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Fixing a Catalyst OpenCL mayhem (Catalyst 13.1 / 13.3b2)

There seems to be a little issue with Catalyst 13.x and OpenCL (maybe other versions are affected too, but I only tested some of those). For me, the problem occurred after installing Catalyst 13.3 beta 2 over Mobility Catalyst 13.1 stable (AMD claims that 13.3 beta 2 works for desktop as well as mobility, it doesn’t seem to be the case!).

The symptoms, apart from some OpenCL applications not working, were GPU-Z saying at startup:

“ATI OpenCL driver bug detected, skipping OpenCL detection. Uninstall the AMDStream SDK/Open CL driver to re-enable this functionality.”

If you just uninstall all the AMD drivers and happen to have an Intel CPU with a graphical chipset, the message will then become:

“Intel OpenCL driver bug detected, skipping OpenCL detection.”

So, you get it, it’s the whole OpenCL installation that’s messed up.

The steps I took to fix that were:

  1. check out files named amdocl64.dll, amdsc64.dll and OpenCL.dll (in C:\Windows\system32) and amdocl.dll, amdsc.dll and OpenCL.dll (in C:\Windows\SysWOW64). If they don’t have the same date, they are likely the cause of the problem: it seems that the AMD APP SDK Runtime installer/uninstaller has trouble updating/removing them, so you end up with some from a version and some from another version, which just isn’t able to work.
  2. uninstall the AMD APP SDK Runtime
  3. delete any of the remaining files spotted in 1. that may be left in system32 and SysWOW64
  4. reinstall the AMD APP SDK Runtime
  5. reboot

After this, GPU-Z still doesn’t have the “OpenCL” check box checked, but there’s no more error message at start-up and the OpenCL application I use works again. If it doesn’t work for you, or if you want more details, or if you mind about the OpenCL tickmark in GPU-Z (apparently they managed to get it), or are just curious about a variation of the method, here’s the post that helped me solve the problem (which presents a more detailed solution, with additional steps that I didn’t need to take): http://mrlithium.blogspot.fr/2013/03/opencl-hassles-ati-opencl-driver-bug.html

Posted in AMD, drivers, graphic cards, Schenker XMG P702.


7 Responses

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  1. Allan Cristhian Kah Kipfer says

    Hi, i’m trying to use my onboard intel HD2500 from my i5 3330
    for web browsing, or gaming, while my 2 XFX HD7950 are used for mining

    but when i open GPU-z says that intel bla bla bla, same old same old.

    Any advice? i did already this method, it help me, but now i’m also using my onboard, while trying to use my offboard too, i saw lots of sites saying that is possíble, that i need a dummy video plug, i did one already too, do i need 2 maybe? one for each card?

  2. patheticcockroach says

    Hi,

    I’m not too sure what you’d need to plug on a desktop. I’m on a laptop so all graphic units (ie both the Intel HD 3000 chipset from the i7 and the Mobility Radeon HD 7970M) go to the same DVI output. I suppose you plug your monitor on the motherboard to use the HD 2500, so I guess one dummy plug per discrete GPU sounds like the way to go. Turning Crossfire on might be helpful too (although you may then hit the infamous 100% 1 core usage bug then), that’s what I used to do with my 2×5870. And maybe the Enduro thing needs some tuning too (in Catalyst, see Switchable graphics application settings), although I don’t remember having to tweak those (using Diablo miner – cgminer doesn’t work with my laptop). If you want to game using the HD 2500 while still mining on the Radeons, you’ll definitely need to configure your games in there (setting them to power saving).

    Just to make things clear though, what exactly works and what doesn’t at the moment? Mining on 1 GPU only ? MIning on 2 GPUs but not when gaming ? When you say when you “open GPU-z says that intel bla bla bla, same old same old”, do you mean the error message about OpenCL ? That would be most strange if you get this message while mining works on at least one GPU (when I had this message there was no way to mine)

  3. patheticcockroach says

    Quick update: Mobility Catalyst 13.4 stable works fine for me.

  4. Richard says

    Work with 13.1 CCC and AMD SDK v. 2.7, 64 bit OS Win7. No other AMD SDK didnt work. Work with 12.8 CCC driver too

  5. Roy says

    I looked here because GPU-Z 073 and 074 both exhibited the same problem today after working fine for a wk or 2 previously. I don’t use crossfire and I already had Catalyst Control Ctr 13.9 installed with AMD SDK whatever (probably the latest version) and all the other crap, er stuff from AMD running under W7 64-bit with a hohum Radeon 6570HD GPU, which incidentally has been running OpenCL tasks (for BOINC/Einstein@Hm) since June without any problems.

    I looked for all the files David mentioned in the OP here and found ’em all except for amdsc64.dll, a no- show on my PC. The ones I found in both System 32 and SysWOW 64 all had identical created/modified date/times, and were identical in size as well – with the exception of the OpenCL.dll files, one was 56 kb the other 62 kb. Their carbon copies in my “Driver Store” folder were named OpenCL32.dll (56 kb) and OpenCL64.dll (62 kb) so I renamed each file by adding 32 or 64 to it and without rebooting , fired up GPU-Z again without any error message, although neither one has Open CL checked and only GPU-Z 074 has Direct X checked off. Oh well. I screw around with my PC way too much but balked at uninstalling & reinstalling anything to make GPU-Z happy, even though it’s a great utility

    Anyways I hope this info maybe useful to the next victim of GPU-Z and/or AMD; I was lucky to find David’s info before plowing thru several other articles in the search engine’s list.

  6. Roy says

    PS: Renaming those files resulted in my BOINC Program Manager being unable to detect my GPU, which prevented my PC from working on all of the assigned tasks requiring the services of a GPU. So I went back and re-renamed the 2 files in my OP to what their original names and BOINC then “found” my GPU, and so did GPU-Z, in addition to correctly indicating my PC is computing “OpenCL” and “Direct Compute 5” tasks.

    In conclusion I have no idea why GPU-Z displayed “ATI OpenCL driver bug detected, skipping OpenCL detection. Uninstall the AMDStream SDK/Open CL driver to re-enable this functionality” in the first place or why it regained “this functionality” after I renamed the 2 files, or why it also worked after I changed the 2 files back to their original names.
    Maybe I’m being punished for sins I committed in a prior life…

    • patheticcockroach says

      That’s quite a strange behavior indeed. Although, from what I observed, Catalyst 13.9 seems to create more issues than it solves. When I reinstall I’ll probably stick to 13.4.



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