Intel vs AMD | Bitcointalksearch.org

P4man

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Quote from: NINJA-- on December 21, 2011, 10:57:14 AM

Like I said I did try ubuntu it was amazing to install but installing drivers was a nightmare. How do you install drivers on linux? Is it nice and simple like windows just click exe or is it a pain in the ass?

Typically in Linux you do not install drivers; they are part of the kernel, so you already have them. Exceptions include proprietary video drivers; AMD catalyst is already installed in linuxcoin, and its the version you want for mining. Nothing extra needed. Ubuntu comes with opensource drivers, and for mining you need proprietary ones, which you install with the "Additional Driver" application and it takes like 2 clicks. Do not use the newest versions of ubuntu though, since they come with more recent AMD drivers which are crappy for mining. In fact, do not use ubuntu for mining. You can run ubuntu from a stick, but only with the open drivers. To run ubuntu with the proprietary drivers from a stick is possible, but not so easy to achieve.

bittenbob

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Quote from: BCMan on January 19, 2012, 12:50:13 AM

Quote from: bittenbob on January 19, 2012, 12:30:29 AM

Quote from: BCMan on January 19, 2012, 12:26:39 AM

Quote from: bittenbob on January 19, 2012, 12:20:54 AM

Usually if your chipset goes into autoprotect mode it will slow down your CPU so keep an eye to see if your clock speeds are consistent.

My cpu is currently working @ 783 mhz - same mhash/s as with 3 ghz and ZERO cpu usage. I'm doing something wrong?

If your cpu is not needed then cool and quiet should underclock it to reduce power consumption. As long as it speeds up when you go to use it for something else you are not doing anything wrong. With such low clock speeds are you running bulldozer?

No, it's a Phenom II. I just mean that there's nothing bad in powersaving mode, because it doesn't (and shouldn't) affect gpu performance.

Powersaving mode on your cpu is just fine. Your northbridge determines the number of PCIE lanes and by consequence all PCIE traffic (along with cpu) passes through it as far as I understand. If this is bottlenecking it would slow down GPU's simultaneously as was observed along with the CPU. Most people would not run into problems saturating the PCIE lanes on a motherboard but I can see 4x6990 causing some problems on a dated chipset.

BCMan

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Quote from: bittenbob on January 19, 2012, 12:30:29 AM

Quote from: BCMan on January 19, 2012, 12:26:39 AM

Quote from: bittenbob on January 19, 2012, 12:20:54 AM

Usually if your chipset goes into autoprotect mode it will slow down your CPU so keep an eye to see if your clock speeds are consistent.

My cpu is currently working @ 783 mhz - same mhash/s as with 3 ghz and ZERO cpu usage. I'm doing something wrong?

If your cpu is not needed then cool and quiet should underclock it to reduce power consumption. As long as it speeds up when you go to use it for something else you are not doing anything wrong. With such low clock speeds are you running bulldozer?

No, it's a Phenom II. I just mean that there's nothing bad in powersaving mode, because it doesn't (and shouldn't) affect gpu performance.

bittenbob

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Quote from: BCMan on January 19, 2012, 12:26:39 AM

Quote from: bittenbob on January 19, 2012, 12:20:54 AM

Usually if your chipset goes into autoprotect mode it will slow down your CPU so keep an eye to see if your clock speeds are consistent.

My cpu is currently working @ 783 mhz - same mhash/s as with 3 ghz and ZERO cpu usage. I'm doing something wrong?

If your cpu is not needed then cool and quiet should underclock it to reduce power consumption. As long as it speeds up when you go to use it for something else you are not doing anything wrong. With such low clock speeds are you running bulldozer?

BCMan

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Quote from: bittenbob on January 19, 2012, 12:20:54 AM

Usually if your chipset goes into autoprotect mode it will slow down your CPU so keep an eye to see if your clock speeds are consistent.

My cpu is currently working @ 783 mhz - same mhash/s as with 3 ghz and ZERO cpu usage. I'm doing something wrong?

bittenbob

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Check the aggression in the miner. This type of drop is common if my aggression is set to 5. With my aggression set to 13 it stays 99% 100% of the time. If you are mining with the same settings on all this is one possible explanation I can think of. I am not running multiple GPU's but if the aggression is not the case then something is bottlenecking. I suggest you also check your chipset temperature on your motherboard. If it is overheating it might be slowing down the cards to protect itself. I had this issue with my CPU on the 790 chipset. Now I am on the 990FX chipset and have never had it slow anything down. Usually if your chipset goes into autoprotect mode it will slow down your CPU so keep an eye to see if your clock speeds are consistent.

BCMan

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There's no difference between energy saving on/off because there's no cpu usage at all and should'nt be, if it's not a cpu bug with AMD APP SDK 2.5. And looks like you have it. Just use SDK 2.4.

bronan

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Is their some kinda energy saving mode being turned on/off since it looks like that is happening
Amd cpu tend to go very low in energy save which can be a pain in the ass, when you turn it off and see what happens.
And yes it happens on intel cpu's as well but since the difference is smaller on intel between the steps it has a less annoying effect

NINJA--

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Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on December 20, 2011, 09:19:06 PM

1) If it is a dedicated mining rig don't open a browser. If you are browsing the web then it isn't a dedicated mining rig.

Dont be so anal. This is a dedicated miner. I was watching the CPU usage while doing basic things to troubleshoot.

Im thinking about trying linux. I hear you get 10% increase hash over windows. Plus booting off USB instead of a HD is pretty sweet. And if your telling me it also uses less CPU than windows it sounds like a dream come true. Like I said I did try ubuntu it was amazing to install but installing drivers was a nightmare. How do you install drivers on linux? Is it nice and simple like windows just click exe or is it a pain in the ass?

jake262144

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So, the cause seems to be your poor, overwhelmed CPU.
That constant 30% CPU usage is just Windows... that's why going Linux was among the first choices I gave you.
I already gave you some ideas as to what features you might wish to disable.

If you wish to pinpoint the source of the CPU usage more accurately, it's gonna get a tiny bit technical:
- Install ~~Microsoft's~~ Sysinternals' Process Explorer ⁽¹⁾
- Run it as root; it will show you a lot of good stuff, including CPU usage by different windows services and drivers.
- Post a list (or a screenshot) of what's going on there, under the hood.

In my career I've seen a lot of astonishing mishaps; one cheapo laptop hogged the CPU by having its mic constantly on and doing additional postprocessing to the captured sound... the louder its environment, the more CPU was being used

Links:
(1) http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653

DeathAndTaxes

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Gerald Davis

Quote from: NINJA-- on December 20, 2011, 08:31:29 PM

Dedicated mining rig with 6990. Not used for any reason except mining. No antivirus. No crossfire. I turned off the fancy display features but no other windows features. Any time I do something such as open a web browser my CPU usage shoots up to 100% and all my GPU's drop. I think its too much for the CPU. Strange cause when Im not doing anything my CPU usage is 30-40%. I did notice I have 60 processes running in the task manager. What windows services can I kill to bring the processes down? Im prolly gonna grab a dual core but would like to try to make this single core work for now.

Two ideas.

1) If it is a dedicated mining rig don't open a browser. You should literally never have anything running except the miner. Dedicated = single purpose. Think mining appliance. If you are browsing the web then it isn't a dedicated mining rig.

2) Linux + usb drive. I use a single core sempron downclocked from 2.8Ghz to 1.2Ghz and rarely use more than 10% cpu w/ 3x5970 running.

Red Emerald

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Quote from: NINJA-- on December 20, 2011, 08:31:29 PM

Dedicated mining rig with 6990. Not used for any reason except mining. No antivirus. No crossfire. I turned off the fancy display features but no other windows features. Any time I do something such as open a web browser my CPU usage shoots up to 100% and all my GPU's drop. I think its too much for the CPU. Strange cause when Im not doing anything my CPU usage is 30-40%. I did notice I have 60 processes running in the task manager. What windows services can I kill to bring the processes down? Im prolly gonna grab a dual core but would like to try to make this single core work for now.

Kill all of them and install linux. It's a dedicated mining rig so you might as well run it efficiently.

NINJA--

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Dedicated mining rig with 6990. Not used for any reason except mining. No antivirus. No crossfire. I turned off the fancy display features but no other windows features. Any time I do something such as open a web browser my CPU usage shoots up to 100% and all my GPU's drop. I think its too much for the CPU. Strange cause when Im not doing anything my CPU usage is 30-40%. I did notice I have 60 processes running in the task manager. What windows services can I kill to bring the processes down? Im prolly gonna grab a dual core but would like to try to make this single core work for now.

RandyFolds

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Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on December 20, 2011, 06:50:01 PM

Quote from: RandyFolds on December 20, 2011, 06:27:52 PM

I also just noticed that the usage of each GPU is perfectly matched. That is not the case in ANY of my rigs. You have some bottleneck, likely a voltage, CPU or windows issue.

What mobo has eight PCIE slots? What are you using to power eight GPUs? What extenders are you using? The PCIE bus can't handle the draw of eight cores running full blast...

Likely he is using dual GPU cards. The perfectly matches usage may be due to Crossfire being turned on in Catalyst Control Center. Although it shouldn't hurt mining I would turn it off.

My trifired 6970s all ran differently. There is just no way their usage would match perfectly in real world conditions.

I know that eight gpus can be done in windows, I just don't think it is easy.

DeathAndTaxes

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Gerald Davis

Quote from: RandyFolds on December 20, 2011, 06:27:52 PM

I also just noticed that the usage of each GPU is perfectly matched. That is not the case in ANY of my rigs. You have some bottleneck, likely a voltage, CPU or windows issue.

What mobo has eight PCIE slots? What are you using to power eight GPUs? What extenders are you using? The PCIE bus can't handle the draw of eight cores running full blast...

Likely he is using dual GPU cards. The perfectly matches usage may be due to Crossfire being turned on in Catalyst Control Center. Although it shouldn't hurt mining I would turn it off.

DeathAndTaxes

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Gerald Davis

Quote from: RandyFolds on December 20, 2011, 05:35:15 PM

It appears you are running eight GPUs under windows...that gets my vote as the problem.

There is no issue w/ running 8 GPU under Windows. My 8 all stay right @ 99% (4x 5970s).

RandyFolds

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I also just noticed that the usage of each GPU is perfectly matched. That is not the case in ANY of my rigs. You have some bottleneck, likely a voltage, CPU or windows issue.

What mobo has eight PCIE slots? What are you using to power eight GPUs? What extenders are you using? The PCIE bus can't handle the draw of eight cores running full blast...

Red Emerald

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Quote from: RandyFolds on December 20, 2011, 05:35:15 PM

It appears you are running eight GPUs under windows...that gets my vote as the problem.

This sounds likely.

I know cgminer creates 2 threads per GPU to help keep the activity as high as possible. Maybe you could try that.

RandyFolds

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It appears you are running eight GPUs under windows...that gets my vote as the problem.

jake262144

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I can think of a few reasons why this mess could be happening.
Please start troubleshooting at 1.

[1] Overwhelmed CPU
Is this a dedicated mining rig?
A dedicated windows-based mining rig should have all the useless (in this context) housekeeping tasks turned off: no defragmentation, indexing, power saving, switching off unused hard drives, no automatic updates and by Jove don't ever use an antivirus on a dedicated miner.

That's a pretty weak CPU so if you were to use this machine as your desktop PC, the mining speed will suffer if the CPU can't keep up. Poor mining speed due to a running web browser is an ubiquitous and long-established fact of life on "mining-optimised" ( ==weak CPU ) machines.

Do you think you could monitor your CPU usage in addition to the GPU stats? CPU temps?
See what the CPU is doing when the mining speed drops happen.

[2] Faulty BIOS
You're running the most recent version, right?

[3] Motherboard too weak to provide enough juice
The MSI 890FXA-GD70 does not seem to sport the additional peripheral connector to provide more current for multiple GPU configurations.
Did you try taking one of the cards out?

Topic: Intel vs AMD (Read 9000 times)