Linux, Bitcoin, graphics card question

[amenditman]

I just got a Gigabyte Radeon R9 270X, 4GB GDDR5 card for, a little late, Christmas present.

 

I currently have an EVGA GT 640 in my new build desktop. It more than does it for everyday use, light gaming, etc.

But it really sucks when it comes to intensive work like Bitcoin mining, maybe 30 mH/s if I throw a few CPU cores

in with it.

 

What I want to do, if it's possible, is put them both in with the old one dedicated to pushing my usual video and the

new one for bitcoin or litecoin mining. I have plenty of PSU, CPU, and RAM to do it. But can I install a nVidia card

and a ATI card in the MOBO at the same time? My thought is if they were both pushing video, then no. If they

are used for separate functions, maybe? I do have a slightly older ATI graphics card that will more than do the trick

if switching that out with the nVidia would help the possibilities.

 

Anyone here have any ideas, where to get more info, etc?

Edited December 31, 2013 by amenditman

[V.T. Eric Layton]

[sunrat]

Never heard of anyone doing that. Matching cards , yes; hybrid graphics Intel/Nvidia with Bumblebee drivers, yes.

I would guess, not possible. Maybe if you hack the kernel and write your own drivers?

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Sounds like a lot of trouble just to generate a bitcoin every 2187.83 years.

[Guest LilBambi]

If you use something like that, I would suggest maybe trying litecoin or dogecoin.

 

You need a pretty specialized rig (read: expensive) for bitcoin these days to do more than spin your wheels even or the long term.

 

Adam was talking about this on the show Saturday.

[amenditman]

I was planning on doing primarily Litecoin. Seems to be a lot more promising at this time.

 

Currently, I have removed the nVidia card and removed any packages related to it that I can find with preliminary seaches. Have installed the open source ATI driver and can boot into KDE. No GPU shows up in my mining software with it's auto-detect function, it does work because it found the old nVidia card. Next step, get the GPU drivers for mining Litecoin.

 

Also, the window manager does not seem to be running. Need some more packages/drivers for that. This is the error

Desktop effects are not available on this system due to the following technical issues: Window Manager seems not to be running

I think I might need to install "glamor" and do some manual config.

 

Any experienced ATI graphics card users with advice to get this going?

[sunrat]

What distro? On Debian you usually need firmware-linux-nonfree for ATI microcode.

[amenditman]

Running on Arch Linux.

xf86-video-ati

ati-dri

 

Now I need to find which are the correct open source drivers for ati opencl, and opengl, etc. The one's I've been using all say nVidia.

As well as how to set it up to do the heavy math for Litecoin. Currently reading several blogs/threads about setting up Litecoin mining on Ubuntu with ATI cards and converting it for ArchLinux.

Edited January 1, 2014 by amenditman

[securitybreach]

You may need to install the Catalyst (I know ugh) drivers for opencl to work:

GPU OpenCL drivers are provided by the catalyst package (an optional dependency), the open-source driver (xf86-video-ati) does not support OpenCL.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GPGPU#AMD

[amenditman]

Thanks securitybreach, that is the definitive answer.

[securitybreach]

[amenditman]

I have the Catalyst driver up and running with the amdapp-sdk and am mining Bitcoin at close to 500 Mh/s. So that is a huge improvement.

Set the GPU processing to Dynamic mode so that I can use the desktop at the same time and am still getting 400 Mh/s.

 

Now to set it up to mine Litecoins.

Edited January 2, 2014 by amenditman

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Bob, will you be needing chaufer/security services once you're a rich and famous rock star coin miner? I'm available. Where do I apply?

[amenditman]

Bob, will you be needing chaufer/security services once you're a rich and famous rock star coin miner? I'm available. Where do I apply?

No need to apply.

Just show up in you biker's leathers and we'll fly.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

That I can do.

[abarbarian]

No need to buy your own mining rig, just use someone else's equipment

 

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/02/dvr_botnet_mines_bitcoins/

 

Miscreants are using hacked digital video recorders in a somewhat misguided attempt to mine cryptocurrency BitCoins.

 

 

"Kudos to camera DVRs hackers for finding something worse (ie, very ineffective cryptocurrency mining) to use them for than surveillance," said Martijn Grooten, Virus Bulletin's anti-spam test director.

Chris Wysopal, co-founder and chief technology officer at code review firm Veracode, was even more dismissive: "Seriously, this is just wasting electricity," he said. ®

 

Best laugh I have had all week.