Folding with Nvidia & AMD GPUs on same computer

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

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nickjd
Posts: 34
Joined: Mon Oct 20, 2008 2:05 pm

Folding with Nvidia & AMD GPUs on same computer

Post by nickjd »

Hello everyone, I have a desktop with an Nvidia GTX 770 and an AMD 7870. I got the 7870 for free and was hoping to increase my PPD. It should do 50 or 60k ppd. The 770 does around 100k and I use that for my primary display. I do not have a second display.

I can't figure out what the problem is, but although I installed the drivers for both GPUs, the AMD card does not do more than 5k ppd. The power consumption at the wall only increases by 10 watts if it's running on the 7870, which makes me believe there is a driver issue and it prevents it from really using any graphics power.

I was wondering if there are any known issues with AMD cards or known incompatibilities with running another brand GPU at the same time. I have messed around with the GPU, CUDA, and OpenCL indices with no luck. It's obvious when I have it wrong because the slots fail to start.

Any troubleshooting advice would be great.

Thank you in advance!

PS, I would attach some text from log files, etc, but I'm not sure what is actually relevant or useful to anyone helping. So I apologize for that, but please let me know what additional information you require.
foldy
Posts: 2061
Joined: Sat Dec 01, 2012 3:43 pm
Hardware configuration: Folding@Home Client 7.6.13 (1 GPU slots)
Windows 7 64bit
Intel Core i5 2500k@4Ghz
Nvidia gtx 1080ti driver 441

Re: Folding with Nvidia & AMD GPUs on same computer

Post by foldy »

I had an issue with Amd and Nvidia cards on Windows that Amd driver fan was fixed at 20% so it ran too hot and throttled down.
1) I had to connect the display to the Amd card first then reboot PC.
2) Open Amd settings and check that fan is on auto setting
3) Connect display back to nvidia and reboot PC.

Post your fah logfile.
nickjd
Posts: 34
Joined: Mon Oct 20, 2008 2:05 pm

Re: Folding with Nvidia & AMD GPUs on same computer

Post by nickjd »

Plugged in a display and it works! It was very odd. The instant I plugged in a display, I heard the fans spin much faster and the power use jumped by 100 watts! Now the PC is using 500 watts continuously.

I never would have thought it would go to a low power mode without a display plugged in. It's actually the same display, but duplicated. Funny that this was the fix.

I don't believe it was actually overheating without the display plugged in. The heat pipes were not very warm. It's very odd that it worked at all with FAH, because it actually finished several work units but they took days instead of hours.
ComputerGenie
Posts: 236
Joined: Mon Dec 12, 2016 4:06 am

Re: Folding with Nvidia & AMD GPUs on same computer

Post by ComputerGenie »

Try something like: http://a.co/dd2XIrK
nickjd
Posts: 34
Joined: Mon Oct 20, 2008 2:05 pm

Re: Folding with Nvidia & AMD GPUs on same computer

Post by nickjd »

Thanks! That's probably what I need to do. Right now I just have both GPUs plugged into the same display, mirrored in the OS.
bruce
Posts: 20910
Joined: Thu Nov 29, 2007 10:13 pm
Location: So. Cal.

Re: Folding with Nvidia & AMD GPUs on same computer

Post by bruce »

The dummy-display plug isn't required on Linux. I think Microsoft disables devices that it thinks aren't needed.
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