Mine more ETHereum with RX470/RX480 Bios Mods

in ethereum •  8 years ago  (edited)

This is probably a good time as any to tweak and tune your ETH mining rig, to ensure to squeeze every MH/s from your setup.

I am building yet another Mining Rig, so here are my findings.

Off the shelf,
AMD RX470/RX480 4GB makes about 21.5 - 22MH/s

While 8GB version,
AMD RX470/RX480 8GB makes about 23.5 - 24MH/s

Sure, running 4 or 6 of these in your set would be quite sweet and usually no hiccups.

Tune your Rig, and you get extra performance for free. Sweet.
Example of my semi-build rig. I have a mix of RX480 & RX470 8GB Cards.
How about some 15% performance boost?

This part is a bit tricky, because, well, it voids warranty for sure.
Second, as any responsible blogger i have to read out the usual,
DISCLAIMER:
No warranty, no responsibility taken or offered for whatever action you take as a result of this guide, as far as your mining, rig, hardware and even sanity is concerned.

Now that’s out the way, here is the list of the tools which you will need.

PolarisBiosEditor
This will allow you to tweak your bios file
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwmZv0o6UAa7cjA4djNEZnF1YVU

ATI Flash
This allows you to backup and Load(flash) the bios on your AMD RX-series card
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwmZv0o6UAa7aXRuSE9jQm5ZMzg

NOTE: My environment runs Windows 7 64-bit

After the Bios Mod is complete, you could expect the following performance gain when mining ETHereum;
AMD RX470/RX480 4GB would start generating about 24.5 - 25/s

And 8GB Version,
AMD RX470/RX480 8GB to make about 27.5 - 28MH/s

Now, there are further power play tweaks which could be done to bring it into 30MH/s territory, but since this (for me) has made the card more unstable and basically crashed more often that the 2MH/s was worth. (was being greedy there)

Bios Mod Settings
RX470 & RX480 8GB Mods
MOD: Timing Values
1750 value copy into 2000 slot (overwrite)
Expected Result: 28MH/s

RX470 & RX480 4GB Mods
MOD: Timing Values
1500 value copy into 1750 and 2000
1425 value copyinto 1625
1375 value copy into 1425 and into 1500
MOD: POWERTUNE
TDP value change to 100w
Expected Results: 25MH/s

Now, The How-To Hope the below step-by-step guide helps;
Once, you have downloaded and unzipped the packages as necessary,
remember to open Polaris bios editor and run it as Administrator.

Step One, Save Bios Setting As they are.
Use ATI Flash, to save the bios.

You could do well writing the whole name out in full, for own FYI

Perform the Mod (updating the values as listed earlier) using the PolarisBiosEditor (run as Administrator)

See Bottom-Right box in the PolarisBiosEditor.
Values to update are located in bottom-right

Then save-as, as "modified" or "modded" so you have both saved for reference while keeping the original bios file as a backup.

Saving as modded

Use ATI Flash again, Load & “Program”

At this stage just be patient, as this will take 10-15 seconds and it may look like it’s unresponsive, but allow time before panic. I found that one particular Win7 install becomes unstable after flash is completed, and required a restart.

In either case, to see the effect of the updated hash rate, you should restart your OS.

Finally, this Mod is done via Windows 7, but done directly to The AMD Graphics Card, so the latter could be moved to any Windows family/Linux and still retain its mod configuration.

Thats it. Enjoy.

Done. This is very stable, and i had this running for weeks now in several rigs.
27.5-28MH/s Achieved

OPTIONAL Overclock Tweak
Overclocking. Remember that good fan/cooling really helps.
I use MSI Afterburner. You can download it via the link below.
http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/msi-afterburner-beta-download.html

8GB Cards OverClock Tuning
Core Clock 1150
Memory Clock 2100 (2150)
This may... take it closer to 30MH/s
Truth be told, I found this 50/50 on my setup. Hope it works well for you.

4GB Cards OverClock Tuning
Core Clock 1260
Memory Clock 2050
This may... take it closer to 27-28MH/s
Same experience as with 8GB,

Enjoy my write up? vote for it. More the encouragement for me to post more! :D
- Coming soon -

  • Ensuring your Windows Mining Rig (or just bog-standard windows) is always mining on boot, will tools provided.
  • Monitoring the health status of your Mining Rig/Mining Setup
  • How to build a Rig. What i bought and how i build it. Costs involved.
  • Devising the remote system reboot setup, if windows/linux box freezes
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I confirm you number on my RX480
I discovered TBP at 100W which allowed me to consume 20W less (I changed too Max Power at 100W).
Striges 1650, GPU at 1100MHz, Mem at 2100 gives 29MH/s on one card, while the other refuse to go above 2000MHz VRAM... maybe there is more a problem with the PCIE16x slot (not yet using a riser, waiting for delivery).
I have PCI errors.

I had good result with RX470 MSI above 27MH/s without TBP tweak, but it died of electric problem (is it related?)

I have been seeing the same. But found anything higher than 28mhs to be unstable, over long period of time. even MSI afterburn overclock at 2100 and 1150

Yeah I've backed-off some OC's as I would rather the rigs were mining 100% of the possible time than faster but less reliable.

Hi - let me invite you to ethereum 2020 community based price estimation

https://steemit.com/ethereum/@digitalplayer/ethereum-price-prediction-2020

Will i still be able to game on these after editing the bios atleast without setting the TDP to 100w?