WARNING Do not upgrade to 375/376.xx drivers (for xx<48)

It seems that a lot of GPU problems revolve around specific versions of drivers. Though NVidia has their own support structure, you can often learn from information reported by others who fold.

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Jimboc
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Re: WARNING ! Do not upgrade to 375.57 drivers.

Post by Jimboc »

Adam A. Wanderer wrote:
bruce wrote:It probably already has impacted production, though not as much as you might think. The number of GPUs with the faulty drivers is somewhat limited and FAH is designed to recover from errors by quickly assigning the WU to somebody else.

Personally, once I find a driver version that's dependable, I don't upgrade spontaneously and I never choose a "game ready" update since they don't provide anything interesting to me.
Thanks! That sounds like a plan. I don't intend to update again for a very long, long time.
bollix47 wrote:This driver has been replaced by nvidia with 375.63 at http://www.nvidia.com/drivers .

If you do not have a specific reason to upgrade and your folding is working I recommend not upgrading at this time, at least until there's some assurance that nv has released a valid update. If you already did and folding is not working please reinstall the older drivers that worked.
@Adam A. Wanderer: Many thanks for reporting this issue and increasing awareness of it. :)

While I agree with bollix47 that unless there's a specific reason to upgrade, don't. But for me the main reason I upgrade drivers is not to benefit from the performance improvements to games (I generally don't play the latest games) but for security fixes. The 375 drivers fix multiple security vulnerabilities for Linux and Windows

While they aren't remotely exploitable, they allow an already present attacker to further compromise your system (local elevation of privilege). There have already been multiple security updates this year. A full list is available here.

I will be closely monitoring both forums and will update the drivers as soon as possible when the Core 21 issue is resolved. Thanks for working towards resolving these new driver compatibility issues.
Last edited by Jimboc on Mon Oct 31, 2016 8:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
silverpulser
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Re: WARNING ! Do not upgrade to 375.xx drivers.

Post by silverpulser »

Just installed Nvidia driver 375.70 and it is returning bad work unit errors. Will return to previous driver This is the second version of the 375.xx driver that I have tried with the same bad result.

Shaun
yalexey
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Re: WARNING ! Do not upgrade to 375.xx drivers.

Post by yalexey »

Security problems and potential vulnerability drivers are relevant for those who, for some reason, launches a lot of untrusted downloaded from the network code on their machine.
If so, then updates are needed.

But this is specific type of activities.
Last edited by Joe_H on Sun Oct 30, 2016 5:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: unnecessary personal comment
Jimboc
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Re: WARNING ! Do not upgrade to 375.xx drivers.

Post by Jimboc »

yalexey wrote:Security problems and potential vulnerability drivers are relevant for those who, for some reason, launches a lot of untrusted downloaded from the network code on their machine.
If so, then updates are needed.

But this is specific type of activities.
Agreed but I am merely installing these security updates to provide defense in depth for my system and as a best practice to maintain it's security (the same reason why people install operating system updates). I don't run un-trusted code on my machine.
Nirvana
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Re: WARNING ! Do not upgrade to 375.xx drivers.

Post by Nirvana »

silverpulser wrote:Just installed Nvidia driver 375.70 and it is returning bad work unit errors. Will return to previous driver This is the second version of the 375.xx driver that I have tried with the same bad result.

Shaun
Same, folding on CPU only is killing my PPD :(
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Nirvana
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Re: WARNING ! Do not upgrade to 375.xx drivers.

Post by Nirvana »

You could uninstall the driver, reboot, and the install the last known compatible driver.
That would be the only fix as of now.
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bruce
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Re: WARNING ! Do not upgrade to 375.xx drivers.

Post by bruce »

I do not believe that patching FAHCore_21 is a realistic option. FAHCore_21 brings additional scientific capabilities to FAH which are not in earlier cores. To do that, it apparently it uses some additional features in OpenCL which were not used by Core_18. NVidia's drivers supposedly provide an API which contains a full range of OpenCL calls, and if something is broken, it's a problem for NVidia to solve. It's a bit like saying that if you can't watch videos which contain a blue color, it's the responsibility of Netflix to avoid displaying anything in blue.
Nirvana
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Re: WARNING ! Do not upgrade to 375.xx drivers.

Post by Nirvana »

^agreed. If a driver update broke it, the only fix is a new driver.
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Nirvana
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Re: WARNING ! Do not upgrade to 375.xx drivers.

Post by Nirvana »

Not really, it's not like they're going to list a phone number or anything.

Just download the 373 driver.
http://www.nvidia.com/download/find.aspx
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foldy
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Re: WARNING ! Do not upgrade to 375.xx drivers.

Post by foldy »

Yes there is a response in official nvidia 375.70 release thread.
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topi ... 10-28-16-/

Issues and updates:
Artifacts in GIFs after driver update - Fixed in upcoming driver
Work units reporting wrong values in Folding@Home - Under investigation
Jorge1950
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Re: WARNING ! Do not upgrade to 375.xx drivers.

Post by Jorge1950 »

Return to 373.06
Sorry for the translation. This aspect, obliges me to very short and concrete sentences. Little by little he will go forward, also in this field.
Thank you for your understanding. Jorge Barrientos
Jimboc
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Asus Rampage VI APEX (BIOS 1401)(Intel X299 Chipset)

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Corsair Neutron NX500 800GB SSD (System Drive)

Seagate SkyHawk 10 TB , 256 MB Cache (Data Drive)

Creative Sound BlasterX AE-5 Plus Pure Edition

Dell UP3218K and Dell U2711

Windows 11 Pro for Workstations 64 Bit (Version 22H2)
Location: Ireland

Re: WARNING ! Do not upgrade to 375.xx drivers.

Post by Jimboc »

foldy wrote:Yes there is a response in official nvidia 375.70 release thread.
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topi ... 10-28-16-/

Issues and updates:
Artifacts in GIFs after driver update - Fixed in upcoming driver
Work units reporting wrong values in Folding@Home - Under investigation
A further update from a Nvidia representative within their 375.76 Hotfix driver thread confirms they are still looking into it. It was mentioned in another thread that a new driver is due for release around the middle of this month. We will need to wait and see if it contains any fix for this.

Thanks.
jlulu
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Re: WARNING ! Do not upgrade to 375.xx drivers.

Post by jlulu »

[removed since this was not a valid workaround, just coincidence that it started processing Core 18 as soon as I changed a setting]
Last edited by jlulu on Tue Nov 15, 2016 2:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
Joe_H
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Re: WARNING ! Do not upgrade to 375.xx drivers.

Post by Joe_H »

Not really a usable workaround for folding. Specifically the 375 version drivers will not work with Core_21 projects which are the majority of available GPU projects at this point. The Core_18 projects that do work with this version of the drivers from nVidia will not be available all of the time.
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bruce
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Re: WARNING ! Do not upgrade to 375.xx drivers.

Post by bruce »

jlulu wrote:Thinking that some config tweaking might help some (after reading about the cpu:7 problems), I configured the GPU slot with "gpu-index 0" and since then I've been able to process some units (about 8 so far). There are some bad work unit failures, but most appear to be starting and completing successfully. I have a Gigabyte 1070 G1, if that matters.
Since you didn't post the system configuration segment of your log, I have to guess....
... that you only have one GPU. (a pretty safe guess, I suppose)

The purpose of gpu-index is to distinguish between each of your GPUs, and since you only have one, the setting of "-1" will always choose the system default value of "0". You didn't really change anything.
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