Nvidia as Primary and ATI as secondary card for mining

laterbreh

Honorable
Nov 30, 2013
3
0
10,520
Hi,

I have a GTX 680 hooked up to 3 monitors and I want to use it to game. I just picked up a R9 280x and I would like to do altcoin mining.

I am running an I7 4770k on a Z87-G45 GAMING with a 1000w PSU.

I have connected 1 monitor to the other card to verify its working.

Basically, I have switched the cards positions in the PC 3 times now. Used driver sweeper to clear drivers and re install between swaps but I cannot get the computer to recognize or initialize the card in the secondary slot. I am hit with Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43) in device manager.

I am at a loss. I have googled and searched everywhere with split answers about them working.
Yes and No.

Does anyone have any way that I can get these two cards working in my system?

Thank you.
 
Solution
First take your AMD card out.

Sweap drivers both Nvidia and AMD with driver sweaper.

Have your Nvidia card in the highest slot on your motherboard. Install Nvidia drivers.

Download the best SDK (2.8 My guess) for your ATI card to mine with. And ATI drivers.

Plug your ATI in your MB.. Connect _no_ monitor to your ATI card

Install SDK and the ATI drivers.

Reboot

Use Cgminer 3.1

cgminer --scrypt -o SITE -u Workername -p password --lookup-gap 2 --thread-concurrency 8192 -g 1 -I 19 -w 256 -> my bat file for my 5970 mining LTC/FTC you should find what settings you should use for an 280x

Thats how i got it to work, and im a scrub at this... This could work for you

pauls3743

Distinguished
My advice would be to verify it's not a motherboard slot problem. Remove both cards from your system and install each, in turn, into the 2nd slot, do not populate the first slot.

Personally, I think it's a driver problem. Some time ago NVidia and AMD had a spat and NVidia re-engineered their drivers to disable their own cards if it found an AMD card as the primary graphics card in the system. It could very well be that AMD have done exactly the same.
 

sRies

Honorable
Dec 4, 2013
1
0
10,520
First take your AMD card out.

Sweap drivers both Nvidia and AMD with driver sweaper.

Have your Nvidia card in the highest slot on your motherboard. Install Nvidia drivers.

Download the best SDK (2.8 My guess) for your ATI card to mine with. And ATI drivers.

Plug your ATI in your MB.. Connect _no_ monitor to your ATI card

Install SDK and the ATI drivers.

Reboot

Use Cgminer 3.1

cgminer --scrypt -o SITE -u Workername -p password --lookup-gap 2 --thread-concurrency 8192 -g 1 -I 19 -w 256 -> my bat file for my 5970 mining LTC/FTC you should find what settings you should use for an 280x

Thats how i got it to work, and im a scrub at this... This could work for you

 
Solution

tomilkka

Honorable
Jan 31, 2014
1
0
10,510
Yes, it is possible. with windows 7. Some fiddling with settings is necessary. It took me nearly 5 hours to make it right.

I have to clarify the steps, as I did this setup yesterday and it is working 100 % and there is a lot of wrong info around...

1. boot-up normally, nvidia is your main display driver with everything already installed and working normally

2. (you already have the ati card installed in pci-e slot 2) Install amd catalyst, and amd sdk drivers for open cl.

3. boot again.

4. go to > control panel > hardware and sound > display > adjust resolution >

5. click "detect"... Now if everything goes ok, 1 or 2 more displays are added to your "display arsenal"

6. click on the number 2 box.

7. from "display" or some other settings panel click your r9 200 card or other amd card active and then click "force vga output"

8. Something should happen now with the box number 2... it becomes another desktop for you to "use"...

9. Click display box 1 (desktop number 1), and configure setting "multiple displays" as "extend these displays"

Now you should be fine for your cgminer settings:

My cgminer.bat is following for the MSI r9 280x card:

setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
cgminer.exe --gpu-platform 1 --scrypt -o stratum+tcp:/xxxxx.com:3333 -u xxxxx -p anypassword -d 0 --intensity 13 --thread-concurrency 8191 --worksize 256 -g 2 --temp-target 75 --temp-overheat 85 --temp-cutoff 90 --gpu-engine 1050 --gpu-memclock 1500 --lookup-gap 2 --auto-fan

the most important factor is to remember add the "--gpu-platform 1" and "-d 0" to your cgminer command line, otherwise nothing works.

It is fully possible to just use cgminer with the above mentioned settings and mine away, but if you do not do the display settings jungle, you will not be able to monitor the gpu-temps of the amd mining card.

-The simplest solution is to make a dummy plug for your amd card, and you do not have to go through the above mentioned hassle, but I wanted to find a software solution, and it seems I found one.

- The display settings might take a few attempts to get it right. You can accidentally even make your screen totally blind/black, in which case you have to reboot in safe mode 640x480 vga (hit f8 at boot-up sequence repeatedly) and delete your displays, and revert to original settings...and try again...

- If you have problems activating the display or detecting it correctly, try also running cgminer first with above mentioned settings (so it kind of kick starts the windows 7 to recognize it, and try dragging some of your windows a little bit over the edge of the screen to the right (to your virtual desktop)

-whew...:)

Good luck. Remember, if this is too complicated, just get yourself a dummy-plug.


 

francis511

Reputable
Mar 13, 2014
1
0
4,510


You can also use a Fuzion motherboard !

 

Akanu

Reputable
Apr 23, 2014
1
0
4,510
if you have access to windows 8 you can run that I am currently running a nvidia gtx 470 in primary for gaming and general purpose computing and a ati r7 260x for mining and both are working flawlessly I have no monitor attached to the ati