GPUGrid Supercomputer week!

[slaveondope]

Ya little 450 here, dont think anyone's running one here and couldnt find any data on ppd for them anywhere.
Was going to go dual low profile 430's but couldnt confirm how well they did and saw a few post on gpugrid's forum saying to avoid them but with out any reason.
Besides for $20 more its twice the shaders of a 430.
I'll report after some time what kind of ppd it pull's from stock to oc'ed in time.

And ya M@H is

[Otis11]

Nice new cards guys.

(Sadly, my own step up plans fell through when my mobo died. Until I can replace that I have 2 idle cards and no extra slots for them.)

And I went through the setup guide and everything seemed to work for me. I mean I followed it (as well as I could - kinda hard to follow a guide letter for letter when you know what you're doing) and it ran GPUGrid. So I think that's good to go.

Anything else I need to update tonight? It'll be the last night I have internet until this thing starts.

[SMTB1963]

On a side note I discovered a magical plastic rectangle which allows me to do trade without parting with goods or services.

Whoa! Looks like Santa Claus (Visa Claws?) was good to you this year! Nice.

Anything else I need to update tonight? It'll be the last night I have internet until this thing starts.

Well Captain, I think the only remaining item is for you to say...



MAKE IT SO!

[Fhqwhgads6680]

hey guys, Trying to get my GTX260 added.. I was using on board video before I got this about a week ago (ATI onboard video). I just removed all the catalyst software and detached and reattached to GPUgrid and still I get:

Message from server: Your computer has no Nvidia GPU.

[slaveondope]

hey guys, Trying to get my GTX260 added.. I was using on board video before I got this about a week ago (ATI onboard video). I just removed all the catalyst software and detached and reattached to GPUgrid and still I get:

Message from server: Your computer has no Nvidia GPU.

Trying to think, start new years tonight

Have you run driver sweeper? ATI lingerings mess up Nvidia pretty bad and the other way around as well.
Ive been trying to run my ATI igpu with a 450 the last hour and its a no go as BOINC client wont connect

So after bailing on the dual gpu idea I got everything straight after removing any trace of ATI with driver sweeper and the client now connects though I have to use the 450 only for everything.

[Otis11]

hey guys, Trying to get my GTX260 added.. I was using on board video before I got this about a week ago (ATI onboard video). I just removed all the catalyst software and detached and reattached to GPUgrid and still I get:

Message from server: Your computer has no Nvidia GPU.

If you have drivers 258.xx or higher then the problem is probably that Boinc was installed as a protected application which disables gpgpu. Just uninstall and reinstall Boinc and you should be good to go.

Also, as long as you leave your files in the Boinc folder alone, you wont lose your WCG WUs.

Let us know if that fixes it.

[Kryja]

Whoa! Looks like Santa Claus (Visa Claws?) was good to you this year! Nice.

That's a shiny new u2711 behind those too, though I've been saving for that. With three birthdays and Christmas December has been quite expensive - but worth it!

Back on topic;

I'm still struggling to find out how to setup Swan_sync. I've looked through the various threads and can't find anything. Google has not been my friend either. I've never changed any environment variables nor know where to look. Could someone take me by the hand and walk me through it

[SMTB1963]

That's a shiny new u2711 behind those too, though I've been saving for that. With three birthdays and Christmas December has been quite expensive - but worth it!

Back on topic;

I'm still struggling to find out how to setup Swan_sync. I've looked through the various threads and can't find anything. Google has not been my friend either. I've never changed any environment variables nor know where to look. Could someone take me by the hand and walk me through it

SWAN_SYNC? Here ya go! Just set it up with a value of 0 and re-boot.

Very, very nice deep color IPS monitor to go along with those cards...gonna be gaming much in 2011?

[Kryja]

Haha, boy do I feel silly. Must've missed that one

My old monitor was my TV which could only do 1200 x 1024, but that was stretched really bad as it was widescreen . 2550 x 1440 is a bit of a jump ;P

As far as gaming is concerned; my x-25 80gb is nearly full and my internet isn't the fastest - takes the best part of a day to download anything from steam. That coupled with working full time and going to collage two nights a week doesn't leave much time for gaming. Though I'd like that to change

[SMTB1963]

Haha, boy do I feel silly. Must've missed that one

No problemo, bro. With work + school + GPUGRID + WCG + keeping up with the #'s here (+ who knows what else), you're allowed to forget a thing or two.

Hell, I forget stuff all the time now. In my case, it's probably an age thing.

now, where did I put my keyboard again?!?

[Kryja]

Okay so I think I've set it up right. Just created a new variable and set it as 0. Restarted my machine and it looks like below;



Boinc still shows the current active tasks as only using 0.05 cpu. I take it the next tasks which start running will use the full cpu? Or is something wrong?

[SMTB1963]

Okay so I think I've set it up right. Just created a new variable and set it as 0. Restarted my machine and it looks like below;

Boinc still shows the current active tasks as only using 0.05 cpu. I take it the next tasks which start running will use the full cpu? Or is something wrong?

I pretty sure you're ok. My understanding of SWAN_SYNC is that it "walls off" a processor/thread from usage by other apps requesting CPU resources - so your low priority GPUGRID app won't be starved for CPU cycles by other processes running at a >= priority.

GPUGRID WUs running by themselves won't come close to taking a full thread on your i7. SWAN_SYNC simply ensures that the CPU is available when the GPUGRID app needs it. The obvious example for us is when we're running WCG tasks and GPUGRID concurrently (as you certainly appear to be), but it should also work if you're running any other CPU-hungry app as well.

Now, in the interests of full disclosure, I'm not currently using SWAN_SYNC. My sole "hands-on" experience with it was last summer when I briefly had a GTX480 to play with, and I didn't have time to run it long enough to see first hand if it made any difference in PPD. There does seem to be a pretty solid consensus around here that it will increase GPUGRID PPD if you're running WCG at the same time. And IIRC, one of our authoritative team members (Snow Crash maybe?) said that you should also set the "% of the processors" value in BOINC Preferences to 99% when using SWAN_SYNC.

EDIT: Snow Crash's advice on SWAN_SYNC in the WCG and GPUGRID resource sharing... thread.


Me? For this week, I'm simply pausing WCG...



I'm sure Snow or another more experienced team mate will step in here and correct things if I'm misinforming you.

[Kryja]

I see. Cool, cheers for that.

I thought that when people were saying SWAN_SYNC allocates a cpu per gpu it meant that the cpu is utalised more i.e. +0.05.

After the SC week I'll disable it and compare. I've clocked both cards to 800 core 1600 shaders stock volts. I think it's a bit naff that you can't unlink them like on the 200 series.

[Snow Crash]

Normally GPU will ask for CPU resources and have to wait until the CPU responds.
CPU apps run at Low priority and GPU apps run at Below Normal (which is higher than Low),
so they can get the resources they need without completely bogging down.

With SWAN_SYNC the app does in fact use 1 full core/thread ... it uses it to continually poll the GPU to see if it needs anything.
You only need to stop and restart BOINC and not your entire rig when you add/ remove this var.

Open up task manager and you will see 100% usage even when you have BOINC set to only use 99% of cores
(you are telling BOINC to use 1 less core/thread than you really have available)

What BOINC says about CPU usage for GPU apps is only based on the meta data of the app file itself so it totally meaningless
unless the precent is so high it decides to dedicate a CPU core to your GPU app automagically.
GPUGrid decided to let us make the choice on how much CPU we use to complete GPU WUs

Please keep in mind that SWAN_SYNC should only be used for fermis ... never for 2XX.
If you do use it on 2xx cards the runtimes will actually get slower

ps Kryja ... quit posting the extra wide screenies ... I hate scrolling left and right

[Kryja]

Thanks for the detailed explaination Snow

All eight threads are fully loaded so it is indeed doing its thing. And no in case you were wondering I have not enabled it on my 275

Yeah, sorry about the pic sizes. It just looks so small on my monitor is all... I'll remember in future to down size them

[SMTB1963]

Normally GPU will ask for CPU resources and have to wait until the CPU responds.
CPU apps run at Low priority and GPU apps run at Below Normal (which is higher than Low),
so they can get the resources they need without completely bogging down.

With SWAN_SYNC the app does in fact use 1 full core/thread ... it uses it to continually poll the GPU to see if it needs anything.
You only need to stop and restart BOINC and not your entire rig when you add/ remove this var.

heh heh, so I guess I got part of it right...thanks SC for clearing that up. Sorry for the bad info Kryja.

All eight threads are fully loaded so it is indeed doing its thing.

Kryja, how many WCG tasks are concurrently running? Six? Seven? I've got two GPUGRID WUs running (with no WCG tasks), and my CPU utilization bounces between 3-6 percent - i.e. 1/2 of a thread. Does this mean that the "polling" activity by itself uses up that much CPU?

[lkiller123]

Crunch away, guys!

[Kryja]

Six WCG tasks running. Is this wrong?

[WhiteFireDragon]

you only have it set to 75% of the CPU threads, so 6 is correct. although that means something is using up the other 2 threads?

[Fhqwhgads6680]

If you have drivers 258.xx or higher then the problem is probably that Boinc was installed as a protected application which disables gpgpu. Just uninstall and reinstall Boinc and you should be good to go.

Also, as long as you leave your files in the Boinc folder alone, you wont lose your WCG WUs.

Let us know if that fixes it.

damn... can't run it as a service... its SOOO much more reliable as a service... I will do this, but not sure if I will keep with it after the 7th.. knowing me I probably will tho... Now I am going to want to buy a bunch of nvida gpu's... sigh... another addiction..

edit: There ya go, another GTX260 added to the mix!

[Lu523]

I am getting ready to move a few gpus over for this. Hope I can get them working right.

[Snow Crash]

@Kryja ... your perfect
@WFD ... Kryja is showing us his Win7 2x460 rig in that shot ... looks spot on to me ... 6 WCG and 2 GPU w/ SWAN_SYNC = 8 total threads.
@Fhqwhgads6680 & Lu523 ... thanks for joining in

if you need any help, let us know and we'll see about getting you the info you need for some great runtimes

[Lu523]

As of now I have 2 GTS450's running. They are showing about 12 hours run time. Not sure if that is good or not.

i am going to try and add 2 more later. They are folding atm. Once they finish the current work i will move them over.

[Snow Crash]

Looks about right to me ... the 465 + 470 you added should help you get some nice PPD

[Lu523]

I now have 4 gpus going. 2 450's, a 465 and a 470. Will see what I can do to help.