Please add Radeon Pro WX Vega M GL

[JohnJohn]

Thanks again for all of your responses; I'm going to kick the tires a little bit and see if there is anything that I missed in the drivers or logs. I'll report back if I can find anything else that I might have overlooked.

[MeeLee]

I wonder why, if folding mainly uses single precision, they don't assign a CPU thread for the double precision calculations?
That way, even GPUs limited to single precision (like IGPs) can fold.

[NuovaApe]

'cores/cores.foldingathome.org/Win32/AMD64/Core_a4.fah/FahCore_a4.exe': Failed to open 'cores/cores.foldingathome.org/Win32/AMD64/Core_a4.fah/FahCore_a4.exe': Access is denied.

I had this on Windows 10. Fixed it by running FAHClient as administrator, which allowed it to create the cores folders in the Program Files (x86) directory (locked down to normal Users). My login does not have admin rights so apps I run don't either. By design - if I need admin I explicitly control it.

Note that files will then have security attributes "created/owned by admin". If you run FAHClient as a normal user it might then get "access denied" to those files. So run as admin always, or right click FAHClient folder, Properties / Security / Edit and either allow or add "Users" to have full control...if you trust them. I'm the only user so I do.

Editing security got messy as some files created as admin some as me so I uninstalled, reinstalled, and right-clicked client desktop link (or FAHClient.exe), Properties / Compatibility / Run This Program As Administrator. Then it always prompts me for the admin pw, always runs in the same context, and I've never had a core update problem since...

[JimboPalmer]

"In fact, the 1002.694F GPU Polaris 22 MGL XL [Radeon Pro WX Vega M GL] is not supported by FAH.

FAH has never supported any GPUs with Intel drivers (including Intel OpenCL drivers) and it's not clear to me what AMD drivers might be used to make it look like a supportable AMD device." - bruce

I have been searching release notes and driver options, it really does not look like you can get a driver for this direct from AMD. Sorry.

[bruce]

It really does not look like you can get a driver for this direct from AMD. Sorry.

There seems to be a fairly high percentage of modern laptops which are equipped with what I'll call a hybrid iGPU which consists of a CPU with an Intel iGPU and a NVidia GPU whiich switches between the two GPUs based on the characteristics of the graphics load. (this may or may not be the WX Vega) There are a number of such reports on this forum. The FAHCore does crash whenever the integrated device decides to switch to the Intel IGPU. In some cases, it seems that some devices have AMD drivers which may work provided the Intel GPU component can be permanently disabled so that the Intel drivers never come into play.

This is my PRELIMINARY determination ... which may or may not be accurate.

In any case, the Intel drivers are currently absolutely NOT supported by FAH and most likely will never be supported.

[JohnJohn]

Thanks for all of your help, guys. I'll look into posting on the AMD user forums dealing with the 5700 GPU's not working for FAH, as it seems the component desktop cards are having a similar error as I am getting running my laptop in discreet graphics mode. I know that there are issues with the integrated graphics settings and running an Intel board/CPU, but I have a feeling that if they can remedy the 5700 line or future products, it might give a sense of direction of the origin of some of the other AMD problems that face many of us.

[Joe_H]

It will be interesting to see if the Vega M GPU's in these Intel packaged devices - a Kaby Lake CPU with an AMD GPU chip and video RAM - can eventually be used for folding. After reading a number of articles and posts on various other sites, there do appear to be a number of potential problems getting there.

First is that while named "Vega", the actual GPU chips from AMD are based on one of the prior generation code named Polaris. Some minor updates were done to implement some Vega features such as use of HBM2 video RAM. So they fall in between the Polaris and Vega chips.

Second is that people who have looked into the driver report it appears to have been forked off a version that supported AMD's own Polaris offerings to support the new features. That was supplied to Intel as part of the OEM agreement between the companies. From what I have read so far, it is not clear whether that driver from AMD included OpenCL support, and if it did whether that was extensively tested. Intel might be providing its own version of OpenCL support files if that did not come from AMD. Whether OpenCL will get fixed enough to run F@h may depend on that OEM agreement.

[bruce]

FAH has had difficulties when there's a discrete GPU in the same system as a (Intel) iGPU. Generally, the BIOS has disabled the iBPU so the problem goes away. Obviously that's not the case here.

In situations like that, it has often been necessary to REMOVE the Intel drivers and install just the drivers from AMD/NV. I have no idea if something like that will work here. In fact, sometimes it has worked when the Intel driver was the second one installed.

Does the Radeon chip support double-precision math? FAHBench may help you determine that.

I'm just offereing this information to anywone who wants to experiment.