Bitcoin Forum

Other => Beginners & Help => Topic started by: RouletteRun on January 16, 2014, 03:39:53 AM



Title: Do all mining GPU in the same rig have to match?
Post by: RouletteRun on January 16, 2014, 03:39:53 AM
My question is; since the GPU used for mining within a rig are not being run in Crossfire or SLI, and are basically being run independently, do all the GPU have to be identical cards or can a person match an say an older Radeon 7000 series card in the same rig with a newer Radeon R9 series card, or an R9 270X with an R9 290X card?


Title: Re: Do all mining GPU in the same rig have to match?
Post by: Duane Vick on January 16, 2014, 04:36:15 AM
The immediate thing I see is that custom settings in your .bat file aren't going to be ideal for different GPUs. You will probably need to have settings for each device. I'm not sure how to write such a bat file but someone here probably knows how to write a single bat file for multiple cards.


Title: Re: Do all mining GPU in the same rig have to match?
Post by: narby1981 on January 16, 2014, 05:30:28 AM
What miner are you using CGMiner, Reaper, Etc???


Title: Re: Do all mining GPU in the same rig have to match?
Post by: radostosic on January 16, 2014, 12:22:18 PM
I know many people using GUIminer cause it is easiest way to mine..Personaly Iam using older version of CGminer 2.11.4


Title: Re: Do all mining GPU in the same rig have to match?
Post by: disparity on January 16, 2014, 12:37:52 PM
it is possible to mine with different video cards. I myself mine with a Sapphire R9 290 and a Sapphire R7 260x
parameters for each card can be set in the cgminer.conf file for example:

"intensity" : "20,20,",
"vectors" : "1,1,",
"worksize" : "256,512,
"kernel" : "scrypt,scrypt,",
"lookup-gap" : "2,2,2",
"thread-concurrency" : "8192,29500"

1st value is for gpu0, 2nd for gpu1 . cgminer I start with a bat file like

setx GPU_MAX-ALLOC-PERCENT 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
cgminer --config cgminer.conf

this setup works pretty fine for me


Title: Re: Do all mining GPU in the same rig have to match?
Post by: RouletteRun on January 16, 2014, 03:08:12 PM
it is possible to mine with different video cards. I myself mine with a Sapphire R9 290 and a Sapphire R7 260x
parameters for each card can be set in the cgminer.conf file for example:

"intensity" : "20,20,",
"vectors" : "1,1,",
"worksize" : "256,512,
"kernel" : "scrypt,scrypt,",
"lookup-gap" : "2,2,2",
"thread-concurrency" : "8192,29500"

1st value is for gpu0, 2nd for gpu1 . cgminer I start with a bat file like

setx GPU_MAX-ALLOC-PERCENT 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
cgminer --config cgminer.conf

this setup works pretty fine for me

Thank you for your answer, next week I have a Sapphire R9 270 coming, but in about three weeks I might add three Gigabyte R9 290's to go with it in the same rig, two for sure provided they're still available. It seems video cards are a pretty hot commodity these days, both Radeon and nVidia. I'm glad to see it for the industry, but it makes it a little hard on the guys/gals who might want a particular card.


Title: Re: Do all mining GPU in the same rig have to match?
Post by: Flashman on January 16, 2014, 04:04:36 PM
The biggest problems come about when you're trying to use GPUs that are generations apart, HD7xxx and Rx xxx are close enough together, but trying something such as a 5850 and a R9 290 may lead to driver problems in that you need a legacy driver for the 5850 but a current driver for the R9.

I am not totally sure, but I think the drivers split to legacy around 13.4 for better support for the HD7xxx series card, but continued to support HD6xxx, therefore those mix okay on that driver, not sure if latest have dropped HD6xxx yet.

Anyway, it seems best to stick to a 2 generation spread, don't go trying to run a 4890 and a R9... even if you just want the 4890 for desktop video... Then you can do 5xxx and 6xxx together, but don't think you'd get much out of your 7xxx if you add one, I believe there was one driver that covered the three, but wasn't great on the 7xxx.



Title: Re: Do all mining GPU in the same rig have to match?
Post by: RouletteRun on January 17, 2014, 05:20:23 AM
The biggest problems come about when you're trying to use GPUs that are generations apart, HD7xxx and Rx xxx are close enough together, but trying something such as a 5850 and a R9 290 may lead to driver problems in that you need a legacy driver for the 5850 but a current driver for the R9.

I am not totally sure, but I think the drivers split to legacy around 13.4 for better support for the HD7xxx series card, but continued to support HD6xxx, therefore those mix okay on that driver, not sure if latest have dropped HD6xxx yet.

Anyway, it seems best to stick to a 2 generation spread, don't go trying to run a 4890 and a R9... even if you just want the 4890 for desktop video... Then you can do 5xxx and 6xxx together, but don't think you'd get much out of your 7xxx if you add one, I believe there was one driver that covered the three, but wasn't great on the 7xxx.



I appreciate you and the others who've taken the time to reply to this thread. Thank you!  :)


Title: Re: Do all mining GPU in the same rig have to match?
Post by: L33cH on January 17, 2014, 07:12:14 AM
you can set every card in cgminer like --temp-cutoff 90,90,90 --temp-overheat 85,85,85 --gpu-memclock 1500,1300,1500 --gpu-engine 1080,1050,1080,


Title: Re: Do all mining GPU in the same rig have to match?
Post by: _r2h on January 17, 2014, 08:57:07 AM
Watch out for the gpu-threads setting.  It is a global setting so its the same on all the cards.  If you are using cards that require a different number of threads each to run a peak kh/s, you'll need a custom version of cgminer. 

Cheers!