[QUOTE=kracker;366334]Hmm. Have you tried a fresh install of the latest drivers? (completely remove, reboot, restart etc) I have had to do that a time or two.[/QUOTE]

As far as I'm concerned, that is the [U]only[/U] way to install a new graphics driver. Though I'm running nVidia cards now, the same was true in the years I ran ATI. I have seen enough flakiness from installing a new driver over the old. This became even more necessary when running GPGPU applications.

I have a new Windows 7 laptop with an AMD HD8970M GPU on which I just started trying MFAKTO (x64).

The throughput numbers look pretty impressive -- over 200GHz-days/day. However, the performance drops to around 100GHz-d/d when the screen goes to sleep, and I haven't figured out a good way to stop it from doing that.

I'm also running an HD7770 on a Windows 7 desktop machine. This one doesn't have that problem: the display goes to sleep after 20 minutes without affecting the GPU's MFAKTO performance at all.

Have tried all sorts of power settings on the laptop, Device Manager, Catalyst Control Center, what have you, and the only setting change that's prevented this from happening is to set the display to Never go to sleep, but that's not acceptable.

Am I missing something? What else (if anything) can I do to keep the HD8970M running at full capacity when the display goes to sleep? Or is it something that's inherent in laptop PCs (or maybe in mobile graphics cards)?

Rodrigo

[QUOTE=Rodrigo;368191]I have a new Windows 7 laptop with an AMD HD8970M GPU on which I just started trying MFAKTO (x64).

The throughput numbers look pretty impressive -- over 200GHz-days/day. However, the performance drops to around 100GHz-d/d when the screen goes to sleep, and I haven't figured out a good way to stop it from doing that.

I'm also running an HD7770 on a Windows 7 desktop machine. This one doesn't have that problem: the display goes to sleep after 20 minutes without affecting the GPU's MFAKTO performance at all.

Have tried all sorts of power settings on the laptop, Device Manager, Catalyst Control Center, what have you, and the only setting change that's prevented this from happening is to set the display to Never go to sleep, but that's not acceptable.

Am I missing something? What else (if anything) can I do to keep the HD8970M running at full capacity when the display goes to sleep? Or is it something that's inherent in laptop PCs (or maybe in mobile graphics cards)?

Rodrigo[/QUOTE]

It's probably a "power saving" feature... My best bet would be in the Catalyst control center, but it seems you've already checked and tried that... I don't have a mobile GPU so I can't speak much about it.

[QUOTE=Rodrigo;368191]I have a new Windows 7 laptop with an AMD HD8970M GPU on which I just started trying MFAKTO (x64).

The throughput numbers look pretty impressive -- over 200GHz-days/day. However, the performance drops to around 100GHz-d/d when the screen goes to sleep, and I haven't figured out a good way to stop it from doing that.

I'm also running an HD7770 on a Windows 7 desktop machine. This one doesn't have that problem: the display goes to sleep after 20 minutes without affecting the GPU's MFAKTO performance at all.

Have tried all sorts of power settings on the laptop, Device Manager, Catalyst Control Center, what have you, and the only setting change that's prevented this from happening is to set the display to Never go to sleep, but that's not acceptable.

Am I missing something? What else (if anything) can I do to keep the HD8970M running at full capacity when the display goes to sleep? Or is it something that's inherent in laptop PCs (or maybe in mobile graphics cards)?

Rodrigo[/QUOTE]

May I ask why it is not acceptable to keep the screen on? There is not much power-saving from turning it off, and you could dim it to not shorten life-time too much.

Apart from that ... there are "advanced options" in the "modify power plan" screen (not sure about the real wording - I just have the German version here). In there, you can modify the PCI Express power saving ... try turning that off.

[QUOTE=Bdot;368246]May I ask why it is not acceptable to keep the screen on? There is not much power-saving from turning it off, and you could dim it to not shorten life-time too much.

Apart from that ... there are "advanced options" in the "modify power plan" screen (not sure about the real wording - I just have the German version here). In there, you can modify the PCI Express power saving ... try turning that off.[/QUOTE]

Some laptops have severely limited BIOS sadly.

[QUOTE=Bdot;368246]May I ask why it is not acceptable to keep the screen on? There is not much power-saving from turning it off, and you could dim it to not shorten life-time too much.

Apart from that ... there are "advanced options" in the "modify power plan" screen (not sure about the real wording - I just have the German version here). In there, you can modify the PCI Express power saving ... try turning that off.[/QUOTE]
I went back into the advanced power settings. There is indeed a PCI Express item, which leads to a "Link State Power Management" option for battery and plugged-in states. Both were already turned off (must have been a default value, I don't remember changing that setting).

At the bottom of the menu list there is also an "ATI Graphics Power Settings" option, which was set to "Maximize Battery Life" for Battery and to "Maximize Performance" for Plugged-in. Just in case, I now changed the Battery setting to Maximize Performance too. Because it's always plugged in, I'm not hopeful that this will make any difference.

As for why not leave the screen on all the time, it is is an expensive laptop and I would rather not burn in the static image that would be displayed 24/7.

If we can't come up with any settings to make the laptop's screen+GPU behave like the desktop's screen+GPU, my next step will be to try a screensaver or else dimming the screen.

Rodrigo

[QUOTE=kracker;368247]Some laptops have severely limited BIOS sadly.[/QUOTE]
You can say that again. Amazingly, for the price of this laptop there is no choice in the BIOS to disable hyperthreading.

But overall I'm delighted with the machine. Just looking for a way to squeeze its whole potential out of it.

Rodrigo

Solution?

[url]http://superuser.com/questions/142760/is-there-a-way-to-shut-off-a-laptop-monitor[/url]

[QUOTE=Rodrigo;368253]
As for why not leave the screen on all the time, it is is an expensive laptop and I would rather not burn in the static image that would be displayed 24/7.[/QUOTE]

Is this even possible anymore? I thought this was just for CRT screens.

From the manual for our 65 inch LCD/LED TV:
[QUOTE]Avoid displaying still images (such as jpeg picture files) or still image elements (such as TV channel logos, TV shows or movies in panorama or 4:3 format, stock or news scroll bars, etc.) on the screen. The constant display of still pictures can cause ghosting or image burn-in (image retention) on the LED screen, which will affect image quality. To reduce the risk of this effect, please follow the recommendations below:
• Avoid displaying the same TV channel for long periods.
• Always try to display any image in full screen mode. Use the TV's Picture Options menu to select the optimal screen size.
• Reduce brightness and contrast values to the minimum required to achieve the desired picture quality. Values that exceed the minimum may speed up the burn-in process.
• Frequently use all TV features designed to reduce image retention and screen burn-in. Refer to proper user manual section for details.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;368260]From the manual for our 65 inch LCD/LED TV:[/QUOTE]
Thanks, Xyzzy, that jibes with my understanding of the situation.

Rodrigo

P.S. Looking into [URL="http://www.dekisoft.com/mou.php"]Monitor Off[/URL], to which your link led me.