Topic: SAVE money - undervolting 7970 XFX, self made VBE7 bios = TABLE OF CONTENTS = - page 9. (Read 56601 times)

When I tried, it did not work. The BIOS #0 voltage VDDC was always the lowest I could go to.

Yes, I guess one day I will also make such an all-easy-peasy BIOS. But I am still hoping that someone finds an even better combination of settings. It would be nice to squeeze a few more absolute khash out of our cards, with the same power consumption ratio khash/Watt - wouldn't it?

Man, you are asking THE question that worried me right from when I started to look into this. Of course, the GPU can be damaged, and with all we are doing here. YES. That's why I say everywhere: Do you own research, read the whole thread.  The company which sold the GPU to us has found values which hopefully are relatively safe for extended gaming - and who knows if even that is true?  But we are leaving their path (which was made for gaming, anyways.) We are pushing the boundaries by changing voltages, clockspeeds - and letting them run for 24/7, of course. I cannot, and will not guarantee anything. It's all your own responsibility.
If I were to own a GPU farm, I would be happy out of my mind finding this manual here, because I could safe some real bucks, increase my profit, and that's not only in expensive countries - BUT I would probably first try it only on a small portion of my rigs, and see how they behave long term. If they still do well after a weeks ... I would go back here, tell everyone, and donate a 2nd time to drakoin :-)
The way to reliably destroy your card is OVER-VOLTING too much, I read in several places. Water-cooling-gamers dare that to get stability with even higher clockspeeds. But I am almost sure, that will come with over-proportionally higher electricity consumption, so I am not interested in going there anyway. I want to extend my cards' life (low temperature, stable running), get as much khash as possible (they cost a fortune, and I need to reach break-even early) - and I want to reduce the necessary power (lowest possible voltage, optimal sweet spots) per khash. 
Actually, thinking about it now - there is one more reason to do this, and that's saving money when buying hardware: I do not need expensive crazy 1500W PSUs, because my whole system uses so little now.  And 1000W or 700W PSUs you can get second hand, too! So:

Spread the word!

Use the banner above, if you want to. Or change your signature to
= Make 50% more profit = save power, pollute less = just tweak your GPU = www.tiny.cc/improve7970 =

Enjoy your day. Happy mining!
(click)

And you make me very happy with that. What a good start into my day. Thanks  

Still, these days are a bit frightening for me. I am not earning enough with this whole cryptocurrency thing. That has to change - or I have to quit!  I seem too technical, and too little into actually making money (teach me how to make money!).   After all of my work for this here, and your enthusiastic reaction ... I ask for direct tips, or that you let your rig run a little bit for me. Use a cgminer.conf from the download package #45  or from the end of posting #50 - or just send me some bitcoin dust to BTC 15UipUK3kGcArJzRyHbVKrwG5TsqYi1b9N or [doge] DFPA5UXRH8jzJGEGWtJQVq27jyf1Nd4KEt


COOL. Congratulations. Yes, 586 seems about right, same here. That's the most optimal sweet spot so far. Looks low at first glance, compared to all those people reporting 750 khash/s - but they are running their systems at 80-90 degrees, full throttle fans, and with insane power consumption.

I guess, you use the settings (C) cgminer.conf with cc=854 mc=799 ?  

Which voltage? What temperature before/after?  

What was the power consumption of the whole system before?

Thanks!
 

I don't know what really happens when you write a lower V in config than in bios... This could be proved easily by writting a very low voltage and see what happens... could the GPU be damaged?

DRAKOIN MAN!!!! THANKS DUDE!

I flashed both of my 7970 and now pulling 400 Watt out of the socket for the whole system, my cards run 2x 586 Kh/s

You are awesome!!!

	voltage	CC	MC	CC/MC	temp	fanspeed	khash/s	Watt	khash/Watt	electricity	coins	profit/month
(0)	1.175	925	1375	0.673	71	65%	475	237	2.00	33 €	86 €	52 €
(C)	0.893	854	799	1.069	67	45%	578	153	3.78	24 €	104 €	80 €

So, I'm expected to believe that by going from 0 (high clocks) to C (low clocks), your hashrate has gone up?  But in your other table, the numbers are not the same...

	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

I think you've got a typo in your first table where you're claiming 2khash/watt - verify what that hash rate actually is - I'm guessing it's going to be somewhere between the first two lines in your second chart.

I do like what you've done, and I agree with the concept - I'm mining coins with cards that only use about 25W to generate ~.004 BTC day each

Made me smile. Thanks a lot. :-)

Spread the word!
Imagine, the whole network starts saving 25% or 33% or even 50% electricity per khash.


Can use this image:
http://cdn.overclock.net/1/13/900x900px-LL-13f010ab_www.tiny.cc_-improve7970.gif


cool. Once you have it >24h stable, please report all relevant values.


Yes, I had a START.bat file with those commands, but now I am starting and controlling cgminer with cgwatcher. Wait, I have an idea ... yes I can put a .BAT file into cgwatcher. Done.   But still: I don't see ANY difference. Does anyone know what these commands really do?


But the 850mV is just for booting. Then cgminer takes over, anyways.
I can also not run it with 850mV with much higher than 500 engine speed, e.g. CC550 MC825 at VDDC850 crashes. I tried that out.


ah, alright. To which enginge/memory-clockspeeds?

I am not using that ati control center. Do you have to?



I tried what happens if I don't specify any clockspeeds in cgminer, and
then it jumps to CC501 MC1375  - which is the "#2" that I can see in VBE7.

I am wondering if I should make an "end-user BIOS" (for people who don't want to tweak)
with
#0 VDDC=910
#0 cc=404 mc=555
#2 cc=854 mc=799
that's a slightly higer than optimal voltage, for stability.

But with those settings, as far as I understand it now,
cgminer should then be able to be run without giving any clockspeed settings.
?

But before I create that rom, I am still hoping for even better settings.

How many khash at how much Watt do you get out of the cc854/mc799 settings (if you are using them), and what is your lowest stable voltage?


but now you cannot go lower with your voltage in cgminer, no?


Sounds enthuasiastic :-)   I like that.  Tweaking hardware is fun, isn't it?


ooops.
100% fan --> Say bye bye to the fan earlier
80ºC --> Say bye bye to the GPU earlier
80ºC --> much much energy consumption

Mine is running at 67ºC now, very low fan.

Do you have a kill-a-watt / wattmeter?


when large fluctuations, I go slightly higher with memclock, or slightly (like 1, 2 or 5) lower with engine clock.

I guess, every card has a sweet spot. Keep on trying, I'd say. The recipe is clear now.


YES. And I got mine for 229 euros, just before the rush! I could afford only 1, though.



hahaha *proud* thank you very much.

Please consider to have your rig running a bit for me, I am really poor:


or donate directly BTC 15UipUK3kGcArJzRyHbVKrwG5TsqYi1b9N or [doge] DFPA5UXRH8jzJGEGWtJQVq27jyf1Nd4KEt

OK, I've experienced missfunction after entering windows (the display just fucked up), having 0,850 at performance in bios is too dangerous for my gpu card, it seems that after loading ati control center the card goes to performance mode (and thus the fail). So boot at 0,950V and now I have 0,950V at perfomance too. All is working flawlessly.
I've bought another XFX 7970 same model just to have the twin. At 244€ these monsters are really cheap. Next days I'm going to lower voltage in the config file and see what I get.

The twin is goign to be checked just in case the card was narrowly better to undevolt. I'm going to keep one at stock value. I need to play BF4 guys .

I have to start undervolting one 7950 that I have also. What I've learnt is that the 7970 with "magical" values in config works very very stable at 700 Khash and at 80ºC at 100% fans with I=13. HD 7950 values were rising and falling constanly albeit using high intensity values resulting in poor windows performances (I had only one gpu).

I've read that XFX models are avoided by the community, with this post has been clearly demonstrated that 7970 (and a XFX one) is a BEAST. 7950 was considered the best option.... I feel happy to know that 7970 is much better by far.

This is the post of the year guys.

P:D: I don't have faith in undervolting my 7950....

NOW YES, it is super very clear.

Drakoin FOR PRESIDENT.

THis is PURE aWeSoMe.

I'm getting 600 k/hash highly undervolted.

I will post how to stays in 24h and I will try to get my ASIC quality of the card.

EDIT:
what confuses me is that you dont use the typical:
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1

why?

The strategy will work.
Please try this BIOS editor http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1962/techpowerup-radeon-bios-editor-v1-28/ and tell us if it works for your card's BIOS.

Still download my package, because of the detailed instructions in there.

might give it a shot again to edit my 6970 Bios ( my current one from factory is broken and cant overclock)


edit : seems to be only for 7970 =[

Here's

• a new BIOS with more stable settings, and
• a longer manual with much more explanations,
• now including instructions how to BIOS atiflash in DOS (instead of the unsafe atiwinflash).
• Moreover, there are 4 cgminer.conf settings files, for the 3 different optimal points - and factory settings for comparison.

Download:
https://mega.co.nz/#!x8g1WJ4Z!D8Sw9Ue3MRxhYpUBmY3GbA8MGl862caCZfREg8dj47g


For more explanations, visit #37, and for a summary of the analysis ... #103.

I only changed 3 values compared to the original vgabios rom:



Is that it, now? I guess, soon I can take care of different challenges :-)

Happy mining!

OK, I didn't saw that last night... strange..
those BIOS specs are for both ?? for supperdupper and Watts optimization? or do you use supperdupper with another BIOS specs.

No problem, your trying it out just makes this manual better :-)


The BIOS specs are in posting #36.

After flashing with that BIOS - I did that only once! - I could choose the whole range of voltages all the way down to 850 mV.
From then on, all changes were only done with cgminer.conf, or manually inside cgminer.

I understand that.

You don't understand me or I express myself very bad.

What are your BIOS specs?

core clock in BIOS:
memory clock in BIOS:
voltage in BIOS:

Are these the same for the supper dupper power and the max Khash/Watts ratio?

All I need to know now are BIOS specs.

Sorry for your confusion, but this is not a thread in which it a final result is presented right from the beginning, but this is a thread in which several settings were tried out. 2 weeks ago, I did not know anything about this. In this thread, I reported four settings: (0) was the stupid unefficient stock settings with which the card was sold to me. And not only (C), but also (A) and (B) are all three good parameter combinations. They all optimize somehow:

(A) the best I could get with stock voltage, without changing the ROM. Least dangerous so to speak.
(B) the highest khash I could get without going to crazy temperatures, or instability.
(C) the overall optimum so far. Less khash than max, but much less power consumption.


The best answer is probably: Both :-)

The 1.038, 1025, 1635 is the superdooper maximum-khash settings (B) in posting #28,
while the 0.893, 854, 799 is the setting (C), it was found much later as being incredibly economical in terms of khash/Watt.

Is it clearer now?  If it works, please leave it running for a while with the "support mining for drakoin" pool settings cgminer.conf.
And please remember us in a month - let's say on Valentine's day - and tell us about your experiences, and how much you saved.

This is my main confusion, specs on post #13 are different from the list you have written. All I would love to know is that:

core clock in BIOS: ?
memory clock in BIOS:
voltage in BIOS: 

gpu-engine in cgminer: 854? or 1025?
gpu-memclock in cgminer: 799? or 1635?
gpu-vddc in cgminer: 0.975? or 1.035?

I understand the fact that 2 cards are not equal and I have to "play" with the cgminers parameters as you said to finally tune the progam.
But first I would like to try to reproduce your results.

just use a higher voltage.
Perhaps the limits to optimizing are dependant on the ASIC quality of your GPU.

I do a final undervolting after I found a good CC & MC value:
1) lowering the voltage slowly, e.g. in 0.020v steps
2) when crash at x volts (Catalyst crash / cgminer crash / BSOD) I always reboot(!).
3) try with x+0.015 or x+0.025 Volts, then long term test.
4) if still unstable, raise voltage even more.
5) if stable for >24 hours, report the value here in the forum

Ah, sorry, yes - I haven't changed them in ages, they are up in post #13.
I don't use any command line parameters anymore.

Start with this cgminer.conf ( edit c:\wherever\cgminer\cgminer.conf ):


and then lower the voltage slowly like I described above.
with the keystrokes g c 0 enter v in cgminer: (g)pu (c)change 0 [enter] (v)oltage

I once lived with hippies near Orgiva at the bottom of the Sierra Nevada. Very nice memories.

To Drakoin:

I'm new to mining, yesterday I installed my XFX R7970 Double dissipation  Model NO: FX-797A-TD Part No: FX-797A-TDFC ver 6.0 to my computer (P6T deluxe OC to 3.82 Ghz). I use a 1000W PSU so no problem here.

I tried to flash the bios with your first values, then I tried your command values. I observed some card crashes and recoveries and card misfunction (lines appearing and disappearing in the monitor).

I returned to 1,175 V bios.  My question is very simple: you are writing about mem clock, voltages etc.. but it is not clear what are the values of the bios, because you can change that values also in the bios and in the command line of the program. could you write down a post with your best bios parameters AND then the best command line paramaters? you can repeat the A, B , C you did, but better explained.

thx (I'm from spain like you )

-- ------ - -  - - ------------- - - - -- - -- -- - -- --- --- - - - -- - --- -- --- ----- - - ------ ---- - -------- --- - - -- - ----
UPDATE 23.1.2014:  A summary of the analysis is in #103. If look deeper first, I suggest start reading there. You will be linked back here to #37.
-- ------ - -  - - ------------- - - - -- - -- -- - -- --- --- - - - -- - --- -- --- ----- - - ------ ---- - -------- --- - - -- - ----
ORIGINAL 14.1.2014 :
-- ------ - -  - - -----------

This thread is worth its weight in GOLD. Saves a lot on your electricity bill, more coins for less pollution.

My so far best values are described here, in the table, as value (C), compared to
the (0) stock values of the 7970 XFX DD (FX-797A-TDFC) with which it was delivered:

	voltage	CC	MC	CC/MC	temp	fanspeed	khash/s	Watt	khash/Watt	electricity	coins	profit/month
(0)	1.175	925	1375	0.673	71	65%	475	237	2.00	33 €	86 €	52 €
(C)	0.893	854	799	1.069	67	45%	578	153	3.78	24 €	104 €	80 €

With

• an average 6 euros per day per megahash coins generated
• an offset of 70 watts because I have an old rig with only 2 cards in it, and the way the cards' Watts are given
• an electricity price of 0.256 euros/kWh; we all must finance the transition into renewables, we have reached 20% nation wide!

Advantages:

• less noise, the fan is slower
• much less heat, my room is almost cool now :-)
• less temperature probably increases longevity of the cards
• less pollution, lower electricity bill
• more coins per day generated

--> Higher profits

This thread is worth its kilobyte volume in GOLD.

• 0) Order / Borrow a Wattmeter / electricity usage meter / kill-a-watt.
• 1) Read the whole thread. Changing the BIOS of your card, and playing with voltage & clockspeed can destroy you hardware. You want to know what you do before you start with this. It's all your own risk!
• 2) Create your own ROM with VBE7. Or download the ROM that I provide for you. Read the README in the ZIP file!!!
• 3) run cgminer using the suggested cgminer.conf below.
• 4) Lower the voltage even more (same posting).
• 5) When found stable value, change your cgminer.conf; and please report back, together with exact name of your card, and ASIC quality.
  

.
.

N.B.: This saves you a lot of money on you energy bills! I am poor. Please tip me: BTC 15UipUK3kGcArJzRyHbVKrwG5TsqYi1b9N or other currencies.
Thanks. Or let your rig run a bit for me, with these cgminer.conf pool settings. Then tell me about it, so I can thank you personally. (click)