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How to fully utilize my Radeon HD7970 in Folding?

dkm777

dkm777

Senior member
Hi guys,

I finally got my paws on an HD7970 - a Sapphire Vapor-X. And from day one I set it to fold when I go to work. The problem is it's not being utilized fully. Catalyst Control Center reports only 40% GPU usage. I'm using the latest beta of Catalyst and I updated to the latest FAH client version but without success. Is this normal or do I need to set some special parameters?
 
At this time F@H doesn't have enough work for it to be completely utilized or your cpu isn't fast enough to keep it fed. Also specs?
 
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It's in my Gulftown rig. I forgot to update my sig. I'll try to fold with the GPU only when I get back from work because right now it is running both the CPU and GPU clients.
 
I think it doesn't keep the GPU fed thats your problem. Try only 50% cpu crunching and the rest for gpu. Also it might be good to try one of the BOINC projects that support GPU computing and see if its completely utilizing the GPU like Einstein@home for a couple hours to see the usage. Hope it goes well. 🙂 Might be good to post to F@H forums to get their response
 
If its working properly, both the GPU and CPU should be loaded at 100%. Your gulftown should be more than fast enough to "keep up" with the 7970. That said, the AMD cards are generally much lower in F@H production than their nV counterparts. Save yourself the power and fold on your CPU exclusively. Thats what I do in my i7-950 gaming rig w/ 7970
 
I'm running a 980x and getting the same results as dkm777. I'm currently set up with two 7970s. Each runs at about 40% in F@H but will run at 100% on Milkyway@home in BOINC. Running the 12.10 WHQL driver but have also tried the 12.11 beta. Thanks in advance for any input.
 
Folding isn't that efficient with AMD cards and there are projects in BOINC that also fold proteins but are better with AMD. Is your heart set on Folding@Home?
 
dkm777 said:
Hi guys,

I finally got my paws on an HD7970 - a Sapphire Vapor-X. And from day one I set it to fold when I go to work. The problem is it's not being utilized fully. Catalyst Control Center reports only 40% GPU usage. I'm using the latest beta of Catalyst and I updated to the latest FAH client version but without success. Is this normal or do I need to set some special parameters?
Click to expand...
It's completely normal to have crappy performance in Folding@home with an Amd-GPU, and there's no way to fix this problem. Even an ancient, low-end Nvidia Geforce 8800-card will likely outperform your high-end Amd-GPU, so in my opinion it's not worth it to use any Amd-card for FAH-crunching.

So, if you've only interested in FAH, you're better off selling your card and buying a Nvidia instead.

If you on the other hand also can be interested to run other projects besides FAH, two excellent health-related choises is Poem@home and World Community Grid's cancer-project. Both projects needs a little extra configuration to really get the high points, but with BOINC v7.0.42 and it's new app_config.xml feature this is easily accomplished.

In the cancer-project, would expect your card will be roughly 2x faster than any single-GPU Nvidia-card, while in Folding@home it's probably the Nvidia-card being 10x - 20x faster, showing how crappy the FAH-choise really is on Amd-cards.
 
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