Folding Forum

Just a heads up about the latest Catalyst 14.12 Omega and older cards.

I have 2 7970's Windows 8.1x64 and the last day and a half I tried the 14.12's. They were roughly 4 minutes slower on the 1300 and 1301 Wu's average TPF was 10:45 or a bit higher,definitely a bug/regression with the OpenCl 2.0 update and my 7970's and or FAH.

I'm back on the 14.9.2 betas Folding is back to normal TPF 7:30 on WU 13000 (391, 1, 35) and TPF of 7:40 on WU 13001 (202, 0, 115).

If you have a newer R series you *may* be ok. I just know for me these and the previous 14.11 betas were a no go not for folding but random bsod's if watching movies in Firefox with Flash.

*Edit* I should note the 10466's and 9201's seems to be unaffected after looking through the logs roughly a TPF of 8:29 and 3;30 respectively.

I run a 7970 and 280x, which are technically the same cards, but I experience the same thing, went from 6:26 TPF to just under 10 minutes on 13000 and 13001 work units.

Thanks for the confirmation always good to know it's not just my system.

I just installed the 14.12 Omegas on my dual R9 290 Win7 (64bit) machine a couple of hours ago, and so far I'm not seeing any regression VS 14.9. This is based on a 9201 WU and a 13000 WU.

Though I guess I won't be installing the new driver on my 7950 machine.

Thanks for the heads-up!

Same on the HD 7790 and HD 7870. The 14.12 drivers are about 5% slower than the 14.9 drivers, which are the best for those cards on Folding (Win7 64-bit).

Updated from 14.4 to 14.9. On my 7750, TPF went from 33:55 to 32:32. Will upgrade the second system tomorrow.

Thanks for the thread @DarkFoss

I was also interested / excited to see what effect Catalyst 14.12 Omega would have on folding PPD.
I measured perfomance using FahBench
14.9 : 26 ns/day (explicit), 76 ns/day (implicit)
14.12 : 16 ns/day (explicit), 51 ns/day (implicit)
So sadly quite BIG drop in folding performance using the new Omega drivers.
(This is my test-bench which only has an old 7850 with Win 7 home - not tried on my folding rigs with dual R2 290X's or dual 7970's )

Anyone else had any other experience?

I tested FAHbench with my HD7950 (or R9 280) @900Mhz
14.9.
Explicit 35
Implicit 122

14.12.
Explicit 35
Implicit 111

So this is a 10% performance decrease, but not a big thing.

@DrG, Your welcome.

@Foldy I respectfully disagree the performance drop on my HD7970's is a big deal. In the time it takes to render 2 frames with the 14.12 driver I could have rendered a 3rd and then some with the 14.9. , that adds 5 to 6 hours of time it takes to complete the WU. It also delays the science since the next one in order could have been issued that much sooner , not to mention the wasted electricity of folding that same WU when I could be 5 hours into the next WU.

@DarkFoss I meant not a big thing on my HD 7950
But i also checked my logfiles for the 13000 and 13001 WUs
and see no difference between 14.9 and 14.12
With my HD 7950 both take 10min per %.

I mean something like that in the logfile:
18:44:50:WU00:FS01:0x17:Completed 4100000 out of 5000000 steps (82%)
18:54:45:WU00:FS01:0x17:Completed 4150000 out of 5000000 steps (83%)

Did you check the logfile time between checkpoint % logs
or are you only referring to TPF?

Maybe the TPF display is not correct?

Hi foldy no worries, I misread I guess
I checked the logs with the 14.12 : With the 14.9.2 beta

I found a workaround for the problem:
You can install the 14.12 driver and still use the 14.9 OpenCl runtime with FAH.
Just copy files OpenCL.dll and amdocl.dll from 14.9 driver to FAH core folder.
This will hide the slower 14.12 OpenCL 2.0 runtime and FahCore will use the faster 14.9. OpenCL 1.2 runtime.

1) Copy amdocl.dll and amd_opencl32.dll
from source folder
C:\AMD\AMD-Catalyst-14-9-win7-win8.1-64Bit-dd-ccc-whql\Packages\Drivers\Display\WB6A_INF\B176041
to target folder:
C:\ProgramData\FAHClient\cores\web.stanford.edu\~pande\Win32\AMD64\ATI\R600\Core_17.fah
2) Rename amd_opencl32.dll to OpenCL.dll
3) Pause and Resume the slot or FAH client.

If you want to use this mod then don't forget that you have to redo it when FahCore changes,
and if you install an even newer driver in future e.g. AMD 15.3 then you have to remove the extra files
if you want to use the future AMD 15.3 OpenCL runtime.

@DarkFoss: I dont know if you are happy with 14.9. now, but if you want 14.12. you can try my runtime mod.
@FAHcore developers: Do you file a performance issue to AMD or do you adapt future FAHcore18 to not have this issue

Comment directly to developers on the /r/foldingathome reddit page.

I didn't seen any performance change on my R9 290X with 14.12 drivers. I think it is even a little bit faster than 14.9

Now it would be interesting to see how fahcore18 behave in these conditions ... the performance issue might be solved or at least improved.

Here are screen shoots to show the difference in the 14.9 and 14.12. Picture #1 was taken while running 14.12 Driver. Picture #2 was taken after doing a DDU and installing 14.9 to finish.

SORRY NO PICTURE UPLOAD.

Long Story Sort : Pic#1 has my ASUS R9-280x TOP (my best folder OCed) running @ 9:26 TPF on WU 13000
Pic#2 has my ASUS R9-280x TOP (my best folder OCed) running @ 6:49 TPF on WU 13000

To me, this is a BIG JUMP IN PERFORMANCE This also means that the 14.12 Drivers are crap for FAH