Hi Folks, I think I need some help with one of my crunchers. Please be aware that I am not a computer guru, I only have a basic understanding of current pc's and none at all of Windows 8. This laptop was a gift so I did not choose it or Windows 8.

I have a new HP Pavilion G6 that seems to be having some trouble crunching. When I added this laptop it seemed to do well but it has fallen off badly, since the decline started:

I have set "power save" to none and set the cpu to run at max freq.
I have tried setting the cpu to use just 1 core to let the other feed the gpu - this did not help. (I set it back to 2 cores)
I am running the 64 bit version of Boinc.
The laptop is on a 2 fan cooling platform.
There is nothing else running other than some of the dreck that comes with Windows 8, lots of which I have deleted.
There is no screen saver.
I only run the stock apps.
The gpu is a Radeon HD 7520G, the startup from Boinc says it is "unknown".
The laptop is always on AC power and the only time it is in use is to check Boinc.
TThrottle says cpu 67c gpu 53c 53c <---- very low temp.


The following is the start up data:

2013-08-17 11:37:04 PM | | No config file found - using defaults
2013-08-17 11:37:05 PM | | Starting BOINC client version 7.0.64 for windows_x86_64
2013-08-17 11:37:05 PM | | log flags: file_xfer, sched_ops, task
2013-08-17 11:37:05 PM | | Libraries: libcurl/7.25.0 OpenSSL/1.0.1 zlib/1.2.6
2013-08-17 11:37:05 PM | | Data directory: C:\ProgramData\BOINC
2013-08-17 11:37:05 PM | | Running under account Robert
2013-08-17 11:37:05 PM | | Processor: 2 AuthenticAMD AMD A6-4400M APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics [Family 21 Model 16 Stepping 1]
2013-08-17 11:37:05 PM | | Processor features: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 htt pni ssse3 fma cx16 sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt aes syscall nx lm svm sse4a osvw ibs xop skinit wdt lwp fma4 tce tbm page1gb rdtscp
2013-08-17 11:37:05 PM | | OS: Microsoft Windows 8: Core x64 Edition, (06.02.9200.00)
2013-08-17 11:37:05 PM | | Memory: 7.47 GB physical, 8.60 GB virtual
2013-08-17 11:37:05 PM | | Disk: 673.04 GB total, 620.50 GB free
2013-08-17 11:37:05 PM | | Local time is UTC -7 hours
2013-08-17 11:37:05 PM | | CAL: ATI GPU 0: AMD Radeon HD (unknown) (CAL version 1.4.1741, 512MB, 480MB available, 658 GFLOPS peak)
2013-08-17 11:37:05 PM | | OpenCL: AMD/ATI GPU 0: AMD Radeon HD (unknown) (driver version CAL 1.4.1741 (VM), device version OpenCL 1.2 AMD-APP (938.2), 512MB, 480MB available, 658 GFLOPS peak)
2013-08-17 11:37:05 PM | SETI@home | URL http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/; Computer ID 6972907; resource share 125
2013-08-17 11:37:05 PM | SETI@home | General prefs: from SETI@home (last modified 12-May-2011 22:26:07)
2013-08-17 11:37:05 PM | SETI@home | Computer location: home
2013-08-17 11:37:05 PM | | General prefs: using separate prefs for home
2013-08-17 11:37:05 PM | | Reading preferences override file
2013-08-17 11:37:05 PM | | Preferences:
2013-08-17 11:37:05 PM | | max memory usage when active: 3825.13MB
2013-08-17 11:37:05 PM | | max memory usage when idle: 6885.23MB
2013-08-17 11:37:05 PM | | max disk usage: 10.00GB
2013-08-17 11:37:05 PM | | (to change preferences, visit a project web site or select Preferences in the Manager)
2013-08-17 11:37:05 PM | | Not using a proxy

benchmark

2013-08-18 12:28:29 AM | | Running CPU benchmarks
2013-08-18 12:28:29 AM | | Suspending computation - CPU benchmarks in progress
2013-08-18 12:29:00 AM | | Benchmark results:
2013-08-18 12:29:00 AM | | Number of CPUs: 2
2013-08-18 12:29:00 AM | | 2176 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU
2013-08-18 12:29:00 AM | | 4981 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU


Any ideas on how to improve this devices performance would be appreciated.

Robert

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http://allprojectstats.com/ts593244b0a.png

The gpu is a Radeon HD 7520G, the startup from Boinc says it is "unknown".

2013-08-17 11:37:05 PM | | Processor: 2 AuthenticAMD AMD A6-4400M APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics [Family 21 Model 16 Stepping 1]

2013-08-17 11:37:05 PM | | CAL: ATI GPU 0: AMD Radeon HD (unknown) (CAL version 1.4.1741, 512MB, 480MB available, 658 GFLOPS peak)
2013-08-17 11:37:05 PM | | OpenCL: AMD/ATI GPU 0: AMD Radeon HD (unknown) (driver version CAL 1.4.1741 (VM), device version OpenCL 1.2 AMD-APP (938.2), 512MB, 480MB available, 658 GFLOPS peak)

The GPU being mentioned as unknown isn't a problem, unlike Nvidia, AMD doesn't have an api for detecting the GPU type, so it needs to be hardcoded into Boinc, later Boinc versions will report it properly,

Claggy

Thank you Claggy, good to know.

Robert

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http://allprojectstats.com/ts593244b0a.png

Any ideas on how to improve this devices performance would be appreciated.

First things, don't go around aborting Wu's, especially if they're got ~85,000 secs of progress on them, if they're not making progress suspend them, or suspend GPU usage, then resume them,
you want to complete them rather that waste time running them, then aborting them,

Try limiting to running only 50% of CPUs to increase the GPU utilisation, hopefully it'll also help to reduce the CPU usage of the GPU app.

Try running the v7 GPU apps with the -sbs 256 parameter, this will increase memory utilisation, whether it's any faster on your GPU is anyone's guess.

An then there's the Optimised apps, while the GPU apps won't be any faster, the CPU apps will be.

Claggy

Claggy, I aborted a task that had a report date of yesterday and then knowing the ones for the next few days would not be done I aborted them to shorten time delay for wingmen.

If you had read the msg you would have seen that I had already done what you suggested - just saying.

Robert

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http://allprojectstats.com/ts593244b0a.png

I did read it, but the meaning then passed me by.

You could also try the Cat 13.4 drivers, from testing of the v7 OpenCL development apps on different drivers we noticed an increased CPU usage issue (and increased runtime) with Cat 12.8/APP runtime 938.2,
that wasn't there with Cat 13.4/APP runtime 1124.2, a later development app (r1874) has fixed that issue with Cat 12.8 drivers.

(Cuda testing has also shown there is a large slowdown of the v7 Cuda apps because of the number of small transfers over the PCI-e bus, eliminating or minimising these transfers is one of the goals for further development)

Claggy

Thank you very much, I will look into the driver versions and see if I have what you have suggested. Thank you for your help Claggy.

Robert

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http://allprojectstats.com/ts593244b0a.png

Not to seem to understand anything, but in device manger it says it is driver version 8.982.10.6000. I am not sure what or where to look for the version numbers you talked about. The laptop does it own updates, I have not done any myself.

Robert

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http://allprojectstats.com/ts593244b0a.png

Not to seem to understand anything, but in device manger it says it is driver version 8.982.10.6000. I am not sure what or where to look for the version numbers you talked about. The laptop does it own updates, I have not done any myself.

We have a ATI Driver Version Cheat Sheet for reference, for us the CAL version, and especially the APP runtime versions are the important things, you're on Cat12.8/CAL 1.4.1741/APP runtime 938.2 (Check the stderr.txt on one of your completed tasks)

AMD supplies Catalyst driver packages, Cat 13.4 being the latest WHQL driver, and Cat 13.8 being the latest Beta, for your Laptop you should see if HP has a later driver for manual download:

HP Pavilion g6 Notebook PC series

or try AMD's verication tool to see if your Laptop is compatible with their driver:

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/radeonmob_win7-64.aspx

Claggy

Thanks Claggy, I would have had no idea how to find that info. I will check it out.

Robert

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http://allprojectstats.com/ts593244b0a.png

Claggy, current version is now 12.104.0.0. I will see if it helps. Thank you very much.

Robert

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http://allprojectstats.com/ts593244b0a.png

Hi Folks, I think I need some help with one of my crunchers. Please be aware that I am not a computer guru, I only have a basic understanding of current pc's and none at all of Windows 8. This laptop was a gift so I did not choose it or Windows 8.

I have a new HP Pavilion G6 that seems to be having some trouble crunching. When I added this laptop it seemed to do well but it has fallen off badly, since the decline started:

If your rig was running under SETI V6 then yes, you would've noticed a drop off in credits, but then the rest of us did too, so the story is that you can't compare what you got pre-June with what you get now as the goal posts have been moved.

Cheers.

Hi Wiggo thanks, yes I am aware of the drop off post v6, but this was way beyond that.

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http://allprojectstats.com/ts593244b0a.png