Help trying to get 2 or more videos cards to work

[deanorn]

Im currrently using this motherboard BIOSTAR A870U3, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138318 with this processor AMD Phenom II X4 925 Deneb 2.8GHz Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Desktop.  The Os on the system is winXP pro 32 bit, with the ati 11.8 drivers( tried 11.7 also).  Here is the issue I'm having if I just put 1 video card in the system it works fine but when I add a 2nd it seems to cut the mining speed on the cards down by about a 1/3.  If I tell it to stop mining on 1 of the cards the other goes back to full speed.  I've tried different cards,and  an Sempron 145 and I connected another power supply up to it which is 1000w's to just rule out that stuff.  I've also tried with the poclbm-GUIminer and CG miner.

I'm pretty new to this stuff so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.  I do have another system which has 3 video cards in it and it's all working fine.  It's running windows 7 though but I just can't figure out the issue with this one.

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[BookLover]

It sounds to me like you are either mining with the CPU instead of the second GPU or are mining twice on the first GPU instead of on GPU 1 and GPU 2.

[Chemicalbro]

I had the same issue, and semi resolved it by messing around with agression. But the permanent solution for me was to switch to Linux 

[deanorn]

I've never used Linux but I guess I might look into that.  I have checked many times to make sure it was nothing like it was trying to mine on 1 video card two times.

[BookLover]

Weird, I wonder what's wrong.   I'd suggest imaging the good computer's hard drive onto the bad computer's hard drive.  If you have things you want to save on the bad hard drive simply purchase a new hard drive and mine with that.  This should fix your problem if it is software related.

P.S. Have you looked at task-manager to see what the CPU usage is and do you have a program which monitors GPU usage?

[btcmerchant]

When you connect both video cards are you using crossfire? I've heard that cuts the hash speed.

[deanorn]

I'm not using crossfire, I could be wrong but I read that would slow down the 5850 since it would be connected to a 5830?  I have checked the CPU usage before but I can't remember what the usage was right now and I don't have access to it.  But I know on my other systems with are higher end than this one with 3 video cards it is around 90% usage on the CPU while mining which seems high but not sure if that is normal.   What is a good program to use to monitor GPU usage?

I also installed Ubuntu as a dual boot option on the system giving me issues last night.  Got it installed and messed with it some but couldn't get the mining software to work correctly so I will work on that some more maybe today.  I have also read that some people have had issues using WinXP sp3 for mining so maybe I will try loading Win 7 on it to check that also.  Just sucks because I have so many XP licenses


I have different Motherboard on the way now so I guess worse case I will just move the cards from this trouble system over to it with a new OS.  Then I can just play around with that one some and see if I can figure it out.

[3phase]

If you have a spare USB stick, you may try with Linuxcoin, if it doesn't work with that, then there certainly some problem with your hardware.

I've also tested mining on Windows, Ubuntu, CentOS and Linuxcoin was the best I found.

Very good fool-proof guide at http://www.linuxcoin.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Headless_Linuxcoin.

[deanorn]

Thanks, I will give that a try also.

[spoutbec]

That's exactly the problem I've been having.  Finally, for the first time I've read about someone else having the same problem.
So, it seems like the new catalyst 11.7 and 11.8 drivers don't work properly with Win XP 32bit, at least as far as mining with
multiple cards is concerned, and so far no one seems to have found any solution.  On the bright side, 11.6 works fine for
mining in Win XP 32bit, you just miss out on any improvements that 11.7 or newer might come up with.

[deanorn]

Thanks for all the tips everyone, loaded Windows 7 and 11.8 drivers and it all worked right away.  Still going to check out those linux OS people suggested also.  But I thought 11.7 and 8 fixed the issue with dummy plugs for your monitor?  I still had to use one with 11.8 installed on it.  Not a big deal though I'm just glad it's working 

[MacT]

  WinXp has its good points, but not so much for mining.

 I was unable to mine at all until changing to sp3, because of openCL.  Then two cards would not work properly at the same time, exactly like the OP posted.

 I clung to XP as long as possible, but gave it up finally because win7 works fine right away for mining.
 

[Beta-coiner1]

The actual issue is the drivers.Use driversweeper to clean and remove any Catalyst 11.7 or 11.8 drivers and install the 11.6B.The 100 % cpu bug is the issue here and believe ATI is trying to solve the issue in an upcoming driver.Perhaps the Catalyst 11.9 or 11.10