AMD 13.1 Drivers are NOT folding friendly

[RailfanS]

Hi guys,

​I started a topic on this yesterday but it seems to have disappeared. Anyways I tried the new AMD video drivers and found out they have the same glitch as the 12.11 drivers. My GPU only folds at 30% of capacity, which means a GPU work unit goes from taking about 5 hours to over 20 hours. Unfortunately I need at least the 12.11 drivers in order to make my GPU stable in certain games. The sapphire 7870's have a built in defect that causes blackscreens, which I find to be much more common on drivers lower than 12.11. Because of this I won't be reverting back to the old drivers. I've decided to stop folding on my GPU for now, until AMD gets these driver issues worked out... Don't worry too much though, I'll still be folding on my 8120 :)

[Whaler_99]

Yep - I was reading forum posts on them as well - whole slew of issues on 13.1 - stuff they even previously fixed broke now. Apparently 13.2 is due out soon. :) The word is that since 12.8 every revision has been focused on 7000 series cards and 6000 and below have not real benefit from upgrading.

[gasho]

From my experience on both driver revisions 13.1 & 12.8 my 6870 fails in folding. so.. no worries there witch version I have. black humor :(

[davidjkuhr]

I can also confirm that after upgrading to version 13.1 drivers I have noticed the folding performance of all 4 GPU's in my 2x HD6990's drop to about 20-25% of the performance they were achieving on previous drivers. I noticed max GPU utilization (as measured by AIDA64 Extreme Edition) on 12.6 drivers was always 95-99% on all 4 GPU's but every so often the drivers would crash. When I upgraded to 12.8 not much changed but I started to have some cores spend a lot more time below 95% utilization but it was still mostly in the 90's. When I upgraded to 12.10 I started to notice cores only running at 80-90% average. When I went to 13.1 the max utilization that all 4 cores would see was 20-25% and I can also confirm this since the time to fold each working unit increasing by the inverse of the utilization being measured. So working units that once took about 6 hours were now taking 24-30 hours to complete. I decided to give the 13.2 beta drivers a shot and they have increased the max utilization to about 40% for each GPU and folding time has been reduced a few hours but it is still not very good. One other thing I will mention is that the FPS in some games I have tested according to fraps has decreased substantially with the newer drivers.

I have already reported my issues with the new drivers but I would encourage everyone who is having problems with these drivers to let AMD know so that they know its affecting many people and also so that they know that Folding@Home is something that many of us support and we expect them to continue to as well.

[Whaler_99]

I can also confirm that after upgrading to version 13.1 drivers I have noticed the folding performance of all 4 GPU's in my 2x HD6990's drop to about 20-25% of the performance they were achieving on previous drivers. I noticed max GPU utilization (as measured by AIDA64 Extreme Edition) on 12.6 drivers was always 95-99% on all 4 GPU's but every so often the drivers would crash. When I upgraded to 12.8 not much changed but I started to have some cores spend a lot more time below 95% utilization but it was still mostly in the 90's. When I upgraded to 12.10 I started to notice cores only running at 80-90% average. When I went to 13.1 the max utilization that all 4 cores would see was 20-25% and I can also confirm this since the time to fold each working unit increasing by the inverse of the utilization being measured. So working units that once took about 6 hours were now taking 24-30 hours to complete. I decided to give the 13.2 beta drivers a shot and they have increased the max utilization to about 40% for each GPU and folding time has been reduced a few hours but it is still not very good. One other thing I will mention is that the FPS in some games I have tested according to fraps has decreased substantially with the newer drivers.

I have already reported my issues with the new drivers but I would encourage everyone who is having problems with these drivers to let AMD know so that they know its affecting many people and also so that they know that Folding@Home is something that many of us support and we expect them to continue to as well.

Do you have a specific site or link where said complaints can be made?

[Whaler_99]

Seems like I am one of the lucky few - running the dual 6870's in XFire with 12.10 and fold at a constant 98-99% utilization - about 8k per card. One weird thing I noticed, every once and a while, GPU 0 somehow gets another WU part way through folding one - so finishes the new one it gets, then goes back and completes the previous one... weird.

[davidjkuhr]

I can also confirm that after upgrading to version 13.1 drivers I have noticed the folding performance of all 4 GPU's in my 2x HD6990's drop to about 20-25% of the performance they were achieving on previous drivers. I noticed max GPU utilization (as measured by AIDA64 Extreme Edition) on 12.6 drivers was always 95-99% on all 4 GPU's but every so often the drivers would crash. When I upgraded to 12.8 not much changed but I started to have some cores spend a lot more time below 95% utilization but it was still mostly in the 90's. When I upgraded to 12.10 I started to notice cores only running at 80-90% average. When I went to 13.1 the max utilization that all 4 cores would see was 20-25% and I can also confirm this since the time to fold each working unit increasing by the inverse of the utilization being measured. So working units that once took about 6 hours were now taking 24-30 hours to complete. I decided to give the 13.2 beta drivers a shot and they have increased the max utilization to about 40% for each GPU and folding time has been reduced a few hours but it is still not very good. One other thing I will mention is that the FPS in some games I have tested according to fraps has decreased substantially with the newer drivers.

I have already reported my issues with the new drivers but I would encourage everyone who is having problems with these drivers to let AMD know so that they know its affecting many people and also so that they know that Folding@Home is something that many of us support and we expect them to continue to as well.

"Do you have a specific site or link where said complaints can be made?"

On the same page that you download the AMD Catalyst drivers there is a link on the right-hand pane of the page under "Helpful Links" named "AMD issue reporting form" you will also find a link below that for reporting issues with the Beta drivers. http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/radeonaiw_win8-64.aspx

[davidjkuhr]

Seems like I am one of the lucky few - running the dual 6870's in XFire with 12.10 and fold at a constant 98-99% utilization - about 8k per card. One weird thing I noticed, every once and a while, GPU 0 somehow gets another WU part way through folding one - so finishes the new one it gets, then goes back and completes the previous one... weird.

Yeah with 12.10 drivers I only noticed a slight decrease in utilization so I was not overly concerned because there could be other factors affecting it, but using the 13.1 and 13.2 drivers IMHO are basically like hitting a brick wall as far as folding performance and even performance in some games. It is almost like they placed a cap on the max utilization of each GPU to about 25% for 13.1 and about 40% for 13.2. It doesn't make much sense but it must have something to do with AMD trying to remove stuttering/frame freezing issues on the 7XXX series cards and somehow the 6XXX series cards seem to be affected negatively. Either way I am sure they will figure out the issue given enough time.