Topic: Getting ahead of arriving miner parts... (with 25LTC bounty) - page 2. (Read 9569 times)

Have 4 powered risers on order for rig #1 and 2 to try and get around the problem on Win7 not detecting the 5th card without error.

New problem though...

Built rig 2 and put 5 cards in it and installed Windows 8 64bit Pro. Windows recognizes all cards without error (which is why I gave it a try because I heard that it took 5 cards no problem). Here's the problem though, cgminer 2.11.3 crashes instantly, making GUIMiner unusable. I can't seem to get BFGminer working either. It loads at least, but no matter what settings I change, it doesn't hash anything from the pool (yes, I set --scrypt).

Is anyone running any mining software on Windows 8 64bit? If so, what miner are you using and what's your startup parameters? I don't care what card you use as I'll modify mine to make it for a 7950. I have to leave for another week of training, but might come home mid-week after class to work on the rig for a few hours if I can get the bastard mining! (:

Thanks in advance,

-Moose

The Sapphire 4Ls are voltage unlocked. I can confirm this - I have 10 of them. They take undervolting very well. But be warned: They come from the factory at 1.25v which is insane. They pull 210-240 watts when running... I dropped them down to 0.962 which has taken each card down to a far more manageable 180-190 watts.

Upgraded the drivers and then came back down to 12.8. Nothing worked. Still have 2 cards conflicting and disabled out of 6 and one of the three "working" cards keeps crashing cgminer. I have tried bumping up the northbridge by .05V and it didn't make anything more stable. I reverted it back to auto setting because it made things worse.

Not exactly sure why I'm getting conflicts on the cards. I'm about to just wipe the whole system tomorrow and do a fresh install of Windows and install all drivers before Windows gets any kind of internet connection. It worked like that the first time I built it. If that doesn't work, it's back to the Linux suggestion I guess on the previous page.

This is getting -really- annoying.

Alright, now I'm starting to get a little pissed off at Windows...

I had 5 cards running nicely (albeit a little warm). Took out 1 card to change TIM and put it back in. A totally different card start randomly failing after that in GUIMiner (cgminer was crashing on it). It did this before I last fixed it, but to fix it, I had to upgrade to 13.1 drivers and then downgrade back to 12.8 (which I haven't tried yet but may). Went to add the 6th card as a -5% powertune reduced my energy consumption some (and coincidentally made one of the five cards run BETTER, but the other 4 stayed the same). The 6th card (which went in the PCI-e 1x slot) started conflicting and showing it had an error along with that OTHER card.

Maybe I should try upgrading all drivers to 13.1 and then revert them all back to 12.8 to see if it fixes the conflicts? Any other ideas before I go and do this???

-Moose

Ryu, would you happen to know of any 7950s that -are- voltage unlocked? I'm most likely buying the Sapphire 7950s from Newegg next (the $289.99 ones) as I've heard they're really nice. Not sure if they're voltage unlocked, but if Powertune ends up letting me drop the power usage on it to get a 6th card on, then I'll be getting those for sure! (:

-Moose

Not all cards are voltage unlocked, so you could try those MSI Afterburner settings but if the voltage slider doesn't become enabled then the card is voltage locked.

It's a Powercolor (not MSI) card. Will this still work?

Change the settings in the CFG file to the following:

UnofficialOverclockingEULA = I confirm that I am aware of unofficial overclocking limitations and fully understand that MSI will not provide me any support on it

UnofficialOverclockingMode = 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6WOEIc5SM8


 

Okay, I'll add it to the list for when I get home! (:

I believe powertune will let you change the voltage (I'm assuming, haven't used a newer card yet) down or up by a percentage.  Should be in the Catalyst Control Center.

Autotune is on for the fans. Yeah I guess it could be too much. I'll reapply a smaller amount on one card and see if temps drop. If so, I will do all the rest

CoinSpeculator, the Powercolor AX7950s I bought seem to be voltage locked. I can change the engine and memory clocks just fine, but Catalyst and Afterburner both won't let me unlock voltages. I assume there's no way to unlock it either? I wish I could find a way to undervolt and see what hashes I can get so I can get this 6th card on the board without overloading the PSU.

I can't imagine running AMD GPU's at stock voltage.  My 5830's are running ~1 V (from 1.2 V) and are at least 8 C cooler with no noticeable drop in hashing.  Lower temp cards will last longer, require less power to run, allow you to fit more in one space, and be easier to cool.

Don't listen to the people telling you to overclock them as much as possible.  You are going to eat up your profits in energy bills and burned out GPU fans.

Too much thermal paste can cause overheating, an X to me sounds like a bit too much.  I generally do for AMD cards less than half a BB (or ~1/3 of a pea) size dot in the center.  Even if the amount was correct in your application, it couldn't hurt to re-do it and see if anything improves.

What are your fans running at, percentage wise?

My stock fans (Sapphire 4Ls) were default set at a maximum of 50%, which caused all kinds of problems. I downloaded SpeedFan, and tweaked the fans to run at 80% fixed. Card temps now range from 63-73C as of this second (and will drop considerably once I get my risers in).

FWIW, I have 2 rigs built (3x7950 and adding 2 more per rig once my PCIE risers get in). If you need any help, I can offer a bit of suggestions. Right now running 3,300 KH/s and will be looking at ~5,400 KH/s once the additional cards arrive. I use Windows 7 with headless rigs using TeamViewer 8.

Also, how are you handling thermal properties of so many rigs? I didn't see where you mentioned it, but you better prepare for a LOT of heat getting to your rigs.

Have you tried p2pool?

Does the AMD Vision Center provide accurate temps? Yesterday it said my cards were 90C. The shrouds are off, better thermal paste was applied (MX-2 and -properly-, made an X on the cleaned chip), and have 2 7" fans running on high pointed at just the one miner. Bfgminer in Linux was reporting mid-70s, and I can't see there being a 20C difference now that I'm on cgminer in Windows. Any ideas?

Taking a trip into town since training ended early today to give it another look and switch the miners over to the stratum give-me-LTC address now that auth issues have been resolved. Very worried about these 90C readings. Plenty of airflow and apartment is kept at 73F.

I have the Gigabyte UD-5 motherboard and the Powercolor AX7950s. If my 3G wasn't so slow I'd try to pull the specs on the motherboard now to see if it had a northbridge. Oh well. Added to the to do list. (:

If there's a northbridge (depending on CPU, some PCI-E controllers are built into the CPU) voltage, give that a bump of 50mv, and/or if there's adjustable PCI-E voltages, give those a small bump as well and see if that 3rd card doesn't become more stable.

rbbrdckybk,

If I have a few days off after training this week (before going offshore), I may give it another try. I had my #3 card go down in Windows and I'm not able to diagnose right now. Runs for a couple of mins and then the driver errors on it and GUIMiner says it crashes. Then the card only runs at 16kH/s until the program is restarted. It was fine yesterday for 18 hours until a power outage today. My lady got the other cards running and just has #3 stopped. Once I can check it out Saturday, I'll try and figure out what's up.

Either way, thanks for the tips. If I don't try it for rig #2, I definitely will by rig #6. Linux was interesting, but I need these things returning cash and Windows is quicker. GUIMiner isn't ideal, but I plan on attempting cgminer CLI or bfgminer in Windows again first. My lady needs to be able to take care of the rigs when I'm offshore, so Windows is ideal as she does ok in it but would take some teaching for Linux.

Moose, if you're still considering using linux, I have some instructions that might help you. I just set up a mining rig last week with 3x 7950s. I'm getting about 620 kH/sec on each card with modest overclocks (no overvolting). I documented my entire installation process and sent these instructions to two friends with zero linux experience, and they were able to get up and running on their own boxes in a matter of hours.

IMO, linux gives you a few advantages: you don't need a HDD (a $5 USB stick works just fine), better remote administration capabilities, better stability (subjective perhaps, but cgminer has been running for just over 1 week now with zero issues for me on linux, and my single stock-clocked 7950 sitting in a windows desktop crashes cgminer about once a day).

Anyway, here are the instructions I sent my friends. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions!


1) Configure BIOS settings:

   - disable everything we're not using (audio, serial port, firewire, etc)
   - change power options to automatically start system whenever power is restored (in case power goes out while you're away, also makes it easier to power on with no switch...)
   - make sure that USB flash stick is first in boot order


2) Install Xubuntu desktop x64 from temporarily-connected CD drive (or another USB stick) to your USB stick

   - get the installation image here:  http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/ubuntu-iso/CDs-Xubuntu/12.10/release/xubuntu-12.10-desktop-amd64.iso
   - use 8GB+ USB stick, partition 5500mb for root (/), 315mb for swap, and the remaining amount for home (/home)
   - make sure to check auto-login box during install
   - boot into desktop when done

   
3) Install AMD Catalyst drivers:

   (open terminal)

   sudo apt-get install fglrx-updates fglrx-amdcccle-updates fglrx-updates-dev
   sudo aticonfig --lsa
   sudo aticonfig --adapter=all --initial
   sudo reboot
   
   (after reboot, check that everything works:)
   
   sudo aticonfig --adapter=all --odgt

   (you should see all of your cards with hardware monitoring enabled)

   *Important: you will likely need to have something plugged into each video card to prevent the OS from idling it. The easiest way to do this is to make a dummy plug for each card. Instructions:
   http://www.overclock.net/t/384733/the-30-second-dummy-plug

   If you add/remove video cards later, re-run this:   sudo aticonfig --adapter=all --initial


4) Install SSH, curl, & update all packages

   sudo apt-get install openssh-server byobu
   
   (the rest can be done via SSH if you wish - make sure to forward port 22 on your firewall to the box if you want to connect from outside your network)
   (As for an SSH client, I recommend Putty - you can copy each of the remaining commands and then right-click them into your putty window instead of typing them manually)
      
   sudo apt-get install curl
   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get upgrade


5) Install CGMiner:

   wget http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/cgminer-2.11.4-x86_64-built.tar.bz2
   tar jxvf cgminer-2.11.4-x86_64-built.tar.bz2

   (optional - delete the archive)
      rm *.bz2

   (optional - check if cgminer detects all GPUs properly:)
      cd cgminer-2.11.4-x86_64-built
      export DISPLAY=:0
      export GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS=1
      ./cgminer -n


6) Create cgminer startup script:

   nano mine_litecoins.sh

   (enter the following into the editor:)
   
      #!/bin/sh   
      export DISPLAY=:0
      export GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT=100
      export GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS=1
      cd /home/[your xubuntu username]/cgminer-2.11.4-x86_64-built
      ./cgminer --scrypt -I 19 -g 1 -w 256 --thread-concurrency 21712 --auto-fan -o stratum+tcp://notroll.in:3333 -u [your notroll.in workername] -p 12345 --failover-only -o stratum+tcp://coinotron.com:3334 -u [your coinotron workername] -p 12345

   (save the file & quit nano)

   chmod +x mine_litecoins.sh
   
   
7) Create auto-start scripts

  nano miner_launcher.sh

   (enter the following into the editor:)
   
   #!/bin/bash
   DEFAULT_DELAY=0
   if [ "x$1" = "x" -o "x$1" = "xnone" ]; then
      DELAY=$DEFAULT_DELAY
   else
      DELAY=$1
   fi
   sleep $DELAY
   su [your xubuntu username] -c "screen -dmS cgm /home/[your xubuntu username]/mine_litecoins.sh"  

   (save the file & quit nano)

   chmod +x miner_launcher.sh
   
   
   Add this line to /etc/rc.local :
   
   /home/[your xubuntu username]/miner_launcher.sh 30 &
   
   (will need to run nano as sudo, put the line above "exit 0")


8. Create an alias to easily check on cgminer:

  sudo nano .bashrc

scroll to the end of the file and add these lines above the line that reads "# enable programmable completion ..."

  alias monitor_cgminer='screen -x cgm'

(note that you'll need to restart your SSH connection for this to take effect)


9) Management/info:

- The miner will autostart after 30 seconds after linux is booted every time the box is powered on.
- If you want to monitor output, SSH into the box and type "monitor_cgminer" at any time to jump to cgminer's screen output. When you're done, hit ctrl-A, ctrl-D to leave the screen session (and leave cgminer running on the box).
- use ./miner_launcher.sh to manually start the miner (if you kill it, or quit out of it, etc)
   
- Info on cgminer's various settings is here (scroll down):  https://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer