Question OpenCL Confusion

[Objektor]

Happy New Year everyone !

I recently built a PC primarily as a reasonably high performance creative rig. I compose music and also photography.

My photography throws a lot of work to the computer, as I'm rendering & merging hundreds of RAW files at a time into a single file (focus-stacking, if anyone's aware of that.

Last few days has been my fist change to get into it, and I'm noticing that mmost of the work is being done by the CPU. It's running at 100% for 15 minutes at at a time ! I would like to allocate the tasks to other resources.

So I've come across 'OpenCL' but having a hard time working out how to turn it on. Here's the vitals:


AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
AMD Radeon RX 7600
64GB DDR4 2400MHz RAM

And the rendering software I'm using is a specialized app called Helicon Focus - which DOES support OpenCL, but when I try to turn it on, the popup screen tells me I need to install drivers.

I have reinstalled AMD Adrenaline (AMD's links to drivers always ends up at Adrenaline) but cannot see anything about OpenCL

Also wondering if I can throw some of the work to the RAM ?

This is where my understanding fails. I don't know the first thing about what this is, but it seems that I need it.

What do I need to do in order to get this going ? There are a few smattering of info around the interwebs, that mention third-party software from unknown developers (unknown to me at least). And I'm VERY cautious about installing random stuff, and keep a lean, clean machine as much as possible.

Here's the performance dashboard during a render. Is it even safe to run my CPU at 100% and 85+ degrees constantly for 15 minutes at a time ?

https://imgur.com/cOkU53A

 

[TerryLaze]

Get GPU-Z it doesn't need to be installed and it will tell you if openCL is available and also which version you have.
It can be that your software just doesn't support amd or that series of gpu.

Your temps are fine, the CPU is running at 60 degrees with spikes up to 85 but even a steady 85 would be ok for even longer term.

 

[Objektor]

Get GPU-Z

Thanks Terry, that's a good little tool. Looks like OpenCL is installed, going by the tickbox at the bottom left. No version # though.

I guess I will get in touch with the software developer. As as small outfit, I don;t think they update versions too often though. And I'll be pretty upset if I can't get this running, as it was the whole purpose of me building the computer, and took a lot of sacrifices to raise the $$, and I have no means by which to buy another GPU in the forseeable future.

Anyway, we'll see what they have to say

GPU-Z Screenshot

 

[COLGeek]

Looking at the version history, I would suspect they don't have support for 7000-series GPUs. I say that because of how previous series are addressed during previous releases.

Helicon Focus - History of changes (Windows) - Helicon Soft

 

[LinuxDevice]

FYI, OpenCL requires the GPU, which is great at offloading work to the GPU. However, there is a requirement that the program itself (or a library used by the program) be designed to take advantage of OpenCL. It is software-dependent.

 

[Objektor]

Thank you @COLGeek & @LinuxDevice

It's quite possible that Helicon haven't released a compatible version yet, as the GPU is less than a year old. They are also a small, boutique developer catering to a tiny niche in the overall photography scene. And.. they are Ukraine-based, so they may have more pressing issues to contend with.

When I attempt to configure Helicon for GPU acceleration, it does throw an 'unsupported' popup dialogue. So I'm turning my attention to Adobe, whom I would think are developing their apps in line with new product releases. The goal here is to determine if OpenCL is working on my computer, in some capacity.

Setting up the preferences/performance for Photoshop and ACR (ACR is basically Lightroom without the file management feature),

I'm getting no 'unsupported' messages, so that's a start. Rebooting my PC between tests, I ran a batch of 250 RAW/DNG files, and two resource-heavy edits across the batch. I followed the identical steps for both Acceleration ON and Acceleration OFF.

It appears to do nothing in re-allocating the load from CPU to GPU.

Here's a visual representation I put together for reference.

_

 

[Objektor]

Oh heck! I just found the following article, on this very website, from one month ago

AMD finally adds hardware accelerated GPU scheduling support to some of its GPUs

About halfway down the page, it reads:

" With the new driver update, hardware accelerated GPU scheduling only works on AMD's Radeon RX 7000-series GPUs (not including the RX 7600, at least for now) "

So maybe it's not a software support issue, but a limitation with AMD's product. Is that how we can interpret this article ?

Goodness, I hope I haven't blown my money on an inappropriate graphics card for my primary needs. I went way over budget on that component, thinking I was buying myself some 'future-proofing'.

 

[COLGeek]

Oh heck! I just found the following article, on this very website, from one month ago

AMD finally adds hardware accelerated GPU scheduling support to some of its GPUs

About halfway down the page, it reads:

" With the new driver update, hardware accelerated GPU scheduling only works on AMD's Radeon RX 7000-series GPUs (not including the RX 7600, at least for now) "

So maybe it's not a software support issue, but a limitation with AMD's product. Is that how we can interpret this article ?

Goodness, I hope I haven't blown my money on an inappropriate graphics card for my primary needs. I went way over budget on that component, thinking I was buying myself some 'future-proofing'.

I wouldn't think this is the issue. OpenCL has been around for years. I am still leaning towards an application limitation. Hopefully, the developers will be able to get back to you.

 

[Bob.B]

Happy New Year everyone !

I recently built a PC primarily as a reasonably high performance creative rig. I compose music and also photography.

My photography throws a lot of work to the computer, as I'm rendering & merging hundreds of RAW files at a time into a single file (focus-stacking, if anyone's aware of that.

Last few days has been my fist change to get into it, and I'm noticing that mmost of the work is being done by the CPU. It's running at 100% for 15 minutes at at a time ! I would like to allocate the tasks to other resources.

So I've come across 'OpenCL' but having a hard time working out how to turn it on. Here's the vitals:


AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
AMD Radeon RX 7600
64GB DDR4 2400MHz RAM

And the rendering software I'm using is a specialized app called Helicon Focus - which DOES support OpenCL, but when I try to turn it on, the popup screen tells me I need to install drivers.

I have reinstalled AMD Adrenaline (AMD's links to drivers always ends up at Adrenaline) but cannot see anything about OpenCL

Also wondering if I can throw some of the work to the RAM ?

This is where my understanding fails. I don't know the first thing about what this is, but it seems that I need it.

What do I need to do in order to get this going ? There are a few smattering of info around the interwebs, that mention third-party software from unknown developers (unknown to me at least). And I'm VERY cautious about installing random stuff, and keep a lean, clean machine as much as possible.

Here's the performance dashboard during a render. Is it even safe to run my CPU at 100% and 85+ degrees constantly for 15 minutes at a time ?

https://imgur.com/cOkU53A

Just curios..... why would you install 2400 ram with that cpu?

 

[kerberos_20]

As it turns out, some versions of the AMD graphics driver apparently no longer ship with OpenCL support on Windows. However, they do ship with the necessary libraries, it's just that these libraries are not registered any longer.


To register them, open the Registry Editor (aka regedit.exe), navigate to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Khronos\OpenCL\Vendors (if the key does not exist, create it), and create a new DWORD of Value 0. Now rename the DWORD to be the path to your amdocl64.dll. Mine is C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\u0344717.inf_amd64_d38cec78c83eee99\B343886\amdocl64.dll. Search C:\Windows\System32\ for amdocl64.dll to find the correct path on your computer.

as you can see on this picture, openCL is not present with latest amd drivers

https://imgur.com/tz1tOMH

View: https://imgur.com/tz1tOMH

alternatively you can try this fix
https://github.com/ptrumpis/OpenCL-AMD-GPU

its bat file which fixes missing registry entries based on your file location

 

[Objektor]

Just curios..... why would you install 2400 ram with that cpu?

It's 3200, left at the factory default. I've never observed the RAM coming anywhere close to 100% utilization.

Is there a compelling reason I should ramp it up ?

 

[Objektor]

I wouldn't think this is the issue. OpenCL has been around for years. I am still leaning towards an application limitation. Hopefully, the developers will be able to get back to you.

So why wouldn't I be seeing this working as expected in Adobe's products ?

 

[Bob.B]

It's 3200, left at the factory default. I've never observed the RAM coming anywhere close to 100% utilization.

Is there a compelling reason I should ramp it up ?

Enable xmp and test you might see a perf bump.

 

[Objektor]

As it turns out, some versions of the AMD graphics driver apparently no longer ship with OpenCL support on Windows. However, they do ship with the necessary libraries, it's just that these libraries are not registered any longer.


To register them, open the Registry Editor (aka regedit.exe), navigate to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Khronos\OpenCL\Vendors (if the key does not exist, create it), and create a new DWORD of Value 0. Now rename the DWORD to be the path to your amdocl64.dll. Mine is C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\u0344717.inf_amd64_d38cec78c83eee99\B343886\amdocl64.dll. Search C:\Windows\System32\ for amdocl64.dll to find the correct path on your computer.

as you can see on this picture, openCL is not present with latest amd drivers

https://imgur.com/tz1tOMH

View: https://imgur.com/tz1tOMH

alternatively you can try this fix
https://github.com/ptrumpis/OpenCL-AMD-GPU

its bat file which fixes missing registry entries based on your file location

While I did spend about 100 hours researching and building my computer, I'm more of a 'front end' power user. Everything you have suggested is completely foreign to me, so I'm going to have to spend a few weeks trying to decipher and learn about what you're recommending.

It's not that I'm unwilling - but to blindly start fooling around in the registry sounds like a bad idea, considering my lack of expertise.

Maybe I should reach out to AMD to see what they have to say about their roadmap on rolling out updates for the RX7600

 

[kerberos_20]

While I did spend about 100 hours researching and building my computer, I'm more of a 'front end' power user. Everything you have suggested is completely foreign to me, so I'm going to have to spend a few weeks trying to decipher and learn about what you're recommending.

It's not that I'm unwilling - but to blindly start fooling around in the registry sounds like a bad idea, considering my lack of expertise.

Maybe I should reach out to AMD to see what they have to say about their roadmap on rolling out updates for the RX7600

yes, for this reason link to github was included
https://github.com/ptrumpis/OpenCL-AMD-GPU

specificaly this file
https://github.com/ptrumpis/OpenCL-AMD-GPU/blob/main/amdocl.bat
download option is on right side, either as icon or under three dots
run that .bat file as administrator
once running it, locating files/registering it in registry is automatic, it will just ask you few times if you want to continue or not, you just need to press "y" on keyboard and confirm with "enter" key

 

[kerberos_20]

Maybe I should reach out to AMD to see what they have to say about their roadmap on rolling out updates for the RX7600

https://www.khronos.org/conformance/adopters/conformant-products/opencl

looking through openCL adopters and theres zero mention for RDNA cards (RX5000 and higher)

weird

 

[Objektor]

Enable xmp and test you might see a perf bump.

Thanks Bob.

I don't do things randomly. Truth is I CAN'T do things randomly (this ol' brain of mine has performance issues).

And I'm 100% not being rude to you, or dismissive - but in public forums there's so much 'hey just try this', which doesn't wash with me. Are you able to explain how I might expect a performance uptick by enabling XMP for 3200, when I'm not seeing the RAM peaking at max. utilization the way it is now ? Apart from real-world user scenarios, Ive also ran a couple of benchmarks, and I can't get it to peak ! Seems like a good problem to have

For what it's worth, the marketing BS from the brand (they are Kingston Fury sticks) do claim 'AMD Ready!' which is why I close them, as I had read that those XMP profiles were really designed for intel platforms and had been known to muck things up on AMD systems.

 

[Bob.B]

Thanks Bob.

I don't do things randomly. Truth is I CAN'T do things randomly (this ol' brain of mine has performance issues).

And I'm 100% not being rude to you, or dismissive - but in public forums there's so much 'hey just try this', which doesn't wash with me. Are you able to explain how I might expect a performance uptick by enabling XMP for 3200, when I'm not seeing the RAM peaking at max. utilization the way it is now ? Apart from real-world user scenarios, Ive also ran a couple of benchmarks, and I can't get it to peak ! Seems like a good problem to have

For what it's worth, the marketing BS from the brand (they are Kingston Fury sticks) do claim 'AMD Ready!' which is why I close them, as I had read that those XMP profiles were really designed for intel platforms and had been known to muck things up on AMD systems.

Anything using the ram will be able to send/rec it's data that much quicker.......perf bump.

 

[kerberos_20]

For what it's worth, the marketing BS from the brand (they are Kingston Fury sticks) do claim 'AMD Ready!' which is why I close them, as I had read that those XMP profiles were really designed for intel platforms and had been known to muck things up on AMD systems.

xmp profiles are just factory overclocks targeted for specific platforms, it used to be for mostly intel (2014+) as amd was sleeping(2018+) while intel was domintaing market for four years until ryzen came up and memory controller catched up with zen 2 (2019), nowadays XMP with amd ready (DDR4) means its tailored for AMD platform
DDR5 uses EXPO for amd

 

[Objektor]

https://www.khronos.org/conformance/adopters/conformant-products/opencl

looking through openCL adopters and theres zero mention for RDNA cards (RX5000 and higher)

weird

Do you still stand by the suggestion above, based on those findings ?

I'm happy to sleep on it and give it a go tomorrow, but I'll need to sort out my will, contact the cat orphanage and redirect my mail, in case something goes horribly wrong.

Just kidding ! What's the worst that can happen with a registry mistake ? I do a complete re-install of all my devices every 6-12 months anyway, so if tragedy strikes, I'll just start over. All my files are backed up to the cloud anyways.

Despite best efforts, I must have mis-read something when I meticulously planned out this build. On my old clunker of a machine, I was getting warnings on Adobe Apps that soon I would be unable to use a lot of features. Remember something about 'OpenCL' and figured I had it covered. BUT looking today at the datasheet for the card (MSI branded), it mentions OpenGL, not OpenCL. Time to increase the font size again, perhaps.

Can't shake the thought that this is on AMD's shoulder's though. The article I linked to above, from this very website, a month ago to the day, says in black and white that they aren't supporting OpenCL on the RX7600

 

[kerberos_20]

Can't shake the thought that this is on AMD's shoulder's though. The article I linked to above, from this very website, a month ago to the day, says in black and white that they aren't supporting OpenCL on the RX7600

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-rx-7600.c4153
your GPU supports openCL 2.2

things like adope photoshops runs on openCL 2.0 as minimum

Just kidding ! What's the worst that can happen with a registry mistake ? I do a complete re-install of all my devices every 6-12 months anyway, so if tragedy strikes, I'll just start over. All my files are backed up to the cloud anyways.

if you use that bat file and some issues pops up later(quick google search shows results like accelerating with two or more apps can produce driver crashes lol - ie adobe photoshop + spotify in background)
its easy to revert without reinstalling windows

 

[COLGeek]

So why wouldn't I be seeing this working as expected in Adobe's products ?

It very well could be a limitation, until driver support is available. Just seems odd that a feature AMD recently enabled didn't cause issues (Abode) before.

 

[Objektor]

It very well could be a limitation, until driver support is available. Just seems odd that a feature AMD recently enabled didn't cause issues (Abode) before.

Do you mean issues for me specifically ? If so, Ive only been running the new PC since October, and only been trying to set up GPU utilization since yesterday.

I'm not sure I'm chasing performance as such - the heavy workloads I throw at the computer are always going to be brutal. I just want to take some stress off the CPU, as it's the component I LEAST want to have to change out due to degradation over time.

 

[Objektor]

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-rx-7600.c4153
your GPU supports openCL 2.2

things like adope photoshops runs on openCL 2.0 as minimum

if you use that bat file and some issues pops up later(quick google search shows results like accelerating with two or more apps can produce driver crashes lol - ie adobe photoshop + spotify in background)
its easy to revert without reinstalling windows

CRASHED !

No not really. Just feels like Im in a trainwreck.

FYI I ran that .bat file, went through the command prompts, then threw the identical tests at it. Not one iota of difference, the CPU is still doing all the work. And yes I rebooted several times.

A lesson learned here, at least. I should have set a restore point of 30 minutes ago. Don't love the idea of random registry changes hanging around. But I think I'll be right dialling back to 2 days ago. Will this reverse whatever we just did in the registry ?

 

[COLGeek]

Do you mean issues for me specifically ? If so, Ive only been running the new PC since October, and only been trying to set up GPU utilization since yesterday.

I'm not sure I'm chasing performance as such - the heavy workloads I throw at the computer are always going to be brutal. I just want to take some stress off the CPU, as it's the component I LEAST want to have to change out due to degradation over time.

No, I meant more in general. Not specifically your situation.