In the midst of my flu induced delirium, I am thinking that, after a year and a bit of loyal service, it is time to upgrade Q-Baby into a lean, mean, number crunching machine.

I’m thinking GPU processing might be the ticket.

Those of you who joined me on my little adventure of a year ago when I assembled Q-Baby will remember just how computer-impaired I really am.

Clearly, I am going to need lots of help. Especially so when it comes to making the thing crunch. (Makes my head spin a little just trying to read some of the threads devoted to the subject.).

Technical stuff on my rig at the moment:

Q-6600 processor, standard clock and stock cooling
2-G ram
Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L board
600W OCZ PSU
Dual boot XP SP3 and Linux (but, to be honest, I only use linux (64 bit) for PrimeGrid sieving so, think XP)

Possibly I am just feeling overconfident do to fever, so: To CUDA or not to CUDA? that is the (first) question.

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Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

Albert Einstein

To CUDA or not to CUDA, huh?

A low end CUDA card would be like adding another core to Q-Baby, a high end card would be like adding a bunch of cores.

Setting it up is simple, install the card and drivers, download the latest installer from Lunatics, and tell it you want to run the CUDA app.

Wish you'd posted this a couple of weeks ago, I had a factory overclocked 9800GT that I gave away. IIRC, it gave a RAC of between 3K & 4K a day.

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Calm Chaos Forum...Join Calm Chaos Now

Hmm, that's interesting. Thanks, Labbie.

As it is, when crunching SETI exclusively (with optimized apps, of course) Q-Baby manages a RAC of about 6700.

Figure a mid-range card ($100 range, no more than $150) I'd get, what, a SETI RAC of 3000 plus another 3k or so from other projects on the 3 non-SETI cores.

The learning curve may be worth the effort but the end result seems iffy. :(

[edit] and I am not really that worried about how to make it work: I know that I can depend on you (and others) to baby-step me through the process. :p [/edit]

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Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

Albert Einstein

The GT 240 was released today and should be a good low cost both price (under a 100$) and to run cost (40nm chip) CUDA card! The reviews are just starting to appear. do a google search or take a look here http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gt-240,2475.html

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All time #1 M.U.R.C. Cruncher!

I would go with an OCed GTX260-216.
~ 170.- €
RAC ~ 13,000
~ 150 wattage


Yes, I know.. but..
Or wait some weeks/months to the GTX3xx series.
I guess:
GTX360 for ~ 350.- €
double RAC
same wattage

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And now the 3rd post in a row..

Francesco Forti's Core2 DUO 6600 with GTS250:
[http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=2693912]
RAC ~ 10,000

Hmm.. then maybe ~ 7,500 RAC for GTS250.

Ohhh, that's the ticket. 7500 RAC and 3 cores doing other things.

Me like. Me like a lot. :D

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Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

Albert Einstein

[...]
...and 3 cores doing other things.
[...]

But why 1 CPU-Core idle?

Use Fred's nice TThrottle prog!
[http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_user.php?userid=8906489]

It can change the priority of the CUDA tasks to 'normal'.
Then you have the full power of 4 CPU threads and one GPU thread.

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And now the 3rd post in a row..

Francesco Forti's Core2 DUO 6600 with GTS250:
[http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=2693912]
RAC ~ 10,000

Hmm.. then maybe ~ 7,500 RAC for GTS250.

Ohhh, that's the ticket. 7500 RAC and 3 cores doing other things.

Me like. Me like a lot. :D

I have a Q6600 with GTS250. RAC 12,472 at the moment :)

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Hi, crazy goth chick! (Your description, lol!)

You need to balance the amount you want to spend on the card with how much power it wants to take, unless you are intending to upgrade the PSU at the same time.

Can't remember what PSU you said you put in Q-Baby, or if the case came with it, but good clean reliable power is the name of the game.

A GTS250 is not too power hungry, it's a rebadged version of one of my cards, a 9800GTX+, but you still need 2x 6 pin PCI-E power connectors for it. It takes 2x 5.25 HDD connectors to run one 6 pin PCI-e connector, if your current PSU hasn't got any 6 pin PCI-E. I think my kids machine is quite similar, although it has a phenom 9850 in it, and has a 500w OCZ PSU in too. I'm not sure I'd stick too much more in the machine though.

A rough and ready PSU guide to help here:- PSU Calc

It might help you decide what card you can get with either a) not upgrading PSU or b) upgrading PSU... should you decide to spend even more money you don't really want to.

I can't remember where it is now, but at one time there was a guide to what power each gfx card would draw on average, but my memory won't work on that one. Maybe someone else remembers?

Hope that helps.

<edit> I'm daft, aren't I? Just went back to your original post and saw that you've posted the spec there. You might get away with a GTX260 if your budget can stretch to it, but I wouldn't try anything higher. My GTX260 is running on a corsair 620w PSU. [G] </edit>

<edit2> Try this one. Quick look on Newegg.ca

Within your budget, just! </edit2>

regards, Gizbar.

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A proud GPU User Server Donor!

Make sure you have adequate airflow through the chassis if you are going to run CUDA all the time. I have no problem with my Q6700 based machine at home with an 8800GTS video card as it has lots of fans, including a 300 mm on top. However, I have another machine with minimal cooling fans that need to be upgraded and the video card overheats and quits crunching. In fact, until I fix the cooling issue I'm just crunching in the CPU (4 cores, two threads per core).

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Gizbar and all, try this,
GPU power requirments - from GPUgrid
http://archive.atomicmpc.com.au/forums.asp?s=2&c=7&t=9354
its a long list but most `popular` cards are in there.

Try this,
GPU power requirments - from GPUgrid
http://archive.atomicmpc.com.au/forums.asp?s=2&c=7&t=9354

Thanks Clive!

I knew I'd seen it somewhere.

regards, Gizbar.

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A proud GPU User Server Donor!

What a thing a seti forum is :)

Looks like the author stopped updating the list, the last time it was edited was august 2008.

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Looks like the author stopped updating the list, the last time it was edited was august 2008.

Thats true, i had not looked at the list for the latest cards, it stops at the 280 / 4870 cards,
i was / am thinking of a 260 type, they seem to be one of the least power hungry ones about for the crunching they can do.
though the 300 series cards are sounding like they will do better in both respects,
we will just have to wait and see.

And now the 3rd post in a row..

Francesco Forti's Core2 DUO 6600 with GTS250:
[http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=2693912]
RAC ~ 10,000

Hmm.. then maybe ~ 7,500 RAC for GTS250.

Ohhh, that's the ticket. 7500 RAC and 3 cores doing other things.

Me like. Me like a lot. :D

And to think I almost armed an old HP AMD media center PC with a GTX295, It works barely, Do any cuda and after a few hours, the motherboard gives a BSOD and before that the PC was not controllable and I had the 190.62 WHQL driver, the fan was set @ 100%, I had v12nokill(32bit) running and It had done a few WU's and the AMD 4200+ (939)cpu was doing AKv8 on both cores too, The Bios is several years out of date and HP won't be upgrading the Bios from 3.47(MS-7184, ATi RS480 chipset), I was going upgrade the Bios to the MSI 3.9 Bios(MS-7093, ATi RS480 chipset) which except for minor differences is the same motherboard, But I couldn't use a usb fdd as the bios was usb fdd deaf and a bootable cd with dr-dos worked, But flashing would halt just before the flashing could begin, So I was going to use an internal fdd to flash the bios to 3.9 but realized the 3.9 Bios probably doesn't have any GTX200 level support either, WU's were taking 1 hr and 41 mins on the 2.2GHz system(2GB PC3200 DDR1 ram).

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Gotta luv a 'Crazy Goth Chick'........

KB...go for it.

Go, QBABY, go......

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

Gotta luv a 'Crazy Goth Chick'........

KB...go for it.

Go, QBABY, go......

QBABY may be going strong or otherwise, But the ol HP Qship(pc3) may run too warm on the gpu, Couldn't tell as only Real Temp shows the gpu temp I think and is Intel only. Core Temp still only shows the cpu temp. And I'm not sure taking the side cover off would help, What I'd like to do is put a 120mm fan in the side and water cool the thing, But to do that I'd need to use the Corsair H50 and that means I need the NQ-1366 939 bracket that NorthQ makes(It's the part with a place with 2 screws, not 4, see below), But It's not available to those here in the USA, NorthQ has a USA Distributor FrozenCPU and I've emailed them and I got no response at all, Just dead air.



FrozenCPU.com, Inc.
128 Turk Hill Office Park
Fairport, NY 14450
USA
Phone: 1-585-425-2810 ext 116
E-mail: mark@frozencpu.com
website: http://www.frozencpu.com

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's