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Topic: is it possible to mine from 2 different GPUs? (Read 9089 times)

newbie
Activity: 7
Merit: 0
I think the question depends on the assumption that GPU's share workloads, which they do not.

Mining software works similar to the way that parallel computing clusters do whereby the software uses a small amount of the host's CPU resources to assign jobs to each GPU, each of which are handled by one GPU.

Thus, each CPU works one job at a time and the work of one job is not shared between the GPU's.

This is why it doesn't matter if your GPU's are in Crossfire or SLI configuration (or not). The software addresses the GPU's directly.

You could have as many different GPU's as your motherboard can support all running under one instance of, say, Diablominer.

So say I have a Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 and I want to buy a PowerColor Radeon HD 7970. Would that work?
donator
Activity: 1616
Merit: 1003
If you were mining back in the days when a 5870 was pulling in 5.0 BTC a day, you will remember that it was even common for people to mine with ATI and nVidida GPUs side-by-side. They simply ran one instance of a CUDA miner and another instance of an OpenCL miner.
member
Activity: 74
Merit: 10
I think the question depends on the assumption that GPU's share workloads, which they do not.

Mining software works similar to the way that parallel computing clusters do whereby the software uses a small amount of the host's CPU resources to assign jobs to each GPU, each of which are handled by one GPU.

Thus, each CPU works one job at a time and the work of one job is not shared between the GPU's.

This is why it doesn't matter if your GPU's are in Crossfire or SLI configuration (or not). The software addresses the GPU's directly.

You could have as many different GPU's as your motherboard can support all running under one instance of, say, Diablominer.
full member
Activity: 126
Merit: 100
Yes, even if they were the same I still wouldn't use crossfire as they run better solo.

I've run 5830s with 6850s and 7850s in the same machine (5830s are a real bargain)

Being able to game on one card while the other keep mining is nice.
legendary
Activity: 1344
Merit: 1004
Absolutely. You may need to run two different instances of your miner though depending on your miner of choice and install ATI Stream SDK 2.1 in addition to the AMD APP that comes with more recent drivers (use 12.1) to get optimum performance though. You can just install the most recent driver and AMD APP that comes with it, but you'll lose up to 20% performance from your 5870.
full member
Activity: 140
Merit: 100
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Yes

Is it possible to make money with GPUs? Well, not very likely and it will take a long time.
member
Activity: 86
Merit: 10
Is it possible to mine bitcoins from 2 different GPUs?
Just say like a 7970 and a 5870?
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