Problem with 1X to 16X riser cables - looking for advice.

[sighle]

Hey all, I recently expanded my mining rigs to add another 4 cards to my setup. I was previously running 2 rigs with a total of 7 cards(4 and 3) and purchased 4 of the Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X OCs.

My MOBO is the Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 which is supposed to have no problem with 5 or 6 cards installed. I have the 4 290s on 16x to 16x risers and 2 7970s on 1x to 16x risers. I am installing ADM Catalyst 13.12 which seems to be the only version that works with the Tri-X OC and I have tried CGMiner ver. 3.5 and 3.7.2, same result. I am running Windows 7 x64.

My computer boots just fine, the drivers are the same for these and everything reads but I get an error on the 1x to 16x cards. (Error 43) in the device manager so I can't mine with them.

I have a 1300 Watt PSU and the 1x to 16x risers are powered. I can't figure out why these cards are being disabled by windows when the PC boots in.

I am expanding my system RAM this evening to 16 Gig because I know that it's lacking but I have a feeling that expanding the RAM isn't going to solve this problem. Anyone have any ideas?

[renodaret]

what version of windows?

[sighle]

As above, windows 7 64 Bit clean.

[renodaret]

A Code 43 error is generated when Device Manager stops a hardware device because the hardware reported to Windows that it's having some kind of unspecified problem.

This extremely generic message could mean there's a true hardware issue or it could simply mean that there's a driver problem that Windows isn't seeing as such but that the hardware is being affected by.

i would try a different driver version.

[sighle]

I've tried installing different drivers. According to the AMD site, Catalyst 13.12 is the "current" for both the HD 7970 and R9 290.

When I attempted to install older versions I was unable to mine on the R9 290s because either the driver version was incorrect or there was an installation problem.

I tried versions 13.9, 13.11 and 13.12 and couldn't get any of them to really work properly. I'm not sure that going back to 12.XX is an option because I don't know what is/isn't compatible with the 290s.

If windows is reading the card correctly in the device manager(Radeon HD 7970 instead of the generic "VGA Adapter" it reads before drivers are installed) I presume that means it's not necessarily a driver issue.

Is it possible that there's a problem with the 1x to 16x risers on this configuration?

[DigitalPackrat]

It's a driver issue. Stock AMD drivers with Win7 only support 4 cards. Look around for modified drivers or try a different OS.

[Wipeout2097]

It's a driver issue. Stock AMD drivers with Win7 only support 4 cards. Look around for modified drivers or try a different OS.

This.

[chowmeow]

It's a driver issue. Stock AMD drivers with Win7 only support 4 cards. Look around for modified drivers or try a different OS.

Yah you'll have to hack around in order to get the additional card(s) to work.  I came across a step-by-step guide written by onna those guys who was building rigs to sell that addresses this very issue but don't have the link handy.  Google should pull it up for ya.

[sighle]

Thanks guys. I'll look into that.

For the time being I have reduced my rigs to only 4 cards each. I may just buckle down and run a third rig to use all the cards I have available right now. All I would need is another MOBO and CPU, I have everything else. It would probably be simpler/more stable that way anyway but a little more up front cost.

Since I posted this message I have had problem after problem with these rigs. I've had 2 days of downtime now and this is getting ridiculous.

I can't seem to get anything to be stable. My rig with 4x Sapphire R9 270x USED to be rock solid, now GPU 3 goes SICK after only a couple minutes. I'm running CG watcher so it restarts the mining process then after about 4 restarts it will die completely, attempt to restart the rig and then everything hangs.

My rig with the 4x Sapphire R9 290s is even worse. I have tried every compatible driver from AMD and I have been unable to get anything to be stable. I would list the problems but I don't have that much time. My biggest concern right now is that my BIOS has reported as corrupted 3 times now and rebuilt itself.

Do you think there's a problem with the AMD drivers and the version of CGminer I'm using? I know that my drivers are newer than my miner so maybe something was changed that cgminer can't handle?

Where can I get older drivers for the R9 290s?

[phaed]

I went through the same mission with that motherboard.  After weeks of hairpulling I came across the solution.  You need to do this to the two slots marked PCIEX8.  

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=102547.0

Hope I was able to help

[sighle]

I went through the same mission with that motherboard.  After weeks of hairpulling I came across the solution.  You need to do this to the two slots marked PCIEX8. 

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=102547.0

Hope I was able to help

I haven't had any problems with my GPUs being detected. They're always there in the device manager. I think this solution is for when a MoBo isn't seeing a GPU at all, isn't it?

[phaed]

Hmm, true.  Two of my cards weren't showing up at all.  Once I did this they did show up but only one was working under windows, the other always had an error in Device Manager.  I did tests swapping out extender cables and moving cards in different places, and always when I had 6 on, only 5 would work.  I could remove any one of the 6 cards and the other 5 always worked so I concluded that it wasn't a hardware error.  Switching to Linux was the only way I was able to get that 6th card to work.  

This is with:

GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD7
6 x GIGABYTE R9 270X OC