I have worked on Seti work units since 2002 using various upgrades of my home PC without any problems. For the past several years, this has included crunching GPU work on my AMD Radeon HD 4850 using Windows 7.

A couple of weeks ago, I upgraded to a new SSD and did a fresh install of Windows 7. The only change I (knowingly) made to my BOINC setup was that when I reinstalled BOINC I configured it to use a traditional HDD rather than the SSD for its data files.

All seems to be fine for both Seti (and other projects) with one exception: work for the GPU is not running properly.

The work unit starts, runs for up to 26 seconds and is then "postponed". Another work unit starts, runs for a similar amount of time and is then postponed". A third work unit starts . . . and so on. Meantime, the first work unit changes its status from "postponed" to "waiting to run". Eventually, when it reaches the head of the queue, its status becomes "running", the clock resets to "0.00" and the whole cycle repeats, over and over again. Eventually, it reports a computation error.

I am using the very latest drivers and have tried checking/unchecking/rechecking various preferences to see if anything makes a difference - but no luck. For now, I simply have the GPU preference "suspended" because it just seemed to be wasting time pointlessly churning through the cycle I describe above.

Any thoughts/suggestions would be welcome. Thanks.

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Which 'postponed' message is this? Please give the full message, not just the Postponed part, because there are more than one versions of it and thus more than one explanation.

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Which 'postponed' message is this? Please give the full message, not just the Postponed part, because there are more than one versions of it and thus more than one explanation.

Under the "Tasks" tab in the "Status" column, it simply says "Postponed". In the Event Log it says, for example: "21/06/2015 18:08:20 | SETI@home | task postponed 30.000000 sec:".

Hope this helps.

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He is getting this on his work.

ERROR: OpenCL kernel/call 'Enqueueing kernel:PC_find_spike32_kernel_cl' call failed (-54) in file ..\analyzeFuncs.cpp near line 3838.

Did you change drivers when you reinstalled Windows?

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He is getting this on his work.

ERROR: OpenCL kernel/call 'Enqueueing kernel:PC_find_spike32_kernel_cl' call failed (-54) in file ..\analyzeFuncs.cpp near line 3838.

Did you change drivers when you reinstalled Windows?

It is possible I changed drivers - but I don't know for sure. If anything offers automatic updates, I usually select that option but I cannot say, for certain, what drivers I had been using previously. What I can say is that my current driver is the latest available.

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Suggests to me that either you are missing the OpenCL component of your drivers, or your ATI Radeon HD 4700/4800 series is one of those that didn't fully support OpenCL crunching. OpenCL wasn't fully supported in hardware until the 4900 series.

If you want to crunch on that card, you'll likely need to install the third-party application from Lunatics that supports AMD's CAL on those cards.

Automatic driver updates are a curse.
In the past they have been responsible for many well functioning machines crashing out of circulation.
(Does anyone else remember the MS upgrade that dumped a large number of computers into a permanent re-boot cycle?)

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

I'm not sure we can blame this one on automatic driver updates from Microsoft. The OP's Radeon HD 4800 series GPU has gone off recent driver support, and the most current drivers are labeled as "legacy". I've found that most of AMD/ATi's legacy drivers are very basic and lack things like OpenCL.

It may be best to uninstall the current driver, make sure all remnants are gone by using DriverSweeper (or something like it), then re-install one of the previous non-legacy drivers which should have OpenCL components.

The latest non-legacy driver I see for the 4xxx series is from June 2012 (Catalyst 12.6).

Thanks to all for responses so far.

Given that my Radeon 4850 worked prior to the reinstall of Windows 7, I know that the card is capable of CL work. It is only since the reinstall that things have stopped.

And as no-one has suggested "user error" (so far) this would seem to suggest that it must be a driver issue.

One thing I do not understand, however, is that GPU Caps viewer still confirms the card's CL capability and all the tests run properly. Does this mean the drivers can work OK for GPU Caps viewer but could be deficient for Seti?

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It does appear that something is missing from the driver based upon the kernel call error your posted previously. I'm not sure what tests GPU Caps Viewer runs for OpenCL, so I can't say for certain why the test runs but SETI doesn't. However, I refer back to the OpenCL kernel call error as a big clue that clearly something is wrong with OpenCL on your machine.

Just to ask: are you sure it is the Open "C" L tests that you are running and not Open "G" L, which are two completely different standards?

Just to ask: are you sure it is the Open "C" L tests that you are running and not Open "G" L, which are two completely different standards?

Yes, I can confirm that it runs all the CL tests. (It also runs the GL tests up to and including GL3).

In the next few days I will try using other drivers as suggested, probably starting with the older version of Catalyst and will report back. So far not had any much success tracking down the Lunatics drivers. . . . . Google seems to think I am suddenly showing an interest in insane road users!!!

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The Lunatics' applications aren't drivers; they're third-party science apps, and they require properly working OpenCL as well. You can find them on their website at http://lunatics.kwsn.info/.

Reporting back on uninstalling current drivers: First, uninstalled existing Catalyst then, in Safe Mode, ran Drive Sweeper (or Display Driver Uninstaller as it is called now) then installed Catalyst 12.6.

Unfortunately, this made no difference - Seti gpu work units still only ran for between 21 and 26 seconds before being "postponed"; they then "wait to run" and then, when they reach the top of the queue, the timer resets and the cycle starts over.

Repeated the uninstall process described above but this time went back to my original CD rom that came with the card. That exercise was as good as useless as these drivers only go up to Vista and, BOINC reported "No GPU present".

Tried once more with Catalyst 12.6. BOINC recognises the GPU and the presence of CL - as does CAPS viewer - but the GPU work units still only run for a few seconds.

Unless anyone has any other suggestions, it looks as if I am going to have to forget about running Seti gpu work units indefinitely. But it does seem odd that they would run quite happily before.

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Hmmm... I found this in your error logs:

SETI7 update by Raistmer

OpenCL version by Raistmer, r1831

AMD HD5 version by Raistmer

The AMD HD5 application was supposed to be strictly for Radeon HD5000 series and newer. I wonder if this is what is causing your problems.

In light of this, I would suggest installing the Lunatics apps since they have a non-HD5 version for HD4000 chips.

Hmmm... I found this in your error logs:

SETI7 update by Raistmer

OpenCL version by Raistmer, r1831

AMD HD5 version by Raistmer

The AMD HD5 application was supposed to be strictly for Radeon HD5000 series and newer. I wonder if this is what is causing your problems.

In light of this, I would suggest installing the Lunatics apps since they have a non-HD5 version for HD4000 chips.

Thank you for the (earlier) link to Lunatics. I spent some time looking at their site but this seems to be way outside my comfort zone. Much of the information on the site is well beyond my level of understanding and made little sense. Consequently, I am very hesitant about going down that path at this time and risk possibly messing things up completely. I may return to Lunatics later, however!.

That said, I would like to thank you (and the others) on this forum who have given their time and tried to help me out - I now know a good deal more about SETI & GPUs than I did before.

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I too am having the task postponed 30.00000 sec:
Running windows 10.
2 processor cpu, 1 processor used for boinc tasks, the other not in use for boinc.
CPU Info:
CPU type GenuineIntel
Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU E5500 @ 2.80GHz [Family 6 Model 23 Stepping 10]
Number of processors 2
Coprocessors AMD ATI Radeon HD 5400 series (Cedar) (1024MB) driver: 1.4.1848 OpenCL: 1.2
Operating System Microsoft Windows 10
x64 Edition, (10.00.10240.00)
BOINC version 7.4.42
Memory 4095.11 MB
Cache 2048 KB
Swap space 8191.11 MB
Total disk space 736.2 GB
Free Disk Space 658.34 GB
GPU Info:
8/9/2015 9:31:24 | | CAL: ATI GPU 0: ATI Radeon HD 5400 series (Cedar) (CAL version 1.4.1848, 1024MB, 991MB available, 208 GFLOPS peak)
8/9/2015 9:31:24 | | OpenCL: AMD/ATI GPU 0: ATI Radeon HD 5400 series (Cedar) (driver version 1800.8 (VM), device version OpenCL 1.2 AMD-APP (1800.8), 1024MB, 991MB available, 208 GFLOPS peak)
8/9/2015 9:31:24 | | OpenCL CPU: Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU E5500 @ 2.80GHz (OpenCL driver vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., driver version 1800.8 (sse2), device version OpenCL 1.2 AMD-APP (1800.8))
Have looked at Lunatics, but belive this is over my head to make the driver change.
Any ideas on what i could try next?
Thanks.

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