Bitcoin Forum

Edit: Please stop PMing me for help on how to GPU mine. I will not be able to help you. I stopped GPU mining almost a year ago. Further PMs requiring help for GPU mining will be ignored.

So I bit the bullet after having some frustrating problems with one of my miners (only 4 pci-e slots and I think my one pci > pci-e slot adapter is dying, having stability problems) and bought a MSI Z77A-G45 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130645) motherboard. I plan on using at LEAST 6 slots, hopefully all 7. I'll be using 1x > 1x risers with al lthe cards and short PCI-E presence pins if necessary. Primary reason why I'm making this thread is I want to document if it is possible for ALL SEVEN slots to be populated and usable at the same time. I haven't encountered any boards yet that completely shut off adjacent PCI-E slots yet with 1x width bandwidth per slot, and I'm hoping it'll be the same for this board too. I'm hoping restricting bandwidth to 1x per slot will keep other slots "on". I -think- my EVGA nForce 790i SLI Ultra board shuts off adjacent slots with larger PCI-E bandwidths (4x/8x/16x), but because I used 1x width risers, it didn't need to shut off any slots.

Anyways, in case anyone is wondering what kind of board I'm looking at and doesn't want to click a link, here ya go.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9768004/z77ag45.jpg

http://img.pconline.com.cn/images/upload/upc/tx/itbbs/1205/20/c2/11684225_1337495045378_4_1024x1024.jpg

Looking forward to your update. Could be a great replacement to the GD70.

Using single core GPU's right? I've heard it's not possible to have over 7 cores mining at the same time

I'm mining on 8 GPU cores on my EVGA nForce 790i SLI Ultra board right now. 3 PCI-E 16x, 2 PCI-E 1x, all using 1x bandwidth. For the MSI Z77A-G45 I will probably use 1 5970, and the rest will be single core; a mix of 5870 and 5850.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/9768004/8GPU.png

Fantastic! are you under windows 7 home? what driver versions

EVGA nForce 790i SLI Ultra board, Intel Celeron 420, 2x2GB RAM, PC Power & Cooling 1KW-SR, 3 reference 5970, 2 reference 5870. Uses about 1040W AC power. PSU Efficiency is pretty low at around 83%, so about 2.61 MHash/Joule.

Win7 x64, Driver 11.12, SDK 2.1. BIOS flashed on each card except 7/8 (new 5970, still breaking it in finding max clocks before I flash). Memory @ 150-160, core speed is specified in the miner window, all voltage is 0.95v except where denoted with a plus (+) sign after the core speed, then it is 1v. I use Phoenix 2 miner, and these arguments are constant between all GPU's. kernel = phatk2, AGGRESSION = 14, VECTORS = true, BFI_INT = true, WORKSIZE = 128. The numbers in the tray in the lower right is the amperage on each volterra programmable voltage regulator. Red is GPU1, orange is GPU2, etc. It helps me notice easier if a GPU is "sick" and adjust frequency to be more stable. And no, I won't use CGMiner. :P

What is the benefit of flashing the card BIOS, do you mean firmware?

how many mhash per 5970 and have you tried the memory clock at 1/3 of clock? that increased mhash significantly for me

Please make a separate thread if you need anymore info. It's getting offtopic; I just wanted to make a thread about the MSI Z77A-G45 motherboard.

I just got this motherboard a week ago and will be shipping it off to be returned soon.  You can only use up to 4 slots on this board it seems.  Even with 4 cards though the board was unstable for me.  Sometimes it would blue screen while booting up windows.  The blue screen indicated that it was related to GPU drivers though, so maybe it wasn't the motherboard.  But when the machine did start up without blue screening, I could only mine with 3 miners at a time at full speed.  With 4 GPUs mining at once, all the miner speeds were handicapped by about 25%.  Also the machine couldn't last long without crashing with all 4 GPUs at once.  For the 3rd and 4th PCIe x1 slots, you can only use one at a time because the other one becomes disabled.   But even with 6 available slots, I was unable to get more than 4 GPUs recognized by Windows regardless of which slot combinations i tried.  Anyways I ordered a MSI P67A-G45 which I already have three of and used the same driver and miner that I used with the MSI Z77A-G45 and got all 5 of my GPUs mining without any problems. 

Is this the 3-way version of the SLI board?

Shame, looked promising, thanks for saving me the trouble of testing it ilovethebtc.

What CPU did you have coupled with it?

Intel Celeron G530 Sandy Bridge 2.4GHz LGA 1155 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor

Which gpu driver version did you use?
As far as I remember 12.1 and possibly newer versions too gave BSODs upon connecting more than 4 GPUs.

I used 12.3 which works fine with 5 GPUs on my MSI P67A-G45.

That's the issue right there.  You need to use an Ivy Bridge CPU with PCIe 3.0 support.  Otherwise the second PCIe slot is disabled or won't work correctly.  Though the PCIe x1 slots should work fine.  Maybe MSI didn't provide enough PLX switches to compensate the bandwidth from the CPU.  I guess that is why you have to fork out more $$ for an expensive board like a Z77A-GD80 which does support it.

Well even with the 2nd PCIe slot not working properly and one of the PCIex1 slots disabled, there are still 5 slots, but I could not get 5 GPUs recognized no matter which slot combinations i tried.  I spent an entire day trying to get this board to run 5 cars.  Would not want to buy a $199 Ivy Bridge to test this board further.

Could you join my thread with the answers to my questions:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=97336.0

Well I got it in the mail 2 days ago. Yesterday's time was mostly spent making a wooden frame to mount the motherboard and video cards on as well as a place for the hard drive and power supply to lay. Like my other rigs, the motherboard will be "upside down" (the CPU is closer to the ground than the PCI-E slots. This means the graphics cards themselves are right-side up). I've been having a couple problems with my hard drives not being reliable, but I think I finally got a keeper. Anyways, the 3 slots closest to the CPU are populated so far with 5850's. None of them need the PCI-E presence pin shorted. I'll have to steal some 5870's from one of my dedicated rigs to attempt to populate the remaining slots.

Fun fact: With an 80plus gold PSU, a G440 CPU, 1 2GB stick of Crucial RAM, and 1 500GB 7200RPM hard drive, this only consumes a meager 25 watts of power, verified by a kill-a-watt. Amazing how efficient newer technology is! :O

sweet. almost went for that cpu but stuck with the g530 for more versatility. disabled the 2nd core and went down to 1.6ghz

Update: Got 5 slots working so far without the assistance of a PCI-E presence short. This is with all slots populated with a GPU via a 1x > 1x riser.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9768004/z77ag45.jpg

Update2: Got a 6th slot working with the assistance of a presence short. #7 proves difficult. I'm hoping it's just a bad riser or bad short, but each 1x slot above a 16x seems to work.
Edit: I put in a ticket with MSI a few days ago, this might be relevant. Here was the response. Very bad english, but the important part is at the end.

Necroedit: old pictures removed.

Very nice

It may not be 7 slots, but I'm happy with 6. I'm not about to return it (and the cpu) for a 20% restocking fee, plus it was a big pain in the butt setting it all up. Probably overpaid a little for 6 slots, but the CPU, board, and hard drive only consume about 25 watts at the wall on an 80plus gold PSU, which means better overall mhash/j

Plus I like MSI's board layout. I got an x79 Big Bang XPower II in my main PC. The only nuance is the silly chipset and mosfet heatsinks.

Also, FWIW, the Celeron G440 only consumes 5 watts when idle, and 9 watts under load with linpack. I have not extensively tested the ondie GPU, but hwinfo64 claimed the GPU package was only taking in 0.064 watts when I was getting baseline power consumption with no video cards installed.

what ati drivers are you using?
i have the same mainboard and it only sees 4 with pcie-1x raisers without anything shorted.
i used all green marked slots but in win7 x64 i can see 5 cards with one card that has an error

I have the G55 and I can only get linux detect 5 gpus.. :(

out of topic...

Can anybody confirm?

Does this mobo detects 6gpu out of the box?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130649

I have the Z77A-G45 V2 with a G1610 (20 PCIe lanes) with x1 to x16risers 4 powered 2 non and have followed the diagram posted by ssateneth but have had little luck. I have 5 gpu's running and 6 show but the last is giving code 43 which is usually a bus issue. I have everything disabled possible except USB (bios shows no specifics on USB 3.0 just usb) and PCI 3.0 on auto and disabled so I'm not sure what else can be done. I'm running windows 8 with several different drivers tried. I figure if 5 are showing the drivers can be the issue I wouldn't think.

what's pcie presence short???

Crazy solution - download the 13.1 driver from teckpowerup.com (they use a different driver for some odd reason) and make sure you use null VGA adapters on all cards, then it will work. Better reinstall windows or make damn sure you uninstall catalyst first though (using their tool - but I'm not convinced it works properly).

You could buy Ivy Bridge Celeron G1610 for $50
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116889

or I3 3220 Ivy Bridge for $120

I myself was able to run 7 GPUs (3x5970 and 1x5830) from similar motherboard: MSI Z77A-GD65 with Win 7 Home 32-bit

 Thanks I had seen that solution and tried it in the past but never had any luck. I also want to say I increased the clock bus clock from 32 to 64, 96 ect with no luck although this worked on my 99FXA G65 with 5 GPUs.

 As for removing AMD drivers I've become and expert at it and long since realized doing it by hand is ideal until I find time to write an app.

Well tried techpowerup's 13.1 drivers and code 43 went away but cgminer and kbsync (I think is the name) keep crashing now. Updated the conf file so all should be well and rebooted a few times. I'm reformatting now...


 Thanks, at least that's some progress.

Ok I reformatted and installed techpowerup's 13.1 drivers. I tried with and without hdmi audio drivers and this was the result both times:


C:\Users\Chris\Desktop\cgminer-3.2.0-windows>cgminer -T
 [2013-08-05 10:40:31] Started cgminer 3.2.0
 [2013-08-05 10:40:31] Loaded configuration file cgminer.conf

 [2013-08-05 10:40:32] clDevicesNum returned error, no GPUs usable

 [2013-08-05 10:40:32] No devices detected!
 [2013-08-05 10:40:32] Waiting for USB hotplug devices or press q to quit

 [2013-08-05 10:40:32] Too many values passed to set temp cutoff


 Yet all 6 GPU's show under display adapters without errors.


 

What do you think about this motherboard?
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P6T7_WS_SuperComputer/

No luck with windows 8. I am gonna go back to windows 7 and give it another try with the techpowerup drivers.

wtf, 9 month old thread bump

i had 7 gpus running with catalyst 11.12

Tried a tutorials suggestion to use catalyst windows 8 + 13.1 and then install 12.6 display drivers but it used a GD55 motherboard so I'm not sure if that was the difference. As of right now both 13.1 from techpowerup and 13.1 from amd's site to 12.6 driver method both return clDevicesNum returned error, no GPUs usable no matter what gpu amount I choose to try and utilize in cgminer. If I disconnect 1 card and reinstall the drivers the machine runs great with 5 but I was really hoping to try my Lepa 1600s with 6 gpu's underclocked a little(would depend on how much weather I stayed with 6 or went back to 5).

Only thing I can think of now is the diagram above may be flawed by accident and or I setup the presence short wrong for this configuration? I went with the x1 presence short vs x16....is that the same as you used ssateneth?

Got it...was my fault. The conf file had some sort of error I cant seem to find but when I copied a working 5 gpu version and modded it for 6 all was well.


 The Lepa 1600 ran great with slight overclocks for about 10 minutes then blew the breaker (15 amp) so I think I'll swap it out with a 20 amp one eventually but for now I'm gonna replace the one 7970 I had wired in with a 7870 XT that runs best at 860 core and less then 1 volt which gets me 420-430 kh.

Hi, i'm trying to get 6 cards running but when I fill the last pcie blue slot nothing detected, even with 2-3 cards :/

with Celeron G1610

thanks in advance.

Windows 8 64 / catalyst 12.6 with 6 7950 even with powered or unpowered risers the two last (blue) pcie 16x don't detects cards only if plugged without risers. Atm only 5 cards running on all 1x filled and the first 16x (two others don't work with risers (1x > 16x)

I'm on z77a GD65 supposed to work WITHOUT shortened pins so idk what i can do now...

is there something to activate on bios ?

thanks in advance

   Aaaand another month-old thread bump.

     Sorry, it's the electrician in me:

     If your rig blows your 15A breaker, DO NOT just  replace it with a 20A breaker.

15 amp household circuits usually use 14ga wire.  These circuits are not expected to pump 12A+  continuously without occasionally popping a breaker. 

You should:

1) Consider running a new 20A or 30A circuit using 12ga or 10ga wire, respectively, and an appropriate breaker and rated outlets.

2) If you have more than one rig, balance load by using multiple circuits.

3) Kitchen, bathroom,laundry, and garage circuits are typically 20A GFCI circuits, and could be subverted for mining use if the bathroom outlets are not used for drying hair/ etc.  In newer homes, yellow-sheathed romex wire is 12ga , rated for 20A. In older homes, it can be white as well. :-\

4) Don't daisy chain a bunch of power strips or extension cords.  The added resistance of these components due to smaller gauge wires or excessive length cause voltage at the unit to fall, requiring a larger current draw by the rig's voltage regulators.  This means slightly more heat and slightly less power efficiency, and an increase in component failure (fire, failure, electronics damage, etc.)

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/9768004/z77ag45.jpg

I have a similar problem on z77a GD65 if anyone has some insight.

I am using Windows 8-64bit / catalyst 13.1 with 6 x 7950.  All risers are powered and match the size of the slots (i.e. 16x for 16x).  I have two identical rigs.

Based on the image above (but with a GD65), right to left, I am plugged into 1,2,3,5,6,7.

On both my rigs the 7950 in slot 6 is not recognized.

Thoughts?

Hello. sorry for update. in my country i cant find g45 anywhere but i found a MSI Z77A-G43 SC-1155,Z77 140$

but i am worried about if it is working with 6gpu? and if works is it smooth?

it is little bit different from g45

http://tr.msi.com/pic/product/five_pictures2_2540_20120312162135.jpg

please help me. i am buying 2x5970 and 4x7950 for for this motherboard?

if u say it will support 6gpu i will buy it. Please help me  :'(

those are pci slots, not pci-e

sorry im a newbie.

2x5970 and 4x7950

to work that cards together what motherboard should i buy?

oh i found and bought a MSI Z77A-G45. i think i can make work 6gpu with that motherboard! thanks.

I would recommend for asrock h61 pro btc, which is claimed to be specifically designed for multi-gpu applications.

i couldnt find where they sell this product?

See here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=365181.msg3915165#msg3915165

Strange, there's a picture of a 6 gpu rig of mine with a GD65 in the thread 1632008 posted. I couldn't get all 6 working in windows with 13.11 drivers, they were detected but code 43'd.

I ended up using linux.

So has anyone figured this out? I have this mobo and cannot for the life of me get any of the 1x slots to work. I can use all three 16x slots, but windows doesnt detect anything when i use the 1x slots...

Shorting pins A1 and B17 might help you:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=36061.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=369043.0

These boards are totally hit or miss. I'm glad I only have a few of them, but I can't get more than three slots to work no matter what I try. Running linux with the latest drivers, drivers which work perfectly supporting 5 cards on all my other systems. Using my risers, which have the presence pin connected. I hate wasting rack space with computers that can't run at least 5 cards!

Does anyone have any ideas how to make them work or want to buy some of them? :) 

It's hilarious nobody bothers to read the thread.

This board will do 5 slots out of the box.  1,2,3,6,7

You have to short slot number 5 to get it to work, so you can have a total of 6 slots.

Slot number 4 is not going to work when the other slots are filled.

6 slots max on that board.

It sure is hilarious  ::)

He is using risers with inbuilt jumpers. He can't get more than three.

I have no idea why, as I've over 11 of them and I've never once had a problem  ???

So you totally missed that I covered all of that in my post? Hilarious!

I'm only trying to use 5. Do you understand what has to be shorted? It's the presence pin. Connects presence 1 in the front of the card to the presence pin that dictates what size card is installed. My risers have that provision.

I've tried every combination of slots, cards etc. I'm using the latest amd drivers for linux, 13.12
Those drivers work fine on every other rig I have, except the three of these boards.  R9-280x or 270x cards. None of them work in combinations other than slot from cpu side  2, 5, 6. I could get them to boot with cards in 1, 2.  or  2, 5  but only two cards. Plug another card into any slot, and it won't boot.

Pontiac, what drivers are you using?

Silly little noob, you really shouldn't be calling people out when you've no idea what you are talking about ;)


Rick,

I've used many different drivers, I've got 2 6x 280x rigs, 1 6x7950 rig, and now 4 6x 290 rigs actually working. For the 290's I used the 13.11 beta drivers that were just released on January 8th, the 280x uses an earlier 13.11 beta but I'm not sure exactly. It may have even been the r9 launch beta driver, because that was back in November...

So long as you are aware one of the 1x slots will disable it doesn't really matter what you use. You just can't use three and four at the same time. If you are using USB risers your setup is identical to mine, no external jumpers at all...

Which version of linux? I use saucy salamander for the 290's, but the 280x's and 7950's are still on raring since it seems to work. Raring will blackscreen after installing the latest beta driver with 290's, the install log mentions something about a kernel failure. Saucy does not have the same problem apparently. I never could get 13.12 to work at all, not with raring or saucy, though I just tried with 290's. They would all detect just fine, but only one would mine at a time, kinda like they were needing dummy plugs. I don't use any at all with 13.11...

I'm using 12.10 still, haven't bothered to change because it has been so stable on so many of my other rigs. The 13.12 drivers work on all of them as well.
I've got a system for doing installs, doesn't take me any time and it works 100%. I'd hate to start upgrading software that otherwise works, looking for new bugs to stop my mining!

Strange, I never tried anything older than raring. I'm kind of bummed I'll have to update my process a bit, but I'd bet it would work for older stuff as well still. Seems stable to me, the 290's have been at ~880kh/s for a few days now. 

Are you using an ivy bridge CPU?

Yep, celeron g1610.

I guess I can try a raring install with old drivers on one of them, see how it works. I've got an open box, moved all the cards to a setup that always works with 5.

Testing with USB risers is fun, I lay out an entire 6 rig machine in a cool looking pattern across my kitchen table. Never could do that with ribbons...

I also use g1610s, so our setups are identical except OS version!

Good luck!

I'll check back in a few hours after trying it. It would be so useful if someone could put together a BAMT version that included current drivers. Then I wouldn't have to do installs every time!

Some news ?

For me it's impossible to work with more than 4 GPU.
I have a Pentium G2020.

I have no idee why. I tried all the combinaison of the GPUs and... always OK with 4 but not with 5 or 6 !

Are you really asking for help, or are you just making a statement? If you are asking for help, you've got a strange way of doing it.

Are you using windows?

Sorry, it was for RickJames ;)

I'm using Debian with just the minimum, ATI Drivers + cgminer 3.7.2. I have 2Gb of RAM and a Pentium G2020. I'm using 4x 7950 and 2x 280x.

It always works with 4 GPU and never with 5... i tried almost everything.

No news, no time to try a reinstall right now. Too busy shipping out risers :P

You need an IvyBridge CPU... Celeron G1610 or G1620 eg.

I have the 1610s in a lot of computers. That's not the only thing needed to make this board work. I hope I can figure it out.

Oh I also use the 13.1 techpowerup catalyst... that's what did it.

The Pentium G2020 is also an Ivy Bridge CPU : http://ark.intel.com/compare/71072,71070

My bad, I have a celeron right before ivy bridge came out and thought that was it...

Well i reinstalled BAMT 1.3 for the 3rd time and it worked directly :D (with 5 GPUs !)

And 6 with the PCIE presence short ! I'm happy :D

These aren't working for me. I installed bamt 1.3, wouldn't take more than three cards. Installed xubuntu raring whatever, and the beta drivers, still no go. As soon as I plug in four cards, it won't boot up at all. Really doesn't seem to matter what I install, I can't get the mobo to do anything once that fourth card is plugged in. I'll do more testing later on, once I get these motherboards out of the racks. I have been snagging up the pro btc boards at retail cost from newegg every few days, finally have enough to get all the msi boards out. I'll probably leave the msi boards running a pair of 280x cards in pc cases, sit them in random corners around the building for heating :)

I don't know why this thread keeps getting bumped.

FYI, I did not use ivy bridge CPU. I used Sandy Bridge, and 6 video cards worked in them. Up to 8 radeon 5870/5970 GPU cores with Windows 7 + driver 11.12, and up to 6 radeon 7970 cores with Windows 8 + driver 12.6 for 7970.

The requirement for ivy bridge is a myth. I don't know where it surfaced, but it's a lie and unbased. Just because Ivy Bridge has PCI-E 3.0 lanes and Sandy Bridge has PCI-E 2.1 lanes doesn't mean anything. The CPU and graphics cards will negotiate to the highest common spec.

Why do you care if the thread gets bumped? It's about a motherboard, not about you. If you don't want to help or be a part of it, just ignore it. It's the only thread about these with any substance, and I'm trying to figure out why I cant get more than three cards to work in them.

Something I noticed on one rig...

This one is the first one to give me fits. Occasionally, when mining, it will jump straight to the ubuntu login screen. Sometimes it did it right when mining started, sometimes after a while. One card would often completely stop, just turn off (6 r9 290's)

Anyway, to make a long story short, I eventually traced the problem out to the angle I was putting on the USB riser cable in the middle x16 slot, as well as the 6th 1x slot. When I'd troubleshoot the problem, I'd often unplug and replug the things, which would fix the issue for a while. Then, I guess after some time, the riser would move. Restarting it in this condition was always different, sometimes it wouldn't boot, sometimes fans would spin up on boot. Other times it would be perfectly fine, except one card would not mine or start mining. I figured that out, and reworked the cables and it's going strong since.