Newbie question.

[alez80]

Hi there!

I'd like to start mining with my hardware, but I don't know if this is possible.

I've one ASUS HD5870 and one Sapphire HD5970 and I don't know if can I use these cards in the same system. Which operating system do you recommend?


Thanks for reading! :-)

[lassdas]

Yes, you can use those cards in the same system.

Which OS to recommend depends on what else you want todo,
if it's a dedicated mining-system, i'd recommend BAMT, quick and easy install, fire and forget.

[alez80]

Thanks for answer.

I'm not a Linux guy at all! There is a guide that explain BAMT to a really newby in Linux/mining? :-)

[lassdas]

No need to be a Linux-Guru,
just write the image to an USB-Key, plug it into your mining-rig, configure bamt and your pool(s) on the first startup and that's about it, there's not much else todo.

All info can be found on the BAMT-website, step-by-step setup on the download-page, examples of the bamt.conf and pools.conf on the wiki,
pretty much self-explanatory.

[alez80]

I tried to read something from the links that you sent me, but I don't understand almost nothing! Win 7 doesn't work well for mining?

[lassdas]

Sure, Win7 will work too,
it's way more complicated to set up though, you'll need to get some dummy-plugs, drivers, sdk and of course mining-software all by yourself.
BAMT on the other hand is ready to use out of the box, plug and play (and doesn't need a HDD).

[alez80]

I have already tried to mine with WinXP(SP3), but I had some problems that I don't know if they were dependent from software or hardware. I mined very well with a HD5870 (about 470Mhash/sec) and GUIminer (OpenCL miner) (OC 1050MHz... this card is equipped with Accelero XTREME ---> 52°C at 75% fan speed :-) very good!).

Now I've problem with my HD5970. Moreover, seems that only one of two GPUs on this card, works with this configuration... every time that I change videocard on my system, I need to reinstall Catalyst & SDK... what a mess!

Configuration Info for HD 5870: Catalyst 10.7 + SDK 2.1
Configuration Info for HD 5970: Catalyst 11.2 + SDK 2.2

Always with GUIMiner & OpenCL miner


From SDK version 2.3, WinXP is not longer supported...

[alez80]

...you'll need to get some dummy-plugs...

What are dummy plugs? What is their function?

[lassdas]

When you've setup the 5970, the 5870 should also just run fine with it, i had a 5970 + 5850 running fine side by side on WinXP.
You just need either a dummy-plug, or a monitor connected to both cards (at least on bootup).

I do remember that i also had some problems at first with only one of the 5970-cores  running on Windows, not sure what i did to solve that though, it's been a while ago and all my GPUs are now on BAMT.
Maybe someone else actually using Windows for mining can help you with that.

[alez80]

@ lassdas

This evening I would like to try BAMT... so I hope to solve all problems but I think it will be a hard work to do... I can't understand "english technical language" very well...  In the meantime, I would like to thank you very much for the time you've spent for me!

A lot of useful informations!

Greetings from Italy and happy mining!

[vphen]

No problems.
guiminer is good for u.