Archive for the ‘Tests and Reviews’ Category

Mining Performance of MSI Gaming X AMD Radeon RX 470 4GB

10, Aug 2016

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After testing the Sapphire NITRO+ AMD Radeon RX 470 8GB and seeing what it it capable of delivering for mining Ethereum and some other crypto currencies it is time to also test a smaller 4 GB version of the Radeon RX 480. We have managed to get our hands on an MSI Gaming X AMD Radeon RX 470 4GB video card and we tested it, so below you can read about our experience and findings using that particular model. The good thing about the MSI RX 470 card is that it runs on 6.6 GHz (1650 MHz) video memory by default and has an OC mode that overclocks the video memory to 7 GHz (1750 MHz), so we could easily test both modes. As you’ve probably read already the Radeon RX 470 8 GB we tested from Sapphire is with 8 GHz video memory, so as you’d expect the MSI card should be slower for Ethereum mining, let us see how much exactly.

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Using the Claymore Dual Miner for mining Ethereum (ETH) at the default settings with the video memory at 6.6 GHz (1650 MHz) the hashrate we are getting is about 20.5 MHS. That is roughly 4 MHS slower than what the RX 470 8GB from Sapphire manages to do with its memory running at 8 GHz. So significant difference in the performance you get at default settings between a 4 GB and 8 GB versions of the RX 470 for mining Ethereum. A larger difference is also to be expected in other mining algorithms that are more memory intensive than GPU intensive. For algorithms that are not so memory dependent on the video memory there should not be much of a difference in performance between he 4GB and 8GB models of the Radeon RX 470.

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Moving to 7 GHz for the video memory (1750 MHz) on the MSI Radeon RX 470 4GB we get an increase of the Ethereum mining hashrate to about 22.1 MHS. That is about 1.6 MHS increase over the result we got from the 6.6 GHz (1650 MHz) video memory and is slower by 2.4 MHS compared to the RX 470 8GB with memory running at 8 GHz.

We wanted to try overclocking the video memory further over the 7 GHz frequency and see if that will bring some extra performance and we could achieve up to about 7.5 GHz stable for mining Ethereum. The problem however was that instead of the hashrate further increasing as we overclock the video memory past the 7 GHz mark the result was the opposite, we started seeing a drop of the hashrate below 20 MHS. It seems that after 7 GHz the timings of the video memory are being changed to less aggressive values and even though we get higher frequency it does not manage to result in better performance for mining Ethereum at least. The maximum limit for how high we could set the video memory operating frequency we got available was 8.4 GHz (2100 MHz), but of course we could not get even close to it with this slower video memory like we could easily reach it with the RX 470 8GB Sapphire card that starts at 8 GHz.

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So what about other mining algorithms? Well, the results we got were a bit disappointing and not because of the hashrates, but because of the way that the video card behaved that got us puzzled. Using the latest AMD Crimson Edition 16.8.1 Hotfix driver and trying to run some sgminer tests for other popular algorithms pretty much resulted in us getting blue screens, so we’ve moved to the version that MSI provides for that video card on their website. Using the 16.7.3 release made things a bit better, no blue screens anymore, now the system just restarted instead. When testing the Sapphire RX 470 8GB model we had no such trouble, however back then we’ve used an earlier beta driver that Sapphire put on disk included with the video card and it behaved much better than what we’ve seen with these two newer releases.

So we’ve had to try the Sapphire NITRO+ AMD Radeon RX 470 8GB with the AMD Crimson Edition 16.8.1 Hotfix driver and guess what, the same blue screens started appearing when trying to run sgminer via the NiceHash Miner package for the same tests that were working with the beta driver prior to that on the same GPU. So it seems that the problem is related to the video drivers and the most recent versions apparently are not good for mining anything other than Ethereum or at least almost anything, because Ethereum mining seems to be working just fine with all of the drivers. If you are interested we can upload and share the Sapphire beta drivers that seem to be working better if you are experiencing similar problems with RX 470 trying to mine anything other than Ethereum.

Mining Performance of Sapphire NITRO+ AMD Radeon RX 470 8GB

8, Aug 2016

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We’ve managed to get our hands on an AMD Radeon RX 470 video card and not just any, but the best out there – the 8GB Sapphire NITRO+ AMD Radeon RX 470, so we’ve had to put it to a test to see how good it will perform for mining Ethereum (ETH) and other popular crypto currencies using different mining algorithms. The Sapphire NITRO+ 8GB model of RX 470 is probably the best you can get in terms of mining performance among other RX 470 offerings because it comes with memory clocked at 2000 MHz (8 GHz) or with other words the same memory frequency as the reference design RX 480 GPUs.

This faster video memory makes it interesting especially for mining Ethereum, but there are other good points to that video card as well such as the 8-pin PCI-E power connector, the good cooling solution and the 1260 MHz boost clock of the GPU. The only drawback is that the price of the Sapphire NITRO+ AMD Radeon RX 470 8 GB should pretty much be the same as the price of 8 GB reference design RX 480s. The 4 GB models of RX 470 are apparently equipped with slower memory, so as far as Ethereum mining goes they will perform slower than the 8 GB NITRO+ version, though i other algorithms they may not be much slower.

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The hashrate that the Sapphire NITRO+ AMD Radeon RX 470 8GB manages to provide out of the box for mining Ethereum is about 24.5 MHS or almost much what the reference design Radeon RX 480 manages to deliver mining ETH. Again this is because of the 8 GHz video memory used on that model from Sapphire, other RX 470 cards with 4 GB come with 7 GHz or 6.6 GHz video memory and that will for sure result in a slower hashrate for Ethereum. The Sapphire NITRO+ manages to keep just fine the GPU boosted to the maximum 1260 MHz is supports all the time, though for Ethereum mining you can lower that frequency by reducing the power limit below 100% on the Power Target as ETH does not benefit much from the higher GPU frequency and you can reduce the power usage without a hit in performance.

What we did not like much is the default fans profile that try to keep the rotations per minute at a low value maintaining a silent operation of the GPU, but with it working at higher temperature. While mining Ethereum the RX 470 wanted to keep the fans in the 30-ies as percentage or about 1300 RPM and as a result the temperature spikes above 70 degrees Celsius, so manually increasing the cooling temperature curve or setting a fixed higher percentage is a good idea to keep the GPU cooler while mining, especially if you mine coins that use more GPU intensive algorithms unlike the one used by Ethereum that is more memory dependent. Also the default power usage of the Sapphire NITRO+ can definitely use some tweaking as it seems to be slightly higher than that of a reference design RX 480

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Overclocking the Sapphire NITRO+ AMD Radeon RX 470 8GB has left us a bit disappointed. We kind of expected to be able to push the 8 GHz video memory to at least 8.8 or 9 GHz like you can on most reference design RX 480. Unfortunately we ended up with up to 8.2 GHz (2050 MHz) maximum limit from AMD’s WattMan and maximum 8.4 GHz with the use of the ASUS GPU Tweak II tool. We are still somewhat short on options for overclocking tools for the new AMD RX series of GPUs, so this forced overclocking limit has left us disappointed. We are not sure if it was forced because the GDDR5 memory chips from Samsung are not capable of working at higher frequencies without problem or as a safety measure so that the RX 470 turns out slower than RX 480 even when overclocked.

The result of the limited video memory clock is important only for Ethereum mining as the result is slower maximum hashrate. At the maximum of 8.4 GHz (2100 MHz) for the video memory we were able to get just about 25.8 MHS mining Ethereum or with other words just about 1.3 MHS more than the stock clocks hashrate. We are yet to see how the 4 GB models of the RX 470 will perform with Ethereum due to their lower default video memory clocks as well as how much it will be possible to overclock them.

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When the AMD Radeon RX 480 was released there was an issue with the drivers that prevented users from successfully mining many of the crypto currencies that used sgminer as the miner just crashed with an error. Since the RX 480 was actually a new architecture there was no way to just get back to older video drivers and have no trouble running sgminer, however it seems that the situation has improved significantly since then, though it is still not perfect for some algorithms and miners. Since at that time most people were using RX 480 for Ethereum mining where no problems with the miners were present that was not much of an issue, but due to various reasons a lot of people have since moved to other alternative coins. Above you can see the hashrates for many of the more popular algorithms supported by Nicehash and tested with their dedicated mining solution that bundles multiple miner programs in a single package.

You can see some benchmarks of the AMD Radeon RX 480 using the NiceHash miner here and note that quite a few of the algorithms back then reported 0 MHS hashrate. At the moment it seems that only Neoscrypt, WhirlpoolX and Blake256r14 are still problematic and are reporting 0 MHS hashrate. That is of course only for the listed algorithms supported by NiceHash and there are quite a few others as well. It is important to note that the Sapphire Nitro+ RX 470 8GB is getting pretty close in terms of performance to a stock RX 480 with 8 GB and in some cases the results are even slightly better (due to further optimizations) and in the others the performance is not behind by much. Still the presence of a little more Stream Processors in the RX 480 gives it an advantage in the more GPU intensive algorithms compared to the RX 470. Unfortunately the GPU frequency of the RX 470 cannot be pushed much higher like on the RX 480, so hoping to compensate the difference with higher OC will just not do.

Just to add information about some more algorithms, the LBRY sgminer crashes the video driver, so we could not get a result in terms of hashrate. As for the SiaCoin sgminer, it has managed to provide us with 906 MHS hashrate mining on the Siamining pool using Stratum, so there were no problems with that miner. Hopefully the issues with some miners and some algorithms not working with the new AMD RX series of GPUs will be resolved as AMD is probably already preparing the faster RX 490 for a release alter this year and it is highly likely it being an interesting solution for crypto miners as well.

How to Maintain and Repair Dual-X and Other Non-Serviceable GPU Fans

25, Jul 2016

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There are a lot of people that use various GPUs for mining with the stock fans that the video card comes with and normally many of these fans start to have issues in just a couple of months or after a year or so. The time frame usually depends on how clean is the environment that the mining rigs are at and how well maintained are the rigs themselves. Sooner or later it is inevitable for the fans to start behaving worse than they were initially, because of the dirt they accumulate that slowly eats away the brass or bronze bushings of the non-serviceable cheap fans that most video cards use. By non-serviceable fans we mean these where you have no access to the mechanical parts of the fan when you remove the sticker of the fan. One of the most famous and widely used such fans are the ones used on Sapphire Dual-X cards, but there are others such as Gigabyte’s Windforce and so on.

The good thing is that these cheaper fans can actually be kept in good shape as well if you know how properly disassemble them to clean them on a more regular basis. Even if you have missed the point where the fans could be kept in top shape by cleaning them regularly and have instead started breaking down, there is still a chance that you can bring them back to life as long as they have not stopped completely rotating. We have prepared a guide on how you can completely disassemble a non-serviceable fan from a Sapphire 280X, clean it up and assemble it or repair it with the help of some new bearings that you are going to be using to repair the fan making it like new. Although this guide is specifically for Sapphire’s Dual-X fans, it should be pretty much the same for many other similar fans. For comparison the turbine type coolers used on most cards, although noisier, are much higher grade and more expensive fans that can last much much longer without any attention from the user.

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Depending on if you just want to clean the fans or to repair them and make them more durable you may need a different set of tools. For the first you can go with just a spray can with cleaning fluid, but for proper repair and upgrade a few more tools will be required. You will need a spray with cleaning fluid to make cleaning easier, we are using TRW brake cleaner, but anything else that is not too aggressive to plastics should be fine. You can also use alcohol-based cleaner that is not under pressure to clean the parts of the fan as well, so pretty much anything will do here. You will also need a philips and a flat screwdriver, some cyanoacrylate adhesive, a small wood screw (or a larger one for plastics) and a pair of bearings with size 2x5x2.5mm in size (this is the correct size for Dual-X fans, some other fans may require different size of bearings). This is all you will need to prepare along with some patience and a few spare fans that you may initially break until you get the hang of things if you are not careful enough.

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You need to detach the fans from the faceplate holding them, usually they are held by three screws each and then comes the first step in disassembling the non-serviceable fans. You need to carefully remove the top rotating part of the fan with the blades. The top part of the fan contains not only the blades, but it is also essentially the rotor part of the brushless motor while the lower part contains the stator of the brushless motor that rotates the fan. You need to separate the two parts carefully by using three or four of your fingers to push in between the two parts (some fans come of easily than others). The important thing here is not to pull the blades of the fan and they can easily break, you just need to apply enough force with your fingers in between the two parts of the fan and you will get the desired result of the two parts separating. Gigabyte’s Windforce fans for example do require more force to come off as apparently they have a stronger plastic locking ring.

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Here are the two parts of the fan disassembled, this is essentially half of the hard part already done. At this point you can just use some cleaning spray to clean up the two parts of the fan, apply some grease on the steel shaft and reassemble the fans. This would be enough to extend the lifetime of the fan significantly if you do this maintenance once every few months of operation. You just need to make sure you use a pressurized cleaning fluid that will take out all of the dirt away from the lower part of the fan as it is harder to clean than the upper part. If you are doing only the cleaning part you can just push the two parts back together and everything should be fine for a couple of more months when it would be a good idea to repeat the cleaning process again.

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For the people that want to repair and upgrade their fans with dual ball bearings thus extending their lifecycle significantly you will need to continue with the disassembling part. You need to use the flat screwdriver or a flat tool that you need to insert between two of the poles of the stator and gently apply pressure. Do not push too hard, if you do not feel the stator with the PCB below moving a bit, then just move to the next pole and apply some more pressure. This is needed, because the PCB with the electronics and the stator of the motor that is on top is glued to the plastic bottom part of the fan and you need to break the glue. Be very careful not to press on the thing copper wire sued for the windings as this may damage the motor, also too much pressure may break the stator away from the PCB, so you need to be extra careful here. There is just a drop of glue, so once you feel the part rotate a bit you should be able to separate the PCB with the electronics from the plastics pretty easy.

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Here are the parts separated. As you can see the bottom plastic part contains the metal bushing (sleeve bearing fans) and on top of it is the plastic holder ring that locks into place the top part of the fan. The PCB and the stator of the motor show traces of some grease and dust accumulated on it. You need to remove the plastic holder ring and be careful not to loose it and under it is the metal bushing that you need to pull out and replace with the two bearings turning your cheaper sleeve bearing fan into the usually more expensive dual ball bearing fan that provides longer lifespan and reliability. As you can see when you remove the plastic holder ring there is a lot of dirt inside, this is the thing that essentially kills the fan because it eats away the bushing unevenly and destabilizes the rotating part of the fan.

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You need to turn the screw inside the metal bushing with the help of a screwdriver, again be careful here, because as soon as you feel that the screw is not rotating, but instead the whole bushing is you will need to pull out the screw with the bushing attached to it. Be careful after removing the metal bushing, because under it should be a small black disc that is easy to get lost and you will need to put it back in when you clean everything up.

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Clean everything well from the dust and dirt and make sure not to loose any of the small parts and then you will be ready to start assembling back things. The difference is that instead of returning the metal bushing back you will be inserting the ball bearings inside the plastic bottom of the fan.

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Start by placing the small black disc inside the bottom plastic part, make sure it is seated well on the bottom before you start inserting the ball bearings. The two 2x5x2.5mm ball bearings should fit tight inside where the original metal bushing was, just push them carefully to get inside and place the plastic ring holder on top.

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Apply a small drop of cyanoacrylate adhesive on the spot where the original glue was placed and quickly place the PCB with the electronics and the stator of the motor back on top of the plastic lower part. You can use the fan cables as a guiding point in order to properly orient the two parts, so that there will be no issues gluing them together properly. What you should be extra careful about while gluing the two parts is not to rotate the bottom too much as the white plastic ring can move around and while pressing the two parts together. Make sure it stays on its original position centered above the bearings as otherwise you may have to remove the two parts and try to glue them again after reseating the plastic ring.

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Wait a couple of minutes for the glue to cure and you are ready to assemble back the two parts of the fan together. Just hold them parallel to each other and gently press them until you hear a click sound. This would mean that the plastic holder ring has moved to its place and has locked onto the steel shaft of the rotor (the top part of the fan). After that you can reassemble the fan on the video card and connect it to the power in order to test that everything is working properly and it should. As a result of replacing the stock metal bushing with two ball bearings you should have the fans rotating just like brand new with a little less effort and with an extended lifespan that the bearings should offer. What you have essentially done is to upgrade your cheap sleeve bearing (single metal bushing) to a higher grade dual ball bearing fan.

As a result you should have less problems with fans on your GPU mining rigs, but as we’ve already explained even if you do the simpler procedure of cleaning the stock fans every few months you should still experience much less problems on the long run. We have already cleaned, repaired and upgraded quite a few of these Dual-X, Windforce and some other similar fans with great success and are really happy with the results. You can even upgrade the cheaper sleeve bearing fans of a brand new card to dual ball bearings, and that should be possible on many video cards even without causing potential problems with the warranty of the card. The reason for this is that if properly done one would have to actually completely disassemble the fan using the procedure above or a similar one in order to find out that the stock bushing was replaced with ball bearings and that normally does not happen in service centers, maybe unless of course you send in the card with fan problems.


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