Bitcoin Forum

Hi guys

I was going to buy a MSI 790FX-GD70 motherboard for my quad 5870 setup but my dealer is sold out and other sellers are charging an arm and a leg. Could someone go on www.ebuyer.co.uk and help me find an alternative replacement, as cheap as poss that can take 4 of these bastards. I need it to be on a AMD3 chipset with Sempron 140. Other specs below:

Sempron 140
usb bootable linux
5870 xfx x 4
ocz zx 1250w psu
4gb corsair 1333 memory
4 x 120mm fans

Overclockers.co.uk have this
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-398-AS
with discount this week, but you'll need an extender to fit all 4

Yeah I did see that. I was clued up on whether I can run these with video on x1 slots? Ive seen other people complaining about combatibility with these slots?

I'm not sure - mine is arriving tomorrow so we'll find out very soon :)

let me know! what cards are you running on there?

To start with it will be 3x xfx 5870, but I have few spare ones so I'll try and see if I can get 4 to work

the link for the extenders... are those the right ones or are there different ones for 1x and 16x

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=6128.0

cheers for that. So for that MB and 4 cards what would I need?:

2 x x16 extender cables
2 x 1x > 16x adaptor extenders
3 x dummy plugs (one will be monitor attached?)

I'm curious of your results. I've been trying to get quad 5870 to work for a while now tonight.

I can run 2 just fine. Even three is giving me problems. Really it's just something strange with my configuration because I swear I had it working earlier.

Now I have three cards installed. If I run Phoenix on card 2 and 3 (not the one my monitor is attached to) everything is great (400MH each at 1Ghz core clock).

But as soon as I run Phoenix on the third card, my system freezes almost immediately. I'ts not overheating and it's not the card (I've swapped it out). So now I have no idea. All I know is if I fiddle and retry enough times eventually it will work but I've been here for hours and I need to give up so I can get some sleep.

Sadlly I have 4 cards and will only be mining on two for now.

Are you running Linux? Anyone else? Can you help? I need some exact details on what to do. Crossfire seems problematic, I can't seem to enable it using catalyst control center. aticonfig seems to tell me I've enabled it correctly (manually using cmdline). But then I still only see one card. I have to go and manually enable the other two cards by setting them to multi-monitor mode.

Any help greatly appreciated! (And maybe a few BTC in it for you if you can help me). I'm wasting about $650 in hardware right now.

---------------------
EDIT!

I swapped out the card which was in the first slot with the spare card and now I can run all three with no problems. Perhaps that 4th card is not stable at 1Ghz core clock?? Arggh! Anyway, 4 cards on one motherboard does not seem to leave room for proper airflow (only 1/4" gap vs. 1inch gap).

I just ordered 5 of those asus boards and 20 5870 cards, overclockers gave me a nice discount too :D Just out of interest did you get your cards to work and how have you arranged them, in crossfire or singled them out?

Nice!  :)
Unfortunately, overclockers fuck up my order so I'll have to wait until tomorrow to get it. I have few rigs - none of them use crossfire

any news on the setup?

In progress
Will let you know how it goes

Update:

After some tinkering I finally have 3x 5870 running on that Asus motherboard. Unfortunately, I have only 1 extender so won't be able to test if 4th card works - it will have to wait until I get round to order more parts.
These cards are running a bit hot 83, 81 and 76 memory underclocked and core slightly overclocked. I have few ideas how to cool them down, but am too tired to try it today.

Have you received yours?

no not yet, I spoke with overclockers, hopefully either friday evening or saturday morning if same day/next day post is available. Otherwise ill go and pick them up myself but with a huge order list ill prob need a bigger car to go in. I just ordered my x16 extender cables from cablesaurus and they should be with me in a few days. So far my order list is this:

20 x XFX 5870
5 x OCZ ZX 1250w PSU
5 x Sempron 140 (I plan on overclocking using board features and unlock the remaining core)
5 x 4GB corsair 1333MHZ kit
5 x 750GBHDD (these were only £2 more expensive than the cheapest 160GB ones)
5 x 890FX ASUS motherboards... really looking forward to these
10 x x16 extender cables
15 x dummy plugs
a few network cables
5 x keyboard and mice (OCUK)

They gave me a total of £5000, Overclockers gave me a £300 discount though.

Im beginning to think though that difficulty will hinder my profits. As long as I can make £1500 thatll break me even once resale of parts (at around £3500) is taken into account.

What are your thoughts on difficulty and mining profits?

That's some serious hardware :)

Bitcoin mining profit margin may decrease, but I personally think it will continue to be profitable far into the future. Surely we gonna see some mad jump after the rally - my prediction for the next difficulty is  over 10^6, but there are a lot of amateur miner and they will be dropping out first 

You could have saved some money with dummy plugs - I use 75 ohms resistors. They cost ~£0.20 at mapplins each.

If you live around London and need help putting the rigs together, let me know ;)

You're in london?! Im basically living in Birmingham atm, but Im moving to my cousins flat on friday morning in chislehurst, kent for this machine setup. Where abouts are you, I would love to have some technically minded help just in case i run into probs. Also means I can setup and start earning much much sooner.

I live in Abbey Wood SE2. Chislehurst is only half an hour away from me. PM me with details and we'll arrange something.
Your rigs will be online in no time

I just picked up the same motherboard and I am trying to get 2 5870s and 2 6870s to work with windows 7... So far windows will only recognize 2 of the cards... If you have any insight on getting them to work, it would be much appreciated :)

are you running them in single fashion or crossfirex?

single...


The 5870s have 2 crossfire tabs but the 6870s only have one... Im new to ATI/AMD cards in specific and multi gpu in general...
That lead me to believe I could not crossfire all of them together...


edit: should note that I have tried to crossfire the same model cards together... ie. both 5870s crossfired together and both 6870s crossfired together.. but both groups separate from eachother..

i think for mining you shouldnt be crossfiring them. ill have a read and see what the issue may be

I'm going to setup nearly the same system. Do you already know what software you are going to use?
Lunix/Windows
poclbm/Phoenix

And if on linux, which driver? xorg or fglrx?

Cheers
Harm

Update on my setup:

(on Linux, Ubuntu 10.10)

Although I thought I had 4 cards running at some point, one of the cards is bad, and freezes the system the instant I start *any* heavy GPU work (and I've isolated the specific card).

It's probably for the best, although the motherboard has 5 x16 length PCIe slots... without extenders you can only fit 4 cards directly on the motherboard, and then that's with no gaps between them. In my opinion, without some serious airflow around/through them they are going to overheat badly like that.

So I now have the same board, running with 3 cards, in the 1st, 3rd and 5th slots. With AMDOverdriveCtl I have MemClk set to 300, and CoreClk set to 960. That was just enough to reach 400MH on each card, 1200MH total. Temps all well below 70C on each card (far lower if I raise the fan speed).


What I love about AMDOverdriveCtl is the ability to manually define a Temp/RPM fan speed profile (curve). So you can easily trade of for noise vs. temps.

Temps of < 70C was easy with fans BELOW 50%. < 60C is reachable if you go to 70% or so. This is with an ambient room temp of 75+ F so you will likely do better in a cooler environment.

I have the cross fire connectors on but I don't beleive I have it enabled. I just fiddled until it all worked. Using "aticonfig --initial --adapter=all" was probably what did the trick for me. This creates an Xorg config file which activates all your cards, crossfire or not I beleive.

Now I just have to figure out how to either RMA or return that 4th card. *sigh*.

PS: I'm also running a 1200W supply which is now way overkill for this system, but at least its rock solid and silent.

Followed this guide for initial linux setup:
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=7514.0

This page gives you options for fine tuning Phoenix:
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=6458.0

(I'm running "BFI_INT AGGRESSION=6 VECTORS")

Finally, highly recommend AMDOverdriveCtrl for adjusting performance (downclock memory, tweak fan speeds, voltages, etc).

http://sourceforge.net/projects/amdovdrvctrl/

Good luck!

thanks a lot for your help:)