Mining Optimization for Power Consumption
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I just ordered a mini itx rig, i will have 3 machines to swap around here now. I am finally going to take my main machine (x58 i7 930 @4.2) offline for a series of RMAs that I have needed to do for a while. I will get to move my 7970s into an awesome 3770k with an Asus Maximus V Extreme that I picked up lightly used 5 months ago and my 7950 will move to the ITX box.
I am hoping to isolate the systems for some KH/Watts testing and improve my efficiency. I would really like to see if I can keep a 7970 above 600KH/s drawing less than 150 watts per card at the wall. I think this will be achievable on a gold+ psu and some tweaking. I am also planning on doing the same with my 7950 but I have no idea whats going to happen. My 7950 has not been the greatest hasher but I might be able to whip it into shape dropping down to 550KH/s and I would hope to be able to do this at 125 watts or less. I will update as I get more info, but after running this config on my 7970s for several weeks I am impressed.
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After plugging and unplugging things and running some numbers and playing with voltages this afternoon these were the results:
My 2x 7970s were averaging 285 watts each at 740KH/s
After the changes they dropped to 190 watts per card and 638KH/s each and 12c cooler using 940MV per card740/285 = 2.6 KH/watt
638/190 = 3.36 KH/wattA scrypt FPGA (koolio’s numbers):
1000/150 = 6.67 KH/wattThat above is a ~29% boost in efficiency with some minor tweaks. My next goal is to see if I can increase the hash rate of these cards while leaving the core clock, memory clock, and core voltage alone. Remember these numbers are from the wall and on an old 80+ bronze PSU. With a more efficient PSU I might be able to get the cards down to about 165-175 watts each at the wall. I also have no access to the memory voltages and that could be another source for power reduction.
When my new ITX rig arrives expect some more number and the same analysis of a 7950.
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Got them down to 180 watts and same hashrate with a few tweaks, memory is a funny thing.
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Thanks for the info.
I’d hope to keep my hash rate as high as I can, but save power. I’ll prob go with standard clock / slightly over, under clock the memory, and maybe the voltage lowered also.
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I reduced my power by about 200 watts by decreasing the engine speed. 1.2 kwh to 1kwh.
I didn’t try reducing the memory speed tho’, once you get everything running, its hard to touch the rig without making it worse. 6950 / 6970 / 6770.
I certainly was lucky early on when you don’t know whats high, only to blow up 2 power supplies, not the GPUs!
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I am now running at 650KH/s per 7970 and 180 watts per card putting me at 3.6KH/w
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thanks for this info. i bookmarked it. Will be adding a bunch of 280x in my rigs this week.
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[quote name=“angloblaxon” post=“38793” timestamp=“1386006403”]
thanks for this info. i bookmarked it. Will be adding a bunch of 280x in my rigs this week.
[/quote]I have 6 280x Sapphires coming this week as well. I will be posting usage and hash rates for these when I get them.
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looking forward to it! i need it more so to fit 6 cards into one mine. :)
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svennand when you killed ur cards, how long did they last? how many % did you overclock it by? did u overclock the mem as well?
how are you all getting the Watt per card? are you guys using a program to read it?
how come all i see is people underclocking, is no body overclocking?
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Ordered 3x Gigabyte R9 280x last night, only 2 are coming though. Should have numbers on those in the next week or so and the Sapphires are back ordered for another 2-3 weeks.
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Well i got 4 saphire vapor x R9 280x running right now. 2 in one machine that was runing at 740 kh/s per a card but was drawing 720w with temps around 83. soon as i get a rig stand they coming out of case. I dropped the clocks to 975 and voltage to 1.043. Power consumption dropped to 550 or so. hash rate to 690 kh/s. temps dropped to 74. once i get a rig stand they will probably drop more temp. I basically sacrificed around 90 kh/s for almost 200w. this machine does have 5 fans and a 165w processor in it. working on getting it more optimized for mining. it was my gaming rig that got sacrifice to the mining gods.
the second machine i dropped clocks to 1070 and voltage to 1.111 and kh/s states at 700 with around 520 watts even saw it hit 480 for awhile. temps around 74 also this machine has a 65w processor a hard drive and that’s it.
a fifth card is running in a machine of my brothers by it self and never breaks the 60s in temps and stock voltage so spacing these cards out would defiantly help with temps.
i basically sacrificed 160 kh/s for clos to 400 watts and lower temps. once i get some rig stands and consolidate to one rig i will optimize them some more.
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[quote name=“colsteel” post=“40652” timestamp=“1386357597”]
Well i got 4 saphire vapor x R9 280x running right now. 2 in one machine that was runing at 740 kh/s per a card but was drawing 720w with temps around 83. soon as i get a rig stand they coming out of case. I dropped the clocks to 975 and voltage to 1.043. Power consumption dropped to 550 or so. hash rate to 690 kh/s. temps dropped to 74. once i get a rig stand they will probably drop more temp. I basically sacrificed around 90 kh/s for almost 200w. this machine does have 5 fans and a 165w processor in it. working on getting it more optimized for mining. it was my gaming rig that got sacrifice to the mining gods.the second machine i dropped clocks to 1070 and voltage to 1.111 and kh/s states at 700 with around 520 watts even saw it hit 480 for awhile. temps around 74 also this machine has a 65w processor a hard drive and that’s it.
a fifth card is running in a machine of my brothers by it self and never breaks the 60s in temps and stock voltage so spacing these cards out would defiantly help with temps.
i basically sacrificed 160 kh/s for clos to 400 watts and lower temps. once i get some rig stands and consolidate to one rig i will optimize them some more.
[/quote]Nice work! I would be interested in seeing all of your settings that you are using for the cards if you dont mind ;) Those are some really good results for KH/watts now that you are tuning them…looks like they are going to be better then my msi 7970s!
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]
,
“intensity” : “13”,
“vectors” : “1”,
“worksize” : “256”,
“kernel” : “scrypt”,
“lookup-gap” : “2”,
“thread-concurrency” : “8192”,
“shaders” : “2048”,
“api-port” : “4028”,
“auto-fan” : true,
“expiry” : “120”,
“gpu-dyninterval” : “7”,
“gpu-platform” : “0”,
“gpu-threads” : “2”,
“gpu-engine” : “975,975”,
“gpu-memclock” : “1500,1500”,
“gpu-powertune” : “0”,
“log” : “5”,
“no-pool-disable” : true,
“queue” : “0”,
“scan-time” : “30”,
“scrypt” : true,
“shares” : “0”,
“kernel-path” : “/usr/local/bin”
}that’s what i am currently running right now. this is my first attempt at mining so some things i am still want to learn to do like add voltage to the config instead of using trixx
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nice results @colsteel, I’m using pretty much the same settings except for memory, which I’ve set to 1400 b/c I get a better hashrate compared to memclock 1500. Weird :p
“gpu-vddc” would be the voltage setting, but I cant get it to work on my Sapphire R9 280X cards :-/
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[quote name=“nimmneun” post=“40755” timestamp=“1386367155”]
“gpu-vddc” would be the voltage setting, but I cant get it to work on my Sapphire R9 280X cards :-/
[/quote]Have you tried Sapphire Trixx? I found that was the only way on my sapphire cards to control voltage, MSI afterburner and cgminer couldnt adjust the voltages no matter what I tried…
[quote author=colsteel link=topic=4176.msg40720#msg40720 date=1386364335]
that’s what i am currently running right now. this is my first attempt at mining so some things i am still want to learn to do like add voltage to the config instead of using trixx
[/quote]I personally love using MSI afterburner and Sapphire Trixx to control gpu core clock, mem clock, fans, and voltages. This lets me throttle/change my cards settings without stopping cgminer with my predefined configs. It also helped me max my hash rate faster because I could easily adjust any of the clocks while cgminer is running. Others may do this differently but I love my afterburner…here are my 5 configurations in afterburner typically:
1. Stock settings
2. Benchmarking settings
3. In game settings
4. Mining Efficency settings
5. Optimized Max Hash Rate settings -
yea i was doing that to. adjusting the cards on the fly is great for tweaking. my brothers and me are going to be placing rigs in multiple locations so this will be great in case we need to remote in and adjust stuff with out stopping the mining.
The Coin must Flow!!!
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[quote name=“colsteel” post=“40952” timestamp=“1386394339”]
The Coin must Flow!!! [/quote]Muad’dib!
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Here is an update for everyone:
My 6x Sapphire R9 280x are still back ordered no ETA
My 2x Gigabyte R9 280x Rev 2 are awesome but voltage locked…ughThe gigabytes are running at 730 and 750 KH/s sitting about 80c in a rackmount chassis. I am planning on flashing each of the 2 bios to my power optimized settings so that I can control the voltages on the video cards. I don’t have power consumption numbers for these cards yet. As some of us mining on windows have seen, the first GPU in the set of GPUs seems to be running slower than everyone else no matter what. I run 1050/1500 on GPU 1 and 1080/1500 on GPU 2 both with a TC of 21105… GPU 1 can’t run at 1080/1500 at all. Another piece of that puzzle is that I use the same OS on all of my mining rigs…none of them work with standard TC settings for miners, when set to 8192 for 7970s or 24000 for 7950s I get low hash rates.
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You can set the Gigabytes to 1.075V through Atiflash.
The temp goes down to 70 degrees and still running 725-730kH/s
