Cannot get openCL to work on AMD card. Tired of everything crashing!

[hoorah]

hey guys,

Having a terrible time with my ATI card here. I have an ATI 4850 (I know, I know. I'm going to upgrade soon). Anyway, anything that TOUCHES openCL on my system crashes.

I was using the microsoft 4800 series driver with no issues, but openCL had no support.

I installed CCC 13.1 (legacy) from the ATI website. If I do that, CCC will crash immediately upon opening it.
If I revert back to the microsoft driver, CCC still crashes.

If I use the microsoft driver, GPU-Z will open with no problem, but it shows no openCL support. If I use the CCC 13.1 driver, I get an error that openCL crashed and that GPUZ disabled it. Using the CCC driver, anything that uses openCL crashes - CCC, Guiminer (openCL bitcoin computing), GPUZ....etc.

I've heard that there is an issue with systems that have intelHD graphics onboard, which mine does, but AFAIK, its disabled. It was never enabled when I installed windows. Nothing is installed in program manager. No intel graphics show up in the device manager.

Games (at least, the low end games I play) work fine either way.

I have uninstalled, driver-cleared, re-installed, re-re-installed drivers, installed the AMD APP SDK - everything. Updated .net, all windows updates. Only have .net 4.0 installed (heard that was an issue with AMD cards as well).

Any ideas?

For reference, its my main rig in my sig below with an MSI 4850 512mb. Power supply is fine.

 

[Genx87]

Uninstall CCC. That was the bane of my 4850s existence.

 

[tweakboy]

They have no support for cuda officially

 

[tweakboy]

The one that comes with nVidia drivers are good.

 

[RussianSensation]

Using the CCC driver, anything that uses openCL crashes - CCC, Guiminer (openCL bitcoin computing), GPUZ....etc.

What OpenCL programs are you trying to run exactly? If you want to get bitcoin mining to work specifically, there are plenty of other options that work, like Flash-based bitminter.com. You do not need GUIMiner for mining.

Also, if you are serious about mining, using an HD4850 is just wasting time. Get an HD7950-7970 or don't even bother.

 

[LoveMachine]

Have you tried any of the older Catalyst versions? Perhaps one of the earlier 11.x versions before the newer GCN based cards came out might work better.

 

[hoorah]

Uninstall CCC. That was the bane of my 4850s existence.

Got rid of CCC, then installed the AMD APP package (which I believe is required). Still the same thing - anything that touches openCL crashes.

So far the driver versions I've tried are 8.970.100.7000 (13.1) and one older, 8.850....(catalyst 11.5). Not sure where that driver came from. That might be the microsoft driver. I've tried both with and without CCC, with the latest AMD APP package installed.

The only difference has been that under the 11.5 driver, in GPU-Z the box marked "Direct Compute 4.1" is checked, whereas with the 13.1 driver, it is not checked.

 

[hoorah]

Have you tried any of the older Catalyst versions? Perhaps one of the earlier 11.x versions before the newer GCN based cards came out might work better.

Apparently the microsoft driver (one from windows update) is version 11.5, and that doesn't work either. Any way to find version 12 drivers?

 

[notty22]

Going back a couple years ago, AMD had the open cl package as a option from the normal driver package d/l recommendation. Maybe get the first releases , when they made open cl standard during installation. Might be the most stable for your generation.

x64 amd drivers 11.9 download
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/previous/11/Pages/radeon.aspx?os=Windows%20Vista%20-%2064-Bit%20Edition&rev=11.9

 

[hoorah]

What OpenCL programs are you trying to run exactly? If you want to get bitcoin mining to work specifically, there are plenty of other options that work, like Flash-based bitminter.com. You do not need GUIMiner for mining.

Also, if you are serious about mining, using an HD4850 is just wasting time. Get an HD7950-7970 or don't even bother.

I'm not particularly serious about it. I'm just experimenting at this point. I'm in the process of picking a new 7 series card. In the meantime, I'd like to get this to work properly. I'm significantly worried that when the new card gets here I'm going to have the same issue.

 

[SolMiester]

You have your .net versions up to date?

 

[hoorah]

You have your .net versions up to date?

Yes, and I only have version 4.0 installed

 

[hoorah]

Going back a couple years ago, AMD had the open cl package as a option from the normal driver package d/l recommendation. Maybe get the first releases , when they made open cl standard during installation. Might be the most stable for your generation.

x64 amd drivers 11.9 download
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/previous/11/Pages/radeon.aspx?os=Windows%20Vista%20-%2064-Bit%20Edition&rev=11.9

Just tried this version. No dice.

 

[RussianSensation]

I'm not particularly serious about it. I'm just experimenting at this point. I'm in the process of picking a new 7 series card. In the meantime, I'd like to get this to work properly. I'm significantly worried that when the new card gets here I'm going to have the same issue.

So why don't you try BitMinter? It's awesome since it uses less CPU power than GUIMiner. Just drop a shortcut to the desktop and launch it in performance mode (minimized). Everything is done for you. You don't even need proper flags unlike GUIMiner.

HD7000 cards have no problems running GUIMiner. I don't know why you are having issues as I used it even back then with HD4890. I suggest you try older versions of GUIMiner. As I said, BitMinter works and it has nothing to do with OpenCL since it's flash based.

If all you are doing this for is Bitcoin mining, why waste hours/days trying to get it to work where there are 5-6 different mining options like Diablo Miner, BitMinter, etc.?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Have you tried installing the newest version of BOINC, and signing up for MilkyWay@Home, and enabling GUI processing of WUs, and then run that? It uses OpenCL, AFAIK, on AMD cards, and the 4850 is supported. I have two rigs doing that. So it is possible to use OpenCL on 4850.

 

[hoorah]

I have not tried that, but I think the root problem is still that any program that calls for OpenCL will crash on my system. I can't even get GPUZ to detect openCL without crashing, much less actually using the code. I'm starting to think this may be why the CCC crashes as well.

On top of that, I went and downloaded GPU Caps Viewer just to see what that would do. Same thing - crashes immediately.

I store all of my data on a NAS, and all of my important programs are on my laptop. There isn't much on the desktop but games. I'm thinking I'm just going to have to reformat the system at this point. I've uninstalled and re-installed openCL and AMD drivers so many times I have no idea whats in there anymore.

 

[grimpr]

Try Atimans Uninstaller to get you a fresh mint with no catalyst leftovers and try again.