Just wondering if there's any good reason to upgrade anything?
Just wondering if there's any good reason to upgrade anything? |
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Message boards : Number crunching : Just wondering if there's any good reason to upgrade anything?
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I've had my machines set up for a year or 2 now, and reading the boards recently I see there is an updated version of Rast's optimized program out now. Having spent quite a while in the IT world, I've seen it from both sides, on one is the latest and greatest, (basically being an unpaid debugger) and the other is if it ain't broke don't fix it. I've been leaning towards that way for a while now, if there isn't a compelling reason to upgrade, run with what gotcha there I like to say. Taking a look at my start up info, can anyone make a comment if and why I should upgrade anything on my machine, from the version of BOINC to the vid drivers to the optimized apps. It seems fairly solid at this point, but if there is a good reason to upgrade, fill me in. Oh, and if you see anything that looks misconfigured, let me know too, as I want it to be running as efficiently as possible. Thanks! | |
ID: 1215388 ·  | |
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I've been using the Lunatics Optimized Apps for quite a few years now (latest version is here) which certainly greatly improves the output of my systems but I will warn you that it does increase the heat output as well so do be sure that your systems are well cooled. | |
| ID: 1215405 · | |
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If you want to do any APs you would have to upgrade your optimized apps.The one you are running now doesn't do the V6 APs and the only 5.05s you might get are resends. | |
| ID: 1215407 · | |
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This is rather subjective so this are my thoughts: | |
| ID: 1215408 · | |
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| ID: 1215412 · | |
This is rather subjective so this are my thoughts: Pretty happy with the hardware I have right now, though I do have two EVGA 295GTX Hydros gathering dust on the shelf right now, along with most everything I need to set up the water cooled system, just haven't taken the time to put it all together. One of these days... BOINC versions after 6.10 have long back-off and that combined with the issues on SETI bandwidth may lead you to not being able to keep the host crunching. So are you saying it would be better to run thru my current cache and then delete and re-load 6.10? Would I be losing anything in the process? I though I was reading that 7 is in testing right now, would being at 6.10 till a couple versions of 7 come out be a good idea? This system is pretty much a web browsing machine and my main 24x7x365 cruncher at this point. Drivers, if everything is working and you dont play latest games, then I'll go for "dont fix if aint broken"... (But, if you want to run the Nvidia OpenCL app for Astropulse you may need to downgrade it) No games, just web browsing for the most part and crunching. Tell me more about the downgrade necessary for AP, please. Optimized apps, you need the latest ones for being able to crunch Astropulse V6, but also, newer versions have fixes to several things so it's always better to run the newest versions. This goes along with the last comment, please tell me more about AP6, since the version 5 I have is pretty much obsolete. Are there driver/OS/BOINC version dependencies? I've been using the Lunatics Optimized Apps for quite a few years now (latest version is here) which certainly greatly improves the output of my systems but I will warn you that it does increase the heat output as well so do be sure that your systems are well cooled. Wiggo, I am currently running AK_v8b_win_x64_SSE41, and in task manager I also see running Lunatics_x32f_win32_cuda30_preview.exe Is this good, bad, or indifferent? Thanks guys for the quick replies! ____________  | |
| ID: 1215418 · | |
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You'll be better off with the latest installer as it will allow you to run the latest v6 Astropulse work (v505 is now history except for the occasional resend) but you will have to grab a newer installer again soon once v7 enhanced comes out (which is suppose to be released soon) as your current one will soon get no work at all. | |
| ID: 1215424 · | |
 jason_gee Volunteer developer Volunteer tester  Send message Joined: 24 Nov 06 Posts: 4189 Credit: 61,378,713 RAC: 33,711  | |
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Taking a look from a slightly different angle... ... You're asking if there's a good reason to upgrade (presumably anything). Others have covered the software aspects just fine. In hardware terms however, I'd suggest, depending on the cost of electricity for you, in the medium to longer term 2 x 580, or better yet 2 x 680 cards would give you more throughput for less long term cost. Whether heat & cost of power is enough to justify updates, only you could decide. If deciding to upgrade hardware, What I wouldn't do or suggest is filling all 4 slots with new cards to use the same power, but take a modest rise in productivity with energy & heat savings... At initial cost of disposing of those 260's & acquiring newer card(s). 2 x 680's would use about half the power (or less), produce more (probably a lot more) output than all those combined, and efficiency will improve as best programming practices for the new architecture evolves. Just a suggestion, and won't be worth dwelling on if you don't pay for your electricity yourself. Jason ____________ "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change." Charles Darwin  | |
| ID: 1215434 · | |
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So you're saying to just D/L the new version and run it, without having to uninstall anything? I am going to hold off for a bit on the version 7 release, till as was stated previously the dust settles around it a bit. Will the drivers and version of BOINC I have currently work properly with the latest installer. I don't want to screw the pooch, so to speak, by muffing my current install and having to go thru a bunch of dependencies corrections. Sorry if I seem a bit gun shy, but I do want to get AP 6 tasks, and would think that it will be a number of months at a minimum to get v7 stabilized, so the upgrade makes sense. | |
| ID: 1215437 · | |
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Re: BOINC versions | |
| ID: 1215439 · | |
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Jason, I did mention that I have those 2 295GTX Hydro's sitting on the shelf, they will provide a nice bump in performance when I finally get around to getting them installed. I am looking at a 970/980/990 CPU upgrade down the road as well if I can find one for a decent price, that is the top of the line for my board I believe, and would keep the cards sufficiently filled with tasks. Would there be any downside to putting in one or 2 of the 260's along with the 295's in one system? Is there a max # of 'cards' BOINC will support? Just curious. | |
| ID: 1215445 · | |
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jason_gee Volunteer developer Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 24 Nov 06 Posts: 4189 Credit: 61,378,713 RAC: 33,711 | |
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260's & 295's being of the same generation, should be fine together, and not cause too many Boinc issues as they are similar performance & compute capabilities. The only things I'd be leery about would be the normal heat & power physical & cost issues, which may or may not concern you. As things stand, being Pre-Fermi's they prefer 1 task per card, and do have additional 'startup time' cost later cards don't have, but notheless 260's & 295's have both put in Stirling service over the years here. Their age tends to see more of them naturally dropping off due to old-age, but there's nothing to suggest they won't keep going for many years, and I've got no intention of deprecating their support in my future app updates. Is there a max # of 'cards' BOINC will support? Just curious. Yes, the limit in server & app code is 8 GPUs (of either ATi or nVidia combined). I think there may be a similar limit within the Boinc client, but haven't checked. I've lifted limits to 16 in newer app builds I'm polishing, but the Boinc client/server limits would still be at 8 [Edit2:] Just an added thought. Some with 4 or more GTX200 series GPUs have experienced troubles with the added overheads in newer OS/Drivers (particularly Vista/Win7 WDDM). Something to keep in mind if you intend to upgrade OS at some point. ____________ "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change." Charles Darwin | |
| ID: 1215449 · | |
BOINC versions after 6.10 have long back-off and that combined with the issues on SETI bandwidth may lead you to not being able to keep the host crunching. Nope... any 6.10.xxx version is just fine, version 6.12.xx and later versions have this issue of the long backoff, (not sure how it is with the version 7). Drivers, if everything is working and you dont play latest games, then I'll go for "dont fix if aint broken"... (But, if you want to run the Nvidia OpenCL app for Astropulse you may need to downgrade it) The AP optimized app version for Nvidia OpenCL when used with drivers from the version 270 and later, may use up to a full core of the CPU. If you install that specific app, you should go back to old drivers to avoid the issue. Anyway, the NV OpenCL app is not included in the Lunatic's installer, and to use that app, you need to dowload and install it manually. The installer only has the app needed to run AP v6 on CPU and on ATI GPUs. Optimized apps, you need the latest ones for being able to crunch Astropulse V6, but also, newer versions have fixes to several things so it's always better to run the newest versions. For this, you only need to download and install the latest version of the optimized apps, which are perfectly compatible with all your current settings. ____________  | |
| ID: 1215457 · | |
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*edit* you answered my question quite well, thank you. one other on that subject, should AP be run on the CPU or GPU for best performance, and can you force them to run on the best one, without a ton of file editing? | |
| ID: 1215459 · | |
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jason_gee Volunteer developer Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 24 Nov 06 Posts: 4189 Credit: 61,378,713 RAC: 33,711 | |
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6.10.60 = fine, they're the 'workable' backoffs | |
| ID: 1215464 · | |
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Ok, hopefully last post, as I don't want to be a pest, but want to verify I am reading everything correctly. To be able to run the current project (AP6) I need to update my optimized app. To properly utilize it, with the least amount of pain, I should update my vid driver to 266.58. To allow/force the GPU to do the AP crunching, I need to download an add-on to the latest optimized app. Am I missing anything? Lastly, seeing what I am going to have to do, listed above, is there any preferred order to these updates? I would guess I'd start by shutting down BOINC, installing the new vid driver, re-starting, then after rebooting again, shut down BOINC and install the latest optimized app, and then the add-on for doing AP6 on the vid card, then restart BOINC. Is there any editing of the .cfg files needed after doing all these things, or should it pretty much be plug & pray? Thanks for All your advice, guys! And glad to hear the XP64 is GTG for a while, at least! | |
| ID: 1215473 · | |
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jason_gee Volunteer developer Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 24 Nov 06 Posts: 4189 Credit: 61,378,713 RAC: 33,711 | |
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Sounds about right to me :) Good luck! | |
| ID: 1215474 · | |
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Well, just ran into roadblock #1, went to EVGA's site, to download version 266.58, and found that the oldest driver for the 200 series card was version 275.33. I didn't see a link on the results page for previous versions. I've always used EVGA cards, and always used their drivers, just because. Is there any way to find their 266.58 driver? I know I could go to Nvidia's site, but I'd prefer to use EVGA's version if possible. Thanks! | |
| ID: 1215479 · | |
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jason_gee Volunteer developer Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 24 Nov 06 Posts: 4189 Credit: 61,378,713 RAC: 33,711 | |
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Always used eVGA cards, and drivers from nVidia's advanced driver search myself. I believe they're the same, but up to you. The only main functional issues you have with latest drivers would be with AP6-addon using a full CPU thread. Later drivers may or may not give you other overhead related issues with other apps depending on the system. I would suggest trying what you feel most comfortable with (say 275.33), then doing a damage assessment regarding APv6 & other apps to decide whether to change tactics. | |
| ID: 1215481 · | |
... should AP be run on the CPU or GPU for best performance, and can you force them to run on the best one, without a ton of file editing? Im not sure about the GTX260 performance... In my hosts running APs on a gt430 takes about the same time as running on a i5-2310 CPU core, but the 560TI does it 5 (or more) times faster. I think that you should install both versions to see how they go in your system and then you can choose which one to keep... ____________ | |
| ID: 1215482 · | |
Message boards : Number crunching : Just wondering if there's any good reason to upgrade anything?
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