Under-rated? - page 2. | Bitcointalksearch.org

epdp14

newbie

Activity: 42

Merit: 0

Quote from: marvinmartian on July 13, 2011, 10:25:37 AM

I am actually NOT a fan of the 6950s. I run a mix of:

5770s
5830s
5870s
6870s
6950s

The 6950s run hottest of all and are the biggest pain to OC (in terms of getting them up to max temp of 72C while still getting some benefit from overclocking. I'll be selling mine after I replace the slower cards in my mix.

For me, I can't even see the benefit to unlocking the shaders as that would just give me the "possibility" of more overclocking. As it is, I can't clock any of them to max speed without overheating. They typically run from 75% to 90% of their max overclock depending on time of day / room temp.

What 6950s do you have? I have 2 x ASUS EAH6950 DCII/2DI4S/1GD5 that get 380MH/s at 72c. Here are my settings if it helps you:
930MHz clock
625mhz clock memory
65% fan manual set
poclbm through guiminer with -v -w128 -f10
Mine were running high temps with an older driver. Make sure that you use the newest 11.6 available from ati/amd.

marvinmartian

full member

Activity: 224

Merit: 100

I am actually NOT a fan of the 6950s. I run a mix of:

5770s
5830s
5870s
6870s
6950s

The 6950s run hottest of all and are the biggest pain to OC (in terms of getting them up to max temp of 72C while still getting some benefit from overclocking. I'll be selling mine after I replace the slower cards in my mix.

For me, I can't even see the benefit to unlocking the shaders as that would just give me the "possibility" of more overclocking. As it is, I can't clock any of them to max speed without overheating. They typically run from 75% to 90% of their max overclock depending on time of day / room temp.

mikeo

full member

Activity: 196

Merit: 100

Oikos.cash | Decentralized Finance on Tron

Quote

I though unlocking the shaders required flashing to a 6970 BIOS? I'd be very interested to hear your method.

Quote

If you download RBE you can simply dump the stock bios via atiflash, open it in RBE and then only unlock the shaders. Afterwards you can flash the modified bios back to the card. On some of the OC boards people don't recommend the 6970 bios because it changes too many timings/etc.

Sounds resonable. Is there a code listing of the stock 6950 BIOS you can point me to that shows exactly what lines to modify? I don't want to screw it up just mucking around ;-)

bigbeerjr

newbie

Activity: 19

Merit: 0

Quote from: mikeo on July 13, 2011, 09:15:42 AM

Quote from: bigbeerjr on July 11, 2011, 07:25:27 PM

Quote from: mikeo on July 10, 2011, 07:17:48 PM

I snagged a nice "open box" MSI R6950-2PM2D2GD5 Radeon HD 6950, which is a reference card, on newegg today. I expect I'll flash it to a 6970 and add it to my miner. That will then be a GPU line-up of 6950 (flashed), 6850, and a 5830. All runing on a OCZ EliteXStream OCZ800EXS-B 800W PSU. Should be fine. If not I'll swap out the Tagan 900W PSU from my gaming maching which requires nowhere near that much PSU.

I've got 7 of those cards. You should just unlock the shaders and not flash the 6970 bios. You should see around 360MH/s once you unlock the shaders. Good luck with overclock, I am unable to increase the core voltage since I run linux and just upping the core speed didn't change my hash rate.

--
BigBeerJR

I though unlocking the shaders required flashing to a 6970 BIOS? I'd be very interested to hear your method.

If you download RBE you can simply dump the stock bios via atiflash, open it in RBE and then only unlock the shaders. Afterwards you can flash the modified bios back to the card. On some of the OC boards people don't recommend the 6970 bios because it changes too many timings/etc.

mikeo

full member

Activity: 196

Merit: 100

Oikos.cash | Decentralized Finance on Tron

Quote from: bigbeerjr on July 11, 2011, 07:25:27 PM

Quote from: mikeo on July 10, 2011, 07:17:48 PM

I snagged a nice "open box" MSI R6950-2PM2D2GD5 Radeon HD 6950, which is a reference card, on newegg today. I expect I'll flash it to a 6970 and add it to my miner. That will then be a GPU line-up of 6950 (flashed), 6850, and a 5830. All runing on a OCZ EliteXStream OCZ800EXS-B 800W PSU. Should be fine. If not I'll swap out the Tagan 900W PSU from my gaming maching which requires nowhere near that much PSU.

I've got 7 of those cards. You should just unlock the shaders and not flash the 6970 bios. You should see around 360MH/s once you unlock the shaders. Good luck with overclock, I am unable to increase the core voltage since I run linux and just upping the core speed didn't change my hash rate.

--
BigBeerJR

I though unlocking the shaders required flashing to a 6970 BIOS? I'd be very interested to hear your method.

jjiimm_64

legendary

Activity: 1876

Merit: 1000

I like my 6950's, but I cannot over clock them past 900, even at that the machine will lock up after a while, so I run them at 875 core, mem 310.

I tried to flash them to a 6970, but apparently that hard wired the locked out shaders. there is some instructions on the internet on how to open the card and connect 2 pins of one of the icchips, but I am reluctant to do that. I get about 345 Mhash with them with a solid share acceptance rate.

they run a little hot, but that might be because I am also using them as bug zappers here in the shed

bigbeerjr

newbie

Activity: 19

Merit: 0

Quote from: fcmatt on July 11, 2011, 10:19:23 PM

MSI R6950-2PM2D2GD5 's can do 430 mh/s easy.
voltage 1200
core clock 970
mem clock 800
fan at 75
shaders unlocked.
good air movement around the cards. conditioned air that is.
using pocblm whatever with phatk kernel.. making sure it has all the lastest code tweaks.

and that is not pushing it to the max. i used to run 980 core clock but decided to take it a bit easier on the cards
and get excellent stability at a temp of ~54

the 6950 reference cards at a price of 250 are an excellent deal for mining and gaming.
but with the difficulty going up it will be hard to pay them off now days at a fast rate.
they had a rebate too just a while back.. but be careful you are limited to one rebate per household.

oh.. and be careful buying refurb cards. i bought a 5970 refurb and as soon as i pushed it
the 2nd core on it started giving me problems. it was obviously still bad in some way and i returned
it for a refund.. thank goodness. buying new or seeing it in action before you buy is probably the way
to go unless you can return it no questions asked.

How are you changing the voltage?

fcmatt

legendary

Activity: 2072

Merit: 1001

MSI R6950-2PM2D2GD5 's can do 430 mh/s easy.
voltage 1200
core clock 970
mem clock 800
fan at 75
shaders unlocked.
good air movement around the cards. conditioned air that is.
using pocblm whatever with phatk kernel.. making sure it has all the lastest code tweaks.

and that is not pushing it to the max. i used to run 980 core clock but decided to take it a bit easier on the cards
and get excellent stability at a temp of ~54

the 6950 reference cards at a price of 250 are an excellent deal for mining and gaming.
but with the difficulty going up it will be hard to pay them off now days at a fast rate.
they had a rebate too just a while back.. but be careful you are limited to one rebate per household.

oh.. and be careful buying refurb cards. i bought a 5970 refurb and as soon as i pushed it
the 2nd core on it started giving me problems. it was obviously still bad in some way and i returned
it for a refund.. thank goodness. buying new or seeing it in action before you buy is probably the way
to go unless you can return it no questions asked.

Imagex

newbie

Activity: 22

Merit: 0

I have 15 xfx 6950's was lucky on 5 of them to be version 2 and unlocked them, I tryed 11.6 drivers with no luck, what drivers do you think are best?

bigbeerjr

newbie

Activity: 19

Merit: 0

Quote from: mikeo on July 10, 2011, 07:17:48 PM

I snagged a nice "open box" MSI R6950-2PM2D2GD5 Radeon HD 6950, which is a reference card, on newegg today. I expect I'll flash it to a 6970 and add it to my miner. That will then be a GPU line-up of 6950 (flashed), 6850, and a 5830. All runing on a OCZ EliteXStream OCZ800EXS-B 800W PSU. Should be fine. If not I'll swap out the Tagan 900W PSU from my gaming maching which requires nowhere near that much PSU.

I've got 7 of those cards. You should just unlock the shaders and not flash the 6970 bios. You should see around 360MH/s once you unlock the shaders. Good luck with overclock, I am unable to increase the core voltage since I run linux and just upping the core speed didn't change my hash rate.

--
BigBeerJR

mikeo

full member

Activity: 196

Merit: 100

Oikos.cash | Decentralized Finance on Tron

I snagged a nice "open box" MSI R6950-2PM2D2GD5 Radeon HD 6950, which is a reference card, on newegg today. I expect I'll flash it to a 6970 and add it to my miner. That will then be a GPU line-up of 6950 (flashed), 5850, and a 5830. All runing on a OCZ EliteXStream OCZ800EXS-B 800W PSU. Should be fine. If not I'll swap out the Tagan 900W PSU from my gaming maching which requires nowhere near that much PSU.

dinzy

full member

Activity: 140

Merit: 100

Quote from: Oldminer on July 08, 2011, 07:21:26 AM

Quote from: epdp14 on July 08, 2011, 07:05:39 AM

What do you guys think about a 450 or 500 run of the mill power supply for a single 6950? I just bought an ASUS EAH6950 from amazon and didn't think about needing more power for just one card.

For 1 x 6950 it will be fine. I run 2 x 6950's on a 700W.

I have run 1 6950 on a very old, but nice, 450 W PSU and am currently running 2 on a 600 W PSU

cvicisso

member

Activity: 80

Merit: 10

For your reference: I run 3 x 6950s (adding a 5850 soon) on a 1250 PSU (80+ Gold) and they only draw ~630-640 W. The cards are non-reference, so I can't unlock the shaders Angry

but with CCC overclocking, I can hit 1 GH/s intermittently (which jives with previous posts).

Oldminer

legendary

Activity: 1022

Merit: 1001

Quote from: epdp14 on July 08, 2011, 07:05:39 AM

What do you guys think about a 450 or 500 run of the mill power supply for a single 6950? I just bought an ASUS EAH6950 from amazon and didn't think about needing more power for just one card.

For 1 x 6950 it will be fine. I run 2 x 6950's on a 700W.

epdp14

newbie

Activity: 42

Merit: 0

What do you guys think about a 450 or 500 run of the mill power supply for a single 6950? I just bought an ASUS EAH6950 from amazon and didn't think about needing more power for just one card.

cicada

full member

Activity: 196

Merit: 100

I'm running a couple rigs with 2x 1GB XFX 6950s - shaders aren't unlockable on any of them unfortunately, but at 885/760 gpu/mem clocks I get 345mhash/s each. Sempron single-core 45W CPU and cheap g-skill ram.

Each rig pulls ~410W at the wall. 1000W is lmao. I got a nice 750W 80+ Corsair PSU expecting more draw, but even adding a third card I won't hit that limit.

Auspician

full member

Activity: 126

Merit: 103

I'm running two overclocked 6950's on a 5 year old 750 watt PC Power and Cooling PSU. You might be able to go even less wattage, considering that in addition to the cards I'm running an overclocked i7, six hard drives, two optical drives, a sound card, a USB PCI card, and seven case fans.

That said, I wouldn't recommend going less than 600 watts for two 6950's in an otherwise bare-bones system. 1000 watts should be more than enough for three 6950's.

onis_uk

full member

Activity: 131

Merit: 100

too right they are under rated ! im getting about 400 mh/s each out of my two ! well good !
my 600 watt ocz power supply cut out when i added the second card, so i bought another 850watt one and all
is good Cool

crazybernie

newbie

Activity: 22

Merit: 0

The "minimum requirements" for a 6950 is a 500Watt power supply... they pull about 169 Watts @ load with stock settings. I'm running an XFX 6950 @ stock and netting 318Mh/s with a Corsair 600 Watt PS with zero problems. I wouldn't be scared to add a second card if it had the extra PCI-E connectors.

I question that 8% variance though... the 6970 has more shaders and a higher clock speed... you might be comparing the 6950's with unlocked shaders. Those cards are getting a little harder to find.... my XFX has a locked bios and I may not be able to unlock those extra shaders (people have been having a 50/50 chance on this particular board revision).

If you do have unlockable 6950's though, you basically already have 6970's.

faille

newbie

Activity: 38

Merit: 0

my i5 2500k with 4x 6950 1gb pulls 820watts from the wall, using a 1200watt psu.

so guessing a good quality 750watt should be fine for you.

Topic: Under-rated? - page 2. (Read 5303 times)