Walter the win whale

Despite the origin, since the site's owner seems to have decided to refer to it as Mt. Gox, I'd say that was now the correct name (see big letter at the top of https://mtgox.com/).

A few more things that are probably worth a try.

Try running "export DISPLAY=:0" then rerun "aticonfig --odgc --adapter=all" and see whether you get the same results. Also can you double check you did the "sudo aticonfig --initial -f --adapter=all" then reboot step from the guide you followed. Also make sure there isn't a hardware crossfire bridge connected between the two cards.

Lspci is showing what I'd expect from 2 5970s, so I think they are connected and are as advertised, I wouldn't worry about that. The clocks being reported in the command output you posted are also the stock clock speeds you'd expect from a 5970. For some reason you're only seeing one card in the drivers though (or possibly one core from each card, it's difficult to tell). I'd try upgrading or downgrading the drivers and see if that makes any difference. If not it might still be worth testing the cards individually just in case one is broken in some way (but they are at least being recognized on the PCI bus so neither is obviously dead).

As far as I can tell from the command output you've pasted, only one of your 5970s is being detected. Unfortunately I don't really know why this is. My suggestions would be: -
1) Try a different Crossfire version/check drivers are properly installed
2) Check output of lspci to see whether the system can see both cards are physically installed. If not then check card seating/test individually in another machine.

I imagine your problem is that the 5970 has 2 cores, so you need to run two instances of your mining program (one per core). So if you have 2 5970s, then 4 in total. For poclbm you add the "--device=0" flag to your command line and change the number to accomplish this, so start one instance with --device=0, then an instance with --device=1 etc.

If that solves your issue please send the bitcoin to 12aw3CRAtKQoT2skZ9CF2ea2jVHFARqCep and it will be gratefully received!

Is this a Windows or a Linux system? If Windows check the event log and see if anything is logged when the problem occurs. If Linux check /var/log/messages and other log files in the same folder.

It could be related to some power saving feature/drivers. Test whether you get the same problem when you are not mining. If not then monitor the temperatures of the graphics cards, see what temperature they get to just before the problem occurs and whether it may be heat related. If that doesn't shed any light on it either then maybe try with just one card in case the problem is power related.

The card shouldn't be running that hot - I would guess the reason it's slowing down after a few minutes is that thermal protection is cutting in. I wouldn't recommend running a 5870 at more than 90C for extended periods (and obviously lower is better).

The fact that you're getting those temperatures at stock settings suggests a problem with your setup. Probably the most likely thing is no airflow. Work out where the air is going - make sure you have case fans that are working properly and are configured to take hot air away from the graphics card. Also check that the graphics card fans are working properly and that the heatsink is properly seated on the GPU.

If all else fails install the latest MSI afterburner (or equivalent) - if you decrease the stock voltage by about 10% (exact amount is trial and error, test for stability) and the memory clock down to about 600MHz the card should run a little cooler without reducing hashing performance. I suspect you have a hardware issue though and that any amount of tweaking won't make a vast difference, so look into that first.

Hi Nick (and all)! Glad you're happy with the site since it's the first thing I've done for Bitcoins, which seem like an interesting experiment. I'll probably do some more lurking around this forum in future.