Windows Lag on ASUS B250 Mining Expert

[AVP]

Having an issue with ASUS B250 Mining Expert, where windows starts to lag after a 5th card is added. For now I plan to run 12-13 AMD cards.

3 or 4 cards seems ok, but with 5th windows lag is unusable. Opening device manager, seems like its refreshing every ~30 sec as in like looking for devices or something, which is weird.

This I tried so far:
- With & without iGPU
- various slot, card & riser combinations to rule out defective hardware
- installing drivers via windows update & installing manually from AMD's site (DDU cleaned each time).
- update latest BIOS & Asus chipset drivers
- set virtual memory at 36-52GB
- Windows Home vs. Windows Pro


Hardware:
- CPU: Pentium G4560 Kaby Lake Dual-Core 3.5 GHz
- 8 GB RAM / 120gb SSD
- MSI RX 570's (unflashed, yet)
- Windows 10 Pro (latest updates)

Anyone face a similar issue?

Any pointers at this point would be appreciated. Thanks.

[fanatic26]

That doesnt happen in linux, Windows is a terrible choice for a mining OS, especially with that many cards.

Reimage it with a good linux mining OS and all of your problems will go away.

[AVP]

That doesnt happen in linux, Windows is a terrible choice for a mining OS, especially with that many cards.

Reimage it with a good linux mining OS and all of your problems will go away.

Well if it would start to hiccup after 7 or 8 then I would agree. But 5 cards should be easy for any mining board. I'm running a bunch of 5 - 7 GPU rigs w/o any issues on Windows. I just think this board is very fussy..

[grendel25]

I'm running 16 GB ram on ASUS B250 so maybe that could help.  What about allocating virtual memory?  Not sure if that would help but worth a try.  

And... is it lagging just when mining or all the time?  If it's just when mining maybe try a different algorithm to see if it is any better.  Of course, you'll want to mine the algo you want to mine but at least you will know if that algo is contributing to headaches.  

So... things to try:

Set windows for optimal performance instead of visuals...  http://www.thewindowsclub.com/disable-visual-effects-windows

Update BIOS

More RAM

Allocate virtual memory: https://www.x-plane.com/kb/increasing-virtual-memory-on-windows/

monitor resource usage in task manager to see what may be consuming processing power:  https://www.windowscentral.com/how-identify-and-terminate-high-resource-processes-using-task-manager-windows-10

[darkneorus]

you must install Windows on GPT partition and boot Windows in UEFI mode to properly use 5+ cards.

[grendel25]

you must install Windows on GPT partition and boot Windows in UEFI mode to properly use 5+ cards.

Nuts!  I hadn't heard of this requirement.  Got me thinking... how do I know what I have and how do I convert to GPT if I'm MBR???

Found this:

https://www.easyuefi.com/resource/check-mbr-or-gpt.html

and this:

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-convert-mbr-disk-gpt-move-bios-uefi-windows-10

for background:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/disk-management/change-an-mbr-disk-into-a-gpt-disk

Guess I know what I'll be doing tonight  

[Andartis]

Hey guys! I am having exactly the same problem. Here is my thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4353979.0
I opened another because the problem is not associated with the ASUS B250 Mining Expert. I had it on a Gigabyte too. Check my thread to read what I tried so far.

edit: So I read its a GPT Problem? But windows 10 on a SSD automatically sets UEFI and GPT, or not?
All my other 12 GPU rigs did not require any further settings (but they also are all NVIDIA Rigs hmm...)

Checked. Its GPT and I still have the problem!

Regards

[AVP]

Thanks for replies.

I tried updating BIOS & setting Virtual Memory at 36-52GB (added to orig. post). But problem still remains...

[Elder III]

you must install Windows on GPT partition and boot Windows in UEFI mode to properly use 5+ cards.

I know this is the correct way to do it with Biostar's mining specific motherboards, so I believe it would be the same for other manufacturers as well. We run 6-8 GPU systems on Windows with more then half of them on Intel Dual Core Celeron or Pentium CPUs and they work fine for us.

[Andartis]

I run several Rigs with 12 NVIDIA GPUs on Gigabyte Mainboards and never had a Problem.
So it must have something to do with AMD Cards....

[jmigdlc99]

I run several Rigs with 12 NVIDIA GPUs on Gigabyte Mainboards and never had a Problem.
So it must have something to do with AMD Cards....

I agree, it must have something to do with AMD cards.

I experienced the same thing before on one of my VEGA rigs. I ran 13-GPUs on a G4560 Petium processor with 4GB RAM. GPUs were 4 VEGAs and 7 RX470s. Opening radeon settings took forever too. I reinstalled everything and used blockchain drivers instead, works perfectly even up until today.

[AVP]

I run several Rigs with 12 NVIDIA GPUs on Gigabyte Mainboards and never had a Problem.
So it must have something to do with AMD Cards....

I agree, it must have something to do with AMD cards.

I experienced the same thing before on one of my VEGA rigs. I ran 13-GPUs on a G4560 Petium processor with 4GB RAM. GPUs were 4 VEGAs and 7 RX470s. Opening radeon settings took forever too. I reinstalled everything and used blockchain drivers instead, works perfectly even up until today.

Did you ever find out what was the actual issue?

I've reinstalled Windows 2 times now, doesn't seem to make a difference.

Also, just curious did you re-install with all GPUs connected or connect 1 at a time afterwards?

[Andartis]

I run several Rigs with 12 NVIDIA GPUs on Gigabyte Mainboards and never had a Problem.
So it must have something to do with AMD Cards....

I agree, it must have something to do with AMD cards.

I experienced the same thing before on one of my VEGA rigs. I ran 13-GPUs on a G4560 Petium processor with 4GB RAM. GPUs were 4 VEGAs and 7 RX470s. Opening radeon settings took forever too. I reinstalled everything and used blockchain drivers instead, works perfectly even up until today.

Did you ever find out what was the actual issue?

I've reinstalled Windows 2 times now, doesn't seem to make a difference.

Also, just curious did you re-install with all GPUs connected or connect 1 at a time afterwards?

Hi, I am still on it since it occured 2 days ago for me. I need a solution.
So far, reinstalling Windows or drivers did not make a change. Also I will post mor details in my thread, since it has a more open topic. I opened it to get more attention since the problem is not only related to the B250 Mining Expert. I had the same behaviour on a Gigabyte and on a MSI board.

[AVP]

I run several Rigs with 12 NVIDIA GPUs on Gigabyte Mainboards and never had a Problem.
So it must have something to do with AMD Cards....

I agree, it must have something to do with AMD cards.

I experienced the same thing before on one of my VEGA rigs. I ran 13-GPUs on a G4560 Petium processor with 4GB RAM. GPUs were 4 VEGAs and 7 RX470s. Opening radeon settings took forever too. I reinstalled everything and used blockchain drivers instead, works perfectly even up until today.

Did you ever find out what was the actual issue?

I've reinstalled Windows 2 times now, doesn't seem to make a difference.

Also, just curious did you re-install with all GPUs connected or connect 1 at a time afterwards?

Hi, I am still on it since it occured 2 days ago for me. I need a solution.
So far, reinstalling Windows or drivers did not make a change. Also I will post mor details in my thread, since it has a more open topic. I opened it to get more attention since the problem is not only related to the B250 Mining Expert. I had the same behaviour on a Gigabyte and on a MSI board.

Thanks for mentioning that. Perhaps its a common issue.

Have you tried opening Task Manager to see if anything is eating up the CPU when lag occurs?

For me it seams to be "Windows audio endpoint builder", but not always.. but killing it or stop/disabling the service does not seem to solve it..

[Andartis]

Thanks for mentioning that. Perhaps its a common issue.

Have you tried opening Task Manager to see if anything is eating up the CPU when lag occurs?

For me it seams to be "Windows audio endpoint builder", but not always.. but killing it or stop/disabling the service does not seem to solve it..

I also checked that. That was the first thing I have done. Nothing suspicious.
Furthermore I just installed the drivers, without the settings and hdmi drivers etc. Did not work either.

So now I will check some BIOS settings. But if this also does not help, I am out of ideas.
Did you find out something I did not mention so far?

[eduardjs]

For everybody here saying AMD cards don't work on ASUS B250, or that Windows is a shitty solution

RIG-A :: 12 x 580 Special Edition GPUs
RIG-B :: 12 x 580 Special Edition GPUs
RIG-C :: 12 x 580 Special Edition GPUs

All use Windows, all running on one 4GB stick of RAM ( proof here ), at about 50 degrees average temps, as you can see in the Claymore miner info, all rigs drawing 1.830 watts each, from 2 pairs of 1400w Delta Electronic server PSUs.

Rigs pic ( all are the same ): https://i.imgur.com/jbxfS4W.jpg

So please, stop with the 16GB RAM tips, or the GPT UEFI partitions, or whatever other crazy idea comes to mind.

[Andartis]

[...]
So please, stop with the 16GB RAM tips, or the GPT UEFI partitions, or whatever other crazy idea comes to mind.

Hey mate,
nobody says it is not working in general! We are saying it does not work for us. And we try to find out why.

Maybe you can help us find the problem. I have 4x of the same 580 Special Edition cards. right now 3 of them are working with 5x 1070 Tis. When I add the 4th 580, system lags.

What drivers do you use?
Did you change anything special in general?

Regards

[AVP]

Thanks for mentioning that. Perhaps its a common issue.

Have you tried opening Task Manager to see if anything is eating up the CPU when lag occurs?

For me it seams to be "Windows audio endpoint builder", but not always.. but killing it or stop/disabling the service does not seem to solve it..

I also checked that. That was the first thing I have done. Nothing suspicious.
Furthermore I just installed the drivers, without the settings and hdmi drivers etc. Did not work either.

So now I will check some BIOS settings. But if this also does not help, I am out of ideas.
Did you find out something I did not mention so far?

I spent days on BIOS settings, nothing seemed to work. Hopefully you can find something I missed.

The only additional thing that comes to mind is to swap the Pentium CPU for i3.

I just had i3-8100 delivered, going to give it a try. Will share results in a bit.

[AVP]

Here's a crazy thought, can Windows activation possibly have anything to do with this?

Trying on un-activated Win 10 instance..

[Andartis]

Here's a crazy thought, can Windows activation possibly have anything to do with this?

Trying on un-activated Win 10 instance..

I am using an i3. It does not help at all...
Also (just a coincidence) this one Rig I am using has an activated windows.
So both points should not be relevant. 

It occurs AFTER installing drivers, right?
So maybe we have to try even older drivers?

Can you install the Blockchain drivers? I am getting blue screen.