Bitcoin Forum

Hey everyone!
I got a gift from a friend (a 5870 he doesn't need anymore) and i wanted to add it to my setup to get more kh/s ..
I have a 750W PSU , i bought a 1x - 16x riser and installed the 5870 but it seems that windows doesn't want to recognize the new card..

I see " unknown device" in device manager and can't make the card to work..
I reinstallled the 13.1 catalyst drivers.. same results

Is it because it's not the same model as the 1st one?
Or my mobo (M2N-E) is too old to support 2 PCI-E cards?

it says in specs

1 x PCI Express x16 slot
1 x PCI Express x4 slot

they look adequately spaced to me

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/M2NE/

i dont see why it wouldnt work,      crossfire probably wouldnt, but..

Crossfire would not work and is in no way necessary or even recomended for mining.

Go into device manager. Where it shows the unknown device,  right click and remove/delete it.

Then find the icon on top of device manager that says "scan for hardware changes".it will hopefully find the card again and actually install drivers .

It is possible. Your problems are usually specific to driver revision and motherboard capabilities.

If your mining Bitcoin then I would install a known good Catalyst package for the 5xxx card.

 Should be no reason this would not work on a capable motherboard. I have successfully run 5xxx and 6xxx series cards on the same mobo in the past, and am presently running 6xxx and 7xxx cards in a couple rigs.

 I would recommend uninstalling Catalyst completely, rebooting, reinstalling Catalyst 13.1, rebooting again, and give it a go.

 If the cards aren't recognized in CCC after the second reboot then... well... shit.

 Might want to swap card positions and see how that works out for you.

Q: Which AMD SDK is the best for cgminer?
A: At the moment, versions 2.4 and 2.5 work the best for R5xxx and R6xxx GPUS.
SDK 2.6 or 2.7 works best for R7xxx. SDK 2.8 is known to have many problems.
If you are need to use the 2.6+ SDK or R7xxx or later, the phatk kernel will
perform poorly, while the diablo or my custom modified poclbm kernel are
optimised for it.

Q: Which AMD driver is the best?
A: Unfortunately AMD has a history of having quite a few releases with issues
when it comes to mining, either in terms of breaking mining, increasing CPU
usage or very low hashrates. Only experimentation can tell you for sure, but
some good releases were 11.6, 11.12, 12.4 and 12.8. Note that older cards may
not work with the newer drivers.

thanks for the answers everyone..
I did try a lot of things..
I updated the mobo bios to a newer version (1703)
Uninstalled catalyst drivers and reinstalled.. still the same "unknow device" on the 2nd card

I tested with only 1 card in the x16 slot= it's detected and i can mine with it
If i switch the same card in the x1 slot only, i get bios beep error codes.. (I tested in the x4 slot with another riser and i get the same results..)

So im completely out of ideas now.. still trying to find if its a software or hardware problem..

For now, i  tested  with catalyst v 11.6 and 13.1.. may try other version.. but i dont think i'll work..

I got it..!! Finalle after a few hours of testing, updates etc etc..
I switched the cards.. so now i have the 5870 in a x16 riser and the 6950 in a x1-x16 riser.. and the 2 cards are detected!
Using the A1 B17 short too

Gonna try to add another 5870 tomorrow!

Thanks all for your help