I was recently so impressed with the speed of GPU applications on my new machine, I decided to upgrade my old one with a GPU capable of running these apps, too.

The system is an Asus A7V600x MB (VIA KT600 chipset) with Athlon XP 3000+ processor running Windows Vista home premium.

I have the latest version of BOINC (6.10.58).

My old GPU was an Nvidia Geforce 7600GT.

The new one is a Radeon HD 3850 (AGP). This is listed as capable on the ATI SDK 1.4 page linked to elsewhere. The AMD developer forums confirm that even this AGP version of the card is CAL capable.

Installation of the drivers for the new card has not been straightforward. THe current situation is that I have the drivers from Cat 10.9 (AGP hotfix version) installed, apparently error free, and working. Graphics performance is terrible, and I'm trying to get some support from Sapphire on this.

However, I cannot now get BOINC to work. It launches, but cannot connect to localhost. There are no messages at all in the messages tab. I've checked the events log in Events Viewer, and there is nothing that seems related in there. BOINC.exe is running - I can see it in task manager, but it does not consume any CPU time. None of the science apps launches.

If I uninstall the GPU drivers, Boinc and the CPU based apps work fine but, of course, the GPU is not recognised.

If I install the older version of the drivers that came on the CD in the box with the card (can't remember the version. 8.x I think), I still have all the poor graphics performance as with 10.9 but BOINC and CPU aps will run fine. It just won't recognise the GPU.

If I run netstat -b, I can see that boincmgr has TCP port 31416 open, but boinc.exe is not listed, so presumably doesn't. I don't know what to do about this. No other process is listed as using this port.

I've searched this forum and have, as a result, moved three atical*.dll files into c:/windows/system32. I've also duplicated three ati*.dll files as amd*.dll files (or vice versa). I've done this "just in case" and because I've run out of ideas.

Has anyone seen anything similar before? If I cannot get the GPU aps running, I will revert to the Nvidia card soon because general graphics performance is totally shocking with this new one. My only other use for this machine now is as to back-up the family photo albums.

Installation of the drivers for the new card has not been straightforward.

Did you COMPLETELY remove the old drivers first?
If not, there may still be something there which BOINC recognizes, and it's trying to find the old card as specified by the old drivers. This may be while it doesn't get any further.

Installation of the drivers for the new card has not been straightforward.

Did you COMPLETELY remove the old drivers first?
If not, there may still be something there which BOINC recognizes, and it's trying to find the old card as specified by the old drivers. This may be while it doesn't get any further.

Sorry, should have said. I've used Driver Sweeper to get rid of the NVidia drivers and to remove ATI drivers each time I want to try a different version. Also more re-boots than I can count between each action.

I've also tried modifying the .inf file where the device code doesn't match the device type. This advice was offered elsewhere on other forums as a fix to get the AGP card installed. I've found it has no effect on any of my problems. The current drivers are based on an un-edited .inf file.

Thanks.

However, I cannot now get BOINC to work. It launches, but cannot connect to localhost. There are no messages at all in the messages tab. I've checked the events log in Events Viewer, and there is nothing that seems related in there. BOINC.exe is running - I can see it in task manager, but it does not consume any CPU time. None of the science apps launches.

If the manager can't connect to the client (boinc.exe), it can't display the messages (they are generated by boinc.exe).

There are some files in the BOINC data directory where messages are kept, namely stdoutdae.txt (those are normally displayed in Messages tab), stderrdae.txt, stdoutgui.txt and stderrgui.txt.

If you can't find anything there either, I suppose boinc.exe hangs when processing the graphics drivers, since you can see it in tasks manager. (For what it's worth - you probably thought of that yourself. :-)

Gruß,
Gundolf

You have two different problems.
1. Your BOINC Manager cannot connect to the client (is boinc.exe even running at the time BOINC Manager gives this message?)
2. Your GPU isn't recognized by BOINC as a CAL capable card.

Now, first off, you don't really need the latest and greatest drivers. Depending on which project you want to go run, check their minimum requirements and:
For applications built with CAL 1.2 a minimum of Catalysts 8.12 are needed for BOINC to recognize the card.
For applications built with CAL 1.4 a minimum of Catalysts 9.3 are needed for BOINC to recognize the card.

I ran for ages with Catalysts 9.4 (ATI ones, not the hotfix) on my Sapphire HD3850 on Windows XP SP3, all the time before its hard drive developed a catastrophic platter failure and I was forced to abandon BOINC on that system as I had to send the drive back to its manufacturer. It's now running a lite version of Linux geared towards being a TV and multimedia center, but that aside.

However, I've always learned it's not just a thing of installing the videocard, then install the drivers. You will also have to reinstall the motherboard chipset drivers (hyperion 4-in-1) and, if applicable, update DirectX.

The latter isn't needed if your Vista runs DirectX 10; however if you installed DirectX 9 at any time before, you will have to update it to the latest available, or run the latest installer again to let it write the correct drivers and extensions for the ATI videocard to \system32 and the registry.

Checking with Windows Update if there's additional fixes isn't a bad idea either.

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Thanks for this replies Gundolf and Ageless.

I did a search for stderr* but I only found old files. There is nothing in any of these that seems to relate to this problem (they predate the new card).

I have installed the very latest Hyperion drivers from VIA. This is the only advice that Sapphire have offered so far. Didn't make any difference.

Didn't realise about DirectX 10. I have Windows Update set to automatic so this may have happened anyway, but I will try and manually install for good measure.

Boinc.exe runs the whole time (but takes 0% CPU time). Just Boincmgr can't connect to it. If I uninstall the drivers, then the connection is made.

Maybe I'll try Cat 9.3. I've tried 9.12, but symptoms are the same. My undersanding is that the hotfix drivers from Sapphire are necessary because the ATI drivers don't support the AGP version of the card. Perhaps that's wrong.

Thanks again.

When you use Driver Sweeper to remove the older driver remnants, do you do so from normal Windows or Safe Mode? It needs to be run from Safe Mode.

See this FAQ for holding hands. ;)

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When you use Driver Sweeper to remove the older driver remnants, do you do so from normal Windows or Safe Mode? It needs to be run from Safe Mode.

See this FAQ for holding hands. ;)

Didn't know that. Yikes! Hope I haven't done too much damage.

Tonight:

1. Uninstall Cat 10.9 drivers using ATI uninstaller
2. Reboot into safe mode
3. Run driver sweeper
4. Reboot normally
5. Install DirectX 10 manually
6. Reboot normally
7. Install Cat 9.3 using ATI installer
8. Roboot normally

See where that gets me and report back!

Thanks.

If you have DirectX 10 installed, as far as I know you don't need to reinstall it. But if you do go for a reinstall, install it after you've reinstalled your drivers.

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So I followed these steps, but noting Ageless's suggestion to install Direct X after the device drivers not before. I installed Cat 9.4 because 9.3 is not on the Sapphire website.

It all went fine. On reboot after running driver sweeper, I launched BOINC and it ran fine and had no difficulty connecting to local host.

On reboot after installing the 9.4 drivers, startup crashed the first time. From the restart menu I just selected "start windows normally" and it started fine.

The driver now reports my card as HD 3800 Series rather than HD 3850 specifically.

I have Knights of the Sea benchmark. I could run it before but now it just crashes immediately - even before the splash screen.

And Boinc won't connect to local host although boinc.exe shows in taskmanager (0% CPU).

Back to square one :(

I installed Cat 9.4 because 9.3 is not on the Sapphire website.

Just a hunch, but as I said before, I ran the ATI supplied drivers. I never had to do with the hotfix drivers. You can try that as well. See the previous drivers list at ATI/AMD.

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Hi,

I went to the ATI website and used their selector tool to identify my card and system. It then directed me straight to the same hotfix drivers. I went through the same rigmarole as before to uninstall and reinstall the 10.9 hotfix drivers from there, but the problem remains as before.

I can now run the knights of the sea benchmark, but this seems to highlight something fundamentally wrong. It reports 8.6 fps average throughout the benchmark. If I uninstall the drivers (using driver sweeper), the benchmark will still run and still reports 8.6fps average.

I will try the standard (non-hotfix) drivers you (Ageless) linked to, but I'm losing hope any solution exists.

Thanks