OFFICIAL CGMINER mining software thread for linux/win/osx/mips/arm/r-pi 4.11.1

[Coiner505]

Thanks for cgminer. It's an awesome tool. That's some pretty weird programming, for scrypt, with some weird magic sweet spot ratio between GPU clock and memory clock speed. I can't even imagine what the heck you're doing. But it works!

You say to make sure you have enough system RAM, more than your combined GPU RAM. I also can't make any sense of that. In Linux (Ubuntu-64bit), my cgminer process reserves just over 1GB VIRT memory, and only uses 60-70MB resident. I have 4GB system RAM, and "top" claims 2.5GB free. Yet my two GPUs add up to 6 GB of GDDR5. Everything seems to work well, but I can't hit some of the peaks I read about, like 700 KH/sec on a 7970 w/3GB.

I tried doubling my system RAM from 4GB to 8GB and absolutely nothing changed.

Any suggestions or comments?

[-ck]

Thanks for cgminer. It's an awesome tool. That's some pretty weird programming, for scrypt, with some weird magic sweet spot ratio between GPU clock and memory clock speed. I can't even imagine what the heck you're doing. But it works!

You say to make sure you have enough system RAM, more than your combined GPU RAM. I also can't make any sense of that. In Linux (Ubuntu-64bit), my cgminer process reserves just over 1GB VIRT memory, and only uses 60-70MB resident. I have 4GB system RAM, and "top" claims 2.5GB free. Yet my two GPUs add up to 6 GB of GDDR5. Everything seems to work well, but I can't hit some of the peaks I read about, like 700 KH/sec on a 7970 w/3GB.

I tried doubling my system RAM from 4GB to 8GB and absolutely nothing changed.

Any suggestions or comments?

Not really, there is some magic going on that you're not aware of. When GPUs talk to the operating system, they use pinned memory if possible to transfer information from GPU to system, even if cgminer itself uses hardly anything (I designed it to be very lean internally). There is no doubt that having enough ram matters, but what that equation is, no one has been able to accurately figure out. I think you just need more system RAM than the largest GPU RAM. You probably don't need more system RAM than the total GPU RAM.

[Xian01]

I have a 7950 in one of my rigs that is a bit "wonky", and every other week or so, it just stops hashing and appears as DEAD in CGMiner.

If I quit and restart the miner (q, up-arrow, enter), up comes the wonky card again for at least another week with no problems.

Thought it might be worth reporting as a curiosity.

[klotzenhotz]

Short question: Is it possible to mine with several different fpgas at the same time? For instance a ztex board plus a few of these: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=195004.msg2025318#msg2025318

Works that "out of the box" (start cgminer and that's it) or would that be somehow tricky?

Yes - I do already.
 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=99497.msg2129102#msg2129102
and
 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=99497.msg2137231#msg2137231

However at the moment it also requires options of --icarus-options 115200:1:1 --icarus-timing 2.9761=100

I'm now updating the code to automatically detect all Icarus devices (the AMU - AsicminerUSB is an Icarus device) and it will have similar to those options by default for the AMU and default options for Lancelot and Cairnsmore1 also

Thank you. So besides of these options, the icarus usb devices plus a ztex board would be automatically recognized and worked on? That'd be great.

[mdude77]

I have a 7950 in one of my rigs that is a bit "wonky", and every other week or so, it just stops hashing and appears as DEAD in CGMiner.

If I quit and restart the miner (q, up-arrow, enter), up comes the wonky card again for at least another week with no problems.

Thought it might be worth reporting as a curiosity.

I have the same issue.  I remember reading the AMD drivers go kaput after so many days of continually use. 

M

[-ck]

I have a 7950 in one of my rigs that is a bit "wonky", and every other week or so, it just stops hashing and appears as DEAD in CGMiner.

If I quit and restart the miner (q, up-arrow, enter), up comes the wonky card again for at least another week with no problems.

Thought it might be worth reporting as a curiosity.

I have the same issue.  I remember reading the AMD drivers go kaput after so many days of continually use. 

M

Windows?

[mdude77]

I have a 7950 in one of my rigs that is a bit "wonky", and every other week or so, it just stops hashing and appears as DEAD in CGMiner.

If I quit and restart the miner (q, up-arrow, enter), up comes the wonky card again for at least another week with no problems.

Thought it might be worth reporting as a curiosity.

I have the same issue.  I remember reading the AMD drivers go kaput after so many days of continually use. 

M

Windows?

Mine is.  Op didn't say.

M

[-ck]

I have a 7950 in one of my rigs that is a bit "wonky", and every other week or so, it just stops hashing and appears as DEAD in CGMiner.

If I quit and restart the miner (q, up-arrow, enter), up comes the wonky card again for at least another week with no problems.

Thought it might be worth reporting as a curiosity.

I have the same issue.  I remember reading the AMD drivers go kaput after so many days of continually use. 

Windows?

Mine is.  Op didn't say.

The question was mostly rhetorical. Windows does the driver reset dance sometimes and I have a small related entry in the FAQ about it. I've had linux mining on the same cgminer instance for 6 months once. I'm led to believe that's impossible on windows.

[peonminer]

I am having an issue with CGMiner. I've been mining just fine with 2 X 7950s @ around 1.1MH/s for BTB. I recently received risers in the mail -1x to 16x. I have not received my 16x to 16x risers yet, so I am only running 3 GPUs. All Gigabyte 7950s. All new. Haven't had any problems with them except some SICK/DEAD statuses if I let them run too hot for too long. I've realized impatience waiting for all the risers is not worth burning up $1000 worth of GPUs so I am keeping them under clocked for the moment.

I use Team Viewer to monitor the rig while I am away from my home. It usually works flawlessly. The android app is nowhere short of amazing.

I was running Catalyst 13.4 / APP SDK 2.8 / CGMiner 3.1.0. I had been mining for 5 days straight with minimal problems. My only problem was cooling. I have since redesigned my Crate Rig to be more efficient for cooling. I will have to wait until I can put all 4 X 7950s on risers though until I can run at full force and at a manageable temperature.

Now, my CGMiner issue.

With my original drivers stated above, I was having my KH/s range with a -20% +20% range. I closed out of CGMiner to give the rig a moment to rest(again, not trying to burn out my hardware). When I started CGMiner back up, I would get different errors every time. 'Could not connect to pool', 'pool 0 not providing work fast enough' 'Could not connect, make sure the URL is correct' and every other error I know about that deals with trouble connecting. The pool would connect rarely with a slow to nothing connection. I then began getting multiple HW errors for each card. After a couple of minutes the rig was submitting shares. This didn't last long as the cards were heating up so I wanted to fix the connection and HW errors for good.

 I was having issues with my ISP so I tethered my Nexus 4 with non throttled HPSA+, but the connection errors are still being shown. Is there something I am missing? Does the currency you intend to mine, have to have the corresponding wallet installed to the PC with the block chain fully caught up? I didn't think so because my BTB wallet was having trouble syncing with a time error. I was still able to mine BTB through binarycoins.eu . I also emailed support for binarycoins.eu and he said that his pool was submitting work and others had no problem connecting. I also tried notroll.in for LTC just to see if it was a computer error or remote server error. All help and suggestions are highly appreciated.

I am running Catalyst 12.8 / APP SDK 2.7 / While trying CGMiner 2.8.0, 2.8.2, 3.1.0, and 3.1.1. Also, last night I installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 64x just to see if a Windows update caused the error. Before trying a fresh install, I tried rolling the system restore back and installing all of the above (recommended for best performance) drivers.

These drivers were in a last ditch effort to fix my pool connection issue. They actually blew me away with the capability of the cards. With the one card mounted to the outter PCI-E slot and the one on a 1X to 16X riser mounted to the top of the crate, both run cool. The main slot does not. In a short time of testing even though the pools were not connecting, the cards would start hashing. I was able to push STEADY 700+KH/s for each RADEON 7950!! I thought these cards were only capable of 630KH/s max for litecoin based coins! I can't wait to get this connectivity issue fixed and have my rig running a solid 3KH/s !!  

If you guys need to know the rest of my HW:

Seasonic Gold 80+ 1250W Modular
Corsair 4GB DDR 3 1666MHZ
ASUS M5A97 R2.0
500 GB Laptop Drive (soon to be replaced by a 60GB SSD OCZ)
Sempron 145 O/C'd to 3.6 GHz stable. MOBO has built in auto O/C features.
MICRO USB EDIMAX WIFI N

StartMining.bat is pretty generic
cgminer --scrypt -o http://binarycoins.eu:9333/ -u MyMiner.1 -p x
with a few settings added(cant connect to PC at the moment as my ISP COMCAST has their heads up their arses. But I do know the settings I have can hash just fine at good and consistent rates, my main issue is the pool connectivity.

If I missed any details, let me know and I can provide them.

[kano]

Scrypt mining uses way more bandwidth than BTC mining.
Thus if you are reducing your PCI-e bandwidth dramatically (16x to 1x) then expect a performance drop or related problems.
Scrypt mining is affect by many, things including RAM, GPU RAM and Motherboard (which includes PCI-e)
- which is why you can't expect to be able to copy someone else's config and expect to get the same results.

[Xian01]

The question was mostly rhetorical. Windows does the driver reset dance sometimes and I have a small related entry in the FAQ about it. I've had linux mining on the same cgminer instance for 6 months once. I'm led to believe that's impossible on windows.

 Yes, running Windows 7. What's curious is the 7970 in the first slot keeps chugging right along while the 7950 in the second slot sits DEAD.

[peonminer]

Scrypt mining uses way more bandwidth than BTC mining.
Thus if you are reducing your PCI-e bandwidth dramatically (16x to 1x) then expect a performance drop or related problems.
Scrypt mining is affect by many, things including RAM, GPU RAM and Motherboard (which includes PCI-e)
- which is why you can't expect to be able to copy someone else's config and expect to get the same results.

Is this in response to my pool connection errors? The thing is, I was having the pool connection errors before I added one more card and before I tried new drivers. The errors started with the exact same settings I had been using for almost a week with no problems at all. All of the changing drivers, etc. was after many failed attempts to communicate with the pool correctly. The HW errors, when the pool actually connects, only lasts the first minute or two, be fore all three cards are runing 500KH/s to 700KH/s depending.

[infamousdutch]

Latest build is throwing an exception on start up. 
Running on WinXP.
Mining with BFL BitForce FPGA Singles (not SC)

I have a cmd file that fires cgminer up and specifies which com ports to connect to.
CGMiner rolls through testing all the ports to run on icarus, avalon, then BFL SCs, then it crashes.

Faulting application cgminer.exe, version 0.0.0.0, faulting module cgminer.exe, version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x0005b469.

[sdczen]

--gpu-platform 1 ?? 

Tried to use Cgminer 3.1.1. and it crashes on startup.  Same .bat file as I'm using with 3.1.0.  I removed "--gpu-platform 1" and it boots normally, although it boots into platform 0, which is my CPU i5 processor.  GPU-Platform has always worked.  Wondering if it's broken in the latest build?

[-ck]

--gpu-platform 1 ?? 

Tried to use Cgminer 3.1.1. and it crashes on startup.  Same .bat file as I'm using with 3.1.0.  I removed "--gpu-platform 1" and it boots normally, although it boots into platform 0, which is my CPU i5 processor.  GPU-Platform has always worked.  Wondering if it's broken in the latest build?

Usual story, you've likely changed your driver in the interim.

[sdczen]

--gpu-platform 1 ?? 

Tried to use Cgminer 3.1.1. and it crashes on startup.  Same .bat file as I'm using with 3.1.0.  I removed "--gpu-platform 1" and it boots normally, although it boots into platform 0, which is my CPU i5 processor.  GPU-Platform has always worked.  Wondering if it's broken in the latest build?

Usual story, you've likely changed your driver in the interim.

I installed the driver over a week ago.  This is the interim of what?  The solution is not changing the driver? or rolling back the driver?

[rikii]

I've been searching for an answer to this for a bit now and im not sure how to accomplish the following.

with the fallback option, lets say i was mining litecoins on pool x with the scrypt flag (obviously) and wanted to fallback to a bitcoin pool if the litecoin pool was down. What would be the best way to accomplish this. is there a way to disable the scrypt flag once its been launched with scrypt or what do you guys think my best solution would be to have something like this work. another option i could do if possible is change it through the api but im not aware of algorithm changing being a cgminer api option. thanks in advance guys.

[os2sam]

I've been searching for an answer to this for a bit now and im not sure how to accomplish the following.

with the fallback option, lets say i was mining litecoins on pool x with the scrypt flag (obviously) and wanted to fallback to a bitcoin pool if the litecoin pool was down. What would be the best way to accomplish this. is there a way to disable the scrypt flag once its been launched with scrypt or what do you guys think my best solution would be to have something like this work. another option i could do if possible is change it through the api but im not aware of algorithm changing being a cgminer api option. thanks in advance guys.

Decide which coin you want to mine and go with it.

[kano]

I've been searching for an answer to this for a bit now and im not sure how to accomplish the following.

with the fallback option, lets say i was mining litecoins on pool x with the scrypt flag (obviously) and wanted to fallback to a bitcoin pool if the litecoin pool was down. What would be the best way to accomplish this. is there a way to disable the scrypt flag once its been launched with scrypt or what do you guys think my best solution would be to have something like this work. another option i could do if possible is change it through the api but im not aware of algorithm changing being a cgminer api option. thanks in advance guys.

i.e. as per line 3 of the README, no you can't mine multiple coins.
You'd have to stop cgminer and restart it with the different coin.

[Coiner505]

As I tweak settings for --scrypt on my system with a 7970 and a 7950, the 7950 is routinely outperforming the 7970, which is odd enough. But also I've started watching the "U" and "WU" and comparing against MH/s. 

Code:

(5s):1.126M (avg):1.110Mh/s | A:166  R:3  HW:0  U:31.8/m  WU:1015.2/m          

Ultimately it's the U and/or WU which count, right? Do they always match the total system MH/s linearly? I'm seeing some variance but I haven't totally figured it out, yet. What's the main thing to watch?