Hi All,
I thought I would share the BIOS/Settings that I have successfully been
using on 25 of my cards in 5 rigs running at a
total of ~680Mh/s for a combined power draw of 3300W from the wall getting me about
4.8W per Hash which is think is pretty reasonable.
Here is a link to the download the BIOS file (Flash at your own risk) :
http://dropcanvas.com/KSqcTO511H26B9This BIOS is for the
Sapphire RX 470 OC which have Hynix memory. I have 25 of them bought primarily because of the cost-performance ratio. I have since tweaked them incessantly to arrive at the current settings which I feel are a sort of a peak for this particular card. I know there are several people on these forums that use these specific cards and so would like to share my results. Bear in mind that these cards can be pushed harder, to achieve 28+Mh/s as demonstrated by different people in this forum, but the power draw and heat generated also goes up significantly.
This is a low power rom that I use across my setups primarily because I am limited by two things :
1) I have to use Sata to Molex connectors for 2 risers per rig and do not want them getting too hot/burn due to excessive power draw.
2) I have to keep power draw under 700W per 5 card rig due to bad electrical wiring quality in my house.
That being said, I was using the 1500 Memory Strap on these cards earlier with higher clocks on my memory (1900/890) but that was not stable across all the cards. Initially I was posting stick it notes on each card to remember their individual best settings but configuring them over and over again is a pain because for some weird reason GPUZ and Wattman do not recognize the GPU's in the same order. So then I began looking for setting that would work on even the shittiest of my cards ( which is a 63% ASIC card, something that GPUZ reports is "better" than 0.1% of similar GPU's out there LOL ).
The attached BIOS ROM is essentially stock with just the memory timings changed. You can also create it on your own using the Polaris Bios editor. I just copied the
1375 memory strap timings to all subsequent straps. I generally do not hardcode settings int he bios primarily because that eliminates any chance of the card crashing due to too aggressive settings.
Here are the Wattman settings that I used (for someone using linux, you would need to hardcode these settings into your bios using polaris editor) :
First, pull back the GPU frequency dynamic slider to -30%. Then switch to manual and edit the last
power state (5, 6, 7) values to 800/800/1050 respectively.
For voltage, copy the State 0 value ( 818 ) to state 1, 2, 3, 4 . F
or State 5 and 6, key in 825. For State 7 put in 870.
For Memory frequency push the slider up to
1870, and key in voltage to 870.
I also set the fan speed at 2000 - 5000 which insures cool operation and the fans around 50% (insuring they don't wear out quickly), and the temps at 85(max) - 70(target) with a +10 power limit.
With these settings and
DCRI set to -18 I can run these cards in
dual mining mode at a low 120W per card, keeping per system power under 640W.
Bear in mind that your GPU and Memory frequency should be the same. With these settings these are my results :
Now remember
that there may be individual cards that jump around from 22 to 27 ( I have a couple of these ) and they do so at all settings/BIOS so there is nothing that you can do about those cards really.
Its just the luck of the draw. Also if you have a
different card than the one pictured above, please
DO NOT FLASH this rom, instead use the atiwinflash tool to save your bios, then use polaris bios editor to edit it on your own.
Setup/Hardware info :
My setups are all 5 card rigs, running Windows 10 on the
ASRock FM2A58+ BTC, with AMD A4-4020 APU, 4Gb Corsair DDR3 1600, Samsung EVO 740 120GB SSD's and Corsair CS750M PSU's and 5 Powered Risers. I use a 2xmolex to 6pin PCIe connector for the 5th card, and for the riser power, direct Molex connectors to 3 of the risers and 2 sata power cables to other two. These have been running more or less stable for over 20 days now.
The Sata power to Riser cables connectors do get warm, and I would
recommend monitoring them for the first couple of days. A couple were getting pretty hot so I replaced them and things have been fine since. So far no cables or Risers have failed on me, and these were all purchased from Aliexpress China.
The ASRock FM2A58+, the last of the "Built to Mine" motherboards has now gone out of stock permanently and I have been experimenting with newer motherboards which are expensive but look promising.
The MSI B150 PC Mate can run 4 cards, the
MSI Z170A Krait Gaming 3X can run 7 as reported by
@Josevora cards but is expensive. I also have a Boistar Z170GT7 board but so far have only managed to get 4 cards working on it, I am still trying to get more to work. I will also be checking out the MSI Z170A PRO because I read somewhere that someone got 6 cards working on it.
I hope all of this helps someone, like the many posts and members on this forum helped me. As always, many thanks to everyone who share their updates and settings/how-to's helping people like me get started.
Comments
I have done absolutely NO research on compatibility and GPU limit... i just got lucky...
If anyone has a Z170 Mobo and wants to share how they got it to work(or not to work) i'll be glad to share info and trying to help has i can.... but again, i did NOTHING on mine... just Plug and Play!
I have some rigs with these same cards.
Most of my non-primary display gpus run at:
1080/850mv 1975-2000/850mv
My primary display gpus run at:
1060/875mv 1950/875mv
You may get slightly higher mhs and lower power consumption experimenting with these values. I use the 1500 strap.
I read that the driver must be patched, or disable signed drivers.
Another thing that caught my attention is that Overclock card with watmann, have low hash rate, compared the stock clock. someone knows why that happens?
If it still does not work for you, theres Guides for fixing that. Or use 16.9.2 drivers and the drivers will recognize the card. If you overclock your card without a BIOS mod, you will lose hash rate. This is because at higher clocks stock bios have very loose memory timings. This is why people mod their bios, to apply tighter timings to higher straps. Again, this isn't a beginners guide, I would recommend that you look through the forum, there are several detailed guides to bios modding.
Thank you for tip, now your bios works perfect for me on last drivers
You can try to run claymore once with -di detect, so it will give you a better order, by giving you the 'proper order' like -di 23104 instead of -di 01234
He tries to load the GPU and see where the temperature increases... Not always work though ... I have some cards ventilated so well it couldn't detect the load
With all the tweking I could do, the BEST I can get my RX 470's is to hash at 25.6 Mh/s while consuming 90W from the wall (GPUZ is like 54W), with a 5 card system at 510W with a lot of bios editing in hex (not polaris). This was a part of my pet 250Mh/s with 1KW at the wall single frame rig/project that I finally achieved yesterday. Its got two 5 card systems in one compact open frame. I will be setting up my 4th such rig to touch 1Gh/s soon.
I have a power ceiling at my place that limits how many rigs I can have running, so most of my research and efforts have been focused into efficiency and not peak performance. Also, the cards run cool, have 0 memory errors, are significantly undervolted and most importantly the risers run cool so i'm insuring a good long run for my hardware.
I think we all know by now that these cards can be pushed pretty hard. But unless you have a proper cooling setup with ducts and air conditioners, and unless you are sure that you are going to dump these cards when ETH goes POS, I would not recommend pushing them to the edge. Find a suitable balance and stick to it, even for perf enthusiasts 27 Mh/s is what you should be happy at with a RX 470 4GB running 24/7. I've made my peace with less.
Running RX470 4G OC
and consumption, you can mine as you want,dual or solo, even other currencies with these settings.
This setting bios is the best for me, low power consumption, moderate hashrate, stable,
low temperatures.
Thank you!
are you test the MSI Z170A PRO carbon