HELP! struggling to make 6 gpu R9 290 rig to run on windows 7 (SOLVED)

[Morbid]

im now running 5 gpus on this rig. temporarily set up win8. gonna wait for some custom drivers. my first linux experience was a let down. even bampt is against me.

[pontiacg5]

Newegg has a deal on xfx 290 cards, buy two and get $100 off. As a bonus it seems to defeat the quantity limit as well, because I could order 3 pairs instead of the limit of 5.



BAMT fought like crazy when I was mining with 280x's, long before there was a BAMT for the R9 cards like I think there is now.


I've noticed that the 290x will not start at all if the fan is disconnected in windows, it just won't do anything unless you remove the GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1 from registry. Even then, it will only work at tc 2816 which makes for miserable mining. I have one watercooled, to get cgminer going I have to plug the fan in, start cgminer, then unplug the fan. Pretty damn annoying... If you aren't getting temp and fan speeds it probably wont mine right.

[TheWoodser]

Since "Cryptokeeper" has not chimed in....

He has some great troubleshooting steps for a 6 card rig here.


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=226210.msg2480038#msg2480038


Woodser

[repairguy]

Isn't the r9 290 a dual core gpu?

Also I don't think that troubleshooting guide is going to help him.  It is for older gpus.  I can run 6x7950 with no issues in windows 7, but r9 290 x6 is a different story.

Bamt is a pain in the ass.  I screwed around with it for a couple of days, then decided windows was working fine, why fuck with it.

[Morbid]

argh! another problem. when disconnecting hdmi and having it run as standalone miner windows 8 loads some crappy 640x480 temporary driver that screws up my hashrate from 800 to 500-600. when i teamview into it i cannot change the resolution. i cannot do dummy plugs as new cards dont support analog output.

[repairguy]

Does your motherboard have onboard video, or a pci slot you could put a shitty video card in?

Does your hashrate go down on all cards or just one?

[Morbid]

Does your motherboard have onboard video, or a pci slot you could put a shitty video card in?

Does your hashrate go down on all cards or just one?

no onboard video - 990fx chipset. all cards suffer.

[nvandertill]

I have an idea. I have a spare r9 280x along with 4 r9 290s. I am going to try to make the r9 280x the main display and then boot into BAMT. Perhaps it will detect the cards but something with the output is screwed up with the driver on those cards. I'll let you guys know ASAP, likely Monday. I got 5 r9 280x up this weekend no problem so it is definitely the 290s issue.

[gtraah]

wait a minute I am confused, I thought that you need 1x 16x Risers if your GPU has a 16x Slot? How can you use 1x to 1x? The slots are totally different?

Confusion!!!!   

I have 4 x 16x on my motherboards and 2 x 1x slots and 1 MiniPCIe Slot

I thought 16x to 16x Risers do not need power because the slot handles the draw, But people use powered risers from the 1x - 16x cables..

I am totally baffled now that I see OP using 1x > 1x On a 16x GPU.... Doesnt the GPU NEED the adapter riser which converts 16x down to 1x?  If not how does it fit into the Longer slot?

I already bought my risers this is purely educational , Im just learning

[pontiacg5]

wait a minute I am confused, I thought that you need 1x 16x Risers if your GPU has a 16x Slot? How can you use 1x to 1x? The slots are totally different?

Confusion!!!!   

I have 4 x 16x on my motherboards and 2 x 1x slots and 1 MiniPCIe Slot

I thought 16x to 16x Risers do not need power because the slot handles the draw, But people use powered risers from the 1x - 16x cables..

I am totally baffled now that I see OP using 1x > 1x On a 16x GPU.... Doesnt the GPU NEED the adapter riser which converts 16x down to 1x?  If not how does it fit into the Longer slot?

I already bought my risers this is purely educational , Im just learning

This is not the place to ask silly questions. Everything you've asked has been covered millions of times on this forum.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=pci-e+riser+cable+for+mining

very top link...

[gtraah]

wait a minute I am confused, I thought that you need 1x 16x Risers if your GPU has a 16x Slot? How can you use 1x to 1x? The slots are totally different?

Confusion!!!!  

I have 4 x 16x on my motherboards and 2 x 1x slots and 1 MiniPCIe Slot

I thought 16x to 16x Risers do not need power because the slot handles the draw, But people use powered risers from the 1x - 16x cables..

I am totally baffled now that I see OP using 1x > 1x On a 16x GPU.... Doesnt the GPU NEED the adapter riser which converts 16x down to 1x?  If not how does it fit into the Longer slot?

I already bought my risers this is purely educational , Im just learning

This is not the place to ask silly questions. Everything you've asked has been covered millions of times on this forum.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=pci-e+riser+cable+for+mining

very top link...

Sorry Pro... your awesome!!

Anywayysss

.. That site didnt answer my question I knew how to put a 1x into a 1x slot and 16x into a 16x slot. .. But dont worry, Dont stress , Relax , take a breather. I will find my answer elsewhere - I may go look through the thousands of posts hoping I come across it Like I have not already.. LOL

Its not important I was just curious , I did not want to go on a search trying to find out if you can plug 1x Plugs into 16x slots without Converting them to 16x plugs. Because when I typed - 1x to 1x For 16x GPU... My answer did not come up as expected.

cuByeee

[Morbid]

i just took the female part of the riser and cut off the plastic limiter with dremel tool. do it carefully as you can damage actual pins.

[nvandertill]

Okay yeah, r9 290s are definitely screwed up. Drivers won't work at all with Linux and spotty with Windows at best. I am done trying to get this card to work. Time to sell them.

[Morbid]

can anyone confirm whether these hdmi to vga adaptors can work as a dummy plug together with resistors? thanks.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/PC-HDMI-Male-to-VGA-SVGA-RGB-Video-Audio-Cable-Lead-Converter-Adapter-1080P-3-5-/201016938652?pt=UK_BOI_Office_Equipment_Supplies_Office_Equipment_ET&var=&hash=item2ecd8b109c

[nvandertill]

Okay, after another post by someone else pointing me in the right direction I stumbled across this site: http://www.ohmpie.com/mining-on-an-r9-290-in-linux/

This goes into detail on how to patch the latest linux driver (13.12) and actually has a link to some .deb binaries so you may not even need to patch. If you can get that far...

Then you need to recompile cgminer from source, from the tarball linked on their site. I am gonna give it a go here within the next 24 hours. If you don't think you can do this then I'd forget the r9 290s for now... I am familiar with linux and patching source and compiling in linux. Really from what I've read it shouldn't be too difficult (might eat my words on that). Anyway, I'll let you all know if I can get them up running stable and post you all my history log so you can see how I did it. Figured I'd post what I've figured out so far for those technically inclined to move forward themselves.

[Morbid]

Okay, after another post by someone else pointing me in the right direction I stumbled across this site: http://www.ohmpie.com/mining-on-an-r9-290-in-linux/

This goes into detail on how to patch the latest linux driver (13.12) and actually has a link to some .deb binaries so you may not even need to patch. If you can get that far...

Then you need to recompile cgminer from source, from the tarball linked on their site. I am gonna give it a go here within the next 24 hours. If you don't think you can do this then I'd forget the r9 290s for now... I am familiar with linux and patching source and compiling in linux. Really from what I've read it shouldn't be too difficult (might eat my words on that). Anyway, I'll let you all know if I can get them up running stable and post you all my history log so you can see how I did it. Figured I'd post what I've figured out so far for those technically inclined to move forward themselves.

thank you. after days of linux bashing i gave up as too stressed on time. running win8 with 5 cards for now. if you can get it working and post the log of step by step inputs that you did i (as well as many others) would really appreciate. good luck/.

[nvandertill]

I just spent all day on this. The drivers are broken. There is just nothing I can do at this point. I went as far as to implement fixes and then recompile the drivers as well as cgminer... It just won't work with more than one card. Sorry boys these things are not ready for real mining yet. Glad I didn't cancel my Ebay auctions.

On the other hand... R9 280x work absolutely fantastic with only a small loss of hashing power, a large loss of noise, and $100 less. Highly recommend those.

[Morbid]

to be honest im hashing fine at 4.1Mh with 5 cards currently in win8. too bad i got nowhere sticking that idle card somewhere else as only spare hardware i have is old motherboards that dont have win7 support.

current heating room:

[repairguy]

to be honest im hashing fine at 4.1Mh with 5 cards currently in win8. too bad i got nowhere sticking that idle card somewhere else as only spare hardware i have is old motherboards that dont have win7 support.

What are you hiding over in the corner?

Also do you want to sell that extra card or I can sell you a cheap ass mobo/processor/ram combo for $50, that would run that card and win7.

[Seals881]

Okay, after another post by someone else pointing me in the right direction I stumbled across this site: http://www.ohmpie.com/mining-on-an-r9-290-in-linux/

This goes into detail on how to patch the latest linux driver (13.12) and actually has a link to some .deb binaries so you may not even need to patch. If you can get that far...

Then you need to recompile cgminer from source, from the tarball linked on their site. I am gonna give it a go here within the next 24 hours. If you don't think you can do this then I'd forget the r9 290s for now... I am familiar with linux and patching source and compiling in linux. Really from what I've read it shouldn't be too difficult (might eat my words on that). Anyway, I'll let you all know if I can get them up running stable and post you all my history log so you can see how I did it. Figured I'd post what I've figured out so far for those technically inclined to move forward themselves.

thank you. after days of linux bashing i gave up as too stressed on time. running win8 with 5 cards for now. if you can get it working and post the log of step by step inputs that you did i (as well as many others) would really appreciate. good luck/.

Once the driver is corrected, and CGMiner is recompiled the R9 290 runs pretty well. I am going to do some more tweaking, and see if I can run more than one  R9 290 before I say everything is working 100%. Currently running around 870 KHas/sec with current settings.