Best driver for a mix of RX and R9 cards?

[ColinD]

So, I've put together a couple of rigs at work for our company's owner, and decided to put together one for myself using a mix of R9 380's and RX 480's.  Of course, i would've preferred to go all 380 or all 480, but with the way its worked out, I've ended up with 3 of each.  For reference, here's the setup:

• 3 x R9 380
• 3 x RX 480
• Celeron CPU
• 4GB DDR4 memory (single dimm)
• Pagefile (located on a secondary sata SSD) configured for 26GB-30GB virtual memory
• GA-720X-UD3 motherboard
• Windows 10 Pro (would prefer ethOS, but you can't mix those cards in that OS)
• AMD Blockchain Beta drivers

To cut to the chase, I've figured out how to get the blockchain drivers installed, however, I'm running into severe issues with stability, with the rig usually crashing within an hour.  At the moment, things are pretty well cooled (running in the high 70's), so I'm pretty sure it's not a thermal issue.  My main method for installing the drivers is as follows:  Use DDU in safe mode to clean out the existing drivers; reboot; install the blockchain drivers (skipping ReLive); patch the drivers before rebooting (480's have modded BIOS'); reboot again & start mining.

Initially, after the drivers have been installed, things seem to run ok.  Then, after 20-30 minutes or so, I'm finding that I'm seeing warnings saying that "Windows has recovered from a driver error" or something along those lines, which is directly related to the GPU.  The moment I turn off the claymore miner they stop.

What drivers are frequently being used when mixing R9 and RX cards (I'm guessing this isn't super common)?  I read somewhere that the 16.9.2 drivers seem to be stable for mixing the cards, however, I find that when i use those drivers, my hashrate on the RX's drops to 18-19mh/s while my 380's are still solid @ 20.  When I use the blockchain drivers, the hashrate on the RX's rockets up to 28mh/s, but then I seem to run into stability issues.  All that being said, I'm not sure where to go from here.  Building 2 separate rigs, one for each set of cards, is out of the question as it's not cost effective in the least, however, I've read over and over that running R9's and RX's on the same MB is entirely doable in Windows.

Any advice on where to start with the drivers?  I'm seriously considering flattening the box, and reinstalling the OS being that I've installed/uninstalled the GPU drivers so many times by this point, but I'm starting to wonder if perhaps the blockchain drivers for Windows 10 just don't like the mix of cards.  The only other thing I can think of is that the OS wasn't fully updated (still had the 1709 patch to install) when I was doing my testing, but I'm not sure how much impact that will have on mining. 

Anyway, sorry for the long post, and if anyone could chime in to help me from wasting much more of my time, that would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[BitcoinSupremo]

Yes it is doable in Windows 10 but running at high 70s if that is in degree Celsius is not something I would not worry about. If you have an open frame case rig your cards should not go more than 65 degree Celsius with fans set at 65-75%.

I think you should try to lower down the memory clock of the cards with MSI Afterburner, OverdriveNtool or AMD Global Wattman. Also try to mine another algorithm like Monero and see if you have the same problem. Reinstalling Windows should be your last option. Troubleshooting takes time but it is worth it after you find the right settings for your rig.

[ColinD]

Interesting.  Yeah - I was under the impression that temp wasn't much of an issue until you hit the 80's or so.  The 380 cards run pretty cool (mid-upper 60's), but the 480's seem to run warmer for sure.  Yes - they're in a frame/open air case.

Are you thinking the temps may be related to the driver crashing or becoming unstable?  I have my doubts on that.  Yes, the temps aren't optimal, but they're not within dangerous temps by any means. 

I'm mainly wondering if there's a newer (better) driver out there that will aid in the stability as that seems to be glaring issue.  Once I have a driver that will mine in a stable manner for more than an hour at a time, I will absolutely work on getting the temps optimized, but it seems premature to work on getting temps down from mid-70's into the mid-60's until or unless I know the driver I'm working with is the correct one.  If the temps were in the 80's - absolutely...  that would be a much bigger focus. 

But anyway, I guess the only question I'm targeting here is what 64-bit Windows drivers are people using now?  Has anything been released that's more stable or gets hashrates as well as the beta driver?  If not... I can live with that (I'd have to), but the vast majority of the info out there regarding drivers seems to be dated a year or more back.

[CryptoWatcher420]

better solution, separate the two series of gpus, there known to cause issues with stability when used together as in r9 and rx series on the rig, once you separate them most or all your problems with stability will prolly go away

[ColinD]

Separating them into two groups would add too much of a complication regarding cost.  The cost of the breakout board, motherboard, cpu, ram, as well as extra case room and power supply requirements make it not feasible to go that route as this was meant to be a small 6 gpu rig rather than something that takes up almost twice the space and requires me to double my non-gpu h/w costs.

I think I'm getting a little closer though in finding out some of the issues after updating it to the latest service pack.  Set it up to mine last night before heading to bed, and woke up to find it completely powered off.  Powered it back on, and it resumed mining from a sleep state, with all the hashrates basically bottomed out (the 480's were hashing 17mh/s, and the 380's were hashing 16).  Killed claymore, restarted the miner again with no change so I rebooted, which was expected being that it initially fell asleep while mining.  After the reboot, the graphics were looking screwy, so I checked the device manager and sure enough - error 43 on both 480's.  Looked at the driver version and they had both been changed to a different version (whatever the stock windows driver is), and were erroring out due to not being patched.  I will say one thing - the modded BIOS' are a pain in the a$$ with regards to troubleshooting.  You practically sneeze on them and up pops an error 43.

So, anyway, i'm guessing that Windows is trying to use auto-updating or something to try to force its version of the driver upon the GPUs, which is likely creating some havoc.  While I had previously disabled automatic driver downloads via Windows Update, I think a service pack (1709) may have re-enabled it, along with the original "sleep" settings.  I think what I'm going to do is just "reset Windows", which is basically just another way of starting from scratch, and do it all right from the get go.  Basically, update the hell out of the OS until there's nothing left to update, make my system changes, and then install the GPUs and deal with the drivers.  If it doesn't work after that, I'll give more thought into alternative solutions.

On another note, related to the first response, I adjusted my fan properties and was able to relatively easily get the temps down into the high 60's for all the cards with minimal effort while the miner was running.  It was a shorter duration mining test, but it was adequate time for the cards to heat up so I feel like that aspect of it (temp) is no longer an issue.

[fanatic26]

Linux will solve all of your driver issues and has the added benefit of increased stability.


I would say look into PiMP (getpimp.org) if you need a linux mining platform that can run any and all cards mixed together. It also has the advantage of being much much cheaper than a windows license.

[solosequenosenada]

Linux will solve all of your driver issues and has the added benefit of increased stability.


I would say look into PiMP (getpimp.org) if you need a linux mining platform that can run any and all cards mixed together. It also has the advantage of being much much cheaper than a windows license.

you have several options like ethos http://ethosdistro.com/ and you can get it for free if you search...

[fanatic26]

you can get it for free if you search...

Yea thats called stealing someone elses intellectual property. You will not find much support for illegal actions like that on this forum.

[CryptoWatcher420]

Separating them into two groups would add too much of a complication regarding cost.  The cost of the breakout board, motherboard, cpu, ram, as well as extra case room and power supply requirements make it not feasible to go that route as this was meant to be a small 6 gpu rig rather than something that takes up almost twice the space and requires me to double my non-gpu h/w costs.

I think I'm getting a little closer though in finding out some of the issues after updating it to the latest service pack.  Set it up to mine last night before heading to bed, and woke up to find it completely powered off.  Powered it back on, and it resumed mining from a sleep state, with all the hashrates basically bottomed out (the 480's were hashing 17mh/s, and the 380's were hashing 16).  Killed claymore, restarted the miner again with no change so I rebooted, which was expected being that it initially fell asleep while mining.  After the reboot, the graphics were looking screwy, so I checked the device manager and sure enough - error 43 on both 480's.  Looked at the driver version and they had both been changed to a different version (whatever the stock windows driver is), and were erroring out due to not being patched.  I will say one thing - the modded BIOS' are a pain in the a$$ with regards to troubleshooting.  You practically sneeze on them and up pops an error 43.

So, anyway, i'm guessing that Windows is trying to use auto-updating or something to try to force its version of the driver upon the GPUs, which is likely creating some havoc.  While I had previously disabled automatic driver downloads via Windows Update, I think a service pack (1709) may have re-enabled it, along with the original "sleep" settings.  I think what I'm going to do is just "reset Windows", which is basically just another way of starting from scratch, and do it all right from the get go.  Basically, update the hell out of the OS until there's nothing left to update, make my system changes, and then install the GPUs and deal with the drivers.  If it doesn't work after that, I'll give more thought into alternative solutions.

On another note, related to the first response, I adjusted my fan properties and was able to relatively easily get the temps down into the high 60's for all the cards with minimal effort while the miner was running.  It was a shorter duration mining test, but it was adequate time for the cards to heat up so I feel like that aspect of it (temp) is no longer an issue.

well since you want to continue to run 2 different series gpus together that are known to cause issues , I welcome you to continue having problem. some have gotten r9 and rx series to work together but its few and far between and they mostly have issues with each other since they use different drivers, they might be packaged in the same installer but there 2 different versions. rx series gpu use the AMDGPU-pro drivers and r9 series use a fglrx driver, but you would know that if you had of done some good research, theres a fucking reason why the 2 don't wanna work together, I run both r9's and rx series gpus but guess what I don't put them together cause it causes MORE problems than its worth

[ColinD]

LOL.  Thanks for welcoming me to continue having issues!  I'm a systems engineer by trade, so I kinda thrive on it. 

With regards to people being successful being few, far and in between, it can't be that rare judging from my own research, and if you had looked at my initial post, you probably could've deduced that I already did my research (see my reference to EthOS?), which is why I asked the question in the first place, providing the detailed info that I did - so it could be worked through.  At this point, if I had thrown up my hands and had followed your advice the moment you gave it, I'd have spent a couple hundred bucks completely unnecessarily as a driver update to 17.12.1 fixed the issue thus far, as it's been mining for a solid 14 hours without a hiccup, and flipping the switch from graphics to compute brought the hashrate back up to on par with the blockchain drivers.

Regardless, I appreciate the advice to all who gave it.  And as far as "there's a fucking reason why the 2 don't wanna work together" - you're right.  It was the driver.