Vega 64 performance

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Marsh

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May 12, 2013
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It does work in Linux but with much lower hashrate.

The AMD Windows version beta block chain driver works much better than Linux version.
But Windows version driver is still buggy but workable.

Windows setup allow soft mod the vega bios using tools or windows registry without hardware bios mod.

For Linux, someone would need to come up a tool to allow "mere mortal" easily moding the Vega bios.
My guess , some smart folks are working on one click Vega bios mod tool now.

Not sure AMD will ever improve Linux beta block chain driver or just abandoned it.
 
M

Marsh

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May 12, 2013
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Joel said:
How big of PSU should I get?
Click to expand...
Any PS over 750-850w is good enough.
The key point is that each vega card requires 2 x 6pin vga plugs, so you will need 4 x 6pin vga plugs for 2 Vega card.
 
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poutnik

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Apr 3, 2013
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I have just (well, 2 days ago) purchased a Vega64 card myself - a SAPPHIRE Radeon RX Vega 64 8G HBM2. I have installed it in a spare (old) computer - Asus M5A88V board with AMD FX-6300 cpu and 12GB ECC RAM, have also added a small spare SSD (32GB) I had lying around. I installed Windows 7 64bit on it, let the machine install almost all updates (SP1). But for the life of it, I can not get the card to work with either the Blockchain or normal AMD drivers (I have done exactly what was recommended in the guides above). The card is detected OK, drivers install OK.
But if I run OverdriveNTool it will detect Radeon Vega card and "This GPU is not supported".
Also GPU_Caps_Viewer won't show any ability for the card.
XMR-stak will quit with no OpenCL for the card being available.

Has anyone encountered similar problems? This was to be my first Windows and AMD mining machine... I already have a Linux/nVidia running perfectly for several months... If I don't find a solution today I may try it in Linux... But I would prefer to get it to work in W7 I have already installed...
 
Last edited:
jims2321

jims2321

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Jul 7, 2013
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Marsh said:
It does work in Linux but with much lower hashrate.

The AMD Windows version beta block chain driver works much better than Linux version.
But Windows version driver is still buggy but workable.

Windows setup allow soft mod the vega bios using tools or windows registry without hardware bios mod.

For Linux, someone would need to come up a tool to allow "mere mortal" easily moding the Vega bios.
My guess , some smart folks are working on one click Vega bios mod tool now.

Not sure AMD will ever improve Linux beta block chain driver or just abandoned it.
Click to expand...
I am sure some enterprising young coder is working on a port or improvement of the Linux block chain driver for AMD.
 
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poutnik

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Apr 3, 2013
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@Marsh , I have tried the drivers from AMD website, both:
* standard Radeon v. 17.30.1051-b6-aug and
* ReLive-Beta-Blockchain-Workloads-Aug23, and today even drivers from
* Sapphire website for Radeon RX Vega 64 v 17.40.1031 (but the file is labeled 17.11.1-nov10)

All of the installations I tried (only the AMD Graphic driver) install OK, but after reboot the card doesn't work - it works to display windows, but can't do any number crunching. And I have used the DDU utility with reboots before every driver install...

I'm giving up on Windows for the moment. I'm going for Linux...
 
keybored

keybored

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May 28, 2016
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poutnik said:
...
I'm giving up on Windows for the moment. I'm going for Linux...
Click to expand...
Try Windows 10. You don't need a key. Just download the installation media creation tool and create a bootable USB stick:Download Windows 10
When installing Windows just click on "I don't have a key". It'll run fine but you won't be able to customize certain parameters.
 
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poutnik

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Apr 3, 2013
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@Marsh , yes, the windows device manager did present it as AMD Radeon RX Vega (I can not check any more, as Windows 7 64 bit partition is already overwritten with ubuntu).

But I still can't use the card, it does not work. In 64bit Ubuntu 16.04.3, I have downloaded both the beta mining driver (amdgpu-pro-17.40-483984) and standard Radeon driver (amdgpu-pro-17.40-492261). Both drivers do install, both load OK, but clinfo aborts (core dumped), xmr-stak will write

Code: 
: WARNING: UNKNOWN_ERROR when calling clGetPlatformIDs for number of platforms.
: WARNING: No OpenCL platform found.
: WARNING: No AMD OpenCL platform found. Possible driver issues or wrong vendor driver.
: WARNING: backend AMD disabled.
and I can't get it to work.

@keybored , I may try that, thank you. But first I will try the card in a different motherboard if I don't have some compatibility issue with the older board. I'm also thinking of just returning it, so much hassle, and nothing of it... nVidia cards were always pretty straitghtforward...
 
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modder man

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Jan 19, 2015
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[/QUOTE]
@keybored , I may try that, thank you. But first I will try the card in a different motherboard if I don't have some compatibility issue with the older board. I'm also thinking of just returning it, so much hassle, and nothing of it... nVidia cards were always pretty straitghtforward...[/QUOTE]

The vega has been by far the most difficult card I have to work with....The profit numbers right now are also very nice.
 
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poutnik

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Apr 3, 2013
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I'm starting to truly hate the Vega. After so much searching I have found out that it might be an issue with Vega not working in PCIE 2.0 slots and requiring a PCIE 3.0 slot. So I have to find a board with a PCIE 3.0 to test with. I didn't want to buy a whole new system yet, but it looks like I might have to...

Yet, it is not certain that a PCIE 3.0 would solve it. And as of yet, I don't have a board with PCIE 3.0 that is not doing something different atm...
 
M

Marsh

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May 12, 2013
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vega card is a game changer for home mining rig for XMR

I have 6 noisy 2U 4 Nodes ( E5 v1 and E5 v3 ), it is noisy and power hungry (700w-850w each ).
Each 4 nodes produce approx 3.x KH/s. ,
efficiency is between 4.x H/s per watt (v1 cpu ) , 6.x H/s per watt ( v3 cpu )

2 little vega card produce 4KH/s with approx 380w. 8.x H/s per watt
 
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poutnik

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Apr 3, 2013
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It might be a game changer if it works. If it does not, it's a money sink.

I have just put the card in a SuperMicro X9SRI-F board, which (according to SM website) has PCIE 3.0 slots. No change, everything same. The card is going out of house - I will return it tomorrow. And I have never had such a bad experience with computer parts in my whole life - and I'm building computers for 24 years. No Vega, no Sapphire again.
 
keybored

keybored

Active Member
May 28, 2016
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poutnik said:
...
I have just put the card in a SuperMicro X9SRI-F board, which (according to SM website) has PCIE 3.0 slots. No change, everything same. The card is going out of house - I will return it tomorrow. And I have never had such a bad experience with computer parts in my whole life - and I'm building computers for 24 years. No Vega, no Sapphire again.
Click to expand...
One of those PCIe slots is a PCIe 2.0 x4 in an x16 slot. Any chance you put the card in there instead of a 3.0 slot?
I'd definitely give Windows 10 a try before returning the card. Takes only about an hour to create a USB stick and install the OS with AMD drivers if you're using an SSD as your boot drive.
Vegas are for sure not the easiest cards to work with though...
 
M

Marsh

Moderator
May 12, 2013
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Code: 
/*
 * Number of GPUs that you have in your system. Each GPU will get its own CPU thread.
 */
"gpu_thread_num" : 2,

/*
 * GPU configuration. You should play around with intensity and worksize as the fastest settings will vary.
 *      index    - GPU index number usually starts from 0
 *  intensity    - Number of parallel GPU threads (nothing to do with CPU threads)
 *   worksize    - Number of local GPU threads (nothing to do with CPU threads)
 * affine_to_cpu - This will affine the thread to a CPU. This can make a GPU miner play along nicer with a CPU miner.
 */
"gpu_threads_conf" : [
    { "index" : 0, "intensity" : 1932, "worksize" : 8, "affine_to_cpu" : false },
    { "index" : 0, "intensity" : 1932, "worksize" : 8, "affine_to_cpu" : false },
],

/*
 * Platform index. This will be 0 unless you have different OpenCL platform - eg. AMD and Intel.
 */
"platform_index" : 1,
@poutnik

Do not give up yet.
Try change this line in xmr-stak-cpu config.txt file , from 0 to 1
/*
* Platform index. This will be 0 unless you have different OpenCL platform - eg. AMD and Intel.
*/
"platform_index" : 1,
 
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