Folding Forum

I just did a DDU/install of 441.87 and the first GPU WU completed successfully while I was afraid to touch the computer for fear of jinxing it. I'm now running a second WU and monitoring temps to see if it was a fluke. This was with the CPU slot turned off, but that same config failed on 445.78 so it would appear that the nVidia driver version was the main issue here.

I'll report back when I've done a few WUs and as I start to restore the old system states.

I just wrote a post saying to try an older version of the driver.

Glad you seem to have fixed it.

v00d00 wrote:I just wrote a post saying to try an older version of the driver.

Glad you seem to have fixed it.

Thanks!

Yeah, I've mentioned a few times through the discussion that I've been suspecting the driver, but I was hoping that I'd get some empirical guidance about which versions to try. The recommendations are always to try the latest versions, but that didn't seem to be helpful for my case.

In this case, I simply chose a driver that I had used before a few months back (and still had in my cache of downloads on my NAS) that also happened to be a couple of major versions behind and I lucked out. It would be nice for the FaH servers to track the driver releases that contributed good results for diagnostic purposes.

(And, it would be nice if there were sample WUs that could be used for vetting an install without having to wait for a new one to come available, but I think that's only been a problem in the last few weeks. For instance, I had to wait nearly an hour to get a WU after I downgraded to 441.87. At that point I could care less if I was going to get credit for something or if it contributed to the cause, I just wanted any valid WU to test the setup. Such sample WUs could also help determine if issues were network related or compute related...)

If you look in the Nvidia area theres usually some discussion on viable driver versions.

I have a couple of things that may be completely off-base ... or not.

1) Is this happening on a system with a hybrid GPU that switches between an iGPU and a "real" GPU based on the system-perceived Graphics load?

2) Is this happening when Intel's OpenCL is also present on the system? (Even though Intel claims their OpenCL doesn't interfere with other installed versions of OpenCL, there are exceptions) Uninstalling the Intel version is a reasonable test.

It looks like both AMD and nV are having driver issues ... More people are paying attention ... and With all this activity, more events are being seen.

Also, iI may turn out that some of the issues are inside of OpenCL or in the way the API stack interfaces with the next level code.

1) Single GPU, no switching, with a Ryzen 3900x that has no integrated graphics.
2) Both tests under 445.78 and 441.87 were after a safe mode DDU + network-disabled install of the nVidia drivers. I also did a complete clean of AMD and Intel drivers just in case even though I've never had an AMD or Intel GPU or iGPU in the system.

I am using the latest "Studio Driver" version 442.19 without a hitch. Maybe you give a shot with that driver. I stayed away from the latest "Game Ready Driver" when I heard about the problems with it... (so I haven´t even tried 445.75)

I doubt the following is going to be helpful but I did see one person post that they were having issues on a Linux platform so I thought I'd post this just in case it provides a clue to someone who is frustrated. I have not seen any errors while processing with this GPU. That doesn't mean that they haven't happened I just haven't seen any and I've been at the computer for a great many hours since the GPU was installed.

I'd definitely look into getting that GPU replaced. Especially if your CPU is completing units successfully.
You could try reducing GPU memory and core clock speeds, but I've found that only delays symptoms not eliminate them.

Some first series of 2080 Ti (and 2080) Founder edition had design flaws that were causing them to die prematurely. Are you sure it's not one of these ?

Thank you scOOp for a driver suggestion. I'll try that in a few days after I give the current drivers a chance to get some work done.

The GPU is quite fine, the drivers I was using appear to be the problem (update - but then again, see next post). I did not have to underclock the GPU in any way (update, or do I? see below about Boost 4.0), the drivers I'm now using (441.87) make it rock solid for folding.

As I stated early on, my GPU has Samsung memory chips which are not the Micron chips that were a problem with early models.

[Perhaps this is the real culprit here?]

Mysteriouser and Mysteriouser...

OK, so that stability lasted about 4-5 days performing somewhere between 15-20 WUs flawlessly and then I started getting the dreaded clWaitForEvents errors again. I did the full reinstall a couple of times and the same thing was happening and it was back to its "error before it even gets 1% of the WU done" tricks. I could have tried yet another driver version, but I decided to go another route instead...

And here is where things get strange...

Since the system was never very hot - the max GPU temp was 53c monitored over several days and the thermal limit is around 85c, I was skeptical that it could be a hardware problem, but I thought I would look at the clocks anyway.

I downloaded MSI afterburner which I've never used before and looked through its settings. I found the place to adjust the processor and memory clocks and bumped them down by about -200MHz. The first GPU WU came through and made it halfway before it errored out.

So I downclocked to -300MHz (both clocks) and now the GPU WUs are running successfully again. But, the thermals were well below any thermal limit...? And isn't that a pretty huge underclock? (Or so I thought, but here is the key...)

So, what were my final speeds that stabilized it this time? 1650MHz on the processor and 6500MHz on the memory. Wait, what? The FE edition of the card is already "factory overclocked" to have a BOOST clock of 1635. I was still 15MHz over that with a clock adjustment of -300MHz? I looked at the dial on MSI AB and it showed that my base clock was indeed 1050 which is the stock base clock less 300, and my boost was 1300ish, which is around 300 less than the FE boost. And it was currently running at 1650MHz - 300MHz over that...?

Investigating I discovered that the RTX cards have the latest Boost (4.0) technology and the card will automatically overclock until it reaches thermal, power, or GPU limits. And since this thing is so over-cooled, it wasn't being held back by much on the thermal front. The stock design was overclocking for me and likely going up to around 1950MHz on its own without me even checking a checkbox anywhere. I've owned this card since last June (just looked up the receipt, I thought I bought it in the fall, but it was last summer). That whole time, though, it was on the stock fan cooler and probably running hot and probably didn't overclock itself by much. I only added the GPU water block when I built my most recent system last month. I'll be monitoring it now and see if the -300MHz is enough to keep it stable - and it is still above the FE factory overclock at that speed anyway.

And one thing which may have made it worse is that I bumped the fan speeds after a couple of days of stability because I wanted to keep the GPU from heat-soaking the CPU. My CPU never reached thermal limits, but it was right around 90c (with a thermal limit of 95c) and when the GPU wasn't running it was much lower - in the mid to low 80s. So, I figured I should take some more heat out of the system to keep the CPU from running so hot all the time. And that may have made the GPU Boost 4.0 issue worse because now the GPU was even less limited by its thermals - and eventually it ran into some other limit. I didn't see the running MHz before/after I modified the fan curves to get a comparison if that caused the GPU to run even faster, though, but it is clearly a believable smoking gun.

Long story short, RTX cards overclock themselves by default and aggressive cooling may double down on that and have it run up against other limits - if you don't adjust them down...

A weak PSU can cause vexing and confusing issues. I would look there.

Roadpower wrote:A weak PSU can cause vexing and confusing issues. I would look there.

It's a Corsair SF750, 80 PLUS Platinum rated and the UPS indicates that the maximum draw under load with F@H is under 500w including 2 monitors and the Nas that are also plugged into the same UPS. With the computer asleep the draw is 70w before the monitors enter sleep state so the computer would be drawing under 400w on a 750w PSU.

I have custom cables, but they look at least as beefy as the stock cables that came with the PSU - 18 awg and shorter than the stock cables by almost half.