AMD Windows Driver Crimson 15.11.1

[geokilla]

I noticed that GPU activity isn't at 99% anymore when I fold with the new drivers. The fan isn't spinning as loudly too and temperatures are lower so for sure the GPU isn't being worked as hard with the new drivers.

[foldy]

What is your GPU type? The signature currently only shows a NVIDIA gtx 460 which does not match for an AMD driver.

[PS3EdOlkkola]

@ geokilla, the load on an AMD GPU is highly dependent on the core being used. I see large fluctuations using Core 17 vs Core 21.

For example, on an R9 Fury X in a PCIe 3.0 x8 slot with a 1050MHz GPU clock under 15.3 drivers, here is the GPU utilization per Afterburner using Core 17:



On the other hand, with the same GPU in the same configuration, Core 21:



If your AMD GPU is picking up Core 17 work units, then the average utilization will be less, which should in turn reduce heat and fan speed.

[toTOW]

I noticed that GPU activity isn't at 99% anymore when I fold with the new drivers. The fan isn't spinning as loudly too and temperatures are lower so for sure the GPU isn't being worked as hard with the new drivers.

Do you have something (a CPU slot for instance) running on the CPU ?

[geokilla]

What is your GPU type? The signature currently only shows a NVIDIA gtx 460 which does not match for an AMD driver.

Updated the signature. Sorry.

I noticed that GPU activity isn't at 99% anymore when I fold with the new drivers. The fan isn't spinning as loudly too and temperatures are lower so for sure the GPU isn't being worked as hard with the new drivers.

Do you have something (a CPU slot for instance) running on the CPU ?

Yes I do. But I haven't changed anything aside from the drivers. I don't keep track of my folding and what kind of cores are being used but regardless of whether it's core 17 or core 21, my TPFs increased across the board and GPU usage, GPU fan speed, and GPU temperatures all dropped, indicating a drop in usage overall.

[foldy]

I have the same GPU with this driver and still see full load. But I do not use CPU slots.

[toTOW]

On my R9 290X, if I want to run something on the CPU (like a FAH CPU slot), I have to manually tweak the GPU core. Since on ATI cards the GPU core doesn't use a full CPU thread to run, I have two choices to do this :

- leave one CPU thread free, like on NV cards, which is the default client beahviour.
- let the CPU core run with 8 threads, but manually lock GPU core affinity to only on thread. This is the method I usually use, with Bill2's Process Manager : GPU core is locked to use only CPU 7.

[FaaR]

Cool.
With the fan speed stuck I was at 15% and 15-19% on the second card temps were 53c and 56c. Yay for watercooling! Wu's are finished so I've suspended folding until the update drops.

A little late to the party perhaps, but it's still worth noting that 56C is almost nothing in the way of temps for a GPU (you're good up to about 100C), and today's GPUs also have pretty advanced thermal monitoring built into them, meaning it'll downclock/downvolt or shut down your rig if it starts running critically hot.

So you were never in any kind of danger - thanks to the watercooling.

I haven't had any fan trouble with the first release of Crimson driver myself, so I never bothered to update to the hotfix, but I have had a number (well, 6) of bluescreens associated with folding and doing other stuff while the client is still running - including when GPU folding is actually suspended, so I'm not 100% what exactly is going on or what exactly causes/triggers it. It would seem it takes some days of folding for the bluescreen to appear, and then surfing the web (using Chrome in my case) or starting a game actually forces the bluescreen to reveal itself.

They all are Video_TDR Error, BCC 116, in atikmpag.sys + dxgkrnl.sys + dxgmms2.sys.

Maybe a video memory leak/fragmentation issue? *shrug* Dunno.

[jrweiss]

I'm still on Cat 14.9. Is there any clear advantage for new drivers on older/lower-end (7750) GPUs?

[FaaR]

I'm still on Cat 14.9. Is there any clear advantage for new drivers on older/lower-end (7750) GPUs?

If you don't play games and all you really do with the card is fold, maybe not so much. I don't know how much more performance you really get out of the same GPU as driver revisions roll by - is compute performance optimizations really something that any real resources get spent on? It's not a very big selling point with the masses, I suspect...

I've heard that the latest "crimson" driver drops OpenCL support for pre-GCN era GPUs, and apparantly, the 7000 series has some 6000-era re-label products in it. I don't think the 77xx cards are one of those though - and I think you would have noticed folding performance being terrible anyway (I tried folding on 6970 GPU - top of the line: one single WU would take over a DAY to finish!)

[foldy]

I haven't had any fan trouble with the first release of Crimson driver myself, so I never bothered to update to the hotfix, but I have had a number (well, 6) of bluescreens associated with folding and doing other stuff

Did this also happen with previous driver version?
Is your GPU Furmark stable?

[foldy]

Bugfix updated driver crimson 15.12 whql was released, no problems here.

[toTOW]

I installed them yesterday. The fan management issue is fixed

No other noticeable difference with 15.11 that I used before.

[jrweiss]

I finally tried the 15.12 Crimson. All seemed well, except the computer crashed overnight the next 3 nights out of 4. Went back to Cat 14.9, and no more crashes...

Win 7 Pro, 7750 GPU.