Boysie's RX480 (REF) BIOS 29MH LOW PWR - ETH OR DUAL Mining

boysieboysie Member Posts: 591 ✭✭✭
Hi All,

So thought I would play with the other end of the scale and look at low power people, as my other 32MH looks like for now to be the extreme top end covered off.

I haven't read anyones posts about low power or taken much notice to the ones I have read so not sure how this compares with others so let me know if it sucks please.

29MH was my target as this seems like a decent amt to get for as little power as possible.

so 29MH is what you will get both dual or just ETH, Obviously ETH only will be less power

Rig is just 1 Card 480 XFX 4GB using 8GB Ref card BIOS
Old ish mobo with a gold 750PSU @ 230v
I'm expecting 70w for the system, that's using a laptop mech drive and 2 sticks of ram and an old G2030 Proc <--is this allowing too much?

Power draw at wall is 185w for whole system so approx. 115w for GCard @ card its 115*0.9 = 103watts

Dual mining @the wall its 205w so about 135w for Gcard @ card its 135*0.9 = 121.5watts

Attached is the BIOS.

MEM will default to 1000, I'm running at 890 to stay stable but you might get better with yours and save a little more.

Enjoy.

Boysie






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Comments

  • TruthchanterTruthchanter Member Posts: 549 ✭✭✭
    how much less watts does this use compared to your other V2 bios (i think it's 31.25 not 31.5 or the 32 one)? I'm not sure which is optimum
  • boysieboysie Member Posts: 591 ✭✭✭
    edited August 2016

    how much less watts does this use compared to your other V2 bios (i think it's 31.25 not 31.5 or the 32 one)? I'm not sure which is optimum

    reading what I put on the opening post:

    for the 31.25Mh it was
    Power: 180w @ wall using EVGA 850 P2 230v @ card = 169w (using mem @ 920mv)


    so using the @ card watt

    31.25 per MH/W = 5.4w

    ETH only
    29 per MH/W = 3.5w

    Dual Mining
    29 per MH/W = 4.1w (you get 315MH SC for the extra 0.6w)

    Boysie

  • FlexinFlexin FranceMember Posts: 45
    Really appreciate your work for the community Boysie, this is what i'm looking for, Best ratio mh/s - power comsuption
    I actually use your first wattman settings, with 162mh/s for 840w at the wall since i don't understand all steps for installing a ROM, and flashing the BIOS...

    If someone can take few minutes with me and explain me in PM, how can do that, ofc i will send a little tip for the help..

    My setup : 6 REF Saphirre Rx480, Windows 10 Pro, 16.8.2

    Thanks.
  • TruthchanterTruthchanter Member Posts: 549 ✭✭✭
    edited August 2016
    @Flexin i'm about to flash one of my 480s for the first time too so having it shared here would be helpful for the community

    To get win10 ready I used Heliox's method in this thread :http://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/9287/rx480-patched-driver-working-in-win10-without-option-7#latest

    after doing the above first step I used parts of this to flash and its working with win10 without the option 7 special bootup:
    SIRacer09 said:

    Success on Windows 7 Pro... for the most part.. :)

    Here is the rough, and I mean rough process I went through to get the BIOS flashed and atikmdag.sys file taken care of. I downloaded the Driver Signature Enforcement Overrider that I found on one of the Graphics forums... I do not know ANYTHING about this software, whether it is good or bad, and I'm not telling anyone to use it because for all I know it could do harm, but it's the only way I could get the atikmdag.sys file to work. Supposedly it signs the atikmdag.sys file so the signature check passes without turning it off. Below is the link to the software. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. (If someone else has insight into the software, or knows if it is good or bad, let us know!)

    http://www.ngohq.com/?page=dseo

    I took steps from @Heliox and @boysie and mashed them together to get it to work. Once again, this is what worked for me. Below are the steps I took from start to finish

    1. Start off in Windows with Stock BIOS, Stock Settings, no undervolt/overclock.
    2. Reboot to safe mode and run DDU to safely remove all video drivers.
    3. Reboot into Windows and download the latest drivers from AMD (Someone said the latest version of drivers cause higher wattage usage, I think this might be the case since I'm at 1050 watts for an 8GB RX480 rig, but I will have to do more testing to figure it out)
    4. Install drivers and reboot.
    5. Once Windows comes back up you should have all your cards seen in Device Manager and all should be good. If you have more than 4 cards you might have to run the 6GPU fix to get the other working. Don't move on to the next step until you've got all working in Device Manager.
    6. Download the latest version of Atiflash

    NOTE: Sometimes it's a good idea to flash 1 card at a time. If you want to do this, shutdown your rig, unplug all RX 480s except 1 and boot back up, repeating the below process to flash eash GPU.

    7. Open a command line, as administrator, and browse to the Atiflash folder. Type atiflash -i to list the GPU or GPUs you have connected. Once the first one will be "0", then 1,2 and so on if you have more than 1 connected.
    8. If you are comfortable with the GPUs that are connected, you can now flash the BIOS by typing "atiflash -f -p 0 BIOS.rom" without the quotes, where "0" is the number of the GPU you want to flash and "BIOS.rom" is the name of the ROM you want to flash to the card. It will give you some info on what it is doing and then take a minute or 2 to flash. When it is done, it will prompt you to reboot to make the changes take effect. You can proceed with flashing the other cards before rebooting, or at least that worked for me.
    9. Once all your cards have been flashed with the new BIOS and are seen by Windows with no errors, you can move on to step 10
    10. Download the Driver Signature Enforement Overrider software (http://www.ngohq.com/?page=dseo) Again, do at your own risk. This is the only way I got it to work in Windows 7 though.
    11. Download a copy of the atikmdag.sys file from the link provided in this thread. Save it to your desktop or folder you can remember.
    12. Open the Driver Signature Enforement Overrider software and it will ask you what you want to do. Click "Enable Test Mode" and click Next. It will prompt you to reboot, so go ahead and reboot.
    13. Once you are back in Windows run the Driver Signature Enforement Overrider software again and choose the "Sign a System File" and click Next. Now it will ask you what file to sign. Enter the file name that you want to sign, which is the atikmdag.sys file (It is requesting the whole file path, i.e. C:\Users\SIRacer09\Desktop\atikmdag.sys)
    14. Enter the file path and hit next, then reboot.
    15. Move the atikmdag.sys file to the c:\windows\system32\drivers folder, overriding the one in place and reboot.

    When your computer comes back up, you should (hopefully) be good to go with the new atikmdag.sys file and flashed GPUs. Again, this is a rough outline of what I did. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. Hopefully I can help! :)

    Post edited by Truthchanter on
  • Dr_House86Dr_House86 Member Posts: 566 ✭✭✭
    Yes ;D

    Big Thanks for that @boysie, will it run on Ubuntu?
  • dcsworlddcsworld Member Posts: 9
    Thank you Boysie, i was going to attempt to edit your 31.25 v2 rom to something like this, but with zero previos experience in any rom editing, this one is perfect! will be attempting to flash this tonight..
  • ExtrastarkaExtrastarka Member Posts: 44
    Would you say it will be any difference compare to the 480LowEnergyOK? @boysie
  • shutfushutfu Member Posts: 320 ✭✭
    I don't have any 480s yet, but I really appreciate your hard work and the fact that you share it! Good stuff
  • boysieboysie Member Posts: 591 ✭✭✭

    Would you say it will be any difference compare to the 480LowEnergyOK? @boysie

    I tried that one and it was ok for ETH only I think...dual mining didn't work...power was too low I think
  • HelioxHeliox Member, Moderator Posts: 634 mod
    boysie said:

    Would you say it will be any difference compare to the 480LowEnergyOK? @boysie

    I tried that one and it was ok for ETH only I think...dual mining didn't work...power was too low I think
    Powerlimit up by 10% and problem fixed.
  • boysieboysie Member Posts: 591 ✭✭✭
    @heliox with the 30.5Mh low power rom I get 225w(system) at the wall, ETH only.

    that's 40w more than at 29MH. Although I expect I can save some on the mem power as it will default to 1000.
  • Blue1984Blue1984 Member Posts: 45
    @boysie
    Thx 4 the Rom i will test it today :)

    1 Question - the Voltage mV works with the 480? (Screenshot) because on the 470 there was no change in the Consumption if i had lower it.

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/46174172/Screenshots/Test35.JPG

    lg blue

  • h311m4nh311m4n Member Posts: 30
    edited August 2016
    @Boysie
    Same question as Blue with whom I've been trying to understand how the heck you can undervolt a Sapphire RX470 Nitro+ 8Gb to less than 1.0V as it seems you cannot go lower without a hardcode Bios mod which implies adding values and not just modifying them (I have 0 XP with this).

    EDIT: btw, another question. When I was undervolting my 390X, it was written that the voltages you set in mV must be set with a simple calculation. This means that for instance:

    If I want a core voltage of 870mv, the correct mv value to enter is 868, not 870. Looking at all the voltage mods, it seems like this is no longer the case or am I wrong?
    Post edited by h311m4n on
  • HelioxHeliox Member, Moderator Posts: 634 mod
    edited August 2016
    Modifying voltages in a gui environment, or better yet, chaning the dpm values is totally not the same as adding offset to the rom.
    If you add offset to the rom you can give the controller the command of starting to calculate every dpm by -100mV for example.

    Again, i keep mentioning this everywhere.

    There is no way to lower memory voltage. Not in a GUI(polarisbiodeditor) and not in the rom.

    So by changing that in PolarisBiosEditor you change the voltage given to the controller "AUX/VDDCI" NOT MVDDC!
    So, it just has no effect on power usage, thus your power usage will not go down.


    As an answer to @h311m4n . You do this by adding the correct offset inside the rom.
    This is using a hexeditor, getting the i2cdump, a dump by atombios and a register dump by Aida, calculating the exact position for that, remove extra whitespace, etc..

    So basically, the real stuff..


    + there's a difference between VID and VDDC

    VDDC is the monitored voltage, so not the voltage the GPU received from the controller, that is VID.
    The difference between VID and vddc can also be seen as vdroop, this varies due to loadline calibration.
  • ed1ed1 Member Posts: 46
    edited August 2016
    This is what i'm getting for my 2 x 480's 8GB
    at the wall system is 265watts and giving 48MH/s
    iIve put the power limit to 54% with gpu tweak
    and in wattman i set the memory voltage to 850
    that's all... the rest is all on auto - fans are 75%
    Post edited by ed1 on
  • evertecevertec Member Posts: 16
    This rom makes my system lock up almost immediately unfortunately. Heliox 's low power works well as long as I set the power limit higher on two of my three cards. What I don't understand is why the voltages are all over the place. One card is set to 868 max, the other 920 something, and the third 975. Why the disparity? If I try to lower them in wattman it immediately goes back to the default.
  • boysieboysie Member Posts: 591 ✭✭✭
    evertec said:

    This rom makes my system lock up almost immediately unfortunately. Heliox 's low power works well as long as I set the power limit higher on two of my three cards. What I don't understand is why the voltages are all over the place. One card is set to 868 max, the other 920 something, and the third 975. Why the disparity? If I try to lower them in wattman it immediately goes back to the default.

    Sounds like you didn't hit reset on wattman after the first reboot after flashing. It basically means you end up with broken settings u till u hit reset.

    This is the same for any rom.

    Boysie
  • boysieboysie Member Posts: 591 ✭✭✭
    Blue1984 said:

    @boysie
    Thx 4 the Rom i will test it today :)

    1 Question - the Voltage mV works with the 480? (Screenshot) because on the 470 there was no change in the Consumption if i had lower it.

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/46174172/Screenshots/Test35.JPG

    lg blue

    So once flashed rebooted and hit reset in wattman power will be on auto. It ignores mem power unfortunately. Drop it to what you want and it will bring down the power of core and mem. 890 was what I used. But you might get even more but with out the offset method @helliox is working on there is not much that can be done. Ideally a bios should be flash and that's it...for now a few tweaks are needed. So really all im doing is setting the wattman settings so if you push it to much they default back to working settings close to what u need except mem power which will default back to 1000.

    Hopefully @Heliox and @Wolf0 can crack out a real bios mod which is a little out side my abilities. Although is this not what has already been done im not sure. They will need to cove this aspect.

    Boysie.
  • h311m4nh311m4n Member Posts: 30
    Heliox said:

    Modifying voltages in a gui environment, or better yet, chaning the dpm values is totally not the same as adding offset to the rom.
    If you add offset to the rom you can give the controller the command of starting to calculate every dpm by -100mV for example.

    Again, i keep mentioning this everywhere.

    There is no way to lower memory voltage. Not in a GUI(polarisbiodeditor) and not in the rom.

    So by changing that in PolarisBiosEditor you change the voltage given to the controller "AUX/VDDCI" NOT MVDDC!
    So, it just has no effect on power usage, thus your power usage will not go down.


    As an answer to @h311m4n . You do this by adding the correct offset inside the rom.
    This is using a hexeditor, getting the i2cdump, a dump by atombios and a register dump by Aida, calculating the exact position for that, remove extra whitespace, etc..

    So basically, the real stuff..


    + there's a difference between VID and VDDC

    VDDC is the monitored voltage, so not the voltage the GPU received from the controller, that is VID.
    The difference between VID and vddc can also be seen as vdroop, this varies due to loadline calibration.

    Hi Helios,

    Great explanation. I've been cracking my head with Blue1984 in the RX470 Sapphire Nitro+ 8Gb BIOS to find if a voltage offset could be entered, but it's like you say, we need to add it to the ROM. Sadly I have 0 knowledge/XP doing this. Any chance you are looking how this can be achieved on the above mentionned RX470 8Gb from Sapphire?

    As I said before, I was really expecting to be able to have a 27Mh/s hashrate with very little Wattage (say 100-120/card). I'm currently at around 150-160. Considering what I pay per kw, this is way too much.

    Then again, I know the RX470 are still new to the seen so hopefully someone will figure it out pretty soon :)
  • zawawazawawa Member Posts: 27
    @boysie Fantastic! Great work on memory timings. I just want to point out, however, that none of your BIOS'es worked as they are with my setup. (One of my RX 480's is an OC version from XFX, that may explain why.) I had to open your custom BIOS with Polaris BIOS Editor, write down the parameters, and modify the original BIOS accordingly. Your configuration was quite informative nonetheless. Thank you so much!
  • boysieboysie Member Posts: 591 ✭✭✭
    just for feed back @Heliox I tried the +10% power limit and it did help but I only got 28.5/300MH @ 255w inc system.

    Thanks

    Boysie
  • MetzMetz Member Posts: 126 ✭✭
    Thanks @boysie & @Heliox - running a stable 29MHz with this ROM (ETH only), for the last 48hrs.

    Cards are 10c cooler (69c) - fans at 2400rpm
    +10% Power let me drop the Mem to 2080MHz/835mV
    Left the GPU at 0%/Auto for now

    GPU-Z is reporting 4w less power draw from the card (74w), compared to the 31MHz ROM (78w).
  • TruthchanterTruthchanter Member Posts: 549 ✭✭✭
    what is the core clock and core voltage for this rom? Also for mem straps is this what was done?: 1500 put into 1625, 1625 into 1750, 1750 into 2000?
  • niubbo1969niubbo1969 Member Posts: 53 ✭✭
    @boysie but with this bios mod the compatibility mode in wattman change something? must be on or off?
  • boysieboysie Member Posts: 591 ✭✭✭

    @boysie but with this bios mod the compatibility mode in wattman change something? must be on or off?

    no idea never changed that.

    @Truthchanter I dont recall exactly, think is was 1625 to 2000, open it up in bios editor and u can see the other bits.
  • TruthchanterTruthchanter Member Posts: 549 ✭✭✭
    boysie said:

    @boysie but with this bios mod the compatibility mode in wattman change something? must be on or off?

    no idea never changed that.

    @Truthchanter I dont recall exactly, think is was 1625 to 2000, open it up in bios editor and u can see the other bits.
    good idea thanks, you experimenting with your 470 4gb today? I optimized more and it seems stable so far at -12.5%(1065)/850mv and 2000/850mv... I may try lowering the mem (and then core) voltage more though
  • boysieboysie Member Posts: 591 ✭✭✭

    boysie said:

    @boysie but with this bios mod the compatibility mode in wattman change something? must be on or off?

    no idea never changed that.

    @Truthchanter I dont recall exactly, think is was 1625 to 2000, open it up in bios editor and u can see the other bits.
    good idea thanks, you experimenting with your 470 4gb today? I optimized more and it seems stable so far at -12.5%(1065)/850mv and 2000/850mv... I may try lowering the mem (and then core) voltage more though
    at the weekend I will. I don't have access to them until then.
  • TruthchanterTruthchanter Member Posts: 549 ✭✭✭
    edited September 2016
    Here's my 480 results right now (still may optimize mem strap timing, undervolts, and mem oc further):

    975-980w @ wall 6x480 whole system. 172-175mhs 22dcri 1920sia (29-29.2 per card) 1095/890mv 2125/890mv heliox original rom.

    What is confusing me with these 480 roms is that boysies and heliox roms use different 2000 mem strap values:

    Heliox: 777000000000000022CC1C00106A6D4DD0571016B90D060C006AE70014051420FA8900A0030000001B11333DC0303A17

    Boysie:
    555000000000000022CC1C00CE616C47D0570F15B48C250B006AE7000B031420FA8900A003000000190F2F39B22D3517

    Would I get higher mhs with boysies?
    What is optimum for the 480 2000 timing strap?


    EDIT: I edited heliox original 480 mod (which i was using for the stats at the beginning of this post) and put the 2000 strap value i listed for boysie in it. Wierdly i'm getting like 17-19s mhs at 2200 mem this way but if i put the mem to like 2080 or 2125, mhs goes back up to normal range around ~29 So there is some wierd stuff going on and i think if im getting the same mhs with this new strap value at 2125 compared with heliox's at 2200. there may be a better strap value to use with 2200. I will continue experimenting, hopefully at least one of you guys will chime in with something good.
    Post edited by Truthchanter on
  • lefferalganlefferalgan Member Posts: 21
    Hi @boysie ,

    If i use your Bios on my Gigabyte RX 480 (REF) and check on GPU-Z OpenCL is no more flagged, and if i launch ethminer or Clay it stop immediatly, do you have any suggestion?

    Thx
  • cvekscveks Member Posts: 62
    Can Sapphire RX 480 4GB Nitro+ , get this hash rate?
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