How to migrate from one Graphics card to a new one?

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Profile David@home
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Message 1902756 - Posted: 24 Nov 2017, 20:40:45 UTC

I succumbed to the power of Black Friday and ordered a new graphics card.

My old Nvidia 750Ti is to be replaced with a Nvidia 1060. From a SETI@home viewpoint do I need to do anything extra like reinstall Lunatics or will it just carry on with the right app? I know I will have to redo my command line options but is there anything else I need to take into account?

Many thanks
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Message 1902763 - Posted: 24 Nov 2017, 21:05:10 UTC

I'd just suspend BOINC activity before shutting down to do the upgrade, other than that you it about right.

For command lines I use,

for AP/ -unroll 10 -oclFFT_plan 256 16 512 -ffa_block 12288 -ffa_block_fetch 6144

for MB/ -sbs 1024 -period_iterations_num 10 -spike_fft_thresh 4096 -tune 1 64 1 4 -oclfft_tune_gr 256 -oclfft_tune_lr 16 -oclfft_tune_wg 256 -oclfft_tune_ls 512 -oclfft_tune_bn 64 -oclfft_tune_cw 64

Those can be tuned more, but I just don't like lag.

Cheers.
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Message 1902770 - Posted: 24 Nov 2017, 21:31:01 UTC - in response to Message 1902756.  
Last modified: 24 Nov 2017, 21:31:34 UTC

From a SETI@home viewpoint do I need to do anything extra like reinstall Lunatics or will it just carry on with the right app?

Make sure the current driver will support the video card. Otherwise as Wiggo said, suspend BOINC/Seti before shutting down to install the card. Install the card & re-boot, then get the current driver from Nvidia (don't let Windows do it). Install the new driver, reboot (generally these days it's not necessary, but I still do it out of habit). Re-start BOINC/Seti & watch the new card chew through WUs.
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Message 1902885 - Posted: 25 Nov 2017, 15:56:13 UTC - in response to Message 1902770.  

Thanks Guys,

New card arrived and installed. New driver installed from Nvidia web site, PC rebooted fine and SETI restarted.

Decided to run the first 11 GPU workunits with the old command line parameters. I am seeing 2.6 to 3.2 times faster than my old graphics card.

If these validate OK I'll put the new command line parameters in for a 1060. From playing with the command line parameters back when I first ran Lunatics on my 750Ti I know that things should get even faster once I tune the command line parameters.

Will be nice to see my RAC go up, for some reason it has dropped by around 3,000 over the last month.

I am pleased with the new graphics card, it is the first time I have gone for one with a fan, normally I go for fanless cards. According to GPU-Z fan speed is around 16% and it is quiet so no extra noise.

At the rate GPU work units are going though won't be logn before I start tuning the command line parameters
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Message 1902921 - Posted: 25 Nov 2017, 22:39:18 UTC - in response to Message 1902885.  
Last modified: 25 Nov 2017, 22:40:02 UTC

Will be nice to see my RAC go up, for some reason it has dropped by around 3,000 over the last month.

Change in the work mix (more, longer, GBT WUs than Arecibo) combined with Credit New, has resulted in a drop in RAC, particularly if you don't do AP work (of which there has been a steady flow lately).
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Message 1903055 - Posted: 26 Nov 2017, 21:44:24 UTC

What do you guys do on maintenance Tuesdays? Do you run out of work units during these slots?

I keep bumping into the 100 work unit limit for SETI@home and cannot download any more work units. With my new graphics card I suspect that I will run out of work units to process before the maintenance slot has finished.
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Message 1903060 - Posted: 26 Nov 2017, 22:52:44 UTC - in response to Message 1903055.  

methinks most people have a backup project with the resource share set at zero so it only gets work when the primary project runs dry.
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Message 1903065 - Posted: 26 Nov 2017, 23:05:25 UTC - in response to Message 1903055.  

What do you guys do on maintenance Tuesdays? Do you run out of work units during these slots?

I keep bumping into the 100 work unit limit for SETI@home and cannot download any more work units. With my new graphics card I suspect that I will run out of work units to process before the maintenance slot has finished.

With my 1060's they maybe out of work for about an hour or so, but sometimes they don't (especially if I have AP tasks for them to do), though at those times when they do run out the CPU cores that feed those GPU's revert to chewing on their own CPU tasks.

Cheers.
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Message 1903137 - Posted: 27 Nov 2017, 8:34:19 UTC

All three of my linux based crunchers run out of gpu work so they either go cold or pick up work from alternative projects.
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Message 1903186 - Posted: 27 Nov 2017, 19:13:19 UTC - in response to Message 1903055.  

Quite often, I do much the same as The Project. Maintenance. I do all my Win 7 updates, clear drive space, de-frag and run a full AV scan of both drives. I don't run 24/7 anyway, so I don't usually run out of GPU work....although it did get very close when there was a longer than usual outage, recently. In that case, I switched to running 100% CPU work, when I got down to my last six or so GPU tasks.
Don't take life too seriously, as you'll never come out of it alive!
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Message 1903332 - Posted: 28 Nov 2017, 12:12:16 UTC

Have the 100 Workunit cache limit already for the maintenace slot. Maybe I should stay up late to check if my GPU goes cold by the end of the maintenance period. Maybe.....
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Message 1903827 - Posted: 30 Nov 2017, 11:19:53 UTC - in response to Message 1903332.  

I can see that I ran out of both CPU and GPU work units during the maintenance window. I was running cold before I went to bed and the systems were not yet back online.

I now have backup project with 0% resource share allocation and this downloads only new work when a job finishes which is good. My query is what happens when SETI@home restarts sending work? When the odd Astropulse workunit comes in it starts immediately and suspends my backup project. So what will happen when all my backgorund project tasks get suspended and I fill up the cache with new SETI@home work? Will they ever complete?
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Message 1903829 - Posted: 30 Nov 2017, 11:21:54 UTC - in response to Message 1903827.  

So what will happen when all my backgorund project tasks get suspended and I fill up the cache with new SETI@home work? Will they ever complete?

Yes, when their deadline approaches they'll restart & finish processing.
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Message 1906259 - Posted: 10 Dec 2017, 20:33:43 UTC
Last modified: 10 Dec 2017, 20:34:13 UTC

Had a rollercoaster of a ride since installing my new Nvidia 1060 graphics card. What with the SETI database outages and Windows wanting downtime to install Creators Fall Edition of Windows 10 my RAC has finally reached a new all time high of 28,372. I think it should continue to climb slowly and pass 30,000 in a week or two.
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Message boards : Number crunching : How to migrate from one Graphics card to a new one?


 
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