Catalyst 13.1 drivers are out

[fredsat]

Ok. I did the following:

1 - Run Atiman as admin (actually create an administrator account then log in and run from there)

2 - Installed 13.1 without APP SDK

3 - Installed APP SDK 2.7 (thanks FastFlyingVirginian )

Now my current PPD are still lower (were 3000 with 13.1 alone, 6000 now with 13.1+2.7 APP, used to be 8000 with 12.11 + 12.8 OpenCL), both CCC Overdrive and GPU-Z are now showing load oscillating between 65 and 85% which is prettier to see than 50%.
Not even close to the 99% of the previous drivers. But since I enjoy an hour or two of gaming in my free time, I MUST keep 13.1 because it shines on Far Cry 2, Crysis 2, Sleeping Dogs, Hitman: absolution etc etc etc...

Who knows...maybe this is due to the WU rather than the driver itself. I will wait to see if anything changes, but in my opinion the solution could be using somehow the OpenCL from 12.8. Any idea how?

[codysluder]

do you suppose 50% is shaders only or if it includes the raster engine? Fah doesn't rasterize anything.

[FastFlyingVirginian]

can you go into more detail exactly what your steps were, I just tried what you describe and im still stuck at 50%

im running win7 64bit and use a 7870. Also i have smp set to 3 so that i have a free core for gpu folding. Cpu is a i5 2500k at 3.8ghz.

Sure. I'm doing this on an i7-860 @ 3.5 Ghz with the aforementioned 7970 which had been previously running the 12.11 beta 11 drivers. SMP slot set to 6, all running on Windows 8 Pro 64-bit. GPU usage was running around 40% with this setup.

- Uninstalled Catalyst driver and Catalyst Application Profiles via Programs and Features in the Windows Control Panel; answered No when prompted for restart.

- Opened msconfig and set system to Selective Startup and Safe Boot, restarted.

- From within Safe Mode, ran Treexy's Driver Fusion and cleaned all files/registry entries related to the AMD Display driver, answered No when prompted for restart.

- Opened msconfig and set system to Normal Startup, restarted.

- From normal startup, installed Catalyst 13.1 using Custom install option - selected all EXCEPT APP SDK and HDMI audio driver (I have no need for HDMI audio in my system). System did not prompt for a restart after install completed.

- Installed Catalyst Application Profiles 12.11 CAP 2 and restarted OS when prompted.

- Installed 64-bit APP SDK 2.7 and restarted OS when prompted.

- Restarted FAH, watching the GPU usage in MSI Afterburner (2.3.0). The usage meter was back to the behavior I saw on Catalyst 12.9 beta (the last version before GPU usage dropped for me), i.e. the meter fluctuated between 92-99% instead of hovering around 40%, with the estimated PPD also returning to the previous normal range.

[Rattledagger]

Well, have now upgraded to 13.1 and after doing some other OpenCL-related tests verifying things works atleast from the initial look of things as they should, have the following result for FAH:

Amd-7950, GPU-clock 900 MHz, memory 1250 MHz gets... 1498 PPD according to FAH-v7...

Just to rule-out a problem with the calculation:
Project: 11292, according to "currently running projects" this is worth 2224 points.
Time: 18 minutes and 30 seconds for 1% done.

=> 1110 seconds/% => 111000 seconds/wu => 1.28472 days => 1731.114 PPD.

So, OK, FAH-v7 is a little off in it's calculation, but it doesn't matter, 1.5k PPD, 1.7k PPD and 2k PPD is all crappy results.

[fredsat]

On project 11293 (1835 base) I'm getting 8000 PPD on a 7950 at 1150/1500, which is what I used to get with 12.11 + 12.8 OpenCL. So, yeah...something is still wrong. Make sure you do the steps FastFlyingVirginian posted. When I first installed 13.1 clean, results on GPU were crappy (considering my overclock)...it most probably depends on the WU, but a 500% difference is symptom of something not working properly. F@H version is 7.2.9.

Also: a noticeable difference does reducing the SMP core to 3, instead of leaving it at -1 or 4. This is, apparently because one full core is required for the handling of the GPU tasks, at least that's what somebody told me here.

EDIT: I just got back home and I am having 21200 PPD total (13000 SMP, 8200 GPU). GPU-z shows an average of 99% load. This looks decent to me. If you have similar system it would be interesting for a comparison...

My config is 3570K @ 4.5 and 7950 1170/1500 (added 20 GHz to the core just for folding)...

[Rattledagger]

On project 11293 (1835 base) I'm getting 8000 PPD on a 7950 at 1150/1500, which is what I used to get with 12.11 + 12.8 OpenCL. So, yeah...something is still wrong. Make sure you do the steps FastFlyingVirginian posted. When I first installed 13.1 clean, results on GPU were crappy (considering my overclock)...it most probably depends on the WU, but a 500% difference is symptom of something not working properly.

Yes, FAH is the only one not "working properly" with the v13.1 OpenCL-part.

I already mentioned "other OpenCL-related", so using an older, slower OpenCL just due to FAH having a broken application isn't an alternative for me.


BTW, have you tried running the new FAH-GPU-benchmark? It would be interesting to see how much faster your overclocked GPU is. See here and here

[Evil Penguin]

Yes, it's not for the drivers to be "fixed".
The fahcore NEEDS to be updated to conform with AMD's latest OpenCL implementation.

[mmonnin]

A member at OCN has modified the 13.1 drivers to work.
http://www.overclock.net/t/1323729/amd- ... t_19084047

[IvantheDugtrio]

Ever since I've started folding on my 7870 my PPD has been extremely low (around 900) and GPU-Z would report zero GPU activity during folding. I also have a GT 640 which gets about 5000 PPD and is always running at 93% usage according to GPU-Z. This was on modified 12.11 drivers. Since then I decided to try out 13.1 WHQL after using AMD's cleanup utility. After installing 13.1 with the old APP SDK v2.7 nothing has changed in terms of performance. I tried updating GPU.txt, clearing the configs and work folders before restarting but nothing has changed. I've even tried changing the SMP core usage to 3 (for an i5 3570K) after reading how AMD GPU's need at least one free SMP core though nothing has changed.
Currently I am running this on Windows Server 2012 x64 Data Center edition.
I also find it odd the GPU-Z has always reported that OpenCL is not supported on my 7870 but is supported on the GT 640. Also I find it odd that CUDA is not supported on the GT 640 according to GPU-Z. Both GPU's are listed as PhysX enabled (Hybrid PhysX) and having Direct Compute 5.0
Note that the 7870 has always performed this low, even before I installed the GT 640.

[JimF]

The good news is that GPU-Z 0.6.7 is out.
The bad new is that it still does not detect the GPU load on my HD 7770, with the 13.1 drivers (Win7 64-bit).
The HD 7770 is in the lower PCIe slot. It does detect the GPU load on my GTX 560 in the upper PCIe slot.

I submitted a bug report, but it wouldn't hurt if a few more were submitted.

[bruce]

... I tried updating GPU.txt, clearing the configs and work folders before restarting but nothing has changed....

I wouldn't expect that GPUs.txt would make any difference. It's used by V7 to identify that it's an ATI GPU that can process assignments that are type :1:5: which isn't likely to change once the GPU first gets on the list.

[DarkFoss]

Thanks FastFlyingVirginian & fredsat. I updated my drivers over the weekend from the 12.8 cats to the 13.1's and my gpu folding tanked went from tpf of 3.23 min to 14.3 min. I used AMD's new uninstall utility http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/ ... ility.aspx rebooted then did a custom install of the 13.1's unselecting the app-sk and installed the app-sk 2.7 after. GPU utilization is back up to 99% only 20 some seconds slower now but still under 4 min tpf
I'm running an all amd system on Win 7 64x Home premium, AMD's uninstalled left all my chipset drivers intact..pretty important since I'm running raid. Don't use this if your running Windows 8 and have an AMD motherboard...especially if your running raid. It should be safe enough if your using Intel and the only AMD product is the graphics card. Some users reported a blank screen when using eyefinity probably best to just use your main monitor before running it. When I ran it the uninstaller appeared to hang once I pressed finish but ctrl-alt-del and selecting log off worked then I rebooted from there.. Also best to remove the AMD Caps 1st..I don't use'em myself but the uninstaller may not remove it.

[techdawg667]

AMD's 13.2 Beta 3 drivers now resolves the GPU usage issues 100%.

My 7950 went from 2.8k to 6.4k ppd. Did not have to use a custom uninstaller or anything. Sitting at ~95% usage right now, but it's bottlenecked by the CPU.

Drivers: http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pa ... river.aspx

[shiroi_kage]

Hello,

I have installed the new set of AMD drivers for my 6990 (Catalyst 13.1) and have been unable to get FAH to use 100% of my GPUs. It stays at ~30% and crashes into blue screen after a while. I have yet to reinstall FAH, which I shall try soon.

I'm using FAH 7.2.9 (or at least I think this is the latest version because I could not find any updates)

UPDATE: Just installed 13.2 BETA drivers which made my GPUs go from 30% 30% to 30% 85%. Will leave it over the next few hours to its thing to see if I get another blue screen crash.

[FastFlyingVirginian]

I tried a 13.2 driver install with my 7970, but the GPU usage was pegged around 85%, instead of 92-99% as before. Uninstalled and performed a driver cleaning again, using the basic steps I detailed earlier in the thread, and reinstalled but skipped installing the included APP SDK and installed APP SDK 2.7 again. GPU usage returned to 92-99% and my PPD were once again back to normal.