Why do ATI gpu's have arround 8 variations for GPU processing?

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Profile Tom M
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Message 1875958 - Posted: 30 Jun 2017, 19:51:04 UTC

I will admit it has been more than a year since I played with any ATI-based video processors (mostly embedded ones I believe).

And I haven't stopped to wonder why there were so many variations. All though I have no intention of running out and getting some ATI cards (budget limitations) I am still curious.

Thank you.
Tom
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Profile BilBg
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Message 1876147 - Posted: 1 Jul 2017, 6:04:29 UTC - in response to Message 1875958.  
Last modified: 1 Jul 2017, 6:20:41 UTC

https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/apps.php

The applications (.exe variants) are only 3

opencl_ati_ - for all ATI AMD >= HD 4xxx
opencl_ati5_ - "normal" variant for all ATI AMD >= HD 5xxx
opencl_ati5_SoG - SoG variant for all ATI AMD >= HD 5xxx

Every one of those 3 apps have 3 <plan_class>es (for a total of 3*3=9)
http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/beta/plan_class_spec.xml

Driver version 13.1 is bad so the server have to avoid computers with Catalyst 13.1
http://www.hal6000.com/seti/boinc_ati_gpu_cheat_sheet.htm

The same app (.exe) may be sent to Catalyst 11.12 ... 12.10 (i.e. < 13.1) by <plan_class> ending by _sah or _SoG
and to Catalyst 13.4+ (i.e. > 13.1) by <plan_class> ending by _cat132
This way the bad Catalyst 13.1 is avoided.

<plan_class> ending by _nocal is to detect GPUs or drivers which do not report/support CAL (AMD dropped CAL in favour of OpenCL)

Note:
If BOINC supported something like:
<bad_opencl_driver_revision>108440</bad_opencl_driver_revision>

... the number of <plan_class>es could be reduced
 
 


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Profile Tom M
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Message 1885538 - Posted: 23 Aug 2017, 7:40:28 UTC - in response to Message 1876147.  

I just picked up an A6-7310 with an "R4" gpu. It is running under a stock Win10 OS. I haven't tried installing any older drivers.

Boinc/Seti is downloading and running "open_cl_nocal" I assume it makes sense so the question is something like I thought "nocal" meant gpu tasks couldn't be run? Apparently I am wrong. So the other question is, if running a backlevel gpu driver will speed up processing, what is the recommended non-current ATI driver?

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Tom
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Message boards : Number crunching : Why do ATI gpu's have arround 8 variations for GPU processing?


 
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