Breathing life into an old computer

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doug
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Message 1186248 - Posted: 18 Jan 2012, 19:35:14 UTC

I have been crunching with my venerable desktop Pentium 4 computer for the last couple of years. I also have a newer i7 and was thinking about turning the Pentium into a low budget better cruncher than it is. AP WUs take ~130 hours now, VLARs ~15. I really don't want to spend a lot, but since it's so old I might be able to pick up a couple of GPU cards to breathe new life into it. I'd probably pick them up off of Craigslist or someplace like that. So I have a couple of questions. The computer uses a PCI bus, so even if I wanted a new card they're hard to find. In your vast collective history, which I'm sure dates back to at least the PCI bus, whatwould be an appropriate card to look for? Were there any good PCI GPUs out there in the past? Is this even worth doing? I can go to WalMart and pick up a newer box with PCIe, latest generation processor, more and faster memory for < $500. If I could get some good results for ~$50 I might do it. Until then I'll crunch away on an AP for 116 hours until I get a "compute error" and then hang my head down and cry.

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Message 1186282 - Posted: 18 Jan 2012, 20:44:36 UTC

You might want to check out this discussion thread for some info.

-Dave
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Message 1186283 - Posted: 18 Jan 2012, 20:44:37 UTC

Your P4 primary graphics card slot could possibly be an AGP one. I am not sure of the most powerful nVidia GeForce GPU makes use of AGP, but the Radeon HD3850 from ATI makes use of this slot.

The driver to use on the ATI is 11.12 CCC with the AGP Hotfix.

On PCI (not E) the usual GeForce ones quoted are the 9500GT. But Zoltac do a PCI Fermi card, the GT430, which may be useful to look for. The latter can be found here. These Fermi cards, with 96 shaders, are about £52 and are passively cooled.
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Message 1186305 - Posted: 18 Jan 2012, 21:08:40 UTC

I think the 2 replies I've received so far will cause me 2 days of research. I'll have to check into power requirements, cooling,... The rest of the computer seems fine. It actually does well n the "Microsoft Windows Experience" index in most categories. Of course it ends up as a "1" because of the lack of graphics. Keep it coming.

Doug
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Message 1186307 - Posted: 18 Jan 2012, 21:13:02 UTC - in response to Message 1186248.  

I have been crunching with my venerable desktop Pentium 4 computer for the last couple of years. I also have a newer i7 and was thinking about turning the Pentium into a low budget better cruncher than it is. AP WUs take ~130 hours now, VLARs ~15. I really don't want to spend a lot, but since it's so old I might be able to pick up a couple of GPU cards to breathe new life into it. I'd probably pick them up off of Craigslist or someplace like that. So I have a couple of questions. The computer uses a PCI bus, so even if I wanted a new card they're hard to find. In your vast collective history, which I'm sure dates back to at least the PCI bus, whatwould be an appropriate card to look for? Were there any good PCI GPUs out there in the past? Is this even worth doing? I can go to WalMart and pick up a newer box with PCIe, latest generation processor, more and faster memory for < $500. If I could get some good results for ~$50 I might do it. Until then I'll crunch away on an AP for 116 hours until I get a "compute error" and then hang my head down and cry.

Doug

The most promising option for PCI is the Zotec GT 430 PCI ZT-40605-10L. Which runs around $70 online.
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Message 1186312 - Posted: 18 Jan 2012, 21:31:38 UTC

Looking at the mother board it appears to have 2 PCI slots and an AGP slot. I'm not that familiar with it, but from a search on AGP slot images that's what it appears to be. One PCI slot has my old dialup modem card in it. Well... I suppose I can sacrifice seeing as I haven't used it in 4 years. I think my power supply is 450 watts.

If this link works this looks exactly the same as what I have.

http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view;_ylt=A2KJkK4dOBdPxiMA3iWJzbkF;_ylu=X3oDMTA3cnMybzJvBHNsawNpbWc-?back=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fimages%3F_adv_prop%3Dimage%26va%3Dagp%2Bslot%26fr%3Dgoodsearch-yhsif%26tab%3Dorganic%26ri%3D2&w=343&h=256&imgurl=www.donutey.com%2Fweblogicons%2Fagp.jpg&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.donutey.com%2Fbuildcomputer3.php&size=31.5+KB&name=AGP+Slot&p=agp+slot&oid=72d74c3d06a1dee9d7a8688dc89affc4&fr2=&fr=goodsearch-yhsif&tt=AGP%2BSlot&b=0&ni=60&no=2&tab=organic&ts=&sigr=1194gh89r&sigb=13dktnmr7&sigi=11360m8mg&.crumb=82X175zBVuZ
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Message 1186332 - Posted: 18 Jan 2012, 22:14:56 UTC
Last modified: 18 Jan 2012, 22:26:28 UTC

There should be a name and/or number printed on the motherboard somewhere,
If you can post it here we will have a good idea as to what this board can do.

I have a zotac GT430 in a PCI slot,
the RAC i have is what it can do running 24/7 with a small overclock.
It is the only thing i am running seti on atm.

I also have a ATI 4650 AGP which seems to have similar performance,
though i think you need to have an SSE2 cpu to run the optimised app on it,
(something to do with the way open cl works)
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Message 1186336 - Posted: 18 Jan 2012, 22:20:09 UTC

Since you will be using the computer primarily for processing large amounts of data, I feel I should note, sometimes heat can be a problem (especially on older models). There are some good water cooling systems out there you can get, if heat is an issue. There are some pretty inexpensive ones on the market.

I just installed a liquid cooling system and it works great, very little noise compared to bulky fans. Plus it just looks cooler on the inside.
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Message 1186353 - Posted: 18 Jan 2012, 22:40:06 UTC

Once installed download SpeedFan & keep a close eye on the CPU + GPU graphs over the first few mins of full power.
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Message 1186358 - Posted: 18 Jan 2012, 22:54:34 UTC - in response to Message 1186332.  

Sorry if parts of this get listed twice. Damn laptops.

It appears to be a P4M 800PRO-MV2.0 and has:
ECS 15-022-012002
DDR2 533
DDR 400
listed below it. I assume this refers to the memory of which I have 1Gb 400Mhz DDR2. I do have 2 400 Mhz 1Gb sticks I bought a year ago. I installed them and the computer ran slower. Now they sit on the shelf.

For the slots I have one labeled AGP 8x and 3 PCI slots. The third one was hidden by the modem card.

Power supply woefully inadequate. I read 180W/250W which I would take as 180 continuous 250 burst mode.

Will probably need better cooling as well.
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Message 1186443 - Posted: 19 Jan 2012, 9:12:05 UTC - in response to Message 1186248.  

AP WUs take ~130 hours now, VLARs ~15. I really don't want to spend a lot, but since it's so old I might be able to pick up a couple of GPU cards to breathe new life into it.

Besides all that has been said, the cheapest way to seed up this machine for SETI by about the factor of 1.5-2 would be using the optimized apps on it like you're doing on your i7 machine.
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Message 1186454 - Posted: 19 Jan 2012, 11:09:20 UTC - in response to Message 1186443.  

That's a good idea. I started using Lunatics on the i7 because I had the ATI card, but I also noticed CPU tasks did run faster. I'll swap over this morning when Spike turns into Pookie (I switch between Linux and Win 7).

Doug
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Message 1186574 - Posted: 19 Jan 2012, 20:03:49 UTC - in response to Message 1186454.  
Last modified: 19 Jan 2012, 20:05:48 UTC

That's a good idea. I started using Lunatics on the i7 because I had the ATI card, but I also noticed CPU tasks did run faster. I'll swap over this morning when Spike turns into Pookie (I switch between Linux and Win 7).

Doug

ATI GPU runs so slow, because you've choosen the wrong GPU app version in the installer. Try HD5 ! And updating your GPU driver to Catalyst 11.12 could help to free your CPUs to run even more tasks.
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Message 1186596 - Posted: 19 Jan 2012, 21:17:45 UTC - in response to Message 1186574.  

Actually what we are talking about here is a Pentium 4 with no GPU (yet) and an old PCI bus. It was running the standard apps until this morning. Now it's running Lunatics that I got from the Lunatics Windows v0.39 installer. CPU-Z indicated that this CPU supported SSE3 so it's running AK_v8b2_win_SSE3_INTEL.exe right now. It does appear to be faster than the standard app, but it's hard to tell. All the execution time estimates got warped when I switched apps. It'll probably take several days before I can really tell ~how much faster it is.

I think you are referring to my i7 4core laptop with an ATI GPU in it. That runs Lunatics also and I used the SSSE3x and HD5 options when installing it. Right now it's running about 6833 RAC. It seems to run between 6500 and 8500 RAC depending on how fast things get validated. I'm quite happy with that. Now I just have to speed up the Pentium 4.

Doug
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Message 1186599 - Posted: 19 Jan 2012, 21:27:13 UTC - in response to Message 1186574.  

Also I'm running Catalyst 11.8 now with no problems. I've read that 11.2 runs the fastest and also there are some problems with some of the later drivers. So right now I'm in the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" mode as far as ATI drivers go. Which brings up another point. Does anyone recall what the bad driver versions were and is 11.2 still the "best" one?

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Message 1186621 - Posted: 19 Jan 2012, 22:31:32 UTC - in response to Message 1186599.  

Also I'm running Catalyst 11.8 now with no problems. I've read that 11.2 runs the fastest and also there are some problems with some of the later drivers. So right now I'm in the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" mode as far as ATI drivers go. Which brings up another point. Does anyone recall what the bad driver versions were and is 11.2 still the "best" one?

Doug

It seems that the 11.12 is a good release. I have seen a some say they are using it and I have it on my HD6870 that I just bought.
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Message 1186649 - Posted: 20 Jan 2012, 0:22:17 UTC

I am currently running the 12.1 preview release and it works fine as well.

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Message 1186707 - Posted: 20 Jan 2012, 4:45:58 UTC - in response to Message 1186649.  
Last modified: 20 Jan 2012, 4:46:59 UTC

Quite a heterogeneous setup you have there too. I was wondering if you could run an Nvidia card as well as an ATI card. I do some OpenCL programming, but would like to throw in Cuda as well. Looks like you can do both on one machine.

Doug
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Message 1186713 - Posted: 20 Jan 2012, 5:14:14 UTC - in response to Message 1186707.  

Quite a heterogeneous setup you have there too. I was wondering if you could run an Nvidia card as well as an ATI card. I do some OpenCL programming, but would like to throw in Cuda as well. Looks like you can do both on one machine.

Doug


As long as you are running Windows 7 you can do it easily.

I just upgraded to a 12.2 Beta version.

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Message 1186785 - Posted: 20 Jan 2012, 13:12:49 UTC - in response to Message 1186596.  

Now I just have to speed up the Pentium 4.


Bin it, and spend the money you save on its electricity bill on another GPU for the other machine.
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