Here's a pie shot for ya'll.....



In a few short days, those of us on this chart have moved our little GPUGrid XtremeSystems team from 72nd place to 58th. (OK, just checked on GPUgrid, we are now 46th place right now. ) Still a long way to go, with much potential for learning GPU crunching on our own WCG team. Kudos to my GPUgrid teammates who put up numbers today. There were 5 of us.

Pie anyone? I took the cherry with only a GTX 260 eVGA superclocked card. I added it to the stable to test GPU crunching out. It scored 13k boinc points today. I think I scored around 28k boinc points on my WCG crunching today.

The message here is that this is a wide open area to crunch in.....I think learning how to crunch a GPU on BOINC CUDA is a worthwhile thing to do, no matter who you crunch it for, at least for now... It uses more hardware in the fantastic "boxes" we all like to build. And since there is not a forum for the GPUgrid team yet, I'm posting here, on what will always be my home team and forum...

I had my doubts about whether crunching on an 8600GTS was worthwhile. I started testing with that and wanted to see the other extreme with the GTX260. I will have full numbers and my take on the efficiency in a few days. There is a sweet spot for GPU crunching, much like the Q6600 was to us, I just don't know where it is yet. I suspect somewhere in the 9000 series cards.

However, just as a teaser, on the GTX260, the raw CPU hours per Boinc points are two ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE higher than my best WCG quads.... I still don't believe the numbers, and am still trying to figure out what they mean. But, as they say, "the proof is in the pudding". I put up 13k on GPUgrid, and 28k on WCG. I ran one GTX260 and one 8600GTS (Which did not put in a WU today) on GPUgrid. I ran 58 cores on WCG today. (I have 60 cores available, 2 of those cores were servicing the GPUs on GPUgrid.)

Don't get me wrong, I'm not about points, but I'm trying to evaluate how GPU crunching compares to CPU crunching, and trying to maximize my work output. If I added a 9000 or 200 series card to every machine I run now, WOW!

I am also not recruiting those here to reduce their contribution to WCG in order to crunch GPUgrid. (it currently costs one CPU core to crunch a GPU WU.) I still have some questions about the nature of the projects over there. It is a brand new thing that I am trying to get a handle on. When WCG gets a handle on this and starts GPU CUDA crunching, I will be there and be ready. I hope they can handle the explosion of work done.....

When I'm ready with a couple of days of run-time, I will post a thread for this. Rather than really hijack this thread, I leave you with the thought that there are many ways to get pie..... ...HELP, Dr. SiG!! Should I take the usual two quads or a GTX280 now??!!!

Regards,
Bob