Question: Exotic Video Card

[artemm]

Hey all,

So I've finally wound up with my first Nvidia product. I was excited to get it going on GPUGrid, so I installed the latest drivers 195.62 and CUDA drivers, made sure SLI is enabled and re-installed BOINC with the recommended client. This is the result.
http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/4870/captureagh.jpg

30 hours per WU? :confused: That can't be good. My GPUs aren't listed on their tested list, but perhaps I could try other things to squeeze out more performance before I give up? What say you guys?

[Otis11]

I say go for it! If you crank up the shaders, you can probably get it down to around 20-25 hours per WU... Won't get the bonus but you'll be helping the science, and the team.
Plus, when you get your next card, you'll have a good pile of points to springboard off of. (guess probably 4-5k ppd for each card?)

And keep in mind, these are much bigger than the WUs on WCG... On an OCed 260 they take around 8 hours each.

Great to have ya!

[artemm]

I say go for it! If you crank up the shaders, you can probably get it down to around 20-25 hours per WU... Won't get the bonus but you'll be helping the science, and the team.
Plus, when you get your next card, you'll have a good pile of points to springboard off of. (guess probably 4-5k ppd for each card?)

And keep in mind, these are much bigger than the WUs on WCG... On an OCed 260 they take around 8 hours each.

Great to have ya!

Thanks, Otis.

So I'm guessing this is normal, eh..

I don't know if I'll be able to OC them since the mobo is very restrictive (HP.) I was just wondering if something was massively off (as in driver or config issues) that the completion times were so high. I suppose these are just sub-optimal cards. Ah well, I don't care. They're silent and I got the whole rig for 1/4 of retail, so I can't complain :)

EDIT: I`ve noticed that some results were returned already. 30 hours per WU and about 10K PPD for both cards. You were right. They suck.

[Otis11]

Thanks, Otis.

So I'm guessing this is normal, eh..

I don't know if I'll be able to OC them since the mobo is very restrictive (HP.) I was just wondering if something was massively off (as in driver or config issues) that the completion times were so high. I suppose these are just sub-optimal cards. Ah well, I don't care. They're silent and I got the whole rig for 1/4 of retail, so I can't complain :)

EDIT: I`ve noticed that some results were returned already. 30 hours per WU and about 10K PPD for both cards. You were right. They suck.

Eh, Idk if i'd say normal.. but I don't find it surprising...

Nor would I say they suck... Slow and steady man, slow and steady. Just set it and forget it. Check back in a year or so (whenever you get your next rig) and you might be surprised how many points you have! (I'm only doing 12-14k ppd currently and have over 1.5 mill credit)

Also - OCing the shaders isn't through the motherboard. :up:
I use EVGA precision here (http://www.evga.com/PRecision/) Might as well give it a try IMO.

If it doesn't work just ask and ppl are more than willing to help!

[Snow Crash]

Also, keep in mind those are BOINC points so if you are use to WCG points that would be 70k equivalent ... thats about what you get crunching 2 i7 920 pumped up to about 4 GHz ... so those little cards are not doing so bad after all :up:
As for OC the graphics card your mobo has nothing to do with it. Memory has little effect and core almost none so focus on the shaders like Otis suggested. Download a copy of RivaTuner or Precision and see if you can reduce your runtime and stay stable. Oh ya ... :welcome:

[PoppaGeek]

:welcome: Thanks for helping!

You'll be surprised how much the points add up in time! :up:

[INFRNL]

is that time really accurate? Wondering if he has set to max performance in nvidia control panel. I know they are budget cards, but It could also be running in 2d mode, no?

nevermind, I just noticed it says .7 gpu's, so it probably is accurate.

Just keep in mind any and every little bit of help counts. You may not be doing as well as some of us, but your are doing a lot better than a lot too

[Otis11]

is that time really accurate? Wondering if he has set to max performance in nvidia control panel. I know they are budget cards, but It could also be running in 2d mode, no?

nevermind, I just noticed it says .7 gpu's, so it probably is accurate.

Just keep in mind any and every little bit of help counts. You may not be doing as well as some of us, but your are doing a lot better than a lot too

Shoot - Take a look at the totals. He'll be puttin out 10k+ a day, more if he gets a working OC... That's contending for the top 20 on the top producing team! :yepp:

:up:

[artemm]

Thanks for the warm welcome, guys. I mention the motherboard because it's a one-off Quanta for an HP system I recently picked up for the fam as an HTPC. I'll try playing with settings...

The reason I got it was because of the price, free monitor and 2-year extended warranty. Plus Q9400 and dual 9800 S all under water and dead silent can't be bad :)

It's the HP Firebird 802. I'm sure many of you have seen one before, but here's mine:
http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/7523/img6137o.jpg

Innards, note the vid cards that resemble laptop cards:
http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/4577/img6139l.jpg

Surprising find when I took the second cover off. The drives (small, laptop drives) are in caddies that would be typically found in a server. Pretty cool and RAIDable (2x250gig):
http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/5695/img6140r.jpg

Memory isn't bad either. Kingston HyperX:
http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/9285/img6141.jpg

Overall, I think it'll be a pretty cool cruncher/HTPC. The lighting on the top and bottom is fully adjustable independently (RGB values allow you to make either light any color or turn off entirely.) It's dead silent, as I mentioned before, even under full load on both the CPU and GPUs. Lack of any kind of overclocking capability is def'ly a bummer, but I can live without it.

Hopefully I get the kinks worked out. Now a WU just failed after 27 hours of computation.. wonderful. I think that average will be MUCH lower that 10K PPD if this keeps up :down:

[Otis11]

Give it some time and it may just work itself out... If it keeps erroring post the error message and people here will be able to help!


Any temps under load?

[artemm]

Give it some time and it may just work itself out... If it keeps erroring post the error message and people here will be able to help!


Any temps under load?

CPU is 57-62C.

GPU temps under load @ ~60C for both. As posted above :)

[W1zzard]

is that with the normal drivers from nvidia.com ?

[artemm]

is that with the normal drivers from nvidia.com ?

Yep. That's with normal DESKTOP drivers from Nvidia. I tried giving laptop drivers a shot, but it was no-go... couldn't detect the card.

[W1zzard]

added to gpu-z detection. any idea when these cards were introduced to the market ?

[artemm]

added to gpu-z detection. any idea when these cards were introduced to the market ?

Well, the PC in question was released January 9th, 2009. AFAIK, these cards weren't used in anything else. Take a look at Futuremark's ORB popularity scores.. the amount of tests all month with the card is effectively zero.

I suppose you could assume they were released at the same time. Not too sure how to look up on Futuremark's database when the first time the card popped up was.

FWIW, it seems identical to the 9800M GTS.

[Kingcarcas]

I'm curious how 4 cores are crunching, GPUGrid takes one away from WCG for me:shrug:

[PoppaGeek]

GPUGrid uses 3-8% of one core on mine.

[Snow Crash]

I'm curious how 4 cores are crunching, GPUGrid takes one away from WCG for me:shrug:

GPUGrid should only be taking a teeny tiny percentage of one core ... on my i7 w/ HT on crunching 8 threads WCG and GTX 295 folding 2 WUs, each GPU WU only uses about 1.4% - 1.5% of 1 core.

There is an option in GRPUGrid to allow it to CPU crunch also but they have never sent any WUs configured that way.

Check the following processor settings on your profile ...
On multiprocessors, at most use: 16 processors
On multiprocessors, use: 100 % of processors

[artemm]

Just as I suspected. I can't change jack on the video cards either. The fascists at HP must have locked the BIOS on the video cards as well.... nice. Can't believe they marketed this to enthusiasts when it launched. Should have targeted grandma and gotten more sales instead.