Hello everyone.

I installed everything needed for SETI this morning and since then I have nothing but trouble.

At first, no tasks would download. Then I poked around the settings, changed everyhting else back and forth until at last it started working. I processed a few CPU tasks.
Then I noticed it doesn't use my GPU (ATi). I wasn't sure if it is not supported, or there is still a problem somewhere.
So I followed some instructions to get S@H to use my GPU and it worked - I had to paste some .exe files in SETI's ProgramData folder and make an .xml config file.

But then it wouldn't download any CPU tasks at all! It only used the GPU tasks, and I couldn't use the screensaver.

So I decided to revert back to CPU only.
And now everytime I try to update, the Message says:
"Requesting new tasks for GPU"
"No tasks available"
where I specifically want CPU, not GPU tasks.

It seems it completely disregards my settings, and is unable to get any task at all.

Can someone guide me throught getting this thing to work?
CPU only, or CPU + GPU, it doesn't matter much to me (GPU is still better), as long as I can open the graphics.

Thanks

Wow. There's a lot to deal with here. Without knowing all the steps, in detail, that you've already performed, it's hard to help and troubleshoot because I don't know exactly what was changed.


What I can gleam from your post though, it sounds like you installed a third-party app so you can crunch with your GPU. Note that the third-party apps do not have the screen saver portion built-in. The whole point of these third-party apps is to provide a large speed-boost to your existing system. Personally, I wish there were a screen saver option, but the coders of the third-party app deem it unnecessary.


So, no third-party apps if you want the screen saver. This also means no official support for your ATi graphics card. Why not? Because ATi has not chosen to help SETI@Home make an official app like nVidia has for their GPU. So you're stuck working without it.

As a quick-and-dirty solution, to return back to a "default" configuration, you can simply delete that .XML file (it should have been an app_info.xml file if you did it right). Then you can simply detach from the project to dump any work assigned to the third-party apps and re-attach to the project, which should force BOINC to re-download the stock SETI@Home applications.

If you have any troubles after that, we can try to sort through everything one at a time. It's easier to troubleshoot if we change one variable at a time and have it documented as to what the results were after we changed it.

Hello everyone, not the same question but i have been stuck in the download forever it seems, this is my first time here and dont know how it all is susposed to work.

Never mind, seems like it took off after i posted, Murphy loves me some times lol

Hi, thank you very much for your reply.

I did delete all of the extra files, reset the project, and so on, but nothing helped, so I ended up reinstalling BOINC.

Now I can process CPU tasks again! It's a shame ATI didn't develop their own app, I think of getting an Nv card next time.. My tri-core 4Ghz is doing good, but I have a tera-scale GPU, that means 1.5TFlops, I'd really like to use it..

Is there any way to use the 3d party Astropulse app + the original SETI enhanced app to get both GPU and CPU taksk?

I tried placing only the Astropulse app in Program Data + adding only Astropulse to app_info.xmx, but I get server message "your app_info.xml does not contain a usable version of seti@home enhanced".

I know maybe it's a little hard to get what I'm trying to do, sorry :D I'll try to be more specific:
Is there a way to configure my app_info.xml, so that BOINC will use the Original SETI@home Enhanced + the 3d party Astropulse, so I can get CPU tasks for S@H-E and GPU tasks for AP?

Thank you

When you use an app_info.xml file, you are telling BOINC to ignore what the project has for applications because you have your own. If you only put in the AstroPulse application into the app_info.xml file, that's all you'll be able to process.


There is a way to use the 3rd-party AstroPulse app and the stock SETI@Home Enhanced app, but it is still advisable not to use the screen saver portion. The reason being that GPUs do not multitask very well at this point. If the GPU is busy calculating intensive data and you wish it to display pretty graphics, the data will error out the majority of the time.


I know how you feel about wanting to use the ATi GPU to crunch but still wanting the screen saver graphics. However, I've gone ahead and made the sacrafice and installed both the 3rd-party CPU and GPU apps without graphics. My ATi Radeon HD 6970 does fairly well, though the app isn't nearly as mature as the nVidia app.

Ok then, I'll wait until I get tired of the graphics and will go all GPU. :)

Thanks a bunch for the assistance