amd 7970, anybody?

[fraggle]

Hello
+1 for feeback on this AMD and + one to update the GPU benchmark (last edited by valdo in 2011 according to the forum clock).

[nikand]

Bump
No 7970 owners out there?

[vlado]

I hope to be able to get you some results by the end of the week.

Best regards,
Vlado

[nikand]

Thanks Vlado...looking forward to it

[Valtiel]

Just a quick repost here in case some folks are subscribed to this but not the general benchmark scene thread. My own results under Max Design 2011 and the 12.11 beta drivers aren't looking so good for my 7950.

16m 40s

[dtolios]

AMD is already pushing out 13.1 WHQL...is that the "next" driver with fixes vlado was mentioning? Any update using the newer driver would ofc be more than welcome.
Thanks for trying to keep up.

[Valtiel]

Just tried the Cat 13 WHQL driver. Slowed from 16m 40s to 18m even Damnit AMD....

I'll run it a few more times just to make sure my system wasn't being slowed down by something else.

*** Edit: Second run came within range of the 12.11 beta results: 16m 36.4s. So it's not a step back in performance but now I'm getting draw artifacts on the desktop. I was really hoping for a tangible improvement.

[dtolios]

Just tried the Cat 13 WHQL driver. Slowed from 16m 40s to 18m even Damnit AMD....

I'll run it a few more times just to make sure my system wasn't being slowed down by something else.

Well then...that's a kinda distorted way to fix things.
We maybe have to accept that GCN is doomed for viewport/games then...theoretical computation rocks, but applied to tasks outside bitcoin mining, like GPU production rendering and PPD for folding etc is meh.

[Valtiel]

***edit***
I now have Max Design 2013 up and running now and am on the Cat 13.2 Beta 6 driver. Still no functionality out of RT alike despite the different software configuration. Vlado! Help!

------------------

Small update on my experiences here.

While the performance is still poor in general on RT 2.30, I can say it scales well with multiple GPUs. I grabbed a second 7950 and got a 7m, 40s time on both uncrossfired cards, better than linear from a 16m time on one card.

Unfortunately I can't get the OpenCL client on RT 2.40.03 to work at all again (Cat 13.11, Max Design 2011 64-bit). The RT server seems to be stuck sorting the scene out (In the "waiting for image data" stage of the activeshade window). I know this typically takes a few minutes the first time around for a scene in a working setup but I tried letting it think overnight until the VRAY standalone process crashed. The CPU client works fine, as expected.

As an aside, it seems AMD crippled folding performance with Cat 13.1 as well. GPU utilization is down to ~40% on the HD7000 series for most people, though some have managed to get it back to high 90%'s after exhaustive driver cleaning and custom SDK/beta driver combinations. I know more of their market is gamers but it's still a shame they're throwing away potential compute functionality to chase fps in Crysis 3. Maybe I should've held onto my dollars for a single titan card >_<

[Valtiel]

Another update, for whom it may concern.

Now running VrayRT 2.40.03, Max 2013 Design, and the Catalyst 13.5 Beta 3 drivers. Still no workable results but some semblance of progress/stability. I'm just trying to run the OpenCL client on a single of my two 7950's. The client no longer crashes the drivers on the desktop anymore and reports a good deal more progress regarding the loading of the scene to the devices. The activeshade window also reports paths being traced and time recorded. It almost seems like it's actually working. Two things though:
1) Device activity is intermittent. After tracing 32 paths/pixel at ~37% load, it goes completely idle, adding paths at the same load at about once per minute (represented by temperature spikes in the gpu temp graph).
2) The frame buffer remains completely black despite the client reporting actual rendering activity There's really nothing to see. Closer, but no cigar.
3) If I run both cards with my CPU (which does work the OpenCL client properly) It traces 560 paths/pixel in 9.3 seconds! Most of the frame buffer is left black, again, with a few sections showing actual colour where I presume the CPU was working. I wonder if the 7950's are loading the scene fine but not actually "seeing" anything when they cast rays?

GPU only OpenCL

CPU + GPU OpenCL

[vlado]

It looks like AMD is not able to get the full version of our OpenCL code to run properly on their cards; for the next service pack we will have to include an older and simpler version of the code that is supposed to work.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Valtiel]

Oh, AMD for all of their talk about supporting compute development and that HSA jazz, it doesn't look like they're much committed to helping CG out. Thanks for the feedback, Vlado.

[Morne]

Good thing after about 15 years of supporting ATI, I finally switched to NVidia