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7870 tuning suggestions?

M

mkrohn

2[H]4U
Joined
Apr 30, 2012
Messages
2,345
I have 3 visiontek 7870's stuck down around 300k and a few other 7870's not performing that great. They all HW error out on me when I try to crank up the intensity. I know I need to put more RAM in those systems but what are some configs you guys are using and what model cards are you using?

3x Visiontek 7870:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814129262

1x Saphire 7870:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A2J4ROE/ref=oh_details_o05_s01_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

1x Gigabyte 270x
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FONITCE/ref=oh_details_o08_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

1x XFX 7870:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007MJGMXQ/ref=oh_details_o05_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I have these in 3 different rigs now. I'm going to sit down and try to tune all of these today after I got quite a bit more out of my 7850's yesterday. I'll post what I did to the 7850's in a while.
 
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Not sure what brand it is, and too lazy to go open the case, but:

--expiry 5 --scan-time 5 --queue 1 -I 20 --thread-concurrency 15232 -w 512

gives me 360KH/s

H.
 
In my experience with twin ASUS 7870's on Windows, any intensity value over 13 gives me unacceptable hardware errors. I can live with a few per hour, but any more and it becomes too inefficient. I have found that the most important measure of a cards mining power is its WU. This number seems to correlate with what the pool is seeing much more accurately then Kh/s.
 
Last edited:
SamE said:
In my experience with twin ASUS 7870's on Windows, any intensity value over 13 gives me unacceptable hardware errors. I can live with a few per hour, but any more and it becomes too inefficient. I have found that the most important measure of a cards mining power is its WU. This number seems to correlate with what the pool is seeing much more accurately then Kh/s.
Click to expand...

I'm reading all over the place about people running them great with high intensity. My WU is down with the K number so I need to figure out how to tune these. My 270x's I can crank the intensity up and fly up over 400k with WU up where it should be in relation to the hash rate.

The 7870 is basically the same as the 270x so I wonder if there's some kind of BIOS flash like the 7970 --> 280x
 
Powercolor Myst 7870 tahiti le, couldn't get stable over 305 k/hs , used -I 18 -g 1 -w 256 --thread-concurrency 15232 which was giving 405 but a HW error every now and then, it's been 3 hrs without errors now
 
I've been continually tuning but just can't get past 350k without massive HW errors. I think I'm just gonna dump all of my 7870's and order a ton of 270x's. The XFX and saphire can just be returned without any issues but the vistiontek's will have to go on ebay but I bought those for like $120 a pop so with the price its worth keeping them going but if I can get like $200 out of them I'd obviously rather upgrade to the 270x cards that'll get 450+ out of the same space
 
I have two 7870 Myst edition cards: 420Kh/s stable, WU around 390/m
Intensity=20, Engine=925MHz, Memory=1500MHz, Powertune=0%, TC=18512, lookup gap=2,
gpu-threads=1, expiry=2, scan-time=1, worksize=256
I've also undervolted those to 1.1V
cgminer 3.7.2
 
I have a MSI 7870 XT O/C Pitcarn that pulls 405KH/s. That's the best I've been able to do with it.

970/1375 core/memory
--I 18
--Shaders 1280
--thread-concurrency 16192
--w 256
--g 1
 
Pitbully said:
I have a MSI 7870 XT O/C Pitcarn that pulls 405KH/s. That's the best I've been able to do with it.

970/1375 core/memory
--I 18
--Shaders 1280
--thread-concurrency 16192
--w 256
--g 1
Click to expand...

I keep getting lockups above 12000 TC. I'm gonna wait until I get another motherboard to try some other stuff on.
 
Core32 said:
I have two 7870 Myst edition cards: 420Kh/s stable, WU around 390/m
Intensity=20, Engine=925MHz, Memory=1500MHz, Powertune=0%, TC=18512, lookup gap=2,
gpu-threads=1, expiry=2, scan-time=1, worksize=256
I've also undervolted those to 1.1V
cgminer 3.7.2
Click to expand...


Kudos to you my friend, used most of the settings exc for expiry ,scan time and lookup gap.
Got the card to 420 stable, I can drop intensity to 17 and it still at 390 and I can use it.
Need to see if I can undervolt.

Pointing this miner at one of SunnyD's pools
 
Glad it helped...
I read where the expiry and scan time defaults that come set in cgminer were set up for GPUs mining bitcoin a good while back.
Supposedly setting them low like I have reduces the time waiting for acceptance and therefore should reduce stales for scrypt mining.
I "believe" it helped my WU #s go up.
 
I have the Sapphire ones I use something around
915/1400, TC = 15360, I=19, and undervolted = 1.00v
Gets me about 392 kH/s. They can break 400 kH/s at 945/1450 clocks, but I've still been searching for stability settings at those clocks and I hate having my rig go down.

I also have a PowerColor 7870 reference design, running 900/1375, TC=15360 and it gets me 385 kH/s, undervolted to 0.975v

I have another MSI 7870, and it's just a complete dud for mining. I can't get more than 350 kH/s out of it. I'm thinking of just trading it straight up for a 7850 or other 7870 if I can find someone willing to do. I have found all 7850s to be as simple as cranking the core until I can get 390-400 kH/s, and even gone as high as 420 kH/s.

I frequently find I have tweak the heck of out 7870s just to match 7850 hash rates, but when I do, I can undervolt and use less power. I guess that's the one benefit of having 7870s over 7850s. But for brute force, the 7850 wins easily. It's definitely not worth buying 7870s over 7850s for mining, unless they can be had for nearly the same price.
 
blade52x said:
I have the Sapphire ones I use something around
915/1400, TC = 15360, I=19, and undervolted = 1.00v
Gets me about 392 kH/s. They can break 400 kH/s at 945/1450 clocks, but I've still been searching for stability settings at those clocks and I hate having my rig go down.

I also have a PowerColor 7870 reference design, running 900/1375, TC=15360 and it gets me 385 kH/s, undervolted to 0.975v

I have another MSI 7870, and it's just a complete dud for mining. I can't get more than 350 kH/s out of it. I'm thinking of just trading it straight up for a 7850 or other 7870 if I can find someone willing to do. I have found all 7850s to be as simple as cranking the core until I can get 390-400 kH/s, and even gone as high as 420 kH/s.

I frequently find I have tweak the heck of out 7870s just to match 7850 hash rates, but when I do, I can undervolt and use less power. I guess that's the one benefit of having 7870s over 7850s. But for brute force, the 7850 wins easily. It's definitely not worth buying 7870s over 7850s for mining, unless they can be had for nearly the same price.
Click to expand...

What motherboard and how much RAM? I have to over a bunch more RAM I think cause TC doesn't work right on most of my rigs
 
Z68 Extreme4 Gen3, and a single stick of 4GB G.Skill Ripjaws 1600mhz CL8.
 
OK, I have 4Gb in that and 15360 actually locks the system up just like most of the other settings I've tried. I unhooked the cards from the dell PSU to take that out of the equation. I'll have to wait to try more RAM in that rig I guess.
 
For the Power color AX7870 2GBD5-2DHV4E/OC I get about 430k/hs with a WU of 400 (WDC. certain coins behave differently it seems) 1030 core and 1375 mem
Settings:

setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
cgminer.exe -I 19 -w 256 -g 1 --thread-concurrency 15232 --scrypt -u XXXX -p XXXX -o stratum+tcp://us.mineworks.co:5545 -o stratum+tcp://eu.mineworks.co:5545 -u XXXX -p XXXX

does this bat file seems ok? not sure if this is written efficiently

I still have some playing around to do. I think I can squeeze more out of it and lower the voltage some
 
Core32 said:
Glad it helped...
I read where the expiry and scan time defaults that come set in cgminer were set up for GPUs mining bitcoin a good while back.
Supposedly setting them low like I have reduces the time waiting for acceptance and therefore should reduce stales for scrypt mining.
I "believe" it helped my WU #s go up.
Click to expand...

Adjusted gpu clock 947 /1500 mem/ 1018 VDDC WU's at 450kH/s
 
I switched the cards to 270x's and put in 8Gb of RAM and still run into problems with TC causing the system to lockup.

Any suggestions to try? I'm going to dump windows and try a linux stick
 
That's weird. I've never had a miner lock up windows. Worst it will do usually is crash the mining program or the Radeon drivers.
 
Pitbully said:
That's weird. I've never had a miner lock up windows. Worst it will do usually is crash the mining program or the Radeon drivers.
Click to expand...

same here, its just that specific rig and its not the blue screen 290 type issue. I tried a few versions of cgminer too. There's just something wrong that I haven't quite figure out. tomorrow I have a new motherboard coming that I"ll just transplant all of that stuff into. I haven't gotten around to trying linux on that rig yet but its not a RAM limitation and its not a specific video card doing it.

Last thing left is mobo specific. I've tried different risers too. I just haven't had another mobo big enough to handle them all thats not already in use.
 
I'd probably run memtest to rule out the memory, then transplant the cards into another machine to see if it still happens. If not, then it is probably the motherboard. Does sound like a hardware issue to me though.
 
It does only happen when I'm trying to crank the TC and intensity up.
 
Right, but that alone is putting more stress on your system. When you turn up the intensity/TC, the video card works harder, drawing more power, which all goes through the motherboard/cpu/memory. Granted the CPU and memory are used very little when mining, and I would venture to say they are probably not the problem, but I've found the easiest way to find the culprit is to eliminate everything you can.
 
playah said:
Adjusted gpu clock 947 /1500 mem/ 1018 VDDC WU's at 450kH/s
Click to expand...
GPU clock above 925 causes my hash rate to actually go down.
I take it this is the 7870 Myst card still?
If so, are you still using the other setting I posted to get this number?
 
holy crap... the kalroth version of cgminer is pretty awesome. Check it out
 
TMCM said:
holy crap... the kalroth version of cgminer is pretty awesome. Check it out
Click to expand...

I did. Tremendous improvement in WU performance! 107% of my MH/s, which I didn't think was possible.
Thanks for the tip!
 
Core32 said:
GPU clock above 925 causes my hash rate to actually go down.
I take it this is the 7870 Myst card still?
If so, are you still using the other setting I posted to get this number?
Click to expand...

Yes it's the Myst, for some reason when I start mining with another card it'll drop to 433 kH/s and 394 WU, but I'm not using all your settings yet, I need to add the other switch's one at a time yet
 
playah said:
Yes it's the Myst, for some reason when I start mining with another card it'll drop to 433 kH/s and 394 WU.......
Click to expand...
That's right at what I get per Myst in a rig that consists of two Myst cards and one 270X.
 
Core32 said:
That's right at what I get per Myst in a rig that consists of two Myst cards and one 270X.
Click to expand...


Other card is 280x that needs to be tweaked or bios flashed, only getting 620 kH/s .

How do the 270x compare to 7870.
 
All are about 10% better than the Myst cards, which are somewhat better than vanilla 7870s, correct?
I can get 500kH/s out of them but have not been able to keep them stable at that rate.
So I run most at 480 - 490.
 
I'm running 10 PowerColor AX7850's in 2 rigs ... 410 Kh/s with a WU ratio of about 96% each.

Settings:
OS: BAMT 1.1 (this might be a key, btw) installed on Flashdrive
RAM: 2gb (DDR3)

I: 18
Lookup-Gap: 2
Thread-Concurrency: 8192 (see note below)
Threads: 1
GPU Engine: 1200
GPU-Memclock: 1250 ** See note on this
Powertune: +15

Per rig: 2050 Kh/s
WU: 1900
Rejects: Less than .5 %

All have been rock solid for 72 hours straight (no reboots), no HW errors.

I did toy with the 12404 and 14000 TC's that people suggest, but got a lot of rejects. These cards *really* liked 8192 for stability. The highest I could get per card was 440 Kh/s, but the WU wasn't worth it. I also toyed with memory at 1450, but it yielded insignificant results. My one 7950 loves a high memory. These 7850's seem to care less.

I built one rig, tweaked the heck out of it for 24 hours, and then duplicated it piece for piece. Both are running almost identically in output and temperature.

---

For the 270's. Haven't tested outside of Windows (BAMT usually gives better rates), but I get on average about 470 Kh/s and 430 WU. With BAMT, it'll probably bump up a tad.
 
I only have 1 7870 card at the moment, but I had to flash the bios, then work on it for over 3 hours just to get 400KH/s from it. All the 7850 cards I have can do 375-400KH/s pretty easily, with very little tweaking. I have one more 7870 on the way back from MSI on RMA, hopefully this one won't be such a pain in my ass or I'll be looking to sell them both.

The 270 cards are MUCH easier to deal with IMO. Every one I have will do 460-475KH/s right out of the box with very little tweaking. If you want to spend some time with them, they will do 480-510KH/s pretty easily.
 
My 270 does 450 kH at 1050/1450 clocks. 12404 TC, 19 intensity, 1 thread, 256 worksize. Undervolting to 1.125v and it's only using 150w under load.
 
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