Merry Christmas everyone. Just wanted to take a moment to thank all of you on this thread who have been very kind, patient and helpful educating a mining newbie like me over the past 2 months. I am still not where I want to be but have learned a lot and hope to continue that and leverage it into a profitable 2017.
Here's a quick update on my never-ending battle to get 6 GPU's running on my 2nd rig... yesterday, I took another shot at strap-modding the bios of my MSI 470s. My first attempt about a week ago to mod GPU #0 didn't work for some reason and I had to flash it back to original settings. This time, I unplugged my orphan Nitro, rebooted, and flashed dev #1 with the modded bios. Reboot went fine but upon checking DevMgr, found the dreaded error 43 on presumably the card i flashed. Tried running the 6xGPU mod a few times but no dice, so I re-flashed it with original bios, rebooted, plugged the Nitro back in I'm back to "normal".
What i don't get is why the exact strap-mod I used on the exact same GPUs on my other rig (same W7) doesnt wanna work on this rig... 0 for 2 now. I'm sure I am doing it right but this rig doesn't wanna take it. The only real difference is the Mobo between the 2 systems. Anyway, I'm at the point where it probably makes sense to strip this thing down, run the driver cleaner, then re-install the GPUs one by one, maybe flashing each as I go.
But, then I got to thinking... if I'm going to basically re-build this thing, I might as well install Windows 10, since I have heard from numerous people that this is a better OS for anything over 4 GPUs. And, it looks like I can still get an upgrade for free so probably worth the shot. This time I am going to try plugging the 1st GPU (and monitor) into slot #2 (x16) since starting with slot #1 last time may have been causing some of my issues. Hopefully, W10 will let me get 6 GPUs running and modded. That should get me about 40% more hash-rate on XMR vs what that rig is currently doing.
So, I got my 6th 470 for rig #2 so will probably take a crack at moving to W10 and rebuilding this thing today. This is my plan but I wanted to ask for opinions as to whether or not this is over-kill. Note that current status is W7, max of 5 GPUs, 2 unsuccessful attempts to strap-mod bios on 2 separate GPUs (exact ones that I have done 4x on my other rig).
1- Power down and unplug all but 1 GPU. Sole GPU will be plugged into PCIe slot #2 (x16), monitor plugged into GPU via HDMI cable.
1a- I suspect this might not work given the issues i have had with slot #2, so will plug into slot #1 initially if needed, then try slot #2 as primary again after W10 install.
2- Boot up and upgrade to Windows 10 before doing anything else
3- Load Crimson drivers from AMD site for 1 plugged in GPU
4- Test GPU in Claymore miner, probably ETH since it shows individual GPU speed, unlike XMR miner
5- Flash that GPU with bios strap-mod, overclock & under-volt, then re-test in ETH miner to ensure speed increase
6- After ensuring all is working correctly, power down, unplug GPU from slot #2 and plug in another GPU into that slot
7- Repeat all of the steps above except for #3 since the drivers will already be on the machine
8- After all steps done for all 6 GPUs, start adding GPUs 1 at a time until up to 6 (hopefully)
9- If I get the error 43 code at GPU #5, install the 6xGPU registry mod app
This is obviously going to take the better part of a full day. The thing that could save significant time would be to skip the 1 at a time method and add GPUs incrementally after getting the first 1 to work. This would make bios flashing a bit tougher, but I am under the impression that windows should add GPU's device numbers in order, so maybe this could save some time. Meaning, get GPU#1 working after flashing bios mod on device #0, then add the 2nd GPU and flash device #1, etc, etc.
At this point, I am no planning to mess with the bios on the orphan Nitro. If I can get 6GPUs and the 5 MSI's bios modded on this rig, I will be very happy.
Anyone see anything wrong with this approach or have any suggestions?
Just wanted to update the status my move to Windows 10 on my 2nd rig, in case someone already here or who finds it in the future was grappling with the same issues as I was.
Firstly, I decided to go with the "add each card incrementally" approach instead of swapping out 1 by 1 to mod the bios then replug them all 1 by 1... and this worked, at least for the most part.
After upgrading to W10 (took a bit over an hour), the main thing I did differently from the W7 build was start with the x16 slot #2 on this mobo. In fact, I did this even before updating windows (had only 1 card plugged into the x16 slot) and it actually worked for the first time on this rig! So, after installing W10, just left it there and it worked fine. From there, I just added GPUs 1 by 1, testing with Claymore ETH miner, then flashing bios, then rinse and repeat. Was really worried before turning it on with GPUs #5 & 6 plugged in, but W10 had absolutely no issue with this whatsoever! So, I now have MSI 470 4GB Gamings in slots 1-5 and the Sapphire Nitro 470 8GB in slot #6.
The one unexpected thing I did run into was this... when copying the ROM from my newest MSI GPU (just opened &received a few days ago), I noticed that under memory type it actually showed Samsung, not Hynix as my other 8 MSI 470's showed. The other interesting thing is that this GPU actually got about 2 Mh/s more on ETH out of the box than my other MSIs. But, since I wasn't sure if that Samsung vs Hynix memory could affect the 1500 memory strap, I just left it un-modded, so it is running about 4 MH/s slower on ETH (over-clocked & under-volted) compared to the other MSIs on this rig. Does anyone know if this will affect the memory strap mod at all?
So... bottom line is, testing on ETH miner, I switched over to Claymore XMR 9.6 and actually getting almost exactly as expected, a bit over 4Kh/s (~700 each from the 4 modded MSI and ~600 each from the un-modded MSI and un-modded Nitro). So, very happy with this so far and maybe a bit of room to tweak for further improvement.
No, all totaled with 10 GPUs and 3 i7 K's, I am getting about 7.6 Kh/s on XMR, using about 1,260 watts total. At current rates, about a bit over $10 profit/day (not counting BurstCoin mining). This is the best it's been in the 3-4 months I've been involved in mining so hoping it lasts a while