Warning to those using GPU client

Tipstaff

If you haven't already noticed, the F@H team has put up a warning for those using the GPU client: don't use the GPU client with Catalyst 7.1 drivers.

Here's the post:
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This is relevant to anyone folding with a GPU at present.

The new Catalyst drivers released today 2007/01/10, version 7.1 (8.33) do not work with regard to folding on your GPU. The new drivers will cause the folding GPU core to continuously EUE on WUs, producing an "mdrun_gpu returned 114" error.

The only versions of Catalyst that work with the GPU client are:

• 6.5
• 6.10
• 6.11

The GPU client will work with these drivers with a significant performance hit:

• 6.6
• 6.7

The following drivers do not work at all with the GPU client:

• 6.8
• 6.9
• 6.12
• 7.1

You can read the thread HERE.

Edit: BTW, this would make 2 official releases that don't work with the GPU client now.

hackerx

i wonder why ATI/AMD/DAAMIT can't just make a proper driver which has support for folding and gives good performance for the card.
U have to use a outdated driver to fold and take a performance hit in games.(althought the hit is very little)

Judas

It's a new technologies that's just having growing pains, plus they are working from a core that probably was never engineered for this task at all, and all the support is controlled by the drivers. I'm content knowing that it'll even work for folding, even if a few official drivers may cause folding to work slower or not at all at times.

I'd suspect that the r600 has been built with consideration of using the gpu for other caculation, although considering the fact that the r600 was probably in development before they started working on using the gpu for this kinda stuff, so probably by the r700 or r800 series, is when full blown support for gpu will be working flawlessly.... but that's just my own speculation

temeteus82

Any news about 7.2 could work with GPU client?

hackerx

7.1 doesn't work with F@H.
But they did say that 7.2 should fix all the probs.Not sure.
BTW is 7.2 out?

temeteus82

I've looked @ ATi's site and 7.2 isn't out yet...

Lelisevis

Is it any wonder us nerds are frowned upon with sentences like that. I for one have never been guilty of doing a EUE on anyone's WU no matter how many pints i've drunk.

Tipstaff

Ok, guys. Thought I'd post an update.

I got a chance to run through the new Cat 7.2s with the folding client, and so far so good. Well.. at least partially. The Windows GUI client seems to work just fine. No trashed WUs yet. The console client seems to work too.. in single GPU mode only. Whenever I try to run it in multi-gpu mode it just references back to the first instance of the client running. Believe me, I've tried everything to get it to work, even going so far as to wipe the directories clean, and starting from scratch, but, no luck. Oh well.

JTYSK.

temeteus82

thanks tipstaff for the update. I'll start using gpu client now since it seem that it works with single gpu

hackerx

so catalyst 7.2 supports folding@home.Great.
Any idea if the core client works?

Tipstaff

As I mentioned above, both GPU clients work, however the command line client won't work in multi-gpu mode, only in single.

I should also point out that according to the forums version 6 of the F@H client (both CPU and GPU) will be coming out soon, as well as the SMP version of the Windows client (Gawd damn I can't wait!). Whether multi-gpu support will work again with the new client remains to be seen though.

temeteus82

29s/frame

I think that's good speed with my x1950 pro