Topic: SAVE money - undervolting 7970 XFX, self made VBE7 bios = TABLE OF CONTENTS = - page 10. (Read 56601 times)

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UPDATE: HERE IS A NEWER BIOS VERSION January 15, 2014

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old posting of January 14, 2014, 05:15:24 AM:
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To help you all, I have made a package with

• old ROM
• tweaked ROM
• screenshot what changed
• README text - do yourself the favour and be careful :-)

Here's your 7970-XFX-DD_bios-tweaked-by-DrAKoin_(FX-797A-TDFC).zip

Come back to the discussion here for the currently best cgminer settings.
Enjoy your energy savings!

These are the settings that I have changed (top original / bottom tweaked):


The purpose of lowering the voltage to 850 mV is not to run it with that voltage in cgminer (it would probably crash, 0.850 V is too low for most CC/MC settings), but to enable the whole range of voltages to be accessible from within cgminer.


N.B.:
This will save you a lot of money on you energy bills! I am poor.
Please consider to tip me: BTC 15UipUK3kGcArJzRyHbVKrwG5TsqYi1b9N Thanks.
And important for me: Tell me about it, so I can thank you personally.

Another option for donations is to let your rig run a bit for me,
I have published a suitable cgminer.conf file here



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UPDATE: HERE IS A BIOS NEWER VERSION January 15, 2014

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Thanks a lot. I gonna try to flash my cards using the above settings, but using VB7 I am just be able to set 1.025V or 1.050V instead of 1.035V such as you are suggesting. How are you setting 1.035 V?

Thanks again.

> 7970 XFX DD (FX-797A-TDFC).
That is my exact card.

The 1050/1500/1.125V is by far not optimal for my card:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.4357504

Read the whole thread?



I suggest you try all of the values, that I documented:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.4276538
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.4282261
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.4320578

and report back, what you find out.


If you have a wattmeter/kill-a-watt, you might also appreciate these settings:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.4358354
or https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.4366415


Enjoy!
:-)

Hi all.
I am following this thread and I’ve tested some above tips, but I can’t get more than 450 KHash/s.
I have two 7970 XFX DD (FX-797A-TDFC).
I’ve tried undervolting one of my cards using the Vizakenjack’s bios so I have currently the following configuration:
-   One 7970 XFX DD with 1.125V (GPU 0)
-   One 7970 XFX DD with 1.175V (GPU 1)
Using this script:

I get the following rates:
 
http://i39.tinypic.com/zwgtjb.png

http://i40.tinypic.com/5n9n5h.png

http://i40.tinypic.com/2qkrmkm.png

Someone knows what I am doing wrong or what can I do in order to improve my rates?
Thanks in advance

oh wow.

Cool.

That's interesting.

So these spot's are more universal than I thought.


With the 7970, or the R9?
The exact same CC:854  MC:799  ?
How many khash?


Now that you found my sweet spot on your card, I am starting to ask the same question...:

Yes, now I agree, that that is odd.


Hypotheses:

* Perhaps that 7970-optimum is actually slightly off your CC:925 MC:990 ?
   Did you optimize in 5Mhz steps, or in the end like this ... 927 ... 926 ... 923 ... 924 ... 925 ... ?
   If not, could you try that for me?

* Your cards are "used to" high performance. Perhaps there is a history dependence? Mine is only 3 weeks old.


What to do?

I didn't try to undervolt but I can find your spot......don't know why you can't find mine.....

Tried a few other values, but this is the best so far:
CC: 854
MC: 799 - if I go to 801 it falls from 575 khash to ~200 !
V: 0.893
Seems to run stable, but let's observe longer.
I would love to find one with a bit more Watt and khash.


It might be in a completely different spot. Just walk around in configuration space a bit, you will feel it :-) Enjoy!

How big is your PSU, perhaps it's not delivering enough amperes to the card, and the card notices?

Don't think.....PSU are 1000 for 7970 and 1050 for 280x

I don't know about these two:
"lookup-gap" : "2,2,2",
"gpu-dyninterval" : "7",

About these value i dind't find a lot on google but there is some info in the GPU-README of cgminer.
Looks like that if u set "thread-concurrency"  you don't need to set "shaders" , "lookup-gap" , and "worksize" ( if I remember correctly).
Some value like "gpu-dyninterval" are there because when I found a good setting i print it with cgminer and it add a lot of value i don't understand.

ah, nice to know.
What did you use to edit the r9-280x bios?  Also VBE7 ?

I changed State #0 and State #6 Engine,MEM,Voltage:
Engine: 930
Mem: 990
Voltage 0.980

but the voltage was to low ( i had no time to test it too mutch) so i had to set it higher with cgminer ( 1020 looks ok , but for 1 card was not enought)

> I builded cgminer my self with AMD-APP-SDK-v2.9-lnx64.tgz ,
could that also be a reason for the good performance?

Don't think because pre-builded cgminer is using an older version I think ( not sure wich one)


-----------------

Later I will try your value ( realy low voltage) .... going down with MEM under Engine (never tried).

Inspired by these peculiar settings ...
... I have searched for sweet spots in completely new places. And found one in an unexpected area!

Usually, the optimal khash appeared around engineclock/memclock = 0.62 to 0.64.
But now I have found a new one, at memclock/engineclock = 1.06, that is more engineclock than memclock (!).
It has less khash, but so much less Watt that it's worth it.

It's the third (C) in this before-and-after table:

	CC	MC	Volt	Celsius	khash	Watt	khash/watt
(A)	907	1450	1.175	74	622	277	2.25
(B)	1025	1635	1.038	73	692	240	2.88
(C)	854	799	0.893	70	578	153	3.78

(A) = before undervolting (before I started this thread)
(B) = best undervolting (stable > 39 hours)
(C) = best undervolting & underclocking (stable for many days now)

3.78 instead of 2.88 is pretty amazing.

Yes, compared to the max possible hashing performance, I loose out on 16% hashrate - that is like throwing away 38 euros worth of 229 euros hardware; but on the other hand, the new settings (C) are saving 36% electricity compared to the max hashing performance (B), and 45% of electricity compared to before-the-undervolting (C).

This new sweet spot is cool:
Mem clock slightly lower than engine clock, for an XFX 7970!!

People in Solomon, Virgin, Turks, Caicos and Marshall Islands, Tonga, Jamaica, Niue, Denmark, Samoa, Tuvalu, Germany, Philippines, Cook Islands, Brazil, Kiribati, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, Ireland and Sweden - we are the good ones, because our governments actually care about the environment *g*. But here's a way for us, to also participate in cryptomining - we have to undervolt and underclock our coinmining rigs dramatically.

 


EDIT: #37 has become THE posting about this low energy mining.

Yes, I also do that. Gives a lot more than -g 1

Or Watt.

How big is your PSU, perhaps it's not delivering enough amperes to the card, and the card notices?


Always optimizing only one card because otherwise I don't know where a crash came from.


Thanks!

Looks very similar to mine.

I don't know about these two:



{quoting got a bit messed up so I switch to email style for now:}

> > > I would point out that 6 month ago i could not get these value.

> > THAT is really interesting - and perhaps an explanation?
> > Perhaps you have "trained" your cards into high performance?

> I have just changed drivers, and flashed an undervolted bios
> cause 7970 on linux was locked....I flashed also 280x for then
> discover that cgminer can change 280x voltage (also on linux).

ah, nice to know.
What did you use to edit the r9-280x bios?  Also VBE7 ?

> > At which (approximate) settings have you had them running
> > in those 6 months, before you reinstalled and readjusted?
> > And which power consumption and temperature?

> Well I restart mining on november.. (during summer was killing me) .
> but i remember i had to use higher memory setting for the same result....
> Mem to about 1350

Alright, so very different from now.

> > > Recently I reinstall the rig with new drivers and cgminer 3.7.2.

> > Which catalyst drivers?
> Driver ati 13.12 and 13.10 .....
> I'm using ubuntu
> but it works also on windows ( i use it just for flash bios)

> I builded cgminer my self with AMD-APP-SDK-v2.9-lnx64.tgz ,
could that also be a reason for the good performance?

> but also the pre-build one could work. [/font]


> > Let's save half of the electricity of the worldwide GPU grid!

Let's get back to this now.  Have a look below.  Thanks a lot for the inspiration!

I understand you very well. Your English is not bad.

And I like the "shit with colors" ... makes it easier to read.

But please, what would be even better - if you simply DELETE everything in your quote that is not important for your answer.
You don't have to quote the whole message to which you are answering.

I see that a lot here in this forum, and it makes reading really difficult.
It takes only a few seconds of time to decide "I am not answering to that paragraph, so I delete it in my quote".

Thanks :-)


P.S.:
Oh and if I want to write in between, I just copy the
begin quote
and
end quote
tags

510 khash/s

I tried a bit around your values of course, but around the 1050/1500 range it is just not optimal for my card.

Our cards are different. I have a rather cheap 7970 from XFX.

Yes, I can get >700 but with 1050/1680/1.149V and then
I use so much power, that I end up with 2.40 khash/Watt only.




How to measure properly
 
Step 1: Baseline
I switch all cards to (d)isable, then I wait until the temperature/fanspeed is down, then I have a look at the 8euro-wattmeter.
The result is what I use as my baseline.
Of course this baseline includes the power usage not only of the motherboard/cpu/rigfans/etc. but also of the idle cards with 300/150 Mhz idle speeds at stock voltage - but it's just an offset, for all my subsequent experiments. It's much easier than unmounting the cards, instead it's just a quick (d)isable/(e)nable. That baseline is a certain cell in my excel file, which I always automatically subtract.

Step 2: Optimization
I tweak the clocks until I get the highest possible khash.

Step 3: undervolting
I lower the voltage until catalyst / cgminer / windows crashes, then reboot, add something like 0.025 V to the crash value (sometimes less or more, it's "feeling" it *g* )

Step 4: waiting
until no more temperature / fanspeed change

Step 5: wattmeter
I stare at my wattmeter for about a minute counting out loud the values *g* because they usually fluctuate within 20Watts. Then after a while I just know the average.

Step 6: Excel
It's documented, so that I can compare, go back to it, combine cards, etc.

Step 7: Publish
Yiehah!

:-)

What is your hash rate at 1000@1500 ? Such big drops(you mentioned 510) in the hash rate are usually because of too much clock, so try lowering the GPU clock a bit. You should be able to get about 700kh/s at 1020@1500. Also how do you measure the card's power consumption ?

Just made some shit with colors....hope u can  read the answer....and sorry for poor english  

Thanks, I am trying your values
E: 1050
M: 1500
V: 1.149V

and I get:
69C
510 khash
253 W

that is 2.02 khash/Watt


To get over 700 khash, I have to up' the memclock to
M: 1680
E: 1050
V: 1.149V

that results in
72 C
705 khash/s
293 Watt

that is 2.40 khash/Watt.

I did try your settings, and they resulted in similar power consumption yes - but only 272khash.

THAT is really interesting - and perhaps an explanation?
Perhaps you have "trained" your cards into high performance?

At which (approximate) settings have you had them running in those 6 months, before you reinstalled and readjusted? And which power consumption and temperature?


Which catalyst drivers?



If only I would get even close to 500, it would be fantastic.


Amazing. With that you could even mine for Danish electricity prices :-)

Same here.

For a while I had Tc = 10240, 11264  on my 7970 and 7850 - because that was the max multiple of shaders that didn't result in kernel errors.
But then very often, both cards would just not start at full power, always one of them hovering at 30khash.  
It took me ages to find out this solution, and that it is not a lack of power (I have funny cabling in my old machine):
Tc = 8192, 8192 works perfectly. It's only using 1072MB of the 3GB of my 7970, and I don't understand that - but it's fine.



hmmm ... we really need to find out how you are able
to drive your cards up to such high khash for so little
clockspeed = temperature = Watt = electricity costs.

Let's save half of the electricity of the worldwide GPU grid!

Here's how I do it on several XFX 280X :

1. After testing many different frequencies I found that my cards run best at 1050 core and default 1500 memory giving about 730kH/s. Yes some of them might be able to run at slightly higher frequencies but I think it is best to liming power consumption and temperatures instead of going for max performance.
2. Alter the voltage with Sapphire Trixx until I find a voltage at which the cards are stable (at 1050@1500), usually 1.15V, but one of the cards required 1.175V
3. Edit the bios and flash the cards with the modified bios using atiflash (under DOS).

My cards consume about 230W each and run at steady 730kH/s. Temperature is about 72-73C with fan at up to 80%. Note that every card is different and I found some of them running at higher or lower actual voltage at the same bios value. Also I found that some cards tend to show higher temperature readings without actually consuming more power, so this is definitely caused by differences in the quality of the cooling or how it contacts with the GPU.

If you found the above useful please donate!!

What are the other settings (thread-concurrency, etc.)?
Tc = 8192
I = 13

Yes are my value (when i see them i did't belive myself).

My rigs are 3x VTX HD 7970 X-Ediction and 4x Sapphire R9 280x Dual-X.

The "U:" not sure what is....it is reported when u are mining and click "G" for modify Video cards setting.

I would point out that 6 month ago i could not get these value.Recently I reinstall the rig with new drivers and cgminer 3.7.2.

try to put Engine to 900 and Mem to 910, then you go up with Mem 920, then 930 ecc...you should find a spot where you are about 600 Khash/s.



280x rig is about 760 Watt
7970 rig is about 600 Watt

In the photo I' m not using 900 how engine but a little more....900 is just a point I use to start.

Hope this can help.