Topic: Catalyst 11.6 vs 11.6b vs 11.7 comparison (Read 3014 times)

11.7 is great! It fixed the problem with UVD and other GPU accelerated apps freezing the system when mining.

http://www.techspot.com/news/44847-amd-releases-catalyst-117-final-118-preview-drivers.html

Monthly

"Sticking firm to its monthly release schedule, AMD has published the next complete build of its Catalyst driver suite along with a complimentary ..."

Whats the release date for 11.8?

Very nice write up. We'll see 11.8 soon http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/Catalyst118DriverPreview.aspx

Nice writeup Endeavor!

BTW (I dont need any screenshots, your post read just fine) 

I'm using ... I want to say it was the 11.8 preview ... on a crossfire'd 5770 machine with no dummy plugs or monitors hooked up, with TightVNC, and I can overclock and underclock them both using BarelyClocked

I use TightVNC on all my mining machines (Win7x64) and the ones with single GPU's don't need any special attention (monitor hooked up or dummy plug), the ones with dual gpu's need to have a monitor hooked up to each and moved to each card to start mining on that card, then I can switch to the other card and begin mining, then remove the monitor completely. I don't want to use dummy plugs because there's a 3-5 MH/s difference per card when the monitor is attached and when it's unhooked.

Nice writeup, not sure if what you're saying is true in all cases though. People seem to have varying experiences for some of these findings.

For instance, I was able to remotely boot and overclock/underclock a windows machine with 11.7 preview, and had 1% CPU usage over 3 cards. No dummy plugs or monitors were plugged in. But I couldn't successfully add a 4th card so I rolled back to 11.6.

I like my software up-to-date so I'm running Version 2011.0524.2259.39378 on my Windows XP.
No under/overclocking done on my ASUS Reaeon HD 4890 and it never crashes, maybe because I run m0mchil's miner at --frames 90?

Other info: 850 MHz (default clock)
2590 RPM (automatic control)
13v, doing ~71'C

Gives me around 91.918 MH/s [Rej: 37/1095 (3%)]

I could easly push it to 103 MH/s, but this makes it just too tricky.

You need to be bitch slapped in real life. How rude.

Endeavour79 thank you for the awesome write up. It's certainly helped me steer clear of updating from 11.6.

Thanks for the updates.

Small update..

Did some testing with 11.7 in combination with APP SDK 2.4 (from 11.6 driver). Works really well, even better than 11.6 standalone.

No, its not too hard. What is apparently hard is for you to answer his question: What would you like screenshots of and why?

You are welcome to provide some valuable screenshots.

Windows7:
press [PrtSc],
open Paint software.
press Ctrl+V
press Save.
upload.
done.

is that too hard?

I'm not about to hear my fans running at 100%, that's loud as hell, it's all about 11.6 since I don't want 100% core usage

11.6 is the best. With SDK 2.1, 0% CPU. With SDK 2.4, 30% CPU (1 single 5830).

Thanks for your nice way of asking 
What do you want with screen-shots? What to see?

Hashrates & Temperatures added to my post..

Hashrates? screen shots?

nice rundown.  I hadn't considered the temperature being different between versions.

Another pro for 11.6 v. 11.7 is MSI Afterburner works right with no limit overclock/underclock on 11.6 but not with 11.7.  (possibly other OC software as well?)

Hi Miners,

I want to spend some time to give you an update and share my experience with the three current options. Catalyst 11.6, 11.6b and 11.7. I do skip the 11.8 as I feel this is too early stage to be worth a look.
I am not comparing technical details but will have a look at the mining experience, hashrate, temperature and stability.

I have 3 machines running, all of them with Win7 64bit. I am using one 2x HD5830, one 4x HD5830 and one mixed (HD6970, HD5850 and HD5830) setup.

Let's have a look   at the different drivers and my experience with it.

Catalyst 11.6:

pros:

• Lowest GPU temperature
• Lowest CPU usage
• Normal overclocking behaviour.

cons:

• Dummy plug required
• Flash/Youtube freeze bug (Machine freezes often when using flash hardware acceleration. For potential fix disable hardware acceleration in flash player menu.)

Catalyst 11.6b:

pros:

• Dummy plug not required*
• Normal overclocking behaviour.*
• Contains various bugfixes since 11.6

cons:

• higher GPU temperature than 11.6
• slightly higher CPU usage compared to 11.6
• partly fixed Flash/Youtube freeze bug (Machine freezes sometimes when using flash hardware acceleration. For potential fix disable hardware acceleration in flash player menu.)

Catalyst 11.7:

pros:

• APP SDK 2.5
• Flash/Youtube freeze bug fixed
• Latest (non beta) driver available.
• contains various bugfixes compared to 11.6
• Dummy plug required not required*

cons:

• CPU usage 100% at Single and Dual Core systems (possibly a APP SDK 2.5 bug)
• High GPU temperature

* If you want to under/overclock your card you still need dummy plugs or a monitor to be connected to the card. Otherwise software based overclocking tools don't work, especially in Multi-GPU configurations.


Hashrates:

307 MHash/sec - HD5830@950/300
390 MHash/sec - HD5850@950/300
425 MHash/sec - HD6970@940/840

Temperatures:
(4x HD5830 Rig - hottest card as reference)
Temperatures are snapshots of the status at this moment. They do vary with room temperature and workload..

11.6   ~79 degree Celsius (automatic fan was at 76%)
11.6b ~81 degree Celsius (~84%)
11.7   ~84 degree Celsius (~92%)

Conclusion:
If you use a dedicated miner machine you probably don't need the latest bugfixes and you pay more attention on stability, temperature and CPU usage. From this perspective I would recommend to use Catalyst 11.6.
If you mine with your standard PC which you also use for gaming then probably Catalyst 11.7 is the better choice.
The hash-rate did not noticeable change between all the drivers.

Feel free to comment..
Happy mining  

End.


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