I have gotten a bit of the SETI bug again, so am working on getting a few systems together, to run the current versions. Just for giggles, I fired up one of the Atom rigs that I had been playing with a few years back, basically running it as just a GPU head, no CPU tasks (duh), and thought that it would either log in and just sit there, or maybe even crash.

What actually happened, is that it started downloading, running, and apparently completing V8 tasks. Remember, this is a machine that hasn't even been run in a couple of years at least, and is running XP 64 bit, and whatever was current at the time for BOINC. The system is ID: 6689894, if anyone would like to take a look at it, and give me their thoughts as to what is going on, because it's pretty weird to me...

---

You're running stock so if your web preferences say to run v8 & that machine is set to use your web preferences then it would have contacted the scheduler when it first fired up BOINC, seen there's a new application available that it can run, downloaded the v8 files, downloaded work and started crunching.

---

Grant
Darwin NT

Oooh, so it did that all by itself. Huh, well do you have any idea if this current config is one of them (older, pre Fermi)that throws bad but seemingly good looking science? I don't want to pollute the database with bad data if so.

---

At the moment your inconclusives are at 4% (which is good), there are 20 Valid results and no errors or invalids.
So there's no signs of problems there.

---

Grant
Darwin NT

Well, just pulled it up again, it appears that nothing is going horribly wrong, and seems to be slowly grinding out tasks, so that is a good thing. I might fire up the other 2 to see how they work as well. Now if only I could find a source of cheap old ATX motherboard trays, like 30 or so of them.. Ebay hasn't been my friend in that matter, but I'll keep looking at it from time to time.

---

Well, just pulled it up again, it appears that nothing is going horribly wrong, and seems to be slowly grinding out tasks, so that is a good thing. I might fire up the other 2 to see how they work as well. Now if only I could find a source of cheap old ATX motherboard trays, like 30 or so of them.. Ebay hasn't been my friend in that matter, but I'll keep looking at it from time to time.

Try Amazon. If they sell British Jelly Babies in the US; they may have what you need, too. ;-) :-)


TL

MMMMMmmmmm Jelly Babies... :-)

---

TimeLord04
Have TARDIS, will travel...
Come along K-9!
Join Calm Chaos

Actually, for the sakes of argument, my beloved but hardly used Asus Lamborghini netbook is my (current) threshold for application support, just because, even though it hasn;t been powered on in a while. It's Intel Atom and Geforce Pre-Fermi equipped, but still a lush thing to take about when the occasion arises. [It actually goes 'Vroom' when I start it up]

---

"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.

Jason, that's funny. I can hear it now.. And thanks TL for the suggestion, I actually hadn't thought of Amazon, as I had Googled around, and after looking at places like Mountain Mod$ and $imilar, decided that I need to look used. I was hoping to locate a computer recycler who might have a stack of them, but so far no luck, though I'll admit that I haven't spent a whole lot of time in the seach as of yet.

---

Well, just pulled it up again, it appears that nothing is going horribly wrong, and seems to be slowly grinding out tasks, so that is a good thing. I might fire up the other 2 to see how they work as well. Now if only I could find a source of cheap old ATX motherboard trays, like 30 or so of them.. Ebay hasn't been my friend in that matter, but I'll keep looking at it from time to time.

Why would you need MB trays?

I don't recall where I got that picture. The date on it makes me think it is a cruncher from the SETI@home classic days.

---

SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

Looking at the extension lead at the bottom left of that pic, it looks like it is in th UK, or a UK wired part of the US.

Not a good idea in homes with free-running pets, I would think.

However, a reasonable heating system...

---

Happy Crunching,

Graham

That'll never work here, unless we glue those PSUs together. But else it's one truck through the street and down they tumble again.
Nothing said about the cats, yeah. ;-)

How do you keep that clean, feather duster?
And how do you connect the videocards to monitors? Or are these headless?

---

Honestly, that is what it sort of looks like what I have sitting in the basement right now, I have to still get the wiring set up, but there are like 6-8 of them lined up on a formica shelf I built just for this purpose. One issue of concern is heat, it would be good to have a little airflow beneath the boards, plus they wouldn't be resting on any solder joints. I know that wood is non-conductive, but not sure what the long term effect of having that weight on the protrusions on the bottom of the board. Plus it just makes it nicer to handle. It's just the matter of finding them is all, well, at a reasonable price. Like >$7.5 ea... or even under $5 would be better, especially in quantity.

One thing I am going to try and do is use one PSU for 2 boards. The ones I have are between 550 and 1200w, so I would use the smaller ones on the Atom setups, and the larger ones on the GTX550 and up rigs. I already have the splitter cables for the 24 pin MB connection and the 4 pin CPU connections, the ones for the GPU's are my next consideration, and I have to be careful there with wattages/amps and the connections, as I don't want to overload anything.

The hardest thing I have to figure out is the power switch, because when ATX came out, the power went from an actual switch to the motherboard/PSU. I supposed I can just set it up to boot both boards at the same time, but the shutdown would be more problematic, because if I set one to shut down, it will turn off the PSU, and take down the other one. I don't believe that should be an issue for the OS, as they are going to be booting off the network, using something like Dotsch's Linux setup from a few years ago.

As to the work in progress, if I shut down the client on the 2nd board and then switch to the 1st one for a shutdown, that would keep the WU's safe from harm. All in all it will be an interesting time getting this to work.

---

Honestly, that is what it sort of looks like what I have sitting in the basement right now, I have to still get the wiring set up, but there are like 6-8 of them lined up on a formica shelf I built just for this purpose. One issue of concern is heat, it would be good to have a little airflow beneath the boards, plus they wouldn't be resting on any solder joints. I know that wood is non-conductive, but not sure what the long term effect of having that weight on the protrusions on the bottom of the board. Plus it just makes it nicer to handle. It's just the matter of finding them is all, well, at a reasonable price. Like >$7.5 ea... or even under $5 would be better, especially in quantity.

One thing I am going to try and do is use one PSU for 2 boards. The ones I have are between 550 and 1200w, so I would use the smaller ones on the Atom setups, and the larger ones on the GTX550 and up rigs. I already have the splitter cables for the 24 pin MB connection and the 4 pin CPU connections, the ones for the GPU's are my next consideration, and I have to be careful there with wattages/amps and the connections, as I don't want to overload anything.

The hardest thing I have to figure out is the power switch, because when ATX came out, the power went from an actual switch to the motherboard/PSU. I supposed I can just set it up to boot both boards at the same time, but the shutdown would be more problematic, because if I set one to shut down, it will turn off the PSU, and take down the other one. I don't believe that should be an issue for the OS, as they are going to be booting off the network, using something like Dotsch's Linux setup from a few years ago.

As to the work in progress, if I shut down the client on the 2nd board and then switch to the 1st one for a shutdown, that would keep the WU's safe from harm. All in all it will be an interesting time getting this to work.

Many years and a few jobs ago. I setup 20 socket 370 Celeron systems with 1 PSU for every 2 systems. I bought 20 pin ATX extension cables and then spent a few hours making Y cables. The only issue doing that is both systems would power on, off, and reboot at the same time.

However for lower powered systems there is a slightly better way to do that now. You could get some picoPSUs. You could connect one system to the main PSU connector and then connect the picoPSUs to the PCIe 12v outputs. You could likely power all of your systems with the single 1200w PSU you already have.

For some time I've been planning to get 16 ASRock Q1900-ITX boards and set them vertically. So I could use a single large silent fan to give them the air circulation they need. So far I have 1 board and the memory for two more...

---

SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

Interesting thought if one was starting out from scratch, but I already have all the boards, memory, CPU's and PSU's on hand, just sitting down there waiting for me to make the move, finish the wiring at the electrical panel (two 20a 240v circuits, which I can use to power all the PSU's, as they are 120/240, and at 240 draw 1/2 the amps). One of the many things I have on my list of to-do's...

I still need to acquire more GPU's though, and the boards I have have 1 16x PCI-E slot, so that won't be too bad in terms of power draw, I don't have the option of running multiple cards. I have a few GTX280 and 295 cards that I've been holding on to since I started this project in 2010, but after discussing it in another thread, it really doesn't make much sense to run them, as the cost of electricity would pay for a used lower end 900 series card in a reasonably short period of time. And who knows what they are going to be releasing in the next month or so? Hopefully that will drive down the price of the current gen cards on the used market, and make it that much more cost effective for me to use them.[/code]

---

I just picked up an EVGA GTX 750 TI FTW because Amazon dropped it from $136.99 to $119.99. Since I ordered it they raised it to $129.99. I might grab a 2nd one if it drop again.

---

SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

How does the 750 compare to the 950, in price, perf and power consumption, any idea off the top of your head? I could of course look it up if you don't know... ;-)

*edit* Doing a quick look, it appears that the price is about $50 higher, the Mhz is 20-30 higher, not sure about the power but I would think slightly better? Overall think there is much benefit for the addl $50?

---

How does the 750 compare to the 950, in price, perf and power consumption, any idea off the top of your head? I could of course look it up if you don't know... ;-)

*edit* Doing a quick look, it appears that the price is about $50 higher, the Mhz is 20-30 higher, not sure about the power but I would think slightly better? Overall think there is much benefit for the addl $50?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units

GTX 950		GTX 750 Ti
90w		60w
1573 GFLOPs	1305 GFLOPs

Not a whole lot of extra oompf for that extra $50.

---

SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

More stats:

EVGA GeForce GTX 950 FTW GAMING ACX 2.0

Performance
768 CUDA Cores
1203 MHz Base Clock
1405 MHz Boost Clock
57.74GT/s Texture Fill Rate

Memory
2048 MB, 128 bit GDDR5
6610 MHz (effective)
105.76 GB/s Memory Bandwidth

Requirements
Minimum of a 350 Watt power supply.
Total Power Draw : 125 Watts


EVGA GeForce GTX 750 Ti FTW w/ EVGA ACX Cooling

Performance
640 CUDA Cores
1189 MHz Base Clock
1268 MHz Boost Clock

Memory
2048 MB, 128 bit GDDR5
5400 MHz (effective)
86.4 GB/s Memory Bandwidth


Requirements
Minimum of a 300 Watt power supply.
Total Power Draw : 85 Watts

---

More stats:

EVGA GeForce GTX 950 FTW GAMING ACX 2.0

Performance
768 CUDA Cores
1203 MHz Base Clock
1405 MHz Boost Clock
57.74GT/s Texture Fill Rate

Memory
2048 MB, 128 bit GDDR5
6610 MHz (effective)
105.76 GB/s Memory Bandwidth

Requirements
Minimum of a 350 Watt power supply.
Total Power Draw : 125 Watts


EVGA GeForce GTX 750 Ti FTW w/ EVGA ACX Cooling

Performance
640 CUDA Cores
1189 MHz Base Clock
1268 MHz Boost Clock

Memory
2048 MB, 128 bit GDDR5
5400 MHz (effective)
86.4 GB/s Memory Bandwidth


Requirements
Minimum of a 300 Watt power supply.
Total Power Draw : 85 Watts

To get GFLOPS for a GPU use (shaders*2)*GPU clock/1000.
That gives us
1521.9 to 1623 GFLOPS for the 750 at 19.094 GFLOPS/watt
1847.8 to 2158 GFLOPS for the 950 at 17.264 GFLOPS/watt

---

SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

Thanks for that info. One of these days when I am bored and have nothing better to do(riiiiiggghttt...) I might just make up a listing of the comparison of all (maybe 200 or 400 series on up?) the cards from EVGA and post those calcs out, it would make for good reading. Unless someone has already beaten me to the punch. Actually, that may even be sticky worthy!

---