Topic: HELP! struggling to make 6 gpu R9 290 rig to run on windows 7 (SOLVED) - page 2. (Read 33654 times)

How did you make the USB drive?

On my MSI boards, to get things going quickly, I unplug the hard drive and plug in the USB disk. Since the bios is set to boot from HDD that no longer exists it boots straight to UEFI bios. Then, I can go to boot settings and select the USB stick by name. It will show us as verbatum, or store and go, or sandisk cruiser etc...

Then, I set that USB as primary, save the bios changes and shut down instead of restarting. Then I just plug the sata drive back in and fire up, worked fine.

Depending on your hardware you may need to change some settings. Common ones are "full/partial USB initilization" usually by fast boot options. Legacy boot options are another option, though you should be able to get UEFI to work. Finally, try other USB ports or even the USB 2.0 headers. You can't boot from USB 3.0 ports on the MSI, apparently, for an example.

Good luck!

As the previous post said, forget BAMT and go with Ubuntu, there is a link I posted some posts back which contain all you need to set it up on a usb stick.

Yeah i have salamander ready to go on a usb stick,  just need to find the time.   Cards are all sapphire.  It boots straight to windows when i put the bamt stick in.  even when i disable the hdd it wont boot,  its like theres nothing on the usb stick at all.

I would not count on AMD to release drivers for windows 7 that allow you to run 6 cards. It's not going to happen, not straight from AMD. Why would they? There's really no support for gaming cards, that is the reason the firepro series exists and why they cost so much more for so little relative power, all the $$$ is in drivers and support.

If anything, someone will figure out how to modify the drivers. Right now, Linux will do what you want though.

Also, I don't think nvandertill was asking about the USB thumb drive, but the manuf. of the 290 cards themselves.

Quit jacking with BAMT and go straight to Saucy Salamander!

ocz and some other brand

Are they Gigabyte? Gigabyte and BAMT don't play nice I've found.

I hate Gigabyte. I'd rather buy ASRock than Gigabyte.

I've tried 2 different USB sticks and can't get them to boot BAMT.  Tried 2 different machines too.  Went through bios boot order as well.

Thanks for your reply.

I can run 3 290's and one 280x on the same machine by using the "--device=" command, so that isn't an issue for me.  The issue lies with windows itself.  CGminer won't even recognize the 5th card because windows won't assign it resources.  Windows would only show 4 until I did the trick where you short the pci slot.  I have tried different types of 16x-16x risers and 1x-16x powered risers in different slots and different cards.  I always seem to get the Code 43 in device manager.  Currently, the 7950 has the Code 43.  When I swapped the 7950 out for another 280x from my other system, the 280x picked Code 43, while the original 280x still worked fine.  

It has to be a driver issue because I see people running 6 and 7 cards, and I'm through trying to figure it out.  Everything works fine in windows 8.1 except for my gpu mapping, it's all fucked up so I don't use Win 8.  Not dealing with that.  Hopefully a driver update from AMD will fix the Code 43 in win 7.  I want to call and see if I can speak to someone at AMD who know what's going on, but I don't know if that would get me anywhere.  Over to Linux for now.

Not yet, but I will give it a try tomorrow when a lot more of my 290's show up 

Anyone tried bamt 1.3 for the r9 290s yet? Apparently they implemented a load of fixes to get shit up and running with the r9s. Check it out.

Hey

I noticed that there is an issue running 7950/290 with 280X card in the same rig. The issue lies with the gpu threads setting. Basically both the 7950 and the 290 prefers 1 thread but the 280x prefers 2. Running 290 with 7950 works great, with just different settings on the intensity, shaders and everything else but running with a 280X in the same rig is not something that I would recommend. You can run multiple instances of cgminer on the same rig, but I dont really recommend that either...

I would put the 290 and the 7950 in one rig, and sell the 280X or swap it with another 7950 or a 290 to get a more stable rig.
Also, if you are not using riser cables that are shielded, that could also be an issue with EMI between the cards. You can buy aluminium tape to shield the cables and make sure the cables don't physically touch each other.

Also, remember that the 290 is a quite new card so it requires later versions of drivers, that can also be an issue if you run on older set of drivers, as some other guide sometimes suggest. I.e you have to run this version, with this version of sdk etc. I think that is just bullshit. AMD releases new drivers for a reason, not to make the cards perform worse.

I prefer using the newest drivers, since I have seen they provide the most stable configuration. I run both on Ubuntu and Windows 7 without any issues, but I have heard people having issues with more cards due to EMI or bad riser cables.

I had a really strange issue with one rig, where two of the 290 cards worked fine but the third didnt, and it stopped after a while. I then switched to 1X->16X powered risers, and connected two of the cards to the 1X and one to the 16X and the problem dissappeared.

Check my guide out in the previous post, if you fancy trying Ubuntu and want to run it on a USB stick instead of on a HDD and Windows.

I can run 3x Sapphire R9 290 Tri-x , 1x Sapphire 280x Toxic, and 1x 7950 in Windows 8.1 just fine, but in Windows 7 I get Code 43 on the 7950 (if I put another 280x in there I still get the Code 43) no matter what I do.  13.11 beta, 13.12 both work in Windows 8.1, but in Windows 7 I can only get 4 cards going.  Fucking sucks.  AMD needs to work this shit out.  And of course, in Win 8.1 my GPU mapping is so screwed up I don't even want to waste my time trying to fix it.

Hey

I wrote a guide for using the Sapphire 290's on Ubuntu with the latest drivers and latest of everything else. I get around 880 khs per card.

http://infinitecointalk.org/index.php/topic,1128.0.html

Check it out, if it might help

try sdk 2.7 + catalists 12.6 +cgminer 3.7.0

What motherboard are you using with those? I've been hit or miss with 6 GPU and different Z87 motherboards, interested in what manufacturer/model/chipset you are using?

.05btc bounty!!!

So, do you think this is the case even for four? {290x} I'm downloaded Ubuntu now...

I'm having a problem keeping 1 stable with win7, nonetheless four or six.

I have:
Four Sapphire r9 290x cards
GA 990FXA-UD5 [mobo]
AMD FX 4130 4-core 3.8GHz
12GB RAM
1500w Enermax
Four 16 x 16 pci extenders [not powered]
(optical, WD 350gb hdd, Windows 7)

pics of my rig here: https://imgur.com/a/uKm87

Also, this is my first rig and may be missing something obvious to others.
All drivers are installed plus win 7
In the bios, I didn't really do anything. It was already set to boot pcie 1
Not sure what else to do in bios.

When trying just one card:
- I have to try multiple slots multiple times.
- Each time, either windows is scrambled, gets frozen at startup, looks 8-bit and distorted, or no signal, no beep
- when it gets going and looks perfect (1 out of 20 starts), it eventually crashes
- When i try other slots (like the x16 ones), it doesn't even beep once, or does the 1 long, 3 short beeps (gpu code).
- Once I got windows up with 2 cards, but one had an error 43
- I've tried to download the updated catalyst, but as it's installing, when the screen goes black a few times, it eventually never comes back.
- Tried uninstalling the drivers and restarting and installing, but trying to start windows without this driver and using this card is damn near impossible. Did it once though.
- Sometimes windows is going, but the monitor stops and says no signal, but the pc sounds no diff than a second ago...like it's still running win7
- If I try to start with two cards in any slot combo, i get the 1 long, 3 short beeps

.05btc bounty to the one that get's me up and running.

If you don't see it listed above, assume I haven't done it..even if basic

Thanks!!

I have two cards running perfectly now, and it wasn't to much work.

Very nice.

Hopefully GPU 5 was just working on an extremely difficult share rather than being lame but you may be right, time will tell once you leave it mining for an extended period to see if the numbers even out at all.

On the upside it looks like the tweaking you are doing is paying off, nice rates so far!

Thanks!

Yes, they are USB 3.0 riser cables. I didn't make these, but I have a bunch of blank PCBs I'm putting together that appear to be working (on less expensive hardware, to start  )

I love these risers, I've never had a single issue with one other than the ridiculous price gouging. I miss November, when they were >$10..



I've managed over 5mh/s, and am closing in on 5kWU/m 

This is without a 20" box fan, as my case is designed to use, and I think I have a lame mounted card in the mix. Too early to tell. I'm not sure how much the reference cards will benefit from the box fan, but I'm about to go buy one and see. Sure does work well with the non-ref coolers though.