Is there any benefit to installing and running lunatics if a person decides not to run two WU’s per GPU?

I ask because right now I have some what of a wimpy PSU unit(800 watts continuous and 1000 watts peak). When I ran the two GTX 580’s with two WU’s, per card they were drawing amps in the high 40’s and mid to low 50’s. With one WU per card, the amperage dropped an easy 10 to 14 amps per card. At this point in time, I really do not wish to over stress the PSU.

Yes, also in that case lunatics app is faster then stock app.

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I am cruncher :)
I LOVE SETI BOINC :)

One thing to remember with the Lunatics' installers (automatic for windoze, manual for Linux) you choose which applications you want to run. The Lunatics have optimised apps that will improve the processing speed of the CPU, or GPU. I've found that the CPU app gives a bigger gain than those for the GPU in terms of percentage improvement. Which ever you choose to install your system will be running harder, so draw more power, so I think you would be wise to stick with processing only 1 WU per GPU if you are concerned about the life of your PSU (said with feeling as I look at a pile of "somewhat overheated" PSUs....)

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Thanks for the replies. The version I installed last night is "Win64 Lunatics' Unified Installer v0.37". The install worked perfectly thanks to some past posts explaining how to edit the app_info file.

Here is what I have noticed so far.

The GPU's used to say 0.81 CPU + 1.00 NVidia gpu while doing work. That has changed to 0.04 CPU + 1.00 NVidia gpu.

When both gpu's were running, I was only crunching with 11 cores. Now after the install it is crunching with all 12.

The gpu usage has dropped as well. They were running around 50 to 60 percent on average. Now they are staying in the middle 40's. They are not down clocking. I am watching their speed and memory usage while using a program called MSI afterburner. I will have to come up with a way to check their current speed with their past performance before lunatics was installed.

Lastly, I did run into a few errors in a couple of WU's. They are my fault though. I was playing with the app file and changing the number(.1 .2 .8) around.

Is there any benefit to installing and running lunatics if a person decides not to run two WU’s per GPU?
....

The only other Advantage of the Lunatics GPU-App is that you produce less Results with the -12 Error. With
less Error you can donload often more Workunits because your DL Limit will reset to 100/Day in a larger way.

There is no considerable Speed improvement - imho.

Helli

I finally got some gpu WU's so I figured I would give it a shot again. Mostly to see how fast the gpu's could bust out the work. I set it up to do 2 WU's per gpu(.5 setting in the app file). I had 6 to edit that way in the app file.

I then got a number of "Error while computing" messages. I do not know if I did some thing wrong or if this is the norm. I did do some searching for other members and noticed that one member I found had a ton of the same errors.

Sounds like you might be running right on the edge for that PSU you have. Going to two WUs per might just be pushing it over.

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PROUD MEMBER OF Team Starfire World BOINC

out of mem on the GPU - try reboot.
And better drop to the 266.58 driver.

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Carola
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I'm multilingual - I can misunderstand people in several languages!

Perryjay, while it is possible that the PSU is having some problems, I have seen no indication of it. When I built the computer a few months back I did some rather extensive tests of the PSU and video cards. Besides a variation of ohms law, I ran a program called OCCTPT. This free download program will seriously tax the system. So much so that there is even a warning about burning up the PSU in some of the tests.

Miep, another good suggestion. I did have the computer on for quite some time when I ran the tests from above. I was also tinkering with a game of starcraft as well. I have not received any new WU's since yesterday for the video cards so I have not been able to test your theory. As soon as I get some, I will run the test and report back here. As for the driver, I have heard about the issues with it downclocking the GPU's. I have not seen this while doing WU's for SETI. I have seen it while in the game of starcraft with one of the GPU's. It dropped from 825mhz to 405mhz. The second card did not drop at all. The downclocking was also not noticed during gameplay.

Yes, gaming can also eat into the free VRAM to a point where the app doesn't have enough left to run.

In general it's better not to mix (graphics intensive) gaming with CUDA crunching.
Either manually snooze BOINC/GPU before gaming or use the exclusive GPU option from cc_config.xml

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Carola
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I'm multilingual - I can misunderstand people in several languages!

Thanks Miep. That is exactly what I do, I snooze all of the crunching. I still have not received any WU's to run further tests. I have found one cruncher that is a poster here. That cruncher has a similar set up to mine except that he is using two GTX 570's. This cruncher has over 600 errors while running lunatics. I may send him a PM.

or just uncheck the "use GPU while computer is in use" that solves a lot of problems like having to leave a game to re-snooze the gpu

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

What is "in use" though? The computer's "in use" whenever it's on :D. Or does it snooze the GPU @ every keystroke or after a period of no input activity? I have an auto-snooze batch-file for my game.

no "in use" means the keyboard or mouse is being actively used at least every 3 minutes

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

Strange that because when screen-power-down is set in Windows power settings when using a steering wheel, it takes it as no input occurring, therefore the GPU would assume that the machine is not being used & would continue - despite there being a game up.

a steering wheel isnt a mouse or keyboard is it.

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

No but it should act as such, keeping the GPU units from resuming.

No but it should act as such, keeping the GPU units from resuming.

If that is something that can be monitored by windows, I'm sure it can be suggested to the bionc devs to include it in the monitoring for activity.

I still would put the game in question into the exclusive gpu app option.

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Carola
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I'm multilingual - I can misunderstand people in several languages!

I am not a big gamer anyways. To be more accurate, I do not use the snooze feature, but rather the suspend option when boinc starts to get in the way.

I´ve set up my Vista prefernces to high performance.
Everything switched to never.
So no problems with sleep mode or hibernation.

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.