GTX 970 - Folding slot fails repeatedly 347.09 after RDT

[LoneWolf]

Hello all,

I've been folding for a long time, and with my last GPUs (ATI 6970 in crossfire, ATI R9 280x in crossfire) things went very well. At the time, I was running driver 344.65.

I purchased an ASUS STRIX GTX 970 due to the power efficiency and performance ratings. Early on, I was getting excellent performance folding. Then, the folding slot for my GPU started failing repeatedly. I have gone to driver revision 344.75 and then 347.09, and have experienced this issue under both drivers. I cannot be sure if the issue started with the update to 344.75, but after attempting to go backwards to 344.65 and having some errors in the process, I went forward again.

Are other people still having their folding slots fail with Maxwell on a regular basis?

For reference, here's what I believe are the pertinent details to my configuration, which has been stable for me in all other regards.

Core i7-4790K (stock clocks)
16GB RAM (4 x 4 G.Skill Ripjaws running at XMP profile)
Seasonic X-750 Gold PSU
ASUS STRIX GTX-970 (stock clocks)
WD Velociraptor 600GB boot drive, WD 1TB Black storage drive

The system is air-cooled, with a Thermalright TRUE Black with two 120mm fans in push-pull. There are two 200mm intake fans (one front, one side), one 200mm exhaust fan (top) and one rear 120mm exhaust; I do not believe overheating is an issue, especially as I never have an issue with my CPU slot.

I have tried turning off the Advanced flag, and turning it back on --the slot fails either way.

[bruce]

At the present time, NVidia has not issued dependable drivers for their Maxwell2 GPUs. There are many topics on this forum discussing that issue and we're all waiting (impatiently) for their successful release.

These are the most recent WUs for which you have received credit:
GPU type Last credit Last returned Proj Run Clone Gen
ATI 32728 2015-01-08 15:18:00 9201 402 3 90
NVIDIA 28749.5 2015-01-10 08:04:16 13001 402 3 95

[LoneWolf]

Hi Bruce,

Thanks for the quick response.

Do you know what most people see in their folding logs when the slot fails on a Maxwell? I know there were driver issues, but I'm curious because I thought the removal of the Core17 stuff was resolving things for people for now (but wasn't completely sure).

My card isn't failing in games or bechmarks, but is reporting WARNING:WU02:FS01:FahCore returned: GPU_MEMTEST_ERROR (124 = 0x7c) at times in folding. I'm just wondering if that's the common error for others, or if people are seeing other things.

Thanks again for your assistance.

[bollix47]

Have you tried the nvidia 344.80 driver? I haven't seen any problems on my Maxwells (1 or 2) since doing a custom/clean install with that graphic driver.

You can also test using MemtestCL if you're concerned about your GPU's memory.

[LoneWolf]

Okay, after trying everything else (multiple drivers with clean installs, turning off the Intel graphics), I know what caused the issue.

I use Remote Desktop regularly to go back into my machine from work or another system at home, and apparently with nVidia cards, it causes GPU folding to fail. This never happened with my ATI cards before, and it has been so long since I've used an nVidia card, I've never heard of this being an issue.

Apparently, I will need to use TightVNC from now on to remote into my main desktop, or at least until I decide to use ATI cards again, possibly when the R3xx series cards come out.

[Joe_H]

You may run into the same problem using Remote Desktop with ATI cards as you have just seen with the nVidia cards you are currently using. That has been reported by other folders using RDT with their setups.

[Bleeder]

...I use Remote Desktop regularly to go back into my machine from work or another system at home...

Can I ask what OS version you are using?

I have Windows Server 2012 R2 running with a AMD HD 7870XT and I'm folding on that box. I remote into that box all the time and don't see an issue. When I had the HD 7870XT on Windows 7 I couldn't RDP into the box - I had the same problems.

Mind you the video drivers are different now, but I'm wondering if Windows 8/Server 2012 fixed this issue or is it the different video drivers or is the RDP different on Windows Server than it is on Windows client OS.

Just curious.

[LoneWolf]

Using Windows 7 SP1 Enterprise x64. Which is also what I used when I had my two R9 280X cards in Crossfire. I folded with both of them and the CPU together with no issues at all, and could RDP in any time with no issue. Same was true of my two 6970 cards, despite the different architecture of VLIW4 instead of GCN.

It's been several hours now, I started with 344.60 drivers and went to the latest 347.25 drivers --remoting in with TightVNC, my GTX 970 has kept folding with no slot errors, and it's crunching fast.

[7im]

Tracking all the possible OS types, driver versions, and hardware GPU types to know which combinations work in RDP and which don't is no small task. Since RDP has always been problematic for GPU folding it will continue to get "not recommended" until fixed in all of Windows.