Folding Forum

Hello Dr_Rob
I have a suggestion that worked for me on a similar platform,.. I disabled GPU 0: R9600 Pro by uninstalling drivers,.. then restarted FahCore which only showed GPU's: as 1 the ATI:5 Bonaire XT [Radeon HD 7790] the unsupported GPU was not listed.

That is certainly a possibility, but I'm not sure where to look for them since I didn't install them. Maybe I can disable the onboard video in bios. I will look.

Most Bios have options for onboard graphics or discreet,..My motherboard had no BIOS settings for switching from onboard to discreet,.. so I went into Windows device manager and it will show both graphics adapters on drop down menu + will open,.. then click properties and uninstalled drivers. Hope this helps

Dr_Rob wrote:I will give it a try sometime, Win 8.1 is still intact, but I had a copy of Vista 64bit and a extra hd. After getting Vista to a workable level, I have been able to fold. It is only at 17% currently but without any problem or adjustments. Mine is not an HP machine but all individual parts. Mb is Gigabyte GA-G41MT-S2Pt Rev 2.1 which has onboard video.

So I think you're saying it was a Win8.1 or Win8.1 driver problem. I've never seen reports suggesting that the appearance of an UNSUPPORTED GPU causes any problems for folding on a supported GPU.

I called it a HP machine simply because of the remark "(Asus OEM for HP)"

Not surprisingly, FAHBench on this matchine:
GPUs: 2
GPU 0: UNSUPPORTED: R9600 Pro primary (Asus OEM for HP)
GPU 1: ATI:5 Bonaire XT [Radeon HD 7790]
CUDA: Not detected
shows one GPU with OpenCL support and none with CUDA support. The R9600 doesn't exist for the purposes of folding. Unfortunately that doesn't answer the question of why it can or cannot be used for a display while folding on the 7790 so I didn't learn anything useful.

Braegnok wrote:Most Bios have options for onboard graphics or discreet,..My motherboard had no BIOS settings for switching from onboard to discreet,.. so ...

I'm not looking for a choice of GPUx or GPUy, I'm trying to get GPUx and GPUy. Would there likely be a better BIOS that supports multiple GPUs, if only to run a display?

Some motherboards are only designed to work as X OR Y with no option for AND. Check the MB specs in the oem docs to be sure.

I wanted to finish off my thoughts on this problem. I have not used AMD video cards for folding until I pulled out this 7790 I have had since very early on when AMD began selling the card. I have used some type of Nvidia card starting with the 9800 thru the 670 currently which have preformed flawlessly till the Nvidia drivers 331 did not have OpenCL support and Core17 just did not run. I have been spoiled to not need to check for software support for FAH to run.

To the point. I went back to bruce's suggestion to look at Fahbench which did not do anything except a DOS window that opened and immediately closed. But when running GPU-Z with AMD's current beta and 13.12 or .9 or .4 drivers no OpenCL support was shown. I assume AMD drivers with Win 8.1 is missing OpenCL for the 7790 and a 7870 I picked up just to try. I do not believe there is a GPU coordination problem within FAH, just an OpenCL issue.

But if anyone else with an XP Pro to Win8.1 upgrade is working, good for them.

Dr_Rob wrote:...the Nvidia drivers 331 did not have OpenCL support and Core17 just did not run...

Please note that the Drivers still have OpenCL support. GK-110 GPUs (GTX 780 Ti, etc) will perform normally while other non-GK110 GPUs will have a huge drop in performance. Development is aware of this issue so let's hope to see a fix in a future release.

Dr_Rob wrote:...when running GPU-Z with AMD's current beta and 13.12 or .9 or .4 drivers no OpenCL support was shown. I assume AMD drivers with Win 8.1 is missing OpenCL for the 7790 and a 7870 I picked up just to try...

Generally we don't recommend Beta Drivers for folding as it may introduce bugs. However, if you would like to test, you could try AMD Driver 14.9 Beta which is reported to increase F@H performance (http://www.reddit.com/r/Folding/comment ... ta_driver/). Maybe it contains bug fixes for you. If that is the case, you could simply try again once the WHQL Driver is released.

Sorry, PantherX, I did not know only some GK chips we affected, but my 670, 660s, and 650s were slowed like many folks reported.

I certainly will take a chance with a beta driver on a dedicated folding machine, but the reddit link did not work as AMD did not like outside direct links to drivers. I could not find a 14.9 beta, but I can be patient.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Dr_Rob wrote:...I certainly will take a chance with a beta driver on a dedicated folding machine, but the reddit link did not work as AMD did not like outside direct links to drivers. I could not find a 14.9 beta, but I can be patient...

Whoops, didn't realize that. Here you go (http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-article ... -beta.aspx). If that doesn't work, please go to (http://support.amd.com/en-us/download) and once you entered all your details, you will be taken to the driver. However, if you scroll down, you will come across "Latest Beta Release Notes" and if you click it, will be taken to the latest beta Drivers.