Sapphire RX470 OC ROM : ETH/SIA 27.35/246 Mh/s + other Mining Hardware Suggestions/Tips

RavinderDhillonRavinderDhillon Member Posts: 74 ✭✭
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/KSqcTO511H26B9
This 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 . For 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

  • JosevoraJosevora Lisbon, PortugalMember Posts: 93
    edited September 2016
    Honestly, i was going to buy more Z170 Mobos on a low price... but now i'm thinking i should wait for more info and data sharing as MANY people are reporting no more than 4 GPUs per Z170 MOBO....

    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!
  • nhandonhando Member Posts: 82
    Very nice work and thank you for taking the time to post this.
  • TruthchanterTruthchanter Member Posts: 549 ✭✭✭
    edited September 2016
    Thanks for sharing.
    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.
  • jsanzspjsanzsp Member Posts: 195 ✭✭
    edited September 2016
    not work for me, after the flash the card is not recognized by the driver, I had to re-flash and return to the original bios.

    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?
  • RavinderDhillonRavinderDhillon Member Posts: 74 ✭✭
    jsanzsp said:

    not work for me, after the flash the card is not recognized by the driver, I had to re-flash and return to the original bios.

    Please insure you are using this bios on the card in the picture above, for all other cards I recommend modifying the bios on your own.
    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.
    jsanzsp said:

    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 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.
  • jsanzspjsanzsp Member Posts: 195 ✭✭
    edited October 2016

    jsanzsp said:

    not work for me, after the flash the card is not recognized by the driver, I had to re-flash and return to the original bios.

    Please insure you are using this bios on the card in the picture above, for all other cards I recommend modifying the bios on your own.
    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.
    jsanzsp said:

    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 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

    Post edited by jsanzsp on
  • hunghcmhunghcm Member Posts: 3
    which is kind of Sapphire 470 4G or 8G ? and is this bios for both
  • ursul0ursul0 Member Posts: 54
    nice rate man!
    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 :)
  • RavinderDhillonRavinderDhillon Member Posts: 74 ✭✭
    So I dove into Hex editing for the BIOS and its not as complicated as its made out to be. For the layman, I still feel what watttool offers is plenty. With HEX what you can additionally do is create intermediate memory timing straps and can include an offset in the bios to reduce core volts consumption.
    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.
  • BadmadafackaBadmadafacka Member Posts: 2
    Is it possible to use a bootable DOS image that automatically flashes all GPUs?
    Running RX470 4G OC
  • kyledamkyledam Member Posts: 7
    Hi, how about solo mining ETH only with those settings, does it need to change anything? Thank you
  • jsanzspjsanzsp Member Posts: 195 ✭✭
    kyledam said:

    Hi, how about solo mining ETH only with those settings, does it need to change anything? Thank you

    Of course the settings of graphics cards It is only to increase performance,
    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.
  • rockzhourockzhou Member Posts: 6

    So I dove into Hex editing for the BIOS and its not as complicated as its made out to be. For the layman, I still feel what watttool offers is plenty. With HEX what you can additionally do is create intermediate memory timing straps and can include an offset in the bios to reduce core volts consumption.
    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.

    could you share your rom ,i want to use it or refence.I'm using Sapphirer RX470 OC.
    Thank you!
  • SvchostSvchost Member Posts: 7
    Hello
    are you test the MSI Z170A PRO carbon
  • AkromaAkroma Member Posts: 92
    hello again :D one question :D if i use a different Brand/model of fan, like asus strix rx470 4gb, what values can i put on rpm? the same? 2000 5000? or another? ty
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