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.
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.