SOLVED Issue with Nvidia GPU's and GPUPI solution

[Sirholg]

Hello. Thought i'd share an issue i encountered while trying to bench with GPUPI. "OpenCL.dll" not found.

Solution: If you've never done a fresh install of nvidia drivers after a new OS installation (Win10), it will not find this file at the correct location as microsoft apparently moves some of theese dll's during every major build release.
As a result GPUPI won't find the file where it's supposed to be. Fix it by updating drivers in custom mode, and check the "fresh install" option. Simply updating drivers won't fix it. Reboot, and the files are there yet again.

Now I can submit my bench to the rookie league

Note: You may need to do this every major windows 10 update. Many may allready know this, but I had to research abit myself..

 

[Lochekey]

I have never seen this issue directly but I have always manually loaded the opencl drivers I wanted for a specific gpu or cpu.

Are you saying that if you try to run it without loading the gpu drivers it gives you that error or if you let windows automatically load the drivers you are seeing this error?

A lot of time I just pull the drivers from the links directly on the gpupi website as seen below.

Which drivers do I need for OpenCL?

NVIDIA GPUs: GeForce Driver
AMD GPUs: Catalyst Driver
Intel GPUs: OpenCL driver for Intel® Iris™ and HD Graphics for Windows
Intel CPUs: OpenCL™ Runtime x.x for Intel® CPU and Intel® Xeon Phi™ coprocessors for Windows*
AMD CPUs: If you can't install the Catalyst drivers, use the AMD APP SDK instead.

GPUPI says that MSVCP110.dll/MSVCP120.dll is missing?

The benchmark executable is compiled with Visual Studio 2013 and therefor needs the Visual C++ Redistributable Packages for Visual Studio 2013. Download vcredist_86.exe to run GPUPI.exe (32 bit) or vcredist_64.exe to run GPUPI_x64.exe (64 bit).

The legacy version of the benchmark up to GPUPI 2.2 has been built with Visual Studio 2012. So you will have to install the Visual C++ Redistributable Packages for Visual Studio 2012 instead.

 

[Sirholg]

I have never seen this issue directly but I have always manually loaded the opencl drivers I wanted for a specific gpu or cpu.

Are you saying that if you try to run it without loading the gpu drivers it gives you that error or if you let windows automatically load the drivers you are seeing this error?

A lot of time I just pull the drivers from the links directly on the gpupi website as seen below.

No. Only after a major windows build update or after a clean windows installation. You have to cleanly install drivers once after either to get the files back to like they were before build update\clean install.
As far as I know, it only affects Nvidia chips. Atleast some of the new gen like 1060's 1070's etc have users reporting issues like this.

 

[Johan45]

I guess what Lochekey is trying to say is that we don't see those issues often since we're installing from scratch most of the time anyway. Being a benching team installing a new OS is usually step one when benchmarking

 

[mackerel]

This is interesting... many have noticed that Windows tends to break (at least nvidia) GPU drivers after a major update, so reinstall afterwards. I do a mix of install on top, as well as clean install using the checkbox in the installer. As far as I've observed I haven't noticed a difference between those.

I install on top to preserve custom settings. If I don't care, I use the clean install option. nvidia drivers as update have a relatively unknown but annoying feature of not removing old driver files, and they can build up to many GB of space usage over time. The clean install option will clear that up.

I also found it interesting, I don't think AMD drivers offer an install on top if it detects an existing install of the same version. Then again, so far I've not observed it having a problem after a major Windows update.

 

[Lochekey]

No. Only after a major windows build update or after a clean windows installation. You have to cleanly install drivers once after either to get the files back to like they were before build update\clean install.
As far as I know, it only affects Nvidia chips. Atleast some of the new gen like 1060's 1070's etc have users reporting issues like this.

Well i would expect to have to do it after a clean install as that would erase all drivers. It is interesting that it is happening after a major build update. I wonder if this is happening only on the new series cards or old cards as well. I just ran a major update on a system with a 960, I will have to test this tonight to see if it shows the same problems.

 

[JLK03F150]

The 1709 Windows update uninstalled the nvidia drivers for my GTX 970 & replaced them with Microsoft drivers.

 

[Sirholg]

It may vary for some systems, I havent gathered a huge database. That Nvidia package that comes preinstalled with newer builds is generally messed up. Say you choose to "reset this system" and "Just delete everything" instead of "keep my files" etc.. In this scenario Microsoft sends in their Nvidia suite that is generally the same as standard but with some hickups. I rarely install from USB anymore after Win10's ability to reinstall itself with all updates installed etc. I guess this won't happen if you do a super fresh install from a bootable removable device. According to myself and others on the world wide web experiencing this flaw, it also happends whenever they run a new build rollout. Easy to fix ofc, but if you (like me) usually just update your driver without the "fresh install" option checked you may get this problem even after several new driver installations. It's just a problem i got, researched and shared here in case anyone would notice or have any problems themselves.

Note: If you have a fully updated system and do a reset, you'll often be met with the preinstalled suite from Nvidia\Microsoft saying "you're drivers are up to date" (Talking Geforce Experience)

 

[Lochekey]

Please do not take my comments as criticism. I am just trying to ascertain the conditions under which this problem arises so that A: I can try to replicate it myself and B: if someone comes looking for help with driver problems we can properly rule out this quirk as a possible cause.

 

[Sirholg]

Please do not take my comments as criticism. I am just trying to ascertain the conditions under which this problem arises so that A: I can try to replicate it myself and B: if someone comes looking for help with driver problems we can properly rule out this quirk as a possible cause.

Ofc, I was just trying to explain myself better.