How to mine using 7970 or 7950 on Win XP?

[ripple]

Can anyone recommend the best way to mine using an AMD Readon 7970 or 7950 graphics card on a windows XP 32-bit operating system?

What mining software would be recommended for this setup to work?

For example 50Miner gives an error message "openCL for AMD with windows XP is not supported", while Guiminer gives an error message "if you want to mine on ATI graphics cards, you may need to install the ATI stream SDK, or your GPU may not support OpenCL".

I understand that an Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) SDK With OpenCL 1.2 Support is available from AMD, however the present v2.8 SDK, and V2.5 to v2.7 SDKs on the archive page, on the AMD website are not available for Windows XP operating system.

Unfortunately for various reasons the user of a computer with XP installed does not wish to change the operating system.

Is there a workaround to mine using this combination?  

Any help appreciated.

[jambaman42]

Your best bet would be to partition your hard drive and dual boot linux if you don't want to upgrade. Windows XP is too old and dated for mining.

[ripple]

Thanks jambaman42 for your suggestion to use Linux.  I'm sure Linux is an admirable operating system for mining, however as I said the user of a computer with XP installed does not wish to change the operating system on his computer.

I know that Nvidia graphics cards work fine mining on Windows XP, so it's a just matter of finding the right software for the Raedon cards, for example a combination of an SDK & .Net Framework, and hopefully someone on the forum reading this has already found the solution to using the Raedon 7970 amd 7950 cards on the Win XP operating system.

[crazyates]

Just go to the amd website, and download the newest drivers for XP. Actually, the newest (13.4) just came out today, so idk how stable they are. You might want to try 13.1 first, and see how those go.

Those drivers will include an OpenCL runtime, which is really what you need to mine. You don't need to install the SDKs anymore.

After you've got some drivers, I'd recommend CGMiner for your mining software.

[ripple]

The latest AMD v13.4 Catalyst Display Driver for Win XP from AMD do not include OpenCL support.

Unlike the v13.4 AMD Catalyst drivers for Vista and Win 7 and Win 8 there is no integrated APP SDK.

As far as I can figure out the last drivers containing OpenCL support for Win XP was Catalyst display driver v11.4, which contained AMD APP SDK v2.4.  However this driver supports the AMD Radeon HD 6900 series of products, but the 7700 7800 7900 series were not supported, as this version predated this 7900 series.

The APP SDKs after v2.4, i.e. v2.5 to v2.8 which work with 7700 7800 7900 series cards only support Vista and Win 7 and Win 8, but not Win XP.

After installation of the v2.4 APP SDK CGMiner gives error "clDevicesNum returned error, no GPUs usable, No devices detected!".

If I can find the solution I can marry up some spare 7950 and 7970 cards with a series of underutilized workstations to mine, but the institution allowing this prefers only the XP operating system on their spare workstations.

So the question remains which is:  How to get the 7970 and 7950 cards working with OpenCL under Win XP?

[Hektek]

I suggest to use an USB-Drive with a Linux Distribution.

[Zanatos666]

I think the answer here is, you arent going to be able to do it.  The OS with that card isnt going to work.  Either change the OS, or downgrade the cards, but there really isnt going to be a solution to get 79xx cards mining on an XP system, so might as well quit banging your head against the wall trying to.

[ripple]

Hektek, thanks, that's not a bad suggestion to run Linux from a USB drive. I have found compatible drivers for Linux and these Raedon cards. This should minimize interference with the installed XP operating systems.

[Zanatos666]

Hektek, thanks, that's not a bad suggestion to run Linux from a USB drive. I have found compatible drivers for Linux and these Raedon cards. This should minimize interference with the installed XP operating systems.

Yes that works obviously, but that means that every time your user needs to use XP, you have to stop mining.  As long as you are okay with this, then thats a good solution as its simple and virtually free.

[Equality]

actually there are modded drivers which support the 7970 and windows xp with opencl. APP SDK v2.6 actually works with windows xp. AMD just disabled it in versions of catalyst for windows xp after 12.1 to b dicks.

[Rakessh]

actually there are modded drivers which support the 7970 and windows xp with opencl. APP SDK v2.6 actually works with windows xp. AMD just disabled it in versions of catalyst for windows xp after 12.1 to b dicks.

Link to said modded drivers?

[HugPuddle]

actually there are modded drivers which support the 7970 and windows xp with opencl. APP SDK v2.6 actually works with windows xp. AMD just disabled it in versions of catalyst for windows xp after 12.1 to b dicks.

Link to said modded drivers?

Yes please.

The more mining on more machines the stronger the networks.