I've been a Boinc member for quite a while now, and recently got myself an nvidea card, the gtx 970. So I installed GPU grid, but I think it's not working as it should.

According to MSI Afterburner, the GPU usage is about ~80 constant, but the core clock just stays stuck at 405mhz, instead of the supposed 1.3~4k. It has been over 1h of work, yet it is still at about 5~6%.

Is this normal, or is there something wrong? Here is a print of the task stats.

Your video driver may have crashed at some point and a reboot of your PC will restore clock speeds.

Have you overclocked your card too much?

Your video driver may have crashed at some point and a reboot of your PC will restore clock speeds.

Have you overclocked your card too much?

Rebooting seems to have solved it. Oh well, guess I can't leave the PC on for that long, or these weird things start to happen.

But now, I'm having another problem. I have a 3 threads CPU. Along with the Gtx 970, I'm using a Radeon HD 6670 for MooWrapper, and WCG for the CPU computations. My computer is running 2 WCG WUs, 1 Moo for 0.25 CPU and 1 GPU Grid for 0.988 CPU; yet, processor usage never really gets to 100%. It is about 99 on 1 core, and ~90 on the other 2, whereas running 3 WCG WUs, it would just cap 100% on all cores. Also, GPU usage just hovers around ~58%, with eventual dips.

Is there anyway I can squeeze additional performance out of my hardware?

Rebooting seems to have solved it. Oh well, guess I can't leave the PC on for that long, or these weird things start to happen.

But now, I'm having another problem. I have a 3 threads CPU. Along with the Gtx 970, I'm using a Radeon HD 6670 for MooWrapper, and WCG for the CPU computations. My computer is running 2 WCG WUs, 1 Moo for 0.25 CPU and 1 GPU Grid for 0.988 CPU; yet, processor usage never really gets to 100%. It is about 99 on 1 core, and ~90 on the other 2, whereas running 3 WCG WUs, it would just cap 100% on all cores. Also, GPU usage just hovers around ~58%, with eventual dips.

Is there anyway I can squeeze additional performance out of my hardware?

Nevermind all of that. I just launched a game, and speed is back to be stuck at 405. Even after I closed it. Had to reboot (again) to fix it. The driver didn't crash, I was on the entire time. Reasons for the problem?

Any OC software (Afterburner etc.) you have installed? If so, get rid of all of them except GPU-Z and try again.

Any OC software (Afterburner etc.) you have installed? If so, get rid of all of them except GPU-Z and try again.

Oddly enough... I used several benchmark softwares, and tried several different games; NONE of them gave any problem. It's only when I open this one specific game, that this problem occurs.

The game is Heroes of Newerth. Clues as to why it happens?

Any OC software (Afterburner etc.) you have installed? If so, get rid of all of them except GPU-Z and try again.

It's only when I open this one specific game, that this problem occurs.
The game is Heroes of Newerth. Clues as to why it happens?

Afterburner is a solution, not a problem. I'd be pretty convinced that there's a problem with the way that game is using the GPU. Have you tried suspending GPUGrid before playing the game? You could also try this BOINC configuration option:

<exclusive_gpu_app>important.exe</exclusive_gpu_app>
BOINC will suspend use of GPUs whenever the executable is running.

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/client_configuration

Afterburner is a solution, not a problem. I'd be pretty convinced that there's a problem with the way that game is using the GPU. Have you tried suspending GPUGrid before playing the game? You could also try this BOINC configuration option:

<exclusive_gpu_app>important.exe</exclusive_gpu_app>
BOINC will suspend use of GPUs whenever the executable is running.

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/client_configuration

Yes, I tried disabling it before playing. The 405 lock happened anyways. And oddly enough, even after the game is closed, the problem persists. Games, benchmarks, folding, they all become stuck at this max speed, until a reboot happens.

I opened a topic in their forums, let's see if I get lucky there.

I opened a topic in their forums, let's see if I get lucky there.

That's the right thing to do. The game seems to do something wrong to trigger the "safe mode" of the driver. Once this happens it's normal for it to remain until the next reboot.

Regarding your question of why you're not seeing 100% load on all cores: the GPU usage value you see in BOINC has nothing to do with the real world. View it as a fantasy value set by someone to "hopefully approximate" the real value. BOINC has no means of detecting the real CPU usage of a GPU app, though. And GPU-Grid uses far less CPU time than claimed.. although it needs an overall CPU load below 100%, otherwise GPU performance suffers.

MrS

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