ethOS - MSI RX 580 8GB OC - Bios Mod for 29 mh/s

If you’ve found yourself with some out of the box underperforming GPUs and spent much time looking to find information on how to mod the bios to increase performance (DISCLAIMER: I’m talking about mining here; I have no idea what this does for gaming)then perhaps this will help a bit.

I’m using the MSI Radeon RX 580 Armor OC 8GB with Hynix memory and was only able to get 22mh/s on ethOS. Everywhere I looked I saw claims of 30mh/s and more. If you’re like me you want those extra mh/s and will bleed dust to get them.

The first obstacle for me is MS Windows; I don’t use it and have no interest in obtaining it. That rules out pretty much most of the info I could find on copying memory timings, et. al. What I needed was a rom that had already been modded, tested and verified usable with good power savings and enhanced hashing speed. What I needed was a kind soul to provide this rom.

Alrighty, here’s what hours and hours of frustrated attempts and research leads to:

Step 1: Get a good modded rom.

Here's the link: https://anorak.tech/t/msi-rx-580-armor-oc-8gb-hynix/5933/11

To download you need to create a free account and this site has roms for every card imaginable with a great community helping one another.

I used the ethOS browser (type browser into your terminal) which is Chromium and defaults its download folder to /home/ethos/Downloads <— note the capital D in Downloads.

Step 1 1/12. Edit your /home/ethos/local.conf [http://ethosdistro.com/kb/#single-rig] (or remote.conf if you’re using that [http://ethosdistro.com/kb/#remote-config]) to have these values:
globalcore 1200
globalmem 2200
globalpowertune 3

You are now minutes away from success and extreme gratification. This will all be done in your terminal window (ssh or on machine terminal).

Step 2. cd Downloads [enter]
Step 3. ls [enter] <— this shows the contents of your Download folder. You should see 2_apolyon_msi580_hynix.rom (or the name of the rom you downloaded)
Step 4. sudo atiflash -i [enter] <— this gives you the names of all your GPUs i.e. 0, 1, 2, etc.
Step 5. sudo atiflash -s 0 rx580_8gb_backupbios.rom [enter] <— save your current bios for backup where ‘0’ = adapter number **DONT SKIP THIS STEP NO MATTER WHAT **
Step 6. sudo atiflash -f -p 4 2_apolyon_msi580_hynix.rom [enter] <— change the number ‘4’ to whichever gpu you are flashing. I started at 4 and worked my way down to 0 on a 5 card rig
Step 7. r [enter] <— reboot after each flash to make sure everything still worked.

When the system comes up you should see the new hash rate has greatly increased.

You may be able to get better performance by adjusting the global core, globalmem, and globalpowertune numbers but these worked well for me without using a ridiculous amount of power or running too hot.

Cheers!