While Mining CPU @ 100%

[PhilAd]

Hi,

i got a problem. My CPU usage climbs up to 100% when i am starting Mining. That leads to a lower GPU Clock which leads to a lower Hash Rate. The Hashrate ist getting lower when i start the workers of all three ATI Cards. I have the same issue on linux and windows. Usually i have 330MH/s on every card ... now it is 600MH/s for three of them ... thats for too low.

Config:

3x ATI Radeon 5850
AMD Sempron 140 @ AMD Athlon X2 4400e

AMD Catalyst 11.6
AMD APP SDK 2.4

Tried on Windows 7 and Linux. Both times with phoenix 1.48 and i tried phatk and poclbm with usual settings.
The CPU Rate should be at around 1% ... i also tried different affinitys ... all mining processes on CPU1 for example ... or CPU0 or on both and on different ... How can i fix that? I didn't have that problem when i tried it on my desktop ... very weird ...


greets
PhilAd

[fascistmuffin]

I think one of your workers is configured wrong or a graphics card isn't registering with the system. Maybe one of your cards isn't being recognized by the program, so slot [2] is being replaced by the processor. Try using GUIminer to test it out, since it's nice interface with hardware-selection drop down list will show what hardware is being found.

[Wuked]

with 3 x 5850s i get pretty heavy usage on a quad core, about 50% for each core!

[PhilAd]

I think one of your workers is configured wrong or a graphics card isn't registering with the system. Maybe one of your cards isn't being recognized by the program, so slot [2] is being replaced by the processor. Try using GUIminer to test it out, since it's nice interface with hardware-selection drop down list will show what hardware is being found.

i checked that ... i am using cypress 0-0 ; 0-1 ; 0-2
cpu is not in use

it already has high cpu usage when i just use one gpu ... i dunno why ... when i tested mining on my usual computer with 2x 5850 i had around 1% cpu usage max.

[compcentral]

You sure you're not doing CPU mining as well?  If so, 100% CPU is normal with CPU mining.

[nofear1999]

Make sure you don't have your devices configured wrong and also make sure you're using a GPU miner.

[PhilAd]

no ... i am not using my cpu for mining for sure ...
i tried ubuntu linux one more time ... this time i didnt use catalyst 11.6 ... now i used 11.5 ... cpu is now in idle ... but now i have the problem that my 5850's dont run at full speed ... they use a slower 3d mode with 550MHz instead of my set 875MHz ... aticonfig also show me that 875mhz is a valid peak clock. How can i force them to go at full speed?

[nofear1999]

Do you have flags set?

[zipxavier]

what are your settings for phoenix?

[adamwashere06]

High CPU usage is unfortunately pretty common it seems. Running 2 cards it does about 50% usage on my i5 2500k. You can set flags to limit it (sorry I don't know the flags for it ) but you may not want to seeing as it can hamper your mining a bit. I don't know the specifics but I've seen talk of it.

[hmblm1245]

Some have launched a new instance of the miner per gpu. Sounds silly but this is a common issue that 11.6 amd drivers and 11.7 have (lets hope they get it right with 11.. So for example i launch guiminer for each miner/worker. if you have 3 5850s thats 3 guiminer.exe processes running with the infinity set to that first core. It has worked for some and myself for an older rig.

[PhilAd]

i used this tut a while ago:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=9239.0

my cpu load wa around 1% ... now i did update the driver from 11.5 to 11.7 and the app sdk from 2.4 to 2.5 and my cpu load of 100% is back .. now my multi gpu system has problems to hold the 330MH/s on all cards because the cpu seems to be too weak ... a fallback didnt fix it ... running 11.5 and app sdk 2.4 again didnt fix the problem ... im guess i have to try if a complete reinstall would fix that problem again ...
but it is surely a driver problem and removing 2 cards from the system is giving me a cpu usage of 1% on one card. maybe a multi gpu opencl bug in the amd/ati driver ...

greets

philad

[PhilAd]

Sorry for double post ... i forgot to restart my mining rig after downgrading to cat 11.5 again ...
now the cpu load is back to 1% using 3 gpus .. but im still using app sdk 2.5 which brings no more performance ^^ so you can stick to 2.4 ... but 11.5 runs without problems ... 11.7 runs with 100% cpu usage ^^
hope that helps ... the tutorial posted one post before is really great ...

[Roach III]

My CPU usage was about 50% on 11.5 drivers. After I upgraded to 11.7, it's now 100% on core 3. But it has not hampered my hash rate any.

[Unclegogi]

It's a bug.
You can hit it with some combos of driver versions and graphic cards connected.
Each mining process (f.e. phoenix.exe) loads 1 core. The best you can do - set all phoenix.exe processes to core #0 and you will get 50% CPU load, and you will not loose any performance in MHash/s this way.
I have no 100% cpu usage on my mining PC with 4 cards with 11.7 beta driver.
Also no 100% cpu usage on another mining PC with 3 cards with 11.6 or 11.7 beta driver, but i had 100% cpu usage on this PC with official 11.7 and beta 11.8 drivers.
Also I have seen 100% CPU usage with 2 cards connected with any driver version.