire 7950 (The Saphire costs about £50 more, that about $75).
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