Doing just MB my HD4870 & Core 2 Duo E8400 they were producing a RAC of nearly the same as one of my i7-860 machines.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
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Yeah, I made the plunge recently and installed the ATi MultiBeam app on my ATi Radeon HD 6970 and I'm pretty impressed with my speed.

However, I have run into a couple caveats. It seems that the application isn't compatible with any driver newer than 11.2. Whenever I tried installing a newer graphics driver, it kept blue-screening both mine and my gf's computers. Reverting back to 11.2 fixed this.

Also, since I am a gamer, I have it set to only use the GPU after 5 minutes of inactivity. The problem is, if I walk away with a video paused or a game still running and I don't return in 5 minutes, my entire PC is locked up and I have to do a hard reboot to start using it again.

Yeah, I made the plunge recently and installed the ATi MultiBeam app on my ATi Radeon HD 6970 and I'm pretty impressed with my speed.

However, I have run into a couple caveats. It seems that the application isn't compatible with any driver newer than 11.2. Whenever I tried installing a newer graphics driver, it kept blue-screening both mine and my gf's computers. Reverting back to 11.2 fixed this.

Also, since I am a gamer, I have it set to only use the GPU after 5 minutes of inactivity. The problem is, if I walk away with a video paused or a game still running and I don't return in 5 minutes, my entire PC is locked up and I have to do a hard reboot to start using it again.

I'm strickly a NVIDIA guy and am not a gamer as such, but in the BM under the TOOLS menu item, click COMPUTING PREFERENCES, then make sure the USE GPU WHILE COMPUTER IS IN USE box is unchecked. This works for me when viewing movies and what little games I use like Soltaire.

Yeah, I made the plunge recently and installed the ATi MultiBeam app on my ATi Radeon HD 6970 and I'm pretty impressed with my speed.

However, I have run into a couple caveats. It seems that the application isn't compatible with any driver newer than 11.2. Whenever I tried installing a newer graphics driver, it kept blue-screening both mine and my gf's computers. Reverting back to 11.2 fixed this.

Also, since I am a gamer, I have it set to only use the GPU after 5 minutes of inactivity. The problem is, if I walk away with a video paused or a game still running and I don't return in 5 minutes, my entire PC is locked up and I have to do a hard reboot to start using it again.

I'm strickly a NVIDIA guy and am not a gamer as such, but in the BM under the TOOLS menu item, click COMPUTING PREFERENCES, then make sure the USE GPU WHILE COMPUTER IS IN USE box is unchecked. This works for me when viewing movies and what little games I use like Soltaire.

I don't use local preferences, and if I allow the GPU to use used while the computer is in use, I get lots of stuttering and horrible frame rates in World of Warcraft.

If you suffering screen lags increase period iterations in command line.
5 should be a good value.
But each setup is a little different.

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

Yeah, I made the plunge recently and installed the ATi MultiBeam app on my ATi Radeon HD 6970 and I'm pretty impressed with my speed.

However, I have run into a couple caveats. It seems that the application isn't compatible with any driver newer than 11.2. Whenever I tried installing a newer graphics driver, it kept blue-screening both mine and my gf's computers. Reverting back to 11.2 fixed this.

Also, since I am a gamer, I have it set to only use the GPU after 5 minutes of inactivity. The problem is, if I walk away with a video paused or a game still running and I don't return in 5 minutes, my entire PC is locked up and I have to do a hard reboot to start using it again.

I'm strickly a NVIDIA guy and am not a gamer as such, but in the BM under the TOOLS menu item, click COMPUTING PREFERENCES, then make sure the USE GPU WHILE COMPUTER IS IN USE box is unchecked. This works for me when viewing movies and what little games I use like Soltaire.

I don't use local preferences, and if I allow the GPU to use used while the computer is in use, I get lots of stuttering and horrible frame rates in World of Warcraft.

Perhaps the use of <exclusive_gpu_app> would fix things for you.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
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If you suffering screen lags increase period iterations in command line.
5 should be a good value.
But each setup is a little different.

Hmm, and how exactly do I accomplish that? Where do I put in that command?

Edit: The screen lags only happens when I run VLAR's, as I did for a test run only, never with "normal" WU's

In appinfo.xml
like this

<plan_class>ati13ati</plan_class>
        <cmdline>-period_iterations_num 15 -instances_per_device 2 -hp</cmdline>

Just try different values til you found sweet spot.

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

I'll try playing around with period iterations, and if I get tired of playing around, I'll just use the exclusive_gpu_app option instead.

Thanks!

Quoting installer v0.38 readme :

Tuning cmd line parameters:
For AP: If you get lags or worse driver restarts, decrease unroll. If you run
stable you can try to increase it. ffa_block should be a multiple of ffa_block_fetch.
Start low e.g. -ffa_block 4096 -ffa_block_fetch 2048 and try increasing if it runs
fine. Sticking to the power of 2 line at first can help.
The will be a system specific best combination - too low slows you down, too high
slows you down as well.
Remember AP runtimes depend on blanking % so only compare runtimes on similar
blanking %.
For MB: other way round - if you experience lag or driver restarts increase
-period_iteration_num

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

As you can see 15 is the best value for my setup.
Works great running 2 instances.
My 5850 is doing 2 VLARS in 1 hour instead >2 hrs on CPU each.

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

Yeah, I made the plunge recently and installed the ATi MultiBeam app on my ATi Radeon HD 6970 and I'm pretty impressed with my speed.

However, I have run into a couple caveats. It seems that the application isn't compatible with any driver newer than 11.2. Whenever I tried installing a newer graphics driver, it kept blue-screening both mine and my gf's computers. Reverting back to 11.2 fixed this.

Also, since I am a gamer, I have it set to only use the GPU after 5 minutes of inactivity. The problem is, if I walk away with a video paused or a game still running and I don't return in 5 minutes, my entire PC is locked up and I have to do a hard reboot to start using it again.

Yes, it's a known problem and has been pointed out early in the thread: FAO Lunatics Beta testers - installer testing, that "11.2 drivers is recommended. Newer drivers tend to greatly increase crunch times" Perhaps the newer drivers do more than that, as you found out.

I've even rescheduled a few VLAR's to the GPU, which I'm running now. That tends to slow down the display though a bit, and increase the GPU temperature, so I will not continue doing that. However I have not experienced any lockups.

I've had the system lock as well. This is an exclusive problem with the 6XXX series and most likely only the 69XX series cards. You'll also not want to watch videos while crunching. IIRC the 11.3-5 have eliminated this by dropping the work back down to the CPU which is why we see longer work progression.

Could my 4850 with 1Gig do 2 WU's at a time you think?

Just a reminder that the 4XXX series cards CANNOT run more than 1 WU at a time

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

Could my 4850 with 1Gig do 2 WU's at a time you think?

Just a reminder that the 4XXX series cards CANNOT run more than 1 WU at a time

Heh, thanks for so quickly pointing out that fact. I tried the 2 option, but nothing happened. Now I don't have to get grey hair trying to figure out why it didn't work :-)

<count>1</count> also would need to be changed to <count>.5</count> to run 2 IIRC. While you can force more than 1 to run on some cards it does not net any benefit. My 5770 for instance would just run 2 at twice as long. Also I think there is a problem is you have -instances_per_device 2 and <count>1</count>. Something about an error sometimes.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
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on 4XXX cards the WU's actually slow down so it takes longer for both WU's which kinda defeats the purpose.

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

You can´t compare 5770 with 4850.

Speaking for myself, i would try that out.
Disable network access and backup workunit folder before starting.

4850 should be fast enough but only has 10 compute units.
RAM shouldn´t be a problem 1 instance only needs 100K.

No promises since i have no experience with 4xxx cards.

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

Guys this was worked out in Beta testing. There's no need to repeat the testing. Running 2 WU's on a 4XXX series card will not help you. stick with 1 at a time or upgrade to a 5XXX or 6XXX if you want to run multiple WU's

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

Thanks for the Info.

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

Guys this was worked out in Beta testing. There's no need to repeat the testing. Running 2 WU's on a 4XXX series card will not help you. stick with 1 at a time or upgrade to a 5XXX or 6XXX if you want to run multiple WU's

For a 5xxx card it probably needs to be a 58xx for more than 1. The 5770 does not seem to gain anything running 2. At least in testing I just saw roughly double times when running 2. Maybe an overclocked 57xx could do better.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
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Guys this was worked out in Beta testing. There's no need to repeat the testing. Running 2 WU's on a 4XXX series card will not help you. stick with 1 at a time or upgrade to a 5XXX or 6XXX if you want to run multiple WU's

For a 5xxx card it probably needs to be a 58xx for more than 1. The 5770 does not seem to gain anything running 2. At least in testing I just saw roughly double times when running 2. Maybe an overclocked 57xx could do better.

It also seems to depend on the rest of the hardware and possibly the operating system. I have tried numorous settings to get my 5870 process more than 1 task at a time, but I never got it to work.

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Seti@Netherlands website

Guys this was worked out in Beta testing. There's no need to repeat the testing. Running 2 WU's on a 4XXX series card will not help you. stick with 1 at a time or upgrade to a 5XXX or 6XXX if you want to run multiple WU's

For a 5xxx card it probably needs to be a 58xx for more than 1. The 5770 does not seem to gain anything running 2. At least in testing I just saw roughly double times when running 2. Maybe an overclocked 57xx could do better.

It also seems to depend on the rest of the hardware and possibly the operating system. I have tried numorous settings to get my 5870 process more than 1 task at a time, but I never got it to work.

you'll need to edit your app_info and restart boinc afterward. Making sure that all the boinc processes go down before restarting your manager.

add this to your cmdline in both your mb and ap gpu sections of your app_info
-instances_per_device 2

the mb and AP gpu app_info has a <count> line. Change that to 0.5
restart save and close your notepad and restart BOINC
you should get 2 WU's running then.

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

you'll need to edit your app_info and restart boinc afterward. Making sure that all the boinc processes go down before restarting your manager.

Getting two tasks running simultanously wasn't the problem. The issue was that a single task took around 20 minutes, when running 2 tasks the time increased to 2-3 hours (running two instances of the application)

I discussed this in the ATi Multibeam thread and some suggested that either the mainboard architecture (Intel 945P) or XP_x86 was the culprit.

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Seti@Netherlands website