Posts by Sheridan

1) Message boards : Number crunching : ATI GPU and Catalyst version help please! (Message 61380) Posted 10 Mar 2014 by Sheridan Post: Thanks to everyone for not giving up on me and I will let stubborn overcome safe and have another go, as soon as time permits - it may not be before next weekend though. I do need to take a close look at drivers and functionality of this system. It is my newest and is my only Z87 chipset, 4770 processor and UEFI BIOS so still things to learn about this generation. Everything except some BOINC projects seems to be working 100% on a 24/7 basis but there are a few things I need to investigate further. It is also the only machine I run a RAMDisk on (with the intent of extending the life of the SSD by keeping BOINC off it). I'll report back, be it success or failure, with 13.1 or even back to 12.8 and will delve very deep into registry and drivers folder the next time. All it needs is time and that's a little short over the next few days. Thanks and best wishes to all - it's good to find a forum where people are obviously trying to help and polite with it!
2) Message boards : Number crunching : ATI GPU and Catalyst version help please! (Message 61371) Posted 10 Mar 2014 by Sheridan Post: I knew I should have given up but stubborn sometimes trumps smart! Tried uninstalling 13.12 and just as before it blue screened when doing the complete un-install from control panel. Very unhappy PC and after a few attempts at start-up repair and restoring to a previous time, all of which claimed to have failed, it did restart with a previous installation of 13.1 running. Running as in video was fine but BOINC and GPU-Z said there was no open CL. So, did the full uninstall from control panel, uninstalled the Install manager, ran Driver Sweeper and Driver Fusion then re-started in safe mode and ran Driver Sweeper and Driver Fusion again. Restarted and deleted all the ATI folders I could find and even ran CCleaner. Reboot once more and installed 13.1. It completed but said there were some warnings and see the log file. Clicking on log file it says everything installed OK. However, GPU-Z sees no Open CL and neither does BOINC. Control Panel AMD un-install (repair option) and Open CL is functional. MilkyWay 1.02 work units fail just as before however. So, I want to give up but... Having reinstalled 13.12, I now find that many of the non-GPU MilkyWay units are failing and another project (Collatz) is doing weird things with dual 5870s. Most of the time, about 5 seconds after one work unit completes, the work unit running on the other GPU fails. This despite MW and Collatz having been reset, removed and re-installed. Gotta love PCs huh? My quick check with SFC says no problem and fortunately everything non-BOINC seems to be working fine. I remain a great fan of the 5870 - especially as they are available for around Â£70-80 (~$110-130) on eBay here in the UK. They are working well in two other PCs I have on everything but MW 1.02. I just have to get this machine working as well as it did two days ago. Next step is to forego the RAM Disk and see if that's responsible for anything nasty. Anyway, thanks for all the well meant advice and to those who have their 5870s running - Well Done! Cheers
3) Message boards : Number crunching : ATI GPU and Catalyst version help please! (Message 61353) Posted 8 Mar 2014 by Sheridan Post: An update for anyone interested... Repeating problems getting 13.1 to install correctly after 13.4 with display driver running fine but MilkyWay (and GPU-Z) telling me there were problems with the open CL driver. I've been uninstalling from the control panel and then using Driver Sweeper in an attempt to get everything cleared out before each downgrade attempt. I've loaded 12.8 seemingly exactly as it should be. GPU-Z sees open CL capability and MilkyWay sent me some 1.02 work units - which all failed - before reporting; 08/03/2014 00:32:48 \| Milkyway@Home \| Message from server: Catalyst driver version is not OK for CAL application with this GPU I guess a man has to know his limitations - and I've reached mine. About to go back to 13.12 and just not request any 1.02 work units - life is too short! The 5870s are getting old but the spec for double precision calculations is still better than many more recent GPUs. Thanks to those who tried to help and I'll keep an eye open for any news.
4) Message boards : Number crunching : ATI GPU and Catalyst version help please! (Message 61338) Posted 7 Mar 2014 by Sheridan Post: [Update - looks like searching the forums for 'Catalyst' was my first mistake - nobody seems to call them that! I'm just about to take a chance and try 13.1 and see if that solves the problem] Sorry if the answer to this is already posted somewhere but I have looked for far too long - and not found it. I have a variety of CPUs running Win7 64bit with all patches and updates. All machines have 1 or 2 ATI 5870 based GPU cards from a variety of suppliers. Just about every BOINC project I run is fine except the straightforward MilkyWay@Home (is it 1.02? - I just aborted the few work units I had left) and this always fails with a computation error. Separation (Modified Fit) 1.28 (opencl_amd_ati) runs fine. I see much here and on other projects saying the ATI Catalyst drivers seem to mess up open CL support every time they fix another game bug. I've even had a notice from the project saying my GPU driver version won't work but I can't find anything telling me which - if any - version will work with my 5870s I have tried 14.1, 13.12 and 13.4 and each time I try to clean out a newer version and load an older one, I get at least one system crash usually needing a start-up repair and then requiring my RAID to re-verify! Please PLEASE - if anyone can tell me a Catalyst version that is good for ATI 5870s I'll take the chance one more time and give it a try. I don't need games support, just a fair reliability for everyday Windows apps and - ideally - MilkyWay. Thanks and best wishes to all.