Drivers and utilities

My first foray into installing this card had several problems. First of all I haven't been a big fan of ATI's catalyst drivers for some time. Since I needed some drivers to run I downloaded the 6.11 version the latest approved by the folding community. Well I thought I removed all necessary files but now feel like I might have missed something. I booted into Windows XP SP2 for the first time and of course it gave me the found new hardware stuff. I tried to install from there but it couldn't as the files need to use their own installer. So I finally exited out. I then went to the device driver file and ran the install. It did a few weird things but for the most part I thought it worked.

Now you need to know I am running two monitors. One 19" widescreen 1440X900 and one 22" wide, 1680X1050 both attached via the VGA cables with VGA/DVI adaptors (long story). The Samsung 225w was recognized immediately and I had no problems getting the proper resolution. The 19" Proview was another story. No listing for the resolution showed up in the list. Hmmm... so I set it to 1200X1024 for the moment and rebooted again. I went back to the list and now the resolution I wanted was listed. Hmmm thats strange. Oh well set it to 1440X900 and bingo the screen changed. Hmm that looks funny.. real big icons and text... move my cursor and the screen jumped to one side. What had happened was that the desktop area was much larger than the screen size. When I would approach the edge of the screen with the cursor the screen would pan in that direction till it got to the desktop edge. WOW thats really strange. So I pushed  the auto sense button on the monitor thinking that the monitor for some reason wasn't understanding the signal and not mapping the pixels right. No dice that didnt work. So I turned the power off to the monitor and turned it back on. That didn't work. So... I rebooted. When it came back up that monitor was still the same. Picture of the desktop much larger than the screen size. So I mulled that over a while and finally gave up. I reset the resolution to 1200X1024 and said to heck with it. I will mess with it later. At least now the screen was ABOUT the right size and I could read it although it was blurry.

Now I have to admit that I don't remember all the changes I made in the next couple of hours. But I would have some small problems here and there that I blamed on drivers. What I do remember is this. I got mad and THOROUGHLY removed every ATI file on this computer. Used ATI's removal tool to uninstall most of the files. Went into control panel/remove programs and removed anything that was ATI. Then I ran my registry cleaner to delete any keys that were considered problems. I use JV16 Power Tools for this and have for a few years now. It seems to get most all and does it without me having to know all about what it recommends. So basically it comes up with a list and I tell it yah go fix it. It does and I am happy. Anyways after that I completely reboot. Now of course I get the found new hardware box and cancel it. I get it twice and was confused at first till I realized it is finding both the primary video out and secondary video out on the card. Hence two hardware installs. Now I go and carefully tell the ATI device driver to install. It does and I reboot and set both resolutions properly and both monitors work! I don't know what I did different the second time but I surmise there must have been some remnant of an ATI file or register key or something that was causing problems. So rule number 1, make sure you delete everything about the ATI drivers before you install these cards.

One other problem I have seen posted a few times. Before I got all the drivers and resolutions fixed this machine would not restart. If I told it to just reboot it would shut down and then just hang there for some reason. I would have to manually turn the power off and back on to get it to boot up. Once the driver and resolutions were fixed this went away.

I then installed my folding progam on the GPU and it came right up no problems. Wow that was easy. The GPU was folding away and running fast too. So I walked away from the computer at that point to do some things around the house. When I came back of course my screensaver had kicked in and I wiggled the mouse and logged back in. Hmmm no GPU folding in site! What happened? Now I worried that something killed the folding program. Was it heat, drivers, or what. I started Folding back up and she ran for several hours. Hmmm then in my reading I found a note that folding did not like the screen saver and there was no fix. So I at first tried a blank screen saver and that didn't work. Then I tried blank with the "on resume display welcome screen" box unchecked. That seems to work but of course I now have no security (you don't have to log in) on the desktop. So I just set the screen saver to none. This was all noted on the folding info stuff but I didn't understand it. In any case it seems my drivers were not the problem. It is a directX function that can't be easily gotten around.

Speaking of DirectX. When I first installed the folding program it crashed half way through. I had forgotten that. Well I had checked my system config and had the directx version and build number that Stanford recommends. They however have a link on their site to the most updated files. I clicked on that link and it took me to the Microsoft installer and installed. I don't know why as I had the latest I thought. Then I started folding and it came right up and ran no problems. I don't quite understand that but that's the way it is.

 UPDATE 3/01/07

Ok temperatures are pretty low as you have probably already read. I will now start working on the drivers. Since I started this project I have been running the Catalyst 6.11 version display driver only. Also running ATI Tray Tools to turn up the fans only. A few days ago ATI released Catalyst 7.2's and the team over at Stanford University say they work with the folding project. So my first step will be to remove all traces of the present version and installing the new Catalyst. I will even try to get the Catalyst Control Center (CCC) up and running this time and we shall see what happens.

OBJECTIVE - Stability

Drivers : Catalyst 6.11 device driver ONLY.

               ATI Tray Tools version 1.2.6.964

Realize my entire concern for this card is reliability. It has to fold and fold accurately on a 24/7 timeframe. Folding is a much more demanding program than most games. By that I mean it is mostly a computational program that is very touchy about mistakes. Not like games where an occasional dot on the screen doesn't quite get painted properly. Folding checks and double checks itself for computational accuracy. If it finds the slightest differences it just shuts down the simulation, called an early unit end or EUE. Therefore it is actually a very good program for testing this cards ability to run overclocked. One problem is the science. EUE's cause trouble with Stanfords research as they don't get the full information they need, and it they have no way of knowing if its their software or my machine. So my responsibilty to them requires me to limit my EUE's to as few as possible.

Today I am still running the 6.11 drivers. I haven't taken them down yet to install the new 7.2 catalysts. I already have ATI Tray Tools loaded to control the fans (90% is my setting) and had experimented some with overclocking when I first installed it. The stock clocks for this card came in at 581 GPU and 702 MEM. I had read several places that these things don't overclock well and especially the memory doesn't like to be pushed. Some have fooled with voltages but I haven't as of yet.

Today I thought what the heck I would see if I can push this card and watch the temps and see if my folding times speed up. So using ATI Tray Tools I right clicked on the tray icon and chose hardware then overclocking settings. This gives me the window below. Remember I have already been playing with this software some so my screen numbers will be slightly different than yours. I will detail the whole procedure later.

Notice the clock numbers. The BIOS numbers are what came with the card. What is programmed into the BIOS. The Current numbers are what I have turned it up to. Also notice in the overclocking section I am using Low Level as my method. Some said I should use Driver Level but I can not seem to get this to work. In any case you can see that I have overclocked the GPU to 607.5. This is close to my limit as I turned it up to 610 once and the folding program EUE'ed. I will let this run a few hours and see if it is stable. Also notice the temperatures down in the section labeled Artifact tester. My temps have hardly moved at all. Same or maybe 1 degree higher than stock settings. So it looks like my cooler project is paying off. Just remember this is very preliminary. I am just playing here to see how fast she might be at the moment. Also I don't understand all the switches and such in this software yet. So... and besides the final OC'ing will be done with the 7.2 drivers even though I don't think that will change things much. Now as far as folding goes.. my times don't seem to be changing much. Since this is a small change I will have to do some averaging over several hours to be sure if this OC'ing is making much of a difference. If it does not speed things up much I will just take it back close to stock as I am more worried about killing the card than I am in gaining a few seconds. Gamers who are interested in maxing out frame rates and such can take a bigger chance. I am trying to get the most reliable card first, then get it faster. Not the other way around.

UPDATE 3/03/07

Ok so the above overclock didn't work. It ran and completed a couple of folding work units (this is what its called when it completes the 100 frames - one work unit) then it EUE'd a work unit. Oh well. Now one problem is that this is beta software AND these are beta WU's. Some of them are going to EUE now and then. I have no way of telling if it was my machine or the software. As I stated before it is very important to Stanford's folding project that my machine not be the problem. As a result of this EUE I have turned the speed down to 600.75 and it ran overnight just fine. I will continue to monitor it at this speed for a couple of more days but I think this is my max speed, at least until I can figure a way to turn up the voltage on the GPU.

Realize of course this all makes me nervous. I do not want to kill this card. So I will err on the side of caution. Seeing how I am a very conservative person (it has been rumored when I buy chicken I buy nothing but right wings. lol) I tend to test things for long periods of time. This project now has taken almost a month already and might take another month to iron out all the little details. The advantage of taking my time is that I will have good hard results. Not just some numbers I cooked up in a couple of days.

Installing Catalyst 7.2 drivers->