If somebody gets a valid test on the 266.58 stable driver VS newer or current versions using the new apps, the kitties are curious whether it is worth risking the upgrade.
And this would be, I guess, a separate question for 200 series cards and Fermi class cards.

Meow.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

If somebody gets a valid test on the 266.58 stable driver VS newer or current versions using the new apps, the kitties are curious whether it is worth risking the upgrade.
And this would be, I guess, a separate question for 200 series cards and Fermi class cards.

Meow.

I was using driver 266.58 with the F app and left it the same for the G app on host 5530010. However I am using an 8500GT so I'm not sure if that will help you in any way.
I didn't do any benchmarking like Sutaru did, but the time estimates in BOINC were going down quickly after changing the app.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the BP6/VP6 User Group today!

If somebody gets a valid test on the 266.58 stable driver VS newer or current versions using the new apps, the kitties are curious whether it is worth risking the upgrade.
And this would be, I guess, a separate question for 200 series cards and Fermi class cards.

Meow.

Let's see:
GT 240 (running at x16 v1.1 on an old motherboard)v266.58 Both AR=2.72
Old - http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/result.php?resultid=1940437112
New - http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/result.php?resultid=1951420494

GTS 450 Both v267.59 AR=.369 (running 2 at a time)
Old - http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/result.php?resultid=1927383287
New - http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/result.php?resultid=1951863015

The GT 240 shows 103 seconds faster on a VHAR and I posted earlier that the GTS 450 was approx. 100 seconds faster on VHARs

The GTS 450 shows 516 seconds faster with the new app.

As always YMMV

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</Tazz>

And as perryjay mentioned you can run 3 instances on 450 as well.

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

As Mike said, since I went to the new 38g and 275.33 drivers I've gone up to three work units at a time on my little GTS 450. I'm getting about the same completion times this way as I was with the old app and two at a time.

I did have one down clock not long after I went to the new 275.33 driver but a reboot cleared it and I have not been able to reproduce it. That was ~ four or five days ago so I'm not worried about that. We wrote it off to cosmic rays or something.

I'm looking forward to what is to come though. Jason G has mentioned he thinks he can get this even faster so good things are in the works as always at Lunatics.

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PROUD MEMBER OF Team Starfire World BOINC

And as perryjay mentioned you can run 3 instances on 450 as well.

I did run 3 at a time, but when Win 7 SP1 came out I rebooted to install from the DVD there were faint green and pink lines filling the screen. They disappeared when Windows installed the on-disc drivers during the OS installation. I chalked it up to over-stressing the card and dropped back to 2 at a time. Maybe next week when I update the Nvidia drivers I'll try 3 again.

p.s. Oh yea, my CPU temps are up too 3-5 C. Don't know about the GPU temp, it's always been low enough that I stopped checking.

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</Tazz>

I am trying to run multiple GPUs in the same box. Both have been running the new Lunatics versions since they came out. They were in separate machines and now I combined them into one machine while I make upgrades to the other.

Boinc, however, detects both cards (gpu0, gpu1) but next to gpu0 it says (not used).

The 2 GPUs I have are GTX460 and GTX260. Is there some reason why it wont use my GTX260?

Is there something I need to change in my app_info or somewhere else?

I am trying to run multiple GPUs in the same box. Both have been running the new Lunatics versions since they came out. They were in separate machines and now I combined them into one machine while I make upgrades to the other.

Boinc, however, detects both cards (gpu0, gpu1) but next to gpu0 it says (not used).

The 2 GPUs I have are GTX460 and GTX260. Is there some reason why it wont use my GTX260?

Is there something I need to change in my app_info or somewhere else?

By default, BOINC will only use what it deems to be the "best" card - judging mainly by speed, but also taking Compute Capability and memory size into account. This is to prevent BOINC trying to make use of inappropriate devices, such as an on-board graphics chip.

There is no reason to avoid using your GTX260, which - as you have found - is perfectly capable of running SETI tasks. To do this, you need to create a file called cc_config.xml in your BOINC Data directory. Use a plain text editor such as Notepad, save the file in ANSI mode, and make sure it has the simple '.xml' extension/file type, not '.xml.txt'

The file needs to contain

<cc_config>
   <options>
       <use_all_gpus>1</use_all_gpus>
   </options>
</cc_config>

If you already have a cc_config.xml file for other purposes, add the <use_all_gpus> line to the options section, or add the whole <options> section if you haven't needed one before. For full details see client configuration.

Once you have created/edited the file, you'll need to stop BOINC completely and restart it. Just re-reading the file via the advanced menu isn't sufficient for this particular change. On restart, the (not used) note should disappear.

Although people will suggest that your GTX460 can work on two tasks at once, you shouldn't attempt to do that on the GTX260. There is no way to set the different cards to do different numbers of tasks: your best configuration will be to run one task per card, two tasks in total at a time.

I wonder, what gives the best output, 3 WUs on a GTX460 or 1 WU on a GTX460 + 1 WU on a GTX260?

I wonder, what gives the best output, 3 WUs on a GTX460 or 1 WU on a GTX460 + 1 WU on a GTX260?

I may be wrong, but I don't think anyone has done the straightforward 1/2/3 task per card comparisons yet for x38g - if anyone has, please post them here.

Given that the 'GPU idle' startup CPU-only phase has been much reduced with this app, I suspect that the benefit of running multiple tasks may be less than previously. But even with the older apps, I'm not sure that the increased efficiency of 3 on a GTX460 would add up to a whole GTX260-equivalent.

I decided to try the new installer to see if the astropulse would work any better on my ATI card (I was having a lot of restarts before). After running the installer I see that the app info has two app version entries for the ati astropulse. One is 505 and the other is 506. Everything is the same between them, just the version number is different. Why are there two entries?

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If somebody gets a valid test on the 266.58 stable driver VS newer or current versions using the new apps, the kitties are curious whether it is worth risking the upgrade.
And this would be, I guess, a separate question for 200 series cards and Fermi class cards.

Meow.

upgraded to v0.38 when it went public, no problems, seeing shorter processing times, Big Thanks to Lunatics crew.

Just upgraded from 266.58 to 375.33.

Shut down Boinc and set it to not start up on restart, installed 375.33 and restarted even though it was not required. Shutdown had problems, it froze on shutdown screen and after 10 min had to use big off switch.

I have had one driver restart, lost 3 WU's:-(

Have since restarted again, no problems on this restart. Since this restart I have seen what looks like a further reduction in processing times.

I have also noted a reduction in CPU usage, Boinc is set to use 99% of processors so only runs 3 CPU WU's, when using v0.37 task manager was reporting 95 - 98% total cpu usage this has now dropped to an average of between 85 - 90%. I am not going to increase CPU WU's for now as it may slow GPU WU's.

I won't advise either way about upgrading drivers, If the driver restart was a one off and I get no more problems, then it may be worth while. feel free to check tasks errors and GPU driver on 4949554.

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Kevin

...I see that the app info has two app version entries for the ati astropulse. One is 505 and the other is 506. Everything is the same between them, just the version number is different. Why are there two entries?

Briefly, so there's a match for previously received tasks which may have been assigned to either of those versions. If there's no match, BOINC deletes the WUs then the next work request[s] get them resent. With the download pipe already maxed, that would be very wasteful particularly with 8 MiB AP WUs.

                                                                 Joe

I decided to try the new installer to see if the astropulse would work any better on my ATI card (I was having a lot of restarts before). After running the installer I see that the app info has two app version entries for the ati astropulse. One is 505 and the other is 506. Everything is the same between them, just the version number is different. Why are there two entries?

Just to ensure as smooth as possible an installation process. People running the stock (Windows) application will have the work already cached (if any) marked as version 505: people running some previous optimised application might have set their app_info.xml files to version 506 to match the (later) stock Linux bulid.

Having both numbers in the installer files merely ensures that neither group of users loses any work during the installation.

Thanks Richard. I figured this out earlier and came back to post about it (got tied up around the house).

Anywho, thanks again.

So far x38g and 275.33 has lowered wu crunch time from around 19 minutes on the bigger cuda wu's to about 12 minutes on My current PC, similar speedup for the shorties, no problems here. Congratz to all involved.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

if I'm watching a video on youtube or dvd, playing a game or whatever, the video and sometimes entire system hangs until it starts crunching

Best to pause while you're doing other video-intensive tasks to maintain the quality of the science.

I've been crunching on this card for 2.5 years now without this issue, so something has definitely changed. I'm wondering if any other GTX2xx users have had similar issues... If not, I'll just revert to x38f where this I can literally just set and forget BOINC and I don't even notice any kind of slow downs (and get no WU errors) no matter what I'm doing...

Either way I'm fine with it :) just would be nice to have best of both worlds, so to speak :D

if I'm watching a video on youtube or dvd, playing a game or whatever, the video and sometimes entire system hangs until it starts crunching

Best to pause while you're doing other video-intensive tasks to maintain the quality of the science.

I've been crunching on this card for 2.5 years now without this issue, so something has definitely changed. I'm wondering if any other GTX2xx users have had similar issues... If not, I'll just revert to x38f where this I can literally just set and forget BOINC and I don't even notice any kind of slow downs (and get no WU errors) no matter what I'm doing...

Either way I'm fine with it :) just would be nice to have best of both worlds, so to speak :D

If the GPU calculate CUDA and you use the GPU also for other things, it's normal that both influence each other.

It looks like the new x38g_cuda32 app use 'normal' priority, x32f_cuda30 had 'lower than normal' (if I look/ed in Windows Task-Manager).

Just an idea..
If you have probs, maybe take Fred's nice eFMer Priority tool and reduce the priority of the new CUDA app.

On my E7600 & GTX260 OC machine x38g_cuda32 run very well (what you see in my test thread).
But, the GTX260 OC is only used for crunching. No screen connected. Screen at onboard (Intel) GPU.
I have set 'high' - and see directly at starts of the CUDA WUs ~ 1 second delayed reaction of the system for other things. But that's O.K., max CUDA performance! ;-)


- Best regards! - Sutaru Tsureku, team seti.international founder. - Optimize your PC for higher RAC. - SETI@home needs your help. -

I asked in the other thread (FAO Lunatics Beta testers - installer testing), if the new CUDA app give us users the possibility to customize via <cmdline>.

How it looks like now with x38g_cuda32 app?

There are commands possible?


- Best regards! - Sutaru Tsureku, team seti.international founder. - Optimize your PC for higher RAC. - SETI@home needs your help. -

In this thread was the question about, if non-/ (1 WU) & Fermi (2+ WUs) GPUs in one machine would be possible.

It would be possible, check out there:
NC subforum : Running mixed nvidia hardware most optimal on the same host


- Best regards! - Sutaru Tsureku, team seti.international founder. - Optimize your PC for higher RAC. - SETI@home needs your help. -

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