[1 BTC BOUNTY CLAIMED!] Get 6 radeon 7970 installing and mining in Windows

[philips]

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I have a couple problems with this solution though. 1: I have never touched linux before. 2: There are no solutions that I'm aware of that allow you to significantly underclock RAM and significantly undervolt the GPU core.

Flashing the BIOS will do. I have them at 150 Mhz RAM and 1.09V.
Not an optimal solution though if you want to keep switching between scrypt and sha-256.

[GenTarkin]

for the hell of it try putting xfire bridge on a few of the cards...see if the driver reacts differently when it sees 2 or more can be linked together ...

[WuNinjaTmp]

I've had a similar problem with my four 7950's, and it was because one video card wasn't getting enough power from molex (it was being split too many times).  Do you have a sufficient PSU?  Are some of your risers powered?

[MashRinx]

Possible, but numerous people have also told me they have 6 7970 on linux [...]

Windows MIGHT be the problem then ^^

If you want to try Linux : BAMT works almost right out of the box ... i believe you just need a few command line and how to edit a file ...

The version of BAMT that you can download and just edit the config files has an older version of CGMiner installed that does not have stratum support, so you would have to mine on a getwork pool, which isn't suggested anymore.  You would need to go through the steps of downloading, compiling and installing CGMiner and possibly the same for AMD Drivers too.

I know there are some decent instructions on how to do this but even with those it was time-consuming...at least for me.

[brucemangy]

The version of BAMT that you can download and just edit the config files has an older version of CGMiner installed that does not have stratum support, so you would have to mine on a getwork pool, which isn't suggested anymore.  You would need to go through the steps of downloading, compiling and installing CGMiner and possibly the same for AMD Drivers too.

I know there are some decent instructions on how to do this but even with those it was time-consuming...at least for me.

Good point. but a stratum proxy would do the trick

[ssateneth]

Please stop asking me to telling me to use a stronger power supply. According to kill-a-watt, I'm only using about 250 watts while idling while connected to a rosewill 1300 watt, of which I have abused to about a 1450 watt AC power draw without problems. The problem lies in getting the damn things to be fully installed and enabled. Once I get that far, THEN I'll worry about power. In the meantime, and because I have a headache dealing with this problem, I have opted to using a radeon 5970 in place of the 6th 7970. My kill-a-watt shows 1170 watts when all 7 GPU cores are mining at 1 volt, which approx 3.7 ghash. I will look around for dummy plugs, but I honestly do not believe that will solve the problem.

A BIOS flash and linux might be the best solution yet, but it falls outside the original parameters of the bounty in that it no longer uses Windows. I would also need my hands held in both BIOS Flashing as RBE does not support 7000 series and I've never touched Linux before so would need step by step instructions there too.

I know this cost money but I would try 3 more things

1) Put dummy plugs on all the cards.. Yes people say the newest drivers doesn't need it.. Still would do it to find out.
2) Use 1x to 16x powered risers on all of the cards
3) Cross your fingers.

Pm me if it works.

Powered risers and using 1x > 16x will not fix it. I am not drawing enough power to cause installation problems WHILE IDLING, and electrically 1x > 1x is the same as 1x > 16x. I may or may not try dummy plugs but I do not believe that will fix it either. Last time I needed dummy plugs, driver installed fine and device manager had no problems. It was a matter of allowing OpenCL to use the GPU and the driver wouldn't allow it unless it was displaying something.

[brucemangy]

if i remember well, core voltage, core speed and memory speed can be changed with atitweak
i have been using BAMT for a few month with a 4x5870 mining rig.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=25750.0

linux is nice if you are not allergic to command line :>

[fnord123]

What CPU are you using?  Make sure you have one that supports PCIe v.3.  The IVB Core I3 CPUs do not - the IVB Core I7 CPUs do.

[notaek]

Have you disabled ULPS?  It is usually automatically enabled, and it interfered with me being able to use some of my cards in my system.  Although that was with different series of cards in one rig.

[rbbrdckybk]

I have never been able to get more than 4 GPUs working in windows.

However, if you have a USB stick and about an hour of time, I urge you to just give linux a try. This guide is virtually idiot-proof:

http://www.cryptobadger.com/2013/04/build-a-litecoin-mining-rig-linux/

You can install to a USB stick and play around without harming your existing windows installation. Unless you have some reason that you're absolutely tied to windows, this really seems like a better path.

[biged214]

Which motherboard are you using? Have you checked the BIOS and made sure that it's up to date with the latest version? Sometimes the BIOS can be the issue since the error you are receiving is so generic and you've looked/tried at many other things I would recommend updating the BIOS is there is one available. 

[philips]

if i remember well, core voltage, core speed and memory speed can be changed with atitweak
i have been using BAMT for a few month with a 4x5870 mining rig.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=25750.0

linux is nice if you are not allergic to command line :>

True for 5xxx cards but only partialy true for 6xxx cards and up.
Voltage can no longer be altered, while for the memory clocks you cannot go lower than 125(6xxx) or 150(7xxx) Mhz below core clocks.

[ssateneth]

I have gotten a PM from a member that has a very thorough guide to getting 6 7970 gpu installed and shows a screenshot of all 6 7900 series cards fully installed in device manager. I will get back to this thread later after I try it out.

[philips]

I have gotten a PM from a member that has a very thorough guide to getting 6 7970 gpu installed and shows a screenshot of all 6 7900 series cards fully installed in device manager. I will get back to this thread later after I try it out.

That would be great, best solution for a Windows user is a Windows solution
I was thinking about jjiimm_64 or Yochdog, they have experience with 7970 cards in Windows.

[ssateneth]

Preliminary testing shows that all 6 of my 7970 are installed in device manager with no errors, however OpenCL continues to see 5 devices. We're halfway there!

[lewlzminer]

so how did you do it?

[ssateneth]

Unfortunately, thats as far as I got. I ran into another dead end. I'll just paste the PM I got.

Hi Ssateneth,

You might want to check this if you have not already. They set up 6 Video cards on Windows 7.
https://50btc.com/article/bitcoin_hardware_mining
However, you will notice that at the time of the article, they were not able to run CGminer stable on Windows 7.
But if you have a similar motherboard and try some of the combination they posted, you might be able to get it to work.
You'll notice the mention: "Sometimes one of videocard is determined incorrectly (43 code). This problem can be solved by deleting it from the device manager and installing again."

I'm gearing up to test 6 video cards on Windows myself. Starting the testing this week end. So I'll let you know what I find out.
Let me know if this thread was of any help.

Thank you,

Matt

No go. Although the yellow ! disappears as if the video card installed good, I still only see 5 GPUs in cgminer, bfgminer, diablominer, gpu caps viewer, and opencl. in msi afterburner, it shows 6 gpus but there are missing sensors and unable to change clocks. His mining screenshots shows linux too, which isnt an option for me as I need to be able to undervolt and underclock RAM, both of which linux cant do.

(Basically, I just used dummy plugs on all the gpus and crossfire bridge on first 3 cards. Not sure where to go now)

[philips]

His mining screenshots shows linux too, which isnt an option for me as I need to be able to undervolt and underclock RAM, both of which linux cant do.

I can give you a BIOS for 7970 cards, already memory underclocked (150 Mhz) and undervolted (1.09V) and go to the dark side.
You will still need to flash the BIOS yourself.

[GenTarkin]

ha! that article points to xfire bridges too =P I wasnt too far off then =)
Did ya give those a shot?

[dtmcnamara]

If you lived in GA Id be willing to come over and tweak around with you on this. Got tons of powered risers, X58 boards/cpus, and other stuff sitting around that we could test out. Good luck

EDIT:

After doing com research on your motherboard/CPU setup I think I may have figured out what is going on. The board you have is using a mix between PCI-E 3.0 and 2.0. Now in order to get full use of all these ports you generally need a IvyBridge 22nm CPU, which the G530 is not. MSI is not putting anything about this on their site but if you go over to the Gigabyte site they make sure to put this in their specs:

http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4139#sp


My suggestion would be to find someone with an IvyBridge CPU and test this out. This is just a theory, but I know with my Z77 board and my 2700K that no matter what I have tried I cannot get all my PCIe slots to work. Let me know if this fixes the problem