My personal review for the new patch and the experience I had with "set freq per-hashboard feature"(I was 4 days in the beta test for the new patch):
VERSION 2.1
Z9 Large(NOT MINI)
I'll start with applauding Jason for his hard work to bring us everything we wanted for our z9 machines and give us what bitmain didn't deliver.
Overall performance of patch 2.1:
This patch seems to work similarly with patch 2.0d with slight advantage in average k/sols overall (in my case the average speed went from 55.61k/sols-55.93k/sols with the same settings)
So its a boost in performance.
Per-hashboard feature:
So I experienced that not all of my asic chains work well when boosted high in freq, but one of them does work better when pushed harder then the rest so this feature is giving me the ability to get the most out of my machine. So to test out how my asic performs i started by setting my global freq to 650 and went from there(so i started at what i thought was the highest my machine would probably go and planned on underclocking everything that doesn't like that freq and overclock anything that is stable).
Results:
1st test(frequencies set to global(global freq set to 650)
asic0 zero-ed out after 14 minutes of mining(that forced me to underclock asic0)
2nd test(this time frequencies set to 643,Use Global,Use Global(global was 650 at that time))
asic0 doesnt crash for 1 day(crashes after one day), asic1 has best hashrate overall, asic2 gives errors in the kerner log and has worst hashrate(i wasnt aware of the kernel log errors at that point)
3rd test(freq set to 637,656,656(so i was still unaware that asic02 was giving errors in the kernel log but the cores were stable and i pushed asic01 and asic02 one step further)
asic0 still crashes once in 2 days but i figured that as soon as the Chip temperature goes over 77'C the asic chain is in danger of zero-ing out and resetting itself(which makes it not work for 1-2 minutes and that doesnt really affect the overall hashrate if it happens once in two or three days. In my case this chain is just hot and is always 3 degrees above the other two. asic01 works perfectly fine at 656, asic02 gives errors but still working on 656 with same stability.
4th test(final one, for now): (i figured that asic02 is giving out errors in the kernel log when set on 650freq and 656freq so i underclocked it to 643, this time frequencies set to 637,656,643)
asic0 same performance, asic01 still performs the best, asic02 stopped giving out errors in the kernel log completely and is now rendering out noticeably better Sol rates.
Average hashrate after 3 days of uptime: 55.93k/sols
Average poolside hashrate after 3 days of uptime: +/- 58.00k/sols
I'm mining Horizen(zencash) on Luckpool.
Conclusion:
My z9 large(might not apply for all of the machines out there) works best when chip temperature is under 77'C, if the temperature goes over that border all of the chips might drop in my scenario at this frequency, so keep your machine in a room that is colder than +/-30'C and everything should work well as this chips dropping to 0k/sols rarely situations are temperature related , at least in my case and experience.
Beside that which is a hardware thing and not related to this firmware, everything works perfectly fine.
Cheers,
Igor
