890FXA-GD70 + 4x 6870 + windows7 64x

[jwzguy]

= fail.

Has anyone had luck running a similar setup?

MSI 890FXA-GD70, AMD Phenom II 1090T 6core
4x XFX 6870 using extender cables on cards 2 & 4.

I hooked each card to a monitor, (dummy plug thing wasn't working even with just 2 cards.) First try, I didn't use any crossfire bridges. All 4 displays worked, but Guiminer would not start (just died instantly.) MSI Afterburner showed: "failed to initialize the display driver wrapper" error.

Rebooted with crossfire bridge on card 1+2 and monitors for 1,3,4. (These cards only have 1 Xfire port)
MSI Afterburner gave the same error.

Guiminer would start, but my only temp/fan monitoring tool that would run is GPU Caps, which only shows the temp for "main" GPU. That jumped to 88C after less than a minute so needless to say, I shut down. Not to mention, I was only getting 880Mhash. I have been using this rig with 3x 6870's and getting 865M with 875/325 OC. So all this nonsense was certainly not worth 15Mhash extra.

Any suggestions?

[1715634075]

1715634075

[1715634075]

1715634075

[sebdude420]

try linuxcoin. its been a big help for me. and i am a total newb when it comes to linux.

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=7374.380

[nikkuchan]

I have a similar setup as you:

Hardware:
Asus P8P67 WS Revolution
Intel Pentium G620
Corsair AX1200 PSU
4x XFX 6870 (2x ZDFC and 2x ZDBC) -- no crossfire bridge
4z DVI homemade dummy plugs

Software/OS:
GUIMiner-20110614
AMD CCC 11.6 Drivers
Windows 7 Pro 32-Bit
GPU-Z v0.5.3

Are you using the latest AMD drivers, GUIMiner, and GPU-Z?

In the beginning I had problems where all 4x 6870's weren't able to run at 100%. When I ran it 4 at the same time, the hash rate would fluctuated between 50-150Mhash/s on all fours. Normally a 6870 OC'ed, I would get somewhere around 270-275Mhash/s (960/1175/1175v). Did some careful research and found out the problem and it was due to temperature being too high (90 degrees) which lowered the performance. Since you have those extenders, it shouldn't actually be a problem for you (maybe). I had to buy an extra fan and had it actually sit on top of the graphics card to lower it down to somewhere around 70-80 degrees. Temps for the graphics card shouldn't going higher than 85-87 degrees, IMO. If so, it's not good for the card.

As for the dummy plugs, I'm actually using this:

http://www.overclock.net/overclock-net-folding-home-team/366646-how-use-multiple-gpu2-clients-using.html

You can buy the DVI-to-VGA adapters for less than $2 from Monoprice.com. Resistors got them from Fry's for 99cents for a pack of 6 resistors.

Hopefully, this helps solve your problem

[CydeWeys]

I'm using a GIGABYTE GA-890FXA-UD5 with 4x5830 and I had a fairly fun time getting it to work.  I finally managed, though, and it's running correctly with two cards plugged directly into the mobo and two on x1-to-x16 adapter riser cables (one plugged into an x1 slot on the mobo, another into an x16 slot).  The key break-through I finally had was swapping around the card configurations until all four could be seen in lspci, then running aticonig --initial --adapter=all -f one or two times with intervening reboots.  Eventually all four cards could be seen.

Of course this is in Linux (Linuxcoin booting off a USB drive with persistence, specifically), so I don't know how relevant it is to you in Windows.

[jwzguy]

I have an update.

First of all, (and this may be a clue) I tried linuxcoin. With 3 cards it will run, but AMDOverdriveCtrl can't underclock the memory on my 6870's.

With 4 cards, linuxcoin throws an error "can't start x server" at startup. Not sure why.

In windows, I installed 11.7 preview drivers, and after that, I could mine with 3 of the 4 cards. Not only that, but the 100% CPU usage bug went away. My CPU usage is 1% per poclbm process.

But the 4th card hangs no matter what I do. And it doesn't matter which 3 cards I run. Any 3 will run, but whatever I start 4th hangs and poclbm dies.

If you try to start GPUz wtih 3 cards mining in this configuration, it hangs. Stopping one allows it to start.

If I remove one card from the system, I can run with 3 instances of GPUz and 3 cards mining. Doesn't seem to be a problem. So with the 4th card installed, this seems like some wierd shared resource problem.

I have 1000w OCZ single rail PSU and currently it only uses 600w with 3 cards OC'd and mining. So I don't think this is the problem.

I guess it could just be the 11.7 drivers. But they were running fine with 3 cards only. You can boot remotely without monitors hooked up, as well.

Edit: 11.7 drivers were the problem. 11.6 = 4 cards running. Back to swapping monitor cables, CPU usage 100% again.