I built a machine yesterday that runs two AMD 6850s in CrossFire. It runs Collatz out of the box perfectly. But that's about it.

See, DistRTGen and POEM both require OpenCL (and essentially require app_info as well). But I get the message that "This GPU does not support OpenCL"

I call BS! Of course it supports OpenCL! I installed the latest Catalyst - twice, in fact, to be sure...

I am cleverly running Windows 8 Server (Windows Server 2012). Is that the problem...?

Or else how do I install OpenCL? I thought it came with Catalyst!

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It's a problem with the driver. BOINC checks for a certain OpenCL library file that the drivers should have installed, if it can't find this file, then it'll say that the GPU does not support OpenCL.

So perhaps you installed BOINC as a service, by which it cannot check any files outside the BOINC Programs and Data directories.
Or the driver got installed wrongly.
Or there's a change in the driver by which it renamed certain files and thus BOINC can't find the file it's looking for. Most all the problems are with the driver.

And in your case added to that is a beta OS.

You can try running with the Beta 12.9 drivers, although it doesn't mention specifically that they have OpenCL added. Or you can try older drivers, the description should say it's got a "OpenCL(tm) Driver".

But even saying that it does, does not make drivers work, per se.

Just saying, BOINC can only detect things that are effectively truly there.

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It's still a beta? Funny, didn't see Microsoft as the type to give me a full-featured server OS that's a beta without even telling me. Then again, why am I surprised? Win8 hasn't hit RTM yet so I guess I should have thought that one through.

I installed the drivers correctly. I am more willing to believe it is this particular version of driver. AMD says it's meant for Win8, but there's been nowhere near enough time for adequate testing with the developer preview. I will try also an older version (for instance the one that has my 6950 cranking out lots of credits), then if not satisfied, the beta drivers.

If all that fails, I'll dig up a legitimate version of Win7 (gotta be one around here somewhere) and start anew.

Problem is we'll have to wait til Monday or so for results; I'm currently out-of-state.

Thanks for the tips!

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Beta drivers did not work. I tried both versions of 12,9 - one "without" .NET 4,0 and one with .NET 4,0 support...still getting the "does not support OpenCL" message.

I have yet to try rolling back to an earlier driver, but I'm somehow more confident that I need a driver supporting Win8, which means 12,8 and higher including the betas.

Later this afternoon I'll try an earlier version anyway - which do you recommend?

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I've got pretty much the same issue except with a GTX 660 TI and on win7 64 bit. This happened after my GTX 480 died and I replaced it. Clean driver installs didn't solve it. I thought I had found the issue when GPU Caps Viewer gave me an error about openCL.dll being corrupt in \windows\system32\

Fixed that by copying the nvidia dll into it yet boinc is still unable to find out that my card does support openCL.

Is there a particular directory or registry entry boinc looks at? I'd like to run openCL as well as CUDA apps.

Clean driver installs didn't solve it.

How clean? Did you just uninstall the previous drivers and install the next, thinking that's clean? Or did you use something like Driver Sweeper, or Driver Fusion to thoroughly get rid of all old drivers and then install the new ones?

Just copying an OpenCL.dll in other places isn't going to work. It isn't just OpenCL.dll that makes OpenCL work. You'll need to install it with the drivers.

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Clean driver installs didn't solve it.

How clean? Did you just uninstall the previous drivers and install the next, thinking that's clean? Or did you use something like Driver Sweeper, or Driver Fusion to thoroughly get rid of all old drivers and then install the new ones?

Just copying an OpenCL.dll in other places isn't going to work. It isn't just OpenCL.dll that makes OpenCL work. You'll need to install it with the drivers.

As clean as uninstalling every nvidia piece separately and rebooting where needed. And then using driver fusion in safe mode to get rid of any leftovers. After rebooting and checking if everything is gone reinstall begins.

Of course, it's supposed to be installed with the drivers, yet for some reason boinc doesn't seem to see it. The GPU caps viewer program can however (after I replaced the broken .dll) and it can run a few simulations with openCL as well. So to me it seems the problem is with boinc not seeing it. Now, why that is, I don't know. It's why I wonder what exactly boinc looks for to see what a GPU supports.

Note that my old GPU died while crunching an openCL task, so perhaps it corrupted some files or registry entries as well, something neither driver sweeper nor fusion lists.

Now, why that is, I don't know. It's why I wonder what exactly boinc looks for to see what a GPU supports.

BOINC checks for the presence of OpenCL.dll underneath the Windows directory, and any of its sub-directories. It'll be in /System32/

Which drivers did you install?

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Now, why that is, I don't know. It's why I wonder what exactly boinc looks for to see what a GPU supports.

BOINC checks for the presence of OpenCL.dll underneath the Windows directory, and any of its sub-directories. It'll be in /System32/

and in C:\Windows\SysWOW64 too, but with a different filesize,

Claggy

Clean driver installs didn't solve it.

How clean? Did you just uninstall the previous drivers and install the next, thinking that's clean? Or did you use something like Driver Sweeper, or Driver Fusion to thoroughly get rid of all old drivers and then install the new ones?

Just copying an OpenCL.dll in other places isn't going to work. It isn't just OpenCL.dll that makes OpenCL work. You'll need to install it with the drivers.

I've had good luck uninstalling as follows:
1. type "change device installation settings" in the windows program search bar
2. choose "no, let me choose what to do"->Never install driver software from Windows Update
3. uninstall graphics driver as usual
4. open device manager, action->scan for hardware changes
5. windows will start installing a driver for your gfx card again. If any old drivers are left over you will end up with your gfx card correctly recognized again under display adapters with its proper name.
6. right click the name display adapter and choose uninstall. In the dialog that pops up check "Delete the driver software for this device" and click ok.
7. Rinse and repeat steps 4-6 to flush out all old drivers for the display card until you get the adapter registered as "generic VGA adapter". (steps 1-2 are crucial for making this happen, otherwise windows will always install drivers from windows update)
8. Now reboot and install whatever driver you want to install.

With this method I've run catalyst 12.10 (latest version) and run BOINC flawlessly.

It might be useful to followers here to look at a thread I posted over at MilkyWay

Basically, after I pulled an ATI HD5850, MW no longer processes any gtx460 tasks even though it used to do it. I assumed that MW app is mis-identifying the gpu but it now seems that BOINC is reporting no opencl but associating that "error" with nvidia instead of the missing ATI board.

The issue is that OpenCL installer which is part of the Catalyst driver installer does not recognize Windows Server 2012 (only supports Vista,7,8 by default). One can verify this by running GPU-Z, it will show that no OpenCL support even though the hardware devices have been identified and installed correctly.

The fix is to simply modify the OpenCL package (C:\AMD\Support\13-1_vista_win7_win8_64_dd_ccc_whql\Packages\Apps\OpenCL64\OpenCL.msi) to include Windows Server 2012. The process is fairly straightword, and mostly based upon this thread.

Though the values need to be adjusted for Windows Server 2012.

Index 1, 2, 3, 4, ...
OS WIN_WIN8_SRV
Version 6.2
Is64-bit Yes
IsMCE Blank
IsWindowsServer Yes

It should look something like this

Save the modified installer, and run it to install the OpenCL components. Check with GPU-Z and verify OpenCL support is enabled (can't remember if a reboot was needed).