Core 17... sweet sorrows

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Konstantinnovation

Gawd
Joined
Jun 25, 2001
Messages
677
I am getting erratic results with my 7970. Sometimes for a day or more it barely works. This has happened a few times since I got the 7970. I have been running the rig 24/7 for about 5 weeks now.

The graphics card folding hangs at 99% and doesn't load the GPU at all. I am using core 17 to get the results, and it is frustrating. Rebooting sometimes helps, but I was hoping there was another fix.

My stats:
http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_summary.php?s=&u=136030
 
What version of driver are you using? I have heard that some drivers caused a few problems with AMD GPUs and folding. If you haven't already tried them, try the latest drivers... 13.4.

Is your card overclocked at all? Factory overclocked? Have you applied any additional overclocking of your own? What is your card's core clock? Memory clock? Voltage?

A few of the core 17 units are somewhat finicky when it comes to overclocking. What might be completely stable with games or benchmarking programs, might not work well when folding.
 
I am using the 13.4 drivers.
My card is stock, 950/1425 at the moment. It is the Sapphire 7970 OC 3GB.

I have played with the overclocking settings, but would sometimes get warnings that the adapter stopped responding and had to be reset, so I put it back to stock settings. Now that you mention this, I will see if the two events coincide or not.

I pray it is not the factory overclock :(
 
Konstantinnovation said:
I am using the 13.4 drivers.
My card is stock, 950/1425 at the moment. It is the Sapphire 7970 OC 3GB.

I have played with the overclocking settings, but would sometimes get warnings that the adapter stopped responding and had to be reset, so I put it back to stock settings. Now that you mention this, I will see if the two events coincide or not.

I pray it is not the factory overclock :(
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My transition from Core_15 > Core_17 was a very rocky one to say the least. About 1 week of solid bad WU's and frustration for about another week before I could consider things stable. I don't know if it's just the beta WU's or the Core_17 itself, but it does not take OC's nearly as well as previous cores.

While we are using different platforms, I too had a factory OC'ed EVGA 660 SC card that would not run stable at its factory 1045Mhz OC. Only for folding on beta units was this a problem. Finally I did what had to be done and downclocked my core a solid 50Mhz and memory 100Mhz just to be safe. While taking a decent hit to my total TPF it actually has run 10x more stable than ever. I was running around 1 bad WU a day on the factory settings, but since the downclock I'm probably averaging 1 bad one every 3 weeks. Partly to do with driver crashes and bad WU's combined, both of which really can't be helped as they sometimes just break and out of our hands.
 
Are you guys experiencing these AMD driver issues on Windows? I thought Windows was supposed to be stable and Linux was not ready yet. :confused:
 
I had a couple of hundred's core17 WUs finished by 4x 7970's - no driver issues experienced.

The card of the OP should be downclocked to the factory 7970 settings AMD orginally envisioned for the 7970 chip, which is 925/1375 MHz. If the error still prevails, downclock it even further a bit.
 
AndyE said:
I had a couple of hundred's core17 WUs finished by 4x 7970's - no driver issues experienced.

The card of the OP should be downclocked to the factory 7970 settings AMD orginally envisioned for the 7970 chip, which is 925/1375 MHz. If the error still prevails, downclock it even further a bit.
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Im also using latest AMD BETA drivers and have had 0 problems for months now. Ive got one of the MSI 1Ghz 7970's running at factory settings under water.

Is this an older card? Any other problems outside of folding?
 
I was having Crashes with my new 7970, never solved that problem...

Now I just have the problem of getting 7811 WUs
 
Outside of folding, I can complete catzilla, all the futuremark benchmarks, Unigine benchmarks, metro last light, etc, with 1125/1500 (after tweaking the voltage)

This is a new card, less than 2 months old. I only get the crashes while gaming when FAH GPU is running.

This is windows 7 x64.
 
Konstantinnovation said:
Outside of folding, I can complete catzilla, all the futuremark benchmarks, Unigine benchmarks, metro last light, etc, with 1125/1500 (after tweaking the voltage)

This is a new card, less than 2 months old. I only get the crashes while gaming when FAH GPU is running.

This is windows 7 x64.
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The same happened to me, just pause while gaming to be honest...

My older MSI 7970 had no issue with it, but the Gigabyte didn't like it. too much stress I guess.
 
Ya this goes to show that everyone's mileage varies. I have a pair of Gigabyte 7970 OC. Both will run fine on the latest drivers, not only with the factory overclock, but with an additional overclock I add to them. I've had one card running at 1100+/1450 stable for weeks. The other doesn't go so high, but will still run stable with an additional overclock.

Things started to get weird when I had both cards in the same system. In fact, as soon as I added the second card, that's when things went all crazy and I had to downclock both cards because even the first one wouldn't run at the speed I had it at stable for weeks prior. This is also how I discovered my issue how if one of the GPUs reported 99% usage, that was the sign that the driver was about to crash.

As for your issue, Konstantinnovation, I would have to concur with both Bob_Dole and AndyE. Pause the GPU while you're gaming and see if your issue continues. If it does. then downclock that sucker to bare stock AMD 7970 clocks and see if it still folds without error... Just don't game on it while folding. If it works at stock, try adding the OC back in baby steps, testing by folding in between each change.
 
If its only doing this while gaming then either finishing the work unit, or pausing (best way) while gaming is the only way to go. Gaming lag aside, it's playing with fire and trying to not get burned. It will crash the driver, the question is when. Learned this the hard way 5 years ago lol.
 
I never keep folding while gaming. Heck I even turn off hardware acceleration in Flash player and all browsers.
 
Biffa said:
I never keep folding while gaming. Heck I even turn off hardware acceleration in Flash player and all browsers.
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You know what, thank you for that. This might be why my graphics driver constantly crashes randomly when I'm watching flash videos (Twitch/Youtube) while having a movie/tv show playing in or paused in the background. Disabled in the browser awhile ago and that helped, but it seems running two videos with at least one being flash will constantly cause the driver to crash while folding, eventually.

Now it's time to wait and see. Can't believe I didn't think of that.
 
Now if only the server would stop giving my 7970 the 78** WUs, Bob_Dole would be even happier
 
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