AMD K6..... Just for fun:)

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Zule

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Message 1694449 - Posted: 21 Jun 2015, 22:20:59 UTC

Just for fun I thought about slapping together an old Socket 7 system with a K6 or even K5 and running a 9400GT.. If the 9400 will boot and crunch it could make it the fastest K6 ever on Seti;) But booting that 9400 is a big IF since it's often problematic running those PCI conversions on older hardware.

Assuming the 9400 will actually boot and run, do you see any problems trying this? I'll have to run XP and Nvidia has drivers for the 9400 on XP.. The latest Boinc supports XP.. The motherboard is an old Shuttle HOT-603 with 1meg L2 cache so it can handle the min 512meg XP needs (I know it'll run on less, but it's a dog)..

On paper it looks doable.. Do you see any reason it won't crunch Cuda?

I know it's a pointless thing to do, I just think it'd be fun to have an old old CPU crunching modern day Cuda tasks:) There's also the question of how much CPU is needed to properly feed a 9400 PCI... I've use the card to crunch and it only produces about 1500 rac so I doubt it needs a lot of CPU to keep it going..
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Message 1694452 - Posted: 21 Jun 2015, 22:40:18 UTC - in response to Message 1694449.  
Last modified: 21 Jun 2015, 22:42:34 UTC

With Cuda multibeam builds you'd be needing SSE instructions. That requirement afaik isn't particular to the cuda parts (though the drivers and DLLs may have some similar requirement depending on version, if you can get a Cuda enabled driver to work without SSE it'd certainly be interesting), but is built into the boinc parts for performance reasons. I don't know if similar minimum requirements exist with OpenCL builds, but I suspect at least the compiler parts (in the driver) would be using SSE instructions.

[Edit:] Note that nothing prevents a build being made without use of any SSE, from the open sources, though I do suspect it'd be pretty horrible :)
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Message 1694453 - Posted: 21 Jun 2015, 22:40:56 UTC

Well... Maybe:)

Crunching on a K6 would be extremely inefficient and hard to justify the purchase of any new hardware.. I think getting the 9400 to boot and run will be hard enough.. I seriously doubt those old CPU's can keep up with a GTS 430.. Chances are the 9400 will max them out.

But if it does work and the K6 can feed the GPU without running 100%, I would consider an upgrade if it were really cheap...
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Message 1694454 - Posted: 21 Jun 2015, 22:46:51 UTC - in response to Message 1694452.  

With Cuda multibeam builds you'd be needing SSE instructions. That requirement afaik isn't particular to the cuda parts (though the drivers and DLLs may have some similar requirement depending on version, if you can get a Cuda enabled driver to work without SSE it'd certainly be interesting), but is built into the boinc parts for performance reasons. I don't know if similar minimum requirements exist with OpenCL builds, but I suspect at least the compiler parts (in the driver) would be using SSE instructions.


Hmm.. So I'll probably need an Athlon XP or PIII

I'm interested to test a K6 just to see what happens or what errors it gives..
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Message 1694457 - Posted: 21 Jun 2015, 22:57:38 UTC

Here's a really dumb idea...

I have plenty of Athlon XP's and motherboards to play with.. How about a crazy Athlon box with 4 or 5 PCI crunchers:)

This is what happens when I get bored:)
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Message 1694696 - Posted: 22 Jun 2015, 21:17:55 UTC

Zule,

I had three K6-2 350's back in the day... SLLOOOOWWW crunching; even back in 2006 when I started with BOINC. I NEVER would have thought that these systems would support feeding a GPU; even on plain PCI.

I didn't get into GPU crunching until last year. I had an AMD A6-6400K desktop system built using XP Pro x64, supporting an EVGA NVIDIA GTX-760. System has 4GB RAM, and a 250GB SATA HD. It's been running just over a year now.

My second system is a used Pentium E5200 desktop system rebuilt in December, last year, using Win 7 Pro x64, supporting an EVGA NVIDIA GTX-275. System has 8GB RAM and a 250GB SATA HD. It's been running since December, last year, and I just upgraded the GTX-275 to a used GTX-750 TI.

Both the A6 and Pentium systems are using NVIDIA Driver 337.88 for the GPUs. They are crunching well. I'm currently splitting my time between BOINC, SETI and Folding@Home.

Good luck with your endeavors, I think you'll have better luck with the Athlon XPs. (I retired my Athlon XP 2200+ running Ubuntu 12.04 when I got the AMD A6 system at the beginning of June, last year.)


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Message 1694703 - Posted: 22 Jun 2015, 21:49:51 UTC

I didn't know CUDA has minimum system requirements to work, but I imagine it makes sense. SSE is pretty popular with the kids thee days and everything.

This kind of thread makes me want to fire up my old HD 3850, but given it can't do OpenCL its beastly 427.5 GFLOPS are only useful on projects that support ATI Stream/CAL. Of course with a GFLOP/Watt rating of only 5.7 I don't really want to waste the power on it in the summer.
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Message 1695314 - Posted: 25 Jun 2015, 0:47:34 UTC - in response to Message 1694696.  

Zule,

I had three K6-2 350's back in the day... SLLOOOOWWW crunching; even back in 2006 when I started with BOINC. I NEVER would have thought that these systems would support feeding a GPU; even on plain PCI.

I didn't get into GPU crunching until last year. I had an AMD A6-6400K desktop system built using XP Pro x64, supporting an EVGA NVIDIA GTX-760. System has 4GB RAM, and a 250GB SATA HD. It's been running just over a year now.

My second system is a used Pentium E5200 desktop system rebuilt in December, last year, using Win 7 Pro x64, supporting an EVGA NVIDIA GTX-275. System has 8GB RAM and a 250GB SATA HD. It's been running since December, last year, and I just upgraded the GTX-275 to a used GTX-750 TI.

Both the A6 and Pentium systems are using NVIDIA Driver 337.88 for the GPUs. They are crunching well. I'm currently splitting my time between BOINC, SETI and Folding@Home.

Good luck with your endeavors, I think you'll have better luck with the Athlon XPs. (I retired my Athlon XP 2200+ running Ubuntu 12.04 when I got the AMD A6 system at the beginning of June, last year.)


TL



I didn't expect much from it.. A few months back I raced a PIII 1ghz against a HTC EVO 4g phone and the PIII beat the EVO by 5 rac with 60ish so I can only image how painfully slow a K6 would be at feeding at PCI cuda card.. But even if the PCI card was crippled by the CPU and only produced 1/4 of it's potential 1500 RAC, that's still 375 RAC or 6 times faster than a PIII 1ghz or ARM processor that's 15+ years newer..

In theory "IF" I could run 4 PCI cards like the GT 610 with 48 cuda cores vs the 9400GT's 18, I could maybe see a few thousand rac from it?.. Just seeing a K6 active today on seti and producing a few thousand RAC would definitely be fun to see and real head scratcher for anyone that looked at my comps:)

I have to assume the lack of SSE would make the whole idea moot, so it's nothing more than a pipe dream at this point... However an Athlon XP cranking out a few thousand RAC could also be fun:)
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Message 1695316 - Posted: 25 Jun 2015, 0:51:08 UTC - in response to Message 1694703.  

I didn't know CUDA has minimum system requirements to work, but I imagine it makes sense. SSE is pretty popular with the kids thee days and everything.

This kind of thread makes me want to fire up my old HD 3850, but given it can't do OpenCL its beastly 427.5 GFLOPS are only useful on projects that support ATI Stream/CAL. Of course with a GFLOP/Watt rating of only 5.7 I don't really want to waste the power on it in the summer.



Powers the real drag in all this.. I have tons of CPU's, Mobo's and GPU's that I could crunch with, but all would kill my AC and my power bill...

It's really sad. I'm the kind of person that would love to setup an old computer like K6 or Athlon and let it crunch for decades till it finally died an honorable death from old age:)
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Message 1695359 - Posted: 25 Jun 2015, 3:57:15 UTC - in response to Message 1695316.  

I didn't know CUDA has minimum system requirements to work, but I imagine it makes sense. SSE is pretty popular with the kids thee days and everything.

This kind of thread makes me want to fire up my old HD 3850, but given it can't do OpenCL its beastly 427.5 GFLOPS are only useful on projects that support ATI Stream/CAL. Of course with a GFLOP/Watt rating of only 5.7 I don't really want to waste the power on it in the summer.



Powers the real drag in all this.. I have tons of CPU's, Mobo's and GPU's that I could crunch with, but all would kill my AC and my power bill...

It's really sad. I'm the kind of person that would love to setup an old computer like K6 or Athlon and let it crunch for decades till it finally died an honorable death from old age:)

Sometimes old hardware just refuses to die. I have been trying to kill an old notebook for a few years now, but it stubbornly just keeps going. It is mostly just out of morbid curiosity, & it's low operating power, that I keep BOINC going on it. Otherwise it serves as a 2nd screen to look things up while I'm using my gaming computer.
Maybe once the cooling fan finally dies it might cook itself to dead, but given I've got it ~58% overclocked and the fan isn't even running at 100%. I don't expect the end of that system will come any time soon. It it only about 10 years old and it is probably going to run another 10 just out of spite.
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Message 1695480 - Posted: 25 Jun 2015, 10:52:19 UTC

They don't build them that well any more.What make is it?
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Message 1696650 - Posted: 29 Jun 2015, 4:20:49 UTC - in response to Message 1695480.  

They don't build them that well any more.What make is it?


I'd like to think it's AMD since they made many of the Intel 286-386 CPU's.. Truth is, as long as an item wasn't overclocked/overheated, it most likely still works today... I have a bunch of 386 CPU's that still work:)

The big killer of old old hardware was the barrel battery leaking and killing the PCB... As long as the mobo was properly maintained there is no reason for an old mobo to die... Ebay has plenty of supposedly working XT mobo's
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Message 1696676 - Posted: 29 Jun 2015, 6:20:57 UTC - in response to Message 1696650.  

They don't build them that well any more.What make is it?


I'd like to think it's AMD since they made many of the Intel 286-386 CPU's.. Truth is, as long as an item wasn't overclocked/overheated, it most likely still works today... I have a bunch of 386 CPU's that still work:)

The big killer of old old hardware was the barrel battery leaking and killing the PCB... As long as the mobo was properly maintained there is no reason for an old mobo to die... Ebay has plenty of supposedly working XT mobo's

Mine had Lithium 2025s or 2032s; I can't remember which... Probably the 2025s.
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Message 1696735 - Posted: 29 Jun 2015, 14:23:43 UTC - in response to Message 1696676.  
Last modified: 29 Jun 2015, 14:25:05 UTC

They don't build them that well any more.What make is it?


I'd like to think it's AMD since they made many of the Intel 286-386 CPU's.. Truth is, as long as an item wasn't overclocked/overheated, it most likely still works today... I have a bunch of 386 CPU's that still work:)

The big killer of old old hardware was the barrel battery leaking and killing the PCB... As long as the mobo was properly maintained there is no reason for an old mobo to die... Ebay has plenty of supposedly working XT mobo's

Mine had Lithium 2025s or 2032s; I can't remember which... Probably the 2025s.

The li-ion CR3032 is the standard* motherboard battery used. CR2025 is more often found in automotive key fobs. However I think Zule is referring to the older 3 cell NiCd batteries that were soldered in.

*The good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from!
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Message 1696747 - Posted: 29 Jun 2015, 15:30:33 UTC - in response to Message 1696735.  

They don't build them that well any more.What make is it?


I'd like to think it's AMD since they made many of the Intel 286-386 CPU's.. Truth is, as long as an item wasn't overclocked/overheated, it most likely still works today... I have a bunch of 386 CPU's that still work:)

The big killer of old old hardware was the barrel battery leaking and killing the PCB... As long as the mobo was properly maintained there is no reason for an old mobo to die... Ebay has plenty of supposedly working XT mobo's

Mine had Lithium 2025s or 2032s; I can't remember which... Probably the 2025s.

The li-ion CR3032 is the standard* motherboard battery used. CR2025 is more often found in automotive key fobs. However I think Zule is referring to the older 3 cell NiCd batteries that were soldered in.

*The good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from!

Well; as I remember it, the SOYO 5EMA+ Motherboard for Socket 7, (AMD K6-2 350), used a different battery than what I had in my wristwatch. My wristwatch, at the time, used 2032s... Which is why I vaguely remember the Motherboards using 2025s; but, I could be wrong...


TL
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Message 1696753 - Posted: 29 Jun 2015, 15:52:49 UTC - in response to Message 1696747.  

They don't build them that well any more.What make is it?


I'd like to think it's AMD since they made many of the Intel 286-386 CPU's.. Truth is, as long as an item wasn't overclocked/overheated, it most likely still works today... I have a bunch of 386 CPU's that still work:)

The big killer of old old hardware was the barrel battery leaking and killing the PCB... As long as the mobo was properly maintained there is no reason for an old mobo to die... Ebay has plenty of supposedly working XT mobo's

Mine had Lithium 2025s or 2032s; I can't remember which... Probably the 2025s.

The li-ion CR3032 is the standard* motherboard battery used. CR2025 is more often found in automotive key fobs. However I think Zule is referring to the older 3 cell NiCd batteries that were soldered in.

*The good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from!

Well; as I remember it, the SOYO 5EMA+ Motherboard for Socket 7, (AMD K6-2 350), used a different battery than what I had in my wristwatch. My wristwatch, at the time, used 2032s... Which is why I vaguely remember the Motherboards using 2025s; but, I could be wrong...


TL

Could be. That is why I added my not about standards. The CR2016 is a cheaper alternative & could have been used. They last about half as long as a 2032.
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Message boards : Number crunching : AMD K6..... Just for fun:)


 
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