Mining hashrate of GPU drops unexpectedly
<![CDATA[A mining rig with several Radeon RX460 4GB GPU cards was previously mining at a hash rate of 11MH/s+ per card.
One of the GPU cards, manufactured by Gigabyte, then suddenly dropped to ~2MH/s. Allowing the system to cool
and rebooting did not restore the hashrate to the previous level.
Reflashing the GPU card BIOS fixed this problem and the card is now operating at 11MH/s+.
A link to the relevant drivers page: http://www.gigabyte.us/Graphics-Card/GV-RX460WF2OC-4GD#support-dl
Flash memory can be affected by high temperatures[1] but it is doubtful that was the root cause given this
card failed after 2 days of use. Note that the RX460 cards manufactured by XFX did not experience any issues.
Update: The Gigabyte RX460 failed again due to excessive heat. This occurs when ambient temperature is above 85F/30C.
This time the GPU was allowed to cool for a prolonged period. Once sufficeintly cool, it did resume hashing at
max throughput without flashing the BIOS.
It may be that flashing the BIOS simply resets a thermal regulation hysteresis loop.
[1] http://www.ti.com/lit/an/slaa392/slaa392.pdf pg5.
Tags: Ethereum, Claymore mining.]]>
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