My Finished 7970 Crossfire Build --> Now in top 200

Here is a a few pics of my completed crossfire build with specs below.
A few more details:

I am using 14.9 drivers, which have been great so far with high ppd.

CPU: I run the 860k at 4.1 Ghz using boost. I already had a A6-6400k from my previous build and wanted to stay FM2. I now wish I would have gotten a used A10-6800k instead. That chip clocks much better. I found out I was unstable with the MSI O/C unless I gave the cpu a 0.1v overvolt. Oh well, at least the MB is FM2+ capable for a better cpu in the future.

GPUs: One I had just one 7970, it was attached to a Accelero IV cooler. It worked wonderful but was hot in crossfire as there was no room. That chip has a 76% ASIC and clocks past 1200 Mhz easily. My 2nd 7970 wasnt quite as good as an overclocker but did come with an nice ICEQ2 cooler from HIS. I put that cooler on my older 7970 that clocks better. I also placed the accelero vram fins on that card. Both have PK3 thermal grease.
The top card runs at 1200 MHZ all day, and the bottom card runs at 1150 MHZ down to 1090 MHZ when I am home (reference cooler is too noisy). The bottom card is tight against the bottom of the case, but I drilled a 2" hole in the case where the fan is which helped a lot. I should probably put a screen over it so my card doesn't get clogged with spider guts! Both cards run between 78 and 81 degrees.

Average PPD is around 290k. I have seen up to 380k, but that was with 2 very nice work units. I had to modify the accelero vram cooler using a pliers in order to fit in the top slot. Sorry about the crappy phone pics.

Very good. Give in to your feelings. Let your farm grow. The folding is strong in this one.

Congrats on the new build and your hard earned position in the point standing.

Dang, those vram fins are huge. I just have some tiny heatsinks placed on mine, but mine is also still at stock clocks. Noticed you were due to overtake me in a week and a half... I think it's time to step my game up

Well, there has not shown any ppd increase for vram increase, but I feel the card will last longer without the vram staying as hot as it does stock. I keep the memory around 1400 MHz for both cards. These cards are loving the cooler weather. The HIS is at 1220 MHz clock and the bottom card is at 1125 Mhz. Both are at 78*C. PPD has been around 320k for these workhorses lately I will have to crank down when my family moves back, otherwise it will drive my wife nuts. For now, I am doing all I can to get you to kick her in the butt, sporktar.

On my rise to the top 150, you're the first member to threaten to overtake me, making you my new rival >:] With fall/winter approaching, and the last bits of my watercooling hardware in the mail, i think it's time to start playing with my clock speeds to see if i can squeeze out a few more ppd.

Me: Brutal 860k/ 7970 xfire combo. You: Efficient 4790k/ 970 combo. It is a fight for Stalingrad. There will be blood.

Nihilus said:

Me: Brutal 860k/ 7970 xfire combo. You: Efficient 4790k/ 970 combo. It is a fight for Stalingrad. There will be blood.

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Do you fold with your CPU as well? I took my CPU client down, as I've been told it decreases the efficiency of GPU folding and brings the overall ppd down. I haven't really done any testing to confirm this though.

Just a tip: if you use trixx 4.4.0 modded, you can change vRam voltage (safe up to 1.65v), and get it to 1600MHz or more.

sporktar said:

Do you fold with your CPU as well? I took my CPU client down, as I've been told it decreases the efficiency of GPU folding and brings the overall ppd down.

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The 860k is a quad core. I could easily fold with 2 cores without interuption since the most that folding uses with 2 cards is 50% when they are both processing a checkpoint at the SAME TIME. I just choose not to since CPU folding doesn't seem that effective anymore.

Tír na nÓg said:

Just a tip: if you use trixx 4.4.0 modded, you can change vRam voltage (safe up to 1.65v), and get it to 1600MHz or more.

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I have afterburner and I will probably crank up the vRAM when SW Battlefront comes out, but it doesn't seem advatageous to do so for folding. When that game comes out, PPD will definitely drop.

Nihilus said:

The 860k is a quad core. I could easily fold with 2 cores without interuption since the most that folding uses with 2 cards is 50% when they are both processing a checkpoint at the SAME TIME. I just choose not to since CPU folding doesn't seem that effective anymore.

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Same thought here. I've shut down my CPU folding because it was taking a toll on my older machines and not producing enough.

Nihilus said:

The 860k is a quad core. I could easily fold with 2 cores without interuption since the most that folding uses with 2 cards is 50% when they are both processing a checkpoint at the SAME TIME. I just choose not to since CPU folding doesn't seem that effective anymore.



I have afterburner and I will probably crank up the vRAM when SW Battlefront comes out, but it doesn't seem advatageous to do so for folding. When that game comes out, PPD will definitely drop.

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I know the Battlefront beta came out because your ppd has dropped by half over the last few days.
What kind of increase in ppd do you see after overclocking? Is it a significant amount?

sporktar said:

I know the Battlefront beta came out because your ppd has dropped by half over the last few days.
What kind of increase in ppd do you see after overclocking? Is it a significant amount?

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Overclocking makes for nice gains in ppd. This only applies to the core as memory really does nothing from what I see. The gains made are greater than linear. For example, given the same drivers,
going from 800 Mhz to 1200 mhz is not a 50% increase in ppd. It would be close to double. I worked out a few formulas to calculate ppd given time where y=ppd and t=frame time. P9704 is y=446 million * (t ^-1.506)
P10469 is y=1.32 billion * (t ^-1.495). Doubling core speed may not necessiarily cut time in half, but let's assume it does for now. Card A gets P10469 frames done in 6 minutes. Card B gets P10469
frames done in 3 minutes or half the time. Using the formula, Card A gets 199,000 ppd. Card B gets 561,000 ppd. That's is nearly triple the ppd using twice the speed. It is worth overclocking up until
you get the insane heat and power increases.

My ppd went down a bit because we did a little home rearranging. My family came back from vacation so I had to shut down then throttle down a bit so not to annoy the wife. I will be stealthy in raising the clocks
slowly back up, sort of like putting a frog in cold water then slowly raising it to a boil so it wont jump out

You motivated me to finally get around to overclocking my card. I haven't OC'd a graphics card in the better part of half a decade, so i'm a bit rusty. I got it up to +200 MHz, but i returned a bad WU, so i bumped it down to +150 MHz. I want to do some more research on how to push my card harder, as heat output isn't a concern with my setup and i'd like tho squeeze out more than +150. It's hard to tell what effect the new OC had on my overall ppd, as my rig has been inconsistently folding over the last few days due to games and other projects. Every little bit should help though!

Not much experience with the GTX 970, but i hear they are efficient. The guys at Hardocp did not do much better than you: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014...70_gaming_4g_video_card_review/8#.VjA5nrerSUl
The problem is the 110% power limit so extra voltage doesn't much. Still, if you are willing to, (careful!) try to add voltage so you can avoid bad WU at those speeds.
The problem for Tahiti is heat/noise. They are tough as nails, though. If the upcoming 380x is priced right, it may be gem as well.
My rig is now in a closet with a long HDMI cable to my room in order to manage heat and noise in our room. Because of this I had to set both cards at 1050 Mhz to stay at 80*C. Oh well, they should still be close to 300k ppd.

Last tip: I now browse a lot on this computer, and since it does not have on board graphics, I was having problems last week. Using Chrome, I went to Chrome://flags and disabled gpu rasterizing. I now use only cpu power for browsing. it runs smoother and doesn't mess with my folding.

Nihilus said:

Not much experience with the GTX 970, but i hear they are efficient. The guys at Hardocp did not do much better than you: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014...70_gaming_4g_video_card_review/8#.VjA5nrerSUl
The problem is the 110% power limit so extra voltage doesn't much. Still, if you are willing to, (careful!) try to add voltage so you can avoid bad WU at those speeds.
The problem for Tahiti is heat/noise. They are tough as nails, though. If the upcoming 380x is priced right, it may be gem as well.
My rig is now in a closet with a long HDMI cable to my room in order to manage heat and noise in our room. Because of this I had to set both cards at 1050 Mhz to stay at 80*C. Oh well, they should still be close to 300k ppd.

Last tip: I now browse a lot on this computer, and since it does not have on board graphics, I was having problems last week. Using Chrome, I went to Chrome://flags and disabled gpu rasterizing. I now use only cpu power for browsing. it runs smoother and doesn't mess with my folding.

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Luckily heat and noise aren't really a concern with my setup. The 970 already runs impressively cool, but my watercooling setup means that my primary sound issue is coil whine, and that's been more of a problem in games than for folding with my specific card.

After reading through that article, i installed GPU-z and found that during folding my power consumption is steadily between 58% and 67% @1478 MHz. This significantly differs from their results. The only explanations i can think of is that F@H is not taxing the power of the card as much as their benchmarks, something is wonky in my nvidia control panel, or their memory overclock is somehow responsible? Like i said earlier, I'm not very experienced in GPU overclocking, so this is all speculation, but on the surface, it looks like i have an unusually high amount of headroom for voltage tweaking? That low of a TDP just seems too good to be true.

I hope your closet is well ventilated, i don't want one of my fellow folders' rigs to be reduced to a smoldering hunk of dead cards :b

Ha - got it somewhere better than the closet. It was getting over 80*C at stocks. I'm clocked around 1050 each now. I need to keep pushing you Weird that the power consumption shows that on Gpu-z with your card. I would try without memory o/c Cheers!