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I have a problem. I cannot get 6 7970 running in Windows 7. Z77A-G45 motherboard, 4GB RAM (Installing 8GB has no impact), dual core celeron G530. I've tried "amd_radeon_hd7900_win7_64" (The 7970 release driver), 12.2, 12.3, 12.4, 12.6, 12.8, 12.10, 13.1, 13.3 beta 3, 13.4, and 13.5 beta 2.

From release driver to 12.6 I can get 5 7970's installed. The 6th one has an error in device manager with a yellow ! mark. The error is "Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)" and it is not detected in cgminer or gpu caps viewer.

When using 12.8 or higher, only 4 7970 will install and the other two will have an error in device manager with a yellow ! mark. The error is "Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)" and it is not detected in cgminer or gpu caps viewer.

I also need to underclock memory much more than 150mhz below core speeds and I heard ADL doesnt allow this, which is the only way of changing gpu clocks and volts in linux. Also ADL can't change 7970 volts. I absolutely need to be able to underclock memory and undervolt. Only MSI Afterburner and Sapphire trixx allows this to my knowledge, which both only work on windows.

1 BTC bounty if you can show me how to get 6 7970s mining in windows. For what it's worth, I have 8 GPU's working with the same hardware, but they are radeon 5000 series (5850, 5870, 5970), so I know its not a motherboard limitation.

Bounty has been claimed.

I thought you needed to be in Linux to run more than 4 GPUs?

I heard windows 7 with 13.1+ allows for 8 GPUS

I tried 13.1, 13.3 beta, 13.4, and 13.5 beta. All only allowed 4 GPUs.

Have you tried swapping cards in slots?

Just to see if that particular card is the problem?

8 cores

Jude's suggestion of swapping cards to make sure the problem doesn't follow is a good. one.  Seeing you already have another large rig running well, I imagine you have power worked out okay with enough juice going to each card and are you using powered risers so there's not too much power trying to go through the board?

Didn't work. Device manager yellow !'s seem to be random on each reboot. Next?


power is fine. next?

You stated that you have 6 cards on the same hardware, but the same OS also?

From everything I have read Windows 7 only supports 4 GPUs.

Seems a lot of consensus on that point. Something worth trying. 7970s seem to be picky cards, tons of weird problems with them that vary from person to person. This might be one of them.

Think i was looking at correct Motherboard specs...that has Onboard Video .?..

For sure it is disabled in BIOS and win is not seeing that either??

Did you look closely in your BIOS ?

Look for a way to let the Operating System take care of the devices Addresses on boot.
Maybe Windows cannot see them because your BIOS could not address everything needed for them to work.
(you could search this way ...)

Hope you have an EFI ...

I disabled every device that was non-essential. Onboard video is disabled. There doesnt seem to be a way to manually set resources, but I don't see why this would be a problem? I already have 8 GPU working on identical supporting hardware and OS, aside from 11.12 driver, but this is also with radeon 5000 series and not 7000 series.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9768004/miner4_3.png


Also another screencap showing 5 7970 installed and mining. 12.6 driver with SDK from 13.1.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9768004/7970x5.png

8 - 5000 series cards on the same type of Power supply as 8 - 7000 series cards is never going to work.

What Power supply is this your using that can power 8 7000 series cards?? and what are you using to plug them all in ...Adapters?...Duel power supplys?

The 7900 have more video memory ... could be the reason.

Could you mix 5800 and 7900 ?

Explanation :
Theory : the BIOS has to address all the video memory ... with 8 58x0 (8x 1 GB) was still ok ...but with 79x0 ... 8x 2GB (maybe 3) ... it is too much to handle.
Worth the try... that would explain the different behaviour ...

I'm not going 8 7970. I'm doing 6 due to PCI-E slot quantity limits. I am also undervolting. I use Rosewill Lightning 1300W. Power supply is not the issue here though. I just need all 6 -installed correctly-. If and when power becomes an issue, then I will address it. I highly doubt it would cause driver issues though, especially when all of the cards are IDLING.


I was in the process of doing this as a compromise before I even saw your post. The bounty is for 6 7970 in a single windows machine though, and not for a compromise.


Possible, but numerous people have also told me they have 6 7970 on linux, as well as spotting a couple pictures with 6 79xx cards per motherboard. It's definately not a hardware limitation, but a software limitation or badly wrote software. I have a couple problems with this solution though. 1: I have never touched linux before. 2: There are no solutions that I'm aware of that allow you to significantly underclock RAM and significantly undervolt the GPU core. If ADL on Windows (which is what cgminer uses for over/under clocking/volting) is anything like ADL on Linux, it can't underclock RAM more than 150 below core, and I am unable to change the volts at all on my 7970's with ADL. They are reference though and I am able to undervolt with utlilities such as MSI Afterburner and Sapphire Trixx. Afterburner also lets me underclock memory significantly.

Your point is understood. Make them mine (the verb ... to mine :> )^^ nice setup you got there ...

I know this cost money but I would try 3 more things

1) Put dummy plugs on all the cards.. Yes people say the newest drivers doesn't need it.. Still would do it to find out.
2) Use 1x to 16x powered risers on all of the cards
3) Cross your fingers.

Pm me if it works.

Windows MIGHT be the problem then ^^

If you want to try Linux : BAMT works almost right out of the box ... i believe you just need a few command line and how to edit a file ...

Flashing the BIOS will do. I have them at 150 Mhz RAM and 1.09V.
Not an optimal solution though if you want to keep switching between scrypt and sha-256.

for the hell of it try putting xfire bridge on a few of the cards...see if the driver reacts differently when it sees 2 or more can be linked together ...

I've had a similar problem with my four 7950's, and it was because one video card wasn't getting enough power from molex (it was being split too many times).  Do you have a sufficient PSU?  Are some of your risers powered?

The version of BAMT that you can download and just edit the config files has an older version of CGMiner installed that does not have stratum support, so you would have to mine on a getwork pool, which isn't suggested anymore.  You would need to go through the steps of downloading, compiling and installing CGMiner and possibly the same for AMD Drivers too.

I know there are some decent instructions on how to do this but even with those it was time-consuming...at least for me.

Good point. but a stratum proxy would do the trick

Please stop asking me to telling me to use a stronger power supply. According to kill-a-watt, I'm only using about 250 watts while idling while connected to a rosewill 1300 watt, of which I have abused to about a 1450 watt AC power draw without problems. The problem lies in getting the damn things to be fully installed and enabled. Once I get that far, THEN I'll worry about power. In the meantime, and because I have a headache dealing with this problem, I have opted to using a radeon 5970 in place of the 6th 7970. My kill-a-watt shows 1170 watts when all 7 GPU cores are mining at 1 volt, which approx 3.7 ghash. I will look around for dummy plugs, but I honestly do not believe that will solve the problem.

A BIOS flash and linux might be the best solution yet, but it falls outside the original parameters of the bounty in that it no longer uses Windows. I would also need my hands held in both BIOS Flashing as RBE does not support 7000 series and I've never touched Linux before so would need step by step instructions there too.


Powered risers and using 1x > 16x will not fix it. I am not drawing enough power to cause installation problems WHILE IDLING, and electrically 1x > 1x is the same as 1x > 16x. I may or may not try dummy plugs but I do not believe that will fix it either. Last time I needed dummy plugs, driver installed fine and device manager had no problems. It was a matter of allowing OpenCL to use the GPU and the driver wouldn't allow it unless it was displaying something.

if i remember well, core voltage, core speed and memory speed can be changed with atitweak
i have been using BAMT for a few month with a 4x5870 mining rig.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=25750.0

linux is nice if you are not allergic to command line :>

What CPU are you using?  Make sure you have one that supports PCIe v.3.  The IVB Core I3 CPUs do not - the IVB Core I7 CPUs do.

Have you disabled ULPS?  It is usually automatically enabled, and it interfered with me being able to use some of my cards in my system.  Although that was with different series of cards in one rig.

I have never been able to get more than 4 GPUs working in windows.

However, if you have a USB stick and about an hour of time, I urge you to just give linux a try. This guide is virtually idiot-proof:

http://www.cryptobadger.com/2013/04/build-a-litecoin-mining-rig-linux/

You can install to a USB stick and play around without harming your existing windows installation. Unless you have some reason that you're absolutely tied to windows, this really seems like a better path.

Which motherboard are you using? Have you checked the BIOS and made sure that it's up to date with the latest version? Sometimes the BIOS can be the issue since the error you are receiving is so generic and you've looked/tried at many other things I would recommend updating the BIOS is there is one available.  :-\

True for 5xxx cards but only partialy true for 6xxx cards and up.
Voltage can no longer be altered, while for the memory clocks you cannot go lower than 125(6xxx) or 150(7xxx) Mhz below core clocks.

I have gotten a PM from a member that has a very thorough guide to getting 6 7970 gpu installed and shows a screenshot of all 6 7900 series cards fully installed in device manager. I will get back to this thread later after I try it out.

That would be great, best solution for a Windows user is a Windows solution :)
I was thinking about jjiimm_64 or Yochdog, they have experience with 7970 cards in Windows.

Preliminary testing shows that all 6 of my 7970 are installed in device manager with no errors, however OpenCL continues to see 5 devices. We're halfway there!

so how did you do it? ::)

Unfortunately, thats as far as I got. I ran into another dead end. I'll just paste the PM I got.


No go. Although the yellow ! disappears as if the video card installed good, I still only see 5 GPUs in cgminer, bfgminer, diablominer, gpu caps viewer, and opencl. in msi afterburner, it shows 6 gpus but there are missing sensors and unable to change clocks. His mining screenshots shows linux too, which isnt an option for me as I need to be able to undervolt and underclock RAM, both of which linux cant do.

(Basically, I just used dummy plugs on all the gpus and crossfire bridge on first 3 cards. Not sure where to go now)

I can give you a BIOS for 7970 cards, already memory underclocked (150 Mhz) and undervolted (1.09V) and go to the dark side.
You will still need to flash the BIOS yourself.

ha! that article points to xfire bridges too =P I wasnt too far off then =)
Did ya give those a shot?

If you lived in GA Id be willing to come over and tweak around with you on this. Got tons of powered risers, X58 boards/cpus, and other stuff sitting around that we could test out. Good luck

EDIT:

After doing com research on your motherboard/CPU setup I think I may have figured out what is going on. The board you have is using a mix between PCI-E 3.0 and 2.0. Now in order to get full use of all these ports you generally need a IvyBridge 22nm CPU, which the G530 is not. MSI is not putting anything about this on their site but if you go over to the Gigabyte site they make sure to put this in their specs:

http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4139#sp
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b230/dtmcnamara/PCI_zpsff652aef.png (http://s20.photobucket.com/user/dtmcnamara/media/PCI_zpsff652aef.png.html)

My suggestion would be to find someone with an IvyBridge CPU and test this out. This is just a theory, but I know with my Z77 board and my 2700K that no matter what I have tried I cannot get all my PCIe slots to work. Let me know if this fixes the problem :)

You know you would make much more coin if you just left it at 5 cards and setup a new system for another 5.  Not being an ass, just saying your time and hash time are more important than ultimate density.

I'd be interested in this.  Any chance you can share?

Thanks!

Would a G1610 or G1610T do the trick? I also have a Z77A-G45 and aim to load 6 cards on Windows or BAMT. Running just 3 cards now but if the processor is the key I want to make sure I have the right one. Currently running a G530.

Share the bios? Here you go: 7970modbios.zip (http://www.uploadmb.com/dw.php?id=1367613673)

Use the latest ATIFLASH for a successful flash.
Is a generic AMD bios I modified (with a hexeditor) for all my 7970 cards, using them for months.
I can not guarantee that is gonna work for all 7970 cards, so far I flashed only Sapphire, XFX and MSI cards.

Use the -f parameter to force the flash and of course make a backup of your original BIOS.

I live up in northern wisconsin. There's practically nobody up here thats literate in computer hardware and/or bitcoins. I appreciate the offer of the house call though. Going to give this a break for tonight. I replaced 2 5850's for 7970's in rig #6, and temporarily (hopefully) opted for a 5970 in place of 7970 #6 in rig #7. Current iteration of the basement hardware clocking in at ~21.5 GHash/sec. All GPU cores at 1.0 volt except for a pesky Gigabyte 5850 voltage locked at somewhere between 1.088-1.2+ volts.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9768004/SAM_0124sm.jpg (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9768004/SAM_0124.jpg)

Nice farm!

Would you please elaborate on how you modified it using hexeditor, and in particular, what offsets control voltage, etc.?

Many thanks in advance!

Although not exactly what I did, this was the starting point:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1196856/official-amd-radeon-hd-7950-7970-7990-owners-thread/4200#post_16495299

How did you lower the voltage to 1.09V? It it this line?

000b1f0: 0000 0000 b603 0000 0000 4204 0000 0000


I was also wondering if you needed to do something with the checksum?

Cant really say, sorry.
It took me a while to figure it out even back then. Glad is over, my head still hurts.

If all you wanna do is lower the voltage to 1.09V just download a 7950 BIOS (a generic one or similar to your card) from Techpowerup and flash that one.

No checksum and stuff, just force the flash.

(I also have one edited for 1.09V and 300Mhz, just in case)

Thanks!

just wondering if 5x7950 + 1x 7870 works as well? or maybe different vendors of 7950 work too?
i remember some1 told me he had running 6x7950 from different vendors, i ordered new cards but this will take a week

Just messaged ssateneth with an answer that should solve his problems.

Got a promising PM from the person above me, currently in progress of teamviewer and brainstorming possible windows 7 solutions. He has a confirmed solution, but only for windows 8. If we cant get it working with W7, I'll resort to W8, and if it works, and because it's still windows, he'll win the bounty :)

And yes, I'll share the solution. I imagine a lot of people are really frustrated with this problem too.

+1 for up nort'

I grew up in Eagle River, and yes there are very few computer tech's around.

The bounty is now claimed by txmasut! Congrats!

I now have 6 x 7970 working and mining in Windows!

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9768004/6x7970.png

Speeds are low because I'm undervolting. Can easily push 650-720+ mhash each if I chose to do stock volts. I spose all of you want the solution, right? ;)

They sure look nice, al six of them in a row :)
How low are you undervolting?
I can get 3200 with only 5 cards, also undervolting.

Happy mining!

Nice yes get us that fix.

What was the fix? 

Usually seeking for help really helps, congratulations! What was the solution, and what Catalyst version do you use?

guess we all want to know, im glad its possible at all

I'm really tempted to sell the solution now, since I -did- spend $117 in BTC for it. Would be nice to get some (or all) of that back. :P

I'll put 10 bucks down  ;D

Anyone else with me?

lol of course, after you said u would share it.... geez
Hell, it was probably as simple as "use windows 8" - done.

This is a bit...unexpected...

-1

Oh ya bunch of whiners.

Tip away: 1BXNapSrzTSfmqSD63e49eh2JvDkeotCxt

It basically comes down to a limitation of Windows 7. What the specific limitation is, I don't know. But Windows 8 allows 1 more GPU to be detected and mineable. So if you install 13.1 driver on win7 and get 4 GPU working, you will get 5 GPU working on win8. Win8 is also annoying though in that you can't install "older" drivers, some of which allow an additional GPU mineable on top of that. The catalyst installer manager simply won't show the display driver installer option. SO. Here we go.

Install windows 8.
Wipe any previous GPU drivers off with amd_cleanup_util_1.2.1.0.exe (google it) if you have installed them before.
Install 13.1 plus OpenCL included with it. Personally, I only installed display driver, opencl sdk, and the hdmi driver because I dont like seeing stuff without drivers. None of the other stuff is required.
You will now have 5 GPU working with one with an error code 43 inside the Device Manager.
Open 12.6 and install only to the point where it extracts stuff into C:\AMD\Support\. Do not actually install drivers. We just need to extract.
In device manager, right click the errored GPU -> Properties -> Driver tab -> Update Driver -> Browse my computer for driver software -> Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer -> Have Disk -> Browse -> Navigate to C:\AMD\Support\12-6_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc_whql\Packages\Drivers\Display\W76A_INF and select either .inf file (it doesn't seem to make a difference) -> OK -> Should only have one device listed under "Model". Hit Next.

It should now proceed to downgrade from 13.1 to 12.6, which is the highest version driver that allows an extra GPU. You screen may flicker MANY times, and your device manager may appear to freeze/hang. Just let it do it's thing. It may take upwards of an hour or longer. You may get a BSOD too. Just go with it. If you're coming on 2 hours or longer, try doing a hard reset. You -should- now have all 6 GPU installed OK in device manager and detected in OpenCL. If not, reboot again (just in case).

If this doesn't work, well, I don't know what to say. This is just the solution I was given. (Well, actually, I was recommended the special 7970 release driver, but I was worried it wouldnt work with 13.1 opencl)

Tips: 1BXNapSrzTSfmqSD63e49eh2JvDkeotCxt

Interesting =) .. ha well win8 was most of the answer =P
next time Ill just say "upgrade to MS's latest shitty OS!" and a few other things n ur good to go =)

I swear tho serious, these GPU count caps need to be fuckin lifted and done away with.

But it wasn't as simple as that. :/

Does this mean that the motherboard you have can only take 5 GPUs on Windows 7, or Windows 7 can only take 5 GPUs?

looks like it is a win 7 specific problem. damn...I won't use win 8.

Anyone know if Linux would solve this as well?

I'd be care of using AMD's driver cleaner on Windows 8.  There have been numerous reports of it messing up the registry or boot startup.  Instead, I'd suggest on using Atiman Catalyst Uninstaller (http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&ei=oNa7TtnuA9DLrQeut6SjBg&hl=en&prev=/search%3Fq%3DATIMAN%2Buninstaller%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3D3NB%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26biw%3D1920%26bih%3D974%26prmd%3Dimvns&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=el&u=http://www.thelab.gr/kartes-grafikon/atiman-catalyst-uninstaller-software-78824-25.html&usg=ALkJrhjRtuRy_svgxA9J_inbatUuLyiZcg#post1063279413).

Now this is really confusing.

I understood from WAY back that now windows is limited to 8 GPU by amd driver.

Now it is 4 again? linux is still 8? i am confused.

Windows is not limited to 4, it's the combination of Drivers and Windows.  For some reason they just don't play together well and I'm guessing AMD never coded their drivers efficiently for 6 Video Cards since who has that many, lol.

8 GPU in windows is surely possible.I saw some guy running four 5970 cards without problem on windows 7 x64.

maybe later drivers like 13.1 took this possibility away??

Yeah, I just said that 6 was a problem.  4 and 5 is fairly easy to achieve.  6 is where the problems start loading on.  8 is even possible but good luck :P

It was probably me.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9768004/8gpu2.png

sweeeeeeeeet ^^ 2.8 GH/s on one rig. \o/ (must be noisy.)

well 6x 7950 = ~3,8 GH/s  ;D

So what is the final speed for your undervolted 6x7970 cards?
And how low are undervolted?

A note about power consumption @wall would be sweet :)

Not sure. I'm limited by power supply.

So what happened now?

13.4 drivers are again limiting to 6 only?

it is impossible to do four 5970s now with newer drivers?

thx!

this thread has nothing to do with 5970's. open a new thread.

It shouldn't matter, really. I don't want to open a new thread.

I am thinking of a similar setup with 6 or 7 7970s but I am still confused how to go about it without windows 8. this thread is still on topic, i think.

i hate metro UI so that is why i am reluctant to try w8.

Hi, I tried it and it's working realy well....just one problem I can only mine sha256 with it for scrypt have to switch bios....is possbible to have a bios with mem from 150 to 1.500?
Or is possible use the other bios switch but without reboot?

In this case you can try a 7950 BIOS similar to your card. A standard 7950 BIOS is undervolted at 1.09V and you can set whatever value for memory.

Download one from Techpowerup.

Well shoot.

I just saw this thread. I knew of the Win8 fix about 2 weeks ago. I run the exact same board with 5x7950s, using Win8 + GUIMiner + MSI Afterburner.

Tried some of them but no one works fine....I keep yours on linux ,but for scrypt have to switch to default bios boot windows and tune with afterburner.....it's my only solution at moment

This works on win-7... it is not a win-7 issue, it is a driver/hardware/mobo issue.

The middle 16x slot NEEDS a "card present" jumper.... The card will not supply "card present" on the 1x PCI-e. (Also the 1x above it MAY need it. They are the same slot.)

Population
Slot 1 1x (card 1)
Slot 2 16x/1x (card 2)
slot 3 1x (card 3)
Slot 4 1x (empty) [This disables if anything is in the 16x slot]
slot 5 16x (card 4, with card-present jumper, HAS TO BE THE ONE YOU "SEE". {Plug your monitor into it})
slot 6 1x (card 5)
slot 7 16x (card 6)

Also note, you NEED to disable the onboard video options in bios.

Also note... You NEED a monitor or dummy-plug in slot 5, card 3... or none of the cards will be able to operate. (Dummy plug if you want to remove the monitor.)

Only one dummy plug is needed for that card, if you don't have a monitor hooked-up. (RAM is irrelevant, unless you are doing scrypt for litecoins.) I use 2GB on one stick.

Device manager plus cgminer or bfgminer screenshot or it didnt happen.

I have 6GPUs running on Win7 x64, 13.1 driver. No issues.
5x 7950, and one APU. Point is, the total number of GPU in GPU-Z is 6.

Having another video card of another type has always worked, it's having 6 of the same that has been the problem.  I figured out the way to 'trick' the system but native drivers with 6 video cards still seem to be an issue.

How are you doing this?

I have MSI Z77A-G45 with newest bios
6x7970
3770k
windows 8 x64
tried with dummy plugs and without

I can only get the OS to see 5 cards.  It will see all five without doing any of those steps no problem.  But I can't get the 6th card to be visible.  I also tried using different slots, etc.  Which slots are you using?

Right now basically I am at the point of where you installed 12.6 catalyst.  But the OS will only see 5 cards so haven't gotten to the next step.  

I have a monitor plugged into the first card.

dont need dummy plugs. if you followed the instructions, it would be working for you.

also driver downgrading takes a long time. Just let it do its thing and it should finish in probably the area of an hour or two. Also if you change video cards, win8 has a habit of reverting back to the 13.1 driver (or whatever you installed before) which goes back to only 5 usable cards. You need to downgrade again if this happens.

Ok I'll try it again, and I'll do a fresh install.  Hey real quick do you remember which slot you left unused?

Thanks man, greatly appreciate.   8)

the middle one. PCI_E4. Also, PCI_E5 needs a presence short if using 1x risers, maybe for 16x too, never used 16x risers before in that board

have to be careful using 16x to 16x risers with a jumpered slot, I just fried a 16x slot

You are the man!  It works, the presence short was definitely needed.  Forgot to mention I'm also using 1x-16x risers.

Not only does it work, this configuration has all my cards running full throttle hash and the hashrate has even gone up.  This is fantastic.  :D

Just for the record, windows changed something, along with the drivers...

The "registry" fails to hold more than 4x of any single card on win-7(64bit).

The solution, which I did not realize I had done, was to have previously had the v12 ccc drivers. Then, the newer v13 drivers were installed. (Major version numbers are "separate" drivers. As opposed to having 13.1 then 13.3, which is a minor driver change, thus, the same exact driver.) Thus, you can run both separately. 4x per major version. (Might be 4-thread duplication limit? One thread/instance of the drivers per card now. As opposed to one thread trying to control all cards at once.)

Windows rolled-back the driver for me, for two of my cards, as I installed them one at a time. I had not noticed this, as I had disabled the CCC from starting. (Because I use Afterburner to control my cards.)

After spending two days trying to figure out why this was not a working solution (Just adding the cards and using the jumpers), for others... I dug deeper. (For win7-64bit.)

Another thing that was suggested, but I could not get it to work with windows new updates...
Card 1, 2, 3 set in cross-fire mode, with the links (No other cards added at the time of setting-up "Cross-fire" support.)
Use the monitor on the middle-one (the 16x native slot, with the 16x riser)
That causes windows to treat the three cards as "One card", with a slight performance loss in mining. The 16x connection will "re-route" data-channels, only using 8x of them, and not using the ones from the two surrounding 1x slots.)

Then... Add the other cards one at a time, in slots 5, 6, 7... all with the jumpers, and the two above 1,3 also with the jumper, only the one-card on the full 16x riser #2, being without a jumper. (So it can actually do crossfire-mode. 1x will not.) Then dummy-plug card #2, the 16x linked cross-fire main card... and move the monitor to the card in slot #5 or #6, to get the others to be seen, as you add them.

Yes, they should all be seen now, without the /!\ and should all function. Even without the roll-back drivers. (Which should work without doing all this other crap.)

NOTE: It will "seem" like nothing is happening... The cards have a hell of a long time trying to "activate" and figure out which ones to display an image on. Takes about a minute to see anything on the screen on "rebooting" or "start-up", but eventually one screen on #5 or #6 should come-on... But I never shut them down anymore, so I forget about this every time I reboot... kind-of scares me into thinking that I fried something.

If it still does not work for you... Then you MUST use win-8 or Linux. (I have to test my "vista 32bit", I don't have vista 64-bit to test on.)

Funny thing... win7 shows only one monitor per card, in the settings. In vista/xp the monitor setup shows all 4 monitors per card. EG, 6-cards = 24-monitors available to configure. (This may also have something to do with win-7 new "limitation", as they are degrading crap to make win-8 sell. Just like they did with xp/vista... but they stopped degrading most of xp/vista.... Which may be why the stuff still functions there. :P for now. Stop auto-updates. hehe.)

all b..... are from Microsoft. 10x for solution. before 2-3 week I have same problem and with Win8 only work 5 GPUs.

Can anyone else confirm they've been able to do this step? the manual selection of the 12.6 driver? I've got win8 working with 5 gpus, and the last slot with the error 43, just the same. But when I attempt to select the 12.6 driver following these exact instructions, I'm told by windows that I can't use that driver because it is not compatible with this version of windows...

My first try I didn't have success.  It was after a fresh reformat that it worked.  It definitely works.  You'll know it's doing it's thing when the monitor starts blinking continuously for about 10 minutes.  After that it's good to go, and surprisingly this method is much more stable on my system.  The latest beta drivers would give artifacts and I had to lower the intensity on the main card, now I can go full intensity on all cards, get full speed, higher speed than before, and do things in windows without any probs.

I tried this method and eventually managed to succeed. But for some odd reason windows 8 reverses the 12.6 driver installation and error 43 appears again.. After this I can reinstall the driver but after a couple hours the same shit happens again. Pain in the ass lol. Does anyone know why this is happening?

I'm also experimenting with a litecoin version of BAMT at the moment but it only starts up with 5 GPU. When I add the 6th one it simply gives a blank screen after startup.. =/

I can confirm this because I've done it myself :P

If you are using a video card that absolutely requires a later driver revision (such as the 7870 XT/Myst edition is my guess), it will be impossible for you to find a solution for 6 gpu in windows. You will need to go linux i guess.

Just notice this post. I think win8 part is not necessary. I got 8 GPUs on win7 using this proces that I figure out too about 3 weeks ago. But they were not all 7970 cards... But I have 6 cards pluged in with 8 GPU total on win7. Works without a problem...

For sure - 8 x RV870 (http://www.gpureview.com/ati-rv870-chip-164.html) - presented single in HD5870 or doubled in 5970 is possible to run under Windows x64 ( not a problem Vista /7 or 8 ... my own run at 7 Pro ) and for sure is not easy to make more that 5 Thaiti (http://www.gpureview.com/amd-tahiti-chip-184.html) GPU cores ( HD79x0 ) to work together ... i was place max 6x with trick 13.1 back to 12.6 and 5x if install 12.8 and back to 12.6 ... so - all is depend of drivers ... same was and early with 3 x 5970 when Win7 do not want to catch 6-th core ... and BlueScreenofDead but ... who search - will find solution finaly.

Just my 2 cents...

P.S. 5 x 7970 over middle range MB + AMD X6 CPU + PSU high class ( 1200 Corsair or ... my favorite 1250 Enermax ) is exactly the best monster.
P.S.2 - no need to place any CrossFireX, TriFireX ect... jumpers ...

All right,
Here is the solution for the 6x7950 on Windows.

Recently I built 2 systems with Z77A-GD65 MB and MSI TwinFrozr 7950 GPUs. No issues whatsoever. Installed Windows 8, Catalyst 13.1 and bang, I had all 6 GPUs up and running.

Then couple of weeks later I had the same components for two more rigs. Used the same steps as before, but could not get the 6th GPU to show up.(the error code 43 issue) Tried multiple times re-installing Win8, Win7. And probably tried every possible catalyst driver..... No luck.

Just by luck I was at one of the good rigs, and noticed the Catalyst installer on the desktop.... Then it hit me..... After some comparison and digging, I found out that the Catalyst 13.1 installer on the problem rigs was different from the 13.1 installer on the first two rigs. No friggin way....

Well, copied over to the two new systems the 13.1 installer from the good running machines, and voila half an hour later I got two more rigs with 6 GPUs all set up.


So after reading all this crap I dumped on you ;), here is the good part:

Go and download the 13.1 catalyst from Guru3d.com and techpowerup.com. Here is the result. The third file on the image is the one that worked on all my rigs.  

https://www.dropbox.com/s/z08mvvjz1tccpk6/Catalyst%2013.1%20Differences.JPG (https://www.dropbox.com/s/z08mvvjz1tccpk6/Catalyst%2013.1%20Differences.JPG)

Get the 13.1 from techpowerup.com and you are all set.
Here is the working 13.1 installer that I used for comparison: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1hoxkz0y8fe933g/13-1_vista_win7_win8_64_dd_ccc_whql%20Working.exe

With that, 6 GPUs on Windows 8 setup is a smooth sail.
 

wow.

Indeed, TechPowerUp 13.1 is different from 13.1 from AMD, looks like techpowerup's version is older.
CH 151 592.inf vs CH 154 961.inf
ofc if those numbers actually mean anything ; )

Differences both in the driver and opencl packages.
edit: though OpenCL msi's are different, but contents is the same.

+edit: differences are only in the .inf files(for driver), so it may be configuration(registry) related

So.. DiamondHunter, are you willing to screw up your rig? ; )
And to pinpoint which registry setting is it.



C7151592.inf
HKR,, DP_DisableHBR2,             %REG_DWORD%, 1

HKLM,"Software\ATI Technologies\CBT",ReleaseVersion,,"9.012-121219a-151592C-ATI"
HKR,, ReleaseVersion,,"9.012-121219a-151592C-ATI"

HKR,, DalNumOfPathPerDpMstConnector, %REG_DWORD%, 0

HKR,, PX_AI_IndInstallSupport, %REG_DWORD%, 1


vs


C7154961.inf
HKR,, DP_DisableHBR2,             %REG_DWORD%, 0

HKLM,"Software\ATI Technologies\CBT",ReleaseVersion,,"9.012-121219a-154961C-ATI"
HKR,, ReleaseVersion,,"9.012-121219a-154961C-ATI"

HKR,, DisableMMSnifferCode,               %REG_DWORD%,    0

HKR,, PX_AI_IndInstallSupport

HKR,, DalNumOfPathPerDpMstConnector

Does anyone else's GPU in the shorted presence pin slot run hotter than the rest?  Mine in the one slot runs 8-10C hotter than all the other cards, including the cards in the very middle.  The cards are exact same and are all equally spaced apart.  It even runs 5C hotter than the card that is directly above the CPU heatsink.

Not a big deal as I undervolt a bit, just curious

Will take a look and let you know guys.

cmon, swap them and check..
also 'equally spaced apart' does not matter unless you thermally isolate them from each other.
and the one above the cpu heatsink theoretically should be cooler a bit, cause cpu heatsink will suck hot air from that card, assuming you have stock heatsink.

I'm not swappin, my cards are bolted down and in a sealed box ducted to the window.  If it was a big deal I would test it, but as I already said, it's not and this was mere conversation on the subject.

Come to think of it though, the card that is in that slot was previously plugged into slot 6 while in the exact same position and it didn't run hot like it is now.  And the cards around it were still in the same spots.

And same spacing per card does matter.  6 cards with .5 inches in between vs 6 cards with 2 inches between have a clear temperature difference.  I only mentioned that to null the idea of people coming in here and suggesting it.

Thermal isolation is useful in many situations but I have dual 600cfm fans centered covering every parameter of the cards including underneath the mobo.  So in this case it may or may not offer a few C temperature drop. The temps are great already so it's not an issue.

Temps on 4 of the cards are within 2C of each other, with the exception of the card in the slot of question, and the card above the CPU only when the chip is at full load.  Which yes does make sense as the fan is driving air towards the cpu which in turn causes some of that air to be blown right back up through the fan.  The silverstone air penetrator videos provide some good examples of the large amount of air that gets pushed back through computer fans when any kind of resistance is on the receiving end.

Dunno why people are still going back and forth about this. I posted the solution for this already. It works for 7970, 7950, 7870 (non-xt, non-myst), 7850, 7770, 7750.

I've installed those 13.1 drivers from techpowerup on my 6gpu rig and it works ; )

Windows 2008 R2, Catalyst 13.1 from techpowerup(driver only), 2x6950, 4x7950 - works
Windows 2008 R2, Catalyst 13.1 from AMD(driver only), 2x6950, 4x7950 - does not work
Windows 2008 R2, Catalyst 12.6 from AMD(driver only), 2x6950, 4x7950 - works

I'm pretty sure Windows 7 will work too.

You do understand that so called 'your solution' is a bit weird.. I mean.. install win8, install 13.1, replace it with 12.6.. that's crap)
I've been runnning 6gpu rig without any issues with just clean w2k8 install+12.6 that's all, no win8 no drivers updating..
But now we have 13.1 working for 6GPU rigs, and I hope soon we will have any Catalyst version working for 6GPU rigs.

Sweet Mary, mother of god! If this has fixed my stability issue you are my favorite person on the internet right now! I did the 12.6 setup above and it was stable for a while but i had to redo some drivers (drivers kept crashing turned out to be a powered riser issue). Did the 12.6 hack again but must have did it differently because the rig was really spotty after that.

Just did these 13.1 drivers all 5 7950's showed up in windows 7 and first run in cgminer and it has been up for 15 minutes (doesnt sound like much but i was struggling to make it that long before). If this corrected the issue, you my friend are a godsend!

suggested 13.1 driver works with my win7-64 5x7870 setup! Thank you!
All others except old 12.6 failed to run 5-th GPU.

Just because it's newer doesn't mean it's better. When the 2.6 SDK came out with the 11.12 driver, Many 5k series radeon users suffered a huge performance hit for mining, because the new SDK was absolutely terrible for mining. It was a headache to roll back to 2.5 SDK because the uninstall does not remove the SDK files, so you are stuck with the newer SDK until you manually found and removed the files.

Hi
Is there any option to run 5 x 7870XT Tahiti on MSI Z77A-GD65 under win7 64-bit ? I think I've already tried all options, but always have error 43. 7870XT is supported since 12.11 beta 4 (if I remember well).
I tried powered risers, but since the issue is in iddle mode then I think it is not necessary to try with it.
I use dummy plugs for all cards, I DO NOT use pins shorting in PCI-E sockets.
Please help.

dont need dummy plugs for anything. that is a rumor for newer hadrware/drivers and not confirmed to help anything as far as windows goes.

you are pretty much screwed btw. you are limited to maximum 4 7870XT in win7 and 5 7870XT in Win8. This is due to driver/OS limitations that cannot be overridden.

There is rumor of a techpowerup 13.1 driver having extra GPUs enabled but no guarantee. I dont have a link for it, search around.

Hello,

I have problem. :) Who can help me?

I have mining rig hardware:

• 4x XFX7950 FX-795A-TDJC
• ASUS SABERTOOTH 990FXR2.0 motherboard
• 8GB RAM
• CPU AMD FX8320 8x Cores 3.51 Ghz
• PSU Lepa 1600W

Software:

• Windows 7 SP1 x64
• AMD Radeon HD drivers 13.4 x64
• AMD SDK 2.7 x64
• CGMINER 3.3.1

My cgminer.conf

With this configuration 3x GPU cards running stable. But when I connect 4 card and run cgminer works very bad and turnoff motherboard. But PSU still running.

Who can help me with this problem? Maybe not impossible run rig with 4x GPU's? Maybe my configuration is wrong? Or I forget something to install?

Than you in advance,

TDS

There is rumor of a techpowerup 13.1 driver having extra GPUs enabled
It's not a rumor, I got 6 rigs running with that driver with 6 MSI 7950 in each. Clean Windows 8 Pro install followed by the above diver install. Nothing else.
Other people reported it working as well.


Question about GPUs going to power saving mode. On some of those 6 rigs I have, on and off one of the cards will go down to 60 KHs and restarting cgminer will not fix that. I noticed sometimes just moving the monitor cable from one gpu to another will instantly "wake up the card" running at 60kHs and fix it back to 630ih range.

I'ts been bugging me a while now and I can't find reliable fix. Does dummy DVI/VGA connectors work, or is there other stable solution that fixes that issue?

Well it's been months since the thread was last updated. Has there been a permanent fix to running 6 GPU's reliably?

Nope, not that I have seen.

Try disabling "AMD External Events" service nad "AMD Fuel" if you installed full Catalyst. And all power saving features, like 'Display Off', Screen Saver, PCIE link.

Also I have use
setx DISPLAY ":0"
or dummies on windows 2008 or all cards are always off except one with monitor connected.

If someone will give me remote access to the 6GPU rig, I will find permanent fix ; )
Assuming that it can be fixed by modifing .inf files, I've posted differences in working and non-working infs ealier in this thread.

To fix this problem I manually go into the registry (regedit), and change all "EnableULPS" entries to 0 instead of 1... Fixes the issue for me :D

* Note that if you change drivers, or add another card you'll have to go through and change them all again. I should just write a file to do this for me, but I'm too lazy, lol

Modded 13.12 driver works for me for 6xGPU
https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=11761.0

Kinda old topic,Though still have a question.

I`m currently running a rig with 7 GPU cores (2x 6990 and 3x 5870) though I`d like to stick in another 5870.
I`m using the new H81 pro btc mobo with ivy bridge processor turned off in BIOS.

When I stick in the last 5870 in the 16x PCI-E port, the computer doesn't boot or even POST.
Is this a driver / OS problem? In other words, would for instance other drivers or OS be able to work with 8 GPU cores?

I`m putting up a 0.15BTC bounty for the one who gets me to mine with 8 cores in my setup.

Cheers

Well its not a tahiti system. I've used tried and true 11.12 or 12.1 driver for 8 GPU's (mix of 5870 and 5970). Those drivers should also support the 6k series. Lemme know how it works out. My donation address is in my sig.

I tried out both, the oldest one doesnt support 6990
Though my problem lies in the chipset I think.
When I put in the 8th GPU, the computer doesn't even pass POST.
It just hangs on a black screen, I have to clear CMOS to start up with a GPU less.
Could someone comment on this?

I'm gonna wipe my SSD clean and try again with fresh windows and drivers.

Maybe put it on x1 riser?
Also there is a setting in BIOS controlling PCIe rev. for this slot, maybe try them..
For 6xGPU on this motherboard it does not affect anything, but for 8x.. who knows.
There are also 'Multi Monitor' and Shared Memory(something like that, set to Auto by default), try changing them and disabling everything like Audio/USB/LAN or enabling(once I saw mobo disabling one PCIe slot if iGPU was disabled).
No POST - deffo not the OS issue, prly BIOS is not able to map all GPUs, maybe increase RAM.

Bad risers or bad power connections can attribute to weird system glitches/hangs if the connections are spotty. Also, apparently there are some modded drivers out there of recent driver revisions that allow more GPUs per W7 box.

https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=11761.0 Check those drivers out, see what it does for you.

BTW, it's impossible to use ivy bridge anything in H81. It's a haswell only motherboard with a different socket. If you forced an ivy bridge CPU in there, you probably fried your system.

Fake edit: after re-reading your post, are having a POST issue. Test each card and each riser individually. If they all check out, use a known good card and good riser and try them in each PCI-E slot.

You`re right, my original plan was a Z77a-gd65 with ivy bridge (would be the better choice i guess), but in order to save some cash I choose the H81 pro btc with G1820 (hashwell).

I`ll try to put in one GPU straight in the 16x PCI-e slot, since the mod as reported doesn't help for any POST problem, only code 43.

All risers and cards have been tested and shown in full working order.

Will post results!

Update!!

I've plugged in the 8th card while the pc as on (Was very carefull not to short anything ;)  
And now it states the following error:


Perhaps one can contemplate on this?

The diagnosis of this error code is:

Two devices have been assigned the same input/output (I/O) ports, the same interrupt, or the same Direct Memory Access channel. The assignment was made by either the basic input/output system (BIOS), the operating system, or a combination of the two.


Cheers,

You need more RAM, especially when using windows.
8 to 12 GB should do just fine

@Koelen,

Thanks for the option, tried it out with both 8GB and 16GB, though it still issues the same error.