Will this GPU card support 'crunching'?

Message boards : Number crunching : Will this GPU card support 'crunching'?
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Message 1280421 - Posted: 5 Sep 2012, 21:47:45 UTC

This card is....

AMD ATI Radeon HD 2300/2400/3200 (RV610) (256MB) driver: 1.4.1734

It is in an XPS410 rig with a dual core system running at 50%. It is the normal and AP unit on the CPU, nothing has come in for the GPU though.

I have an older XPS400 rig also set at 50% with a....

NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT (512MB) driver: 301.42

This one receives mainly WU's for the GPU and a few CPU ones for the time the computer is in use (as the GPU is set not to crunch when in use). This also has an older dual core processor.

So obviously seti realizes the upgraded card in the 400 system is more powerful so it sends work for that. Is the other card in the 410 not capable of crunching or does seti realize the CPU would be more powerful in that unit?
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Message 1280428 - Posted: 5 Sep 2012, 22:03:22 UTC - in response to Message 1280421.  

it can run the brook AP wu's but nothing more. the brook WU's revert back to the CPU for parts of the processing. It may slow down your CPU WU's while it is running


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Message 1280459 - Posted: 6 Sep 2012, 0:28:01 UTC
Last modified: 6 Sep 2012, 0:33:49 UTC

I don't think it has anything to do with power.

Your main problem is software support for hardware. nVidia provided the support from early on. ATI did not. So today we have mostly mature software infrastructure to use various nVidia cards, just to illustrate how mature, the most basic nVidia card that you can use is old 8400 chip with 256 MB of RAM on the card. Your card is 9600 which is series that came out after the 8xxx series so you are one step ahead of the lowest hardware specification.

Because ATI was so late in providing software support, the software for ATI cards is very spotty. Some projects have support for ATI cards, others ignore them in favor of much better supported nVidia cards. It simply depends on the project.




This is excerpt from wiki (http://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/GPU_computing):
"ATI GPUs: you need a platform based on the AMD R600 or AMD R700 GPU or later. R600 GPUs are found on ATI Radeon HD2400, HD2600, HD2900 and HD3800 graphics board. R700 GPUs are found on HD4350 to HD4890 graphics boards. Check ATI's list of Stream-enabled products and ATI's list of OpenCL-enabled products."
If you go to the wiki, there are two links, neither link actually works. Where ever AMD moved those pages, I could not find them when I was looking for some info a couple of days ago.
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Message 1280485 - Posted: 6 Sep 2012, 3:48:18 UTC - in response to Message 1280459.  

if you've read that last post you'll note that I already addressed the usage issue. Download the Lunatics apps and install. you ATI card can only use the "brooks" hybrid app. On theplus side you will optimize your CPU which will run work about 50% faster


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Message 1280495 - Posted: 6 Sep 2012, 5:18:38 UTC

Using the 3rd party app for the older cards is already well covered earlier in this thread. However you can also use their apps on all of your machines for a bit more 'bang for your buck' if you should like.

The stock AP app supports cards with OpenCL support. Like the 6870 card you have in one of your other machines. That is why it is getting work and your ATI GPUs are not. The 4000 Series cards are really the start of support for that, but more realistically the 5000 series cards.

I have several machines at work with 3450 GPUs. I would love to replace them with 7450 cards. For lower power usage and 4 to 5 times more GFLOPS.
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Message boards : Number crunching : Will this GPU card support 'crunching'?


 
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