Need some advice..

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Martin
Martin
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18 Jan 2011 18:18:59 UTC
Topic 195587
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    Hi

    After a few years and many PC's crunching climate prediction at home, I've decided to share my computing power here at Einstein. :)

    To be honest I find it hard to follow any thread here on the forum, they tend to get bogged down in detail mainly to do with GPU and WU's, which I'm no expert on.

    Unfortunately I have a ATI GPU which rules me out of some WU's. That however is my question. What WU can I NOT do on my PC, and can I edit my preferences either in Boinc or here, so I don't get the error message:

    "Einstein@Home Message from server: Your computer has no NVIDIA GPU"

    No kidding! :)

    Or can all WU's be processed on GPU's and CPU'S?

    Cheers

    Michael Karlinsky
    Michael Karlinsky
    Joined: 22 Jan 05
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    Need some advice..

    18 Jan 2011 19:23:33 UTC
    Message 103435
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      Quote:

      Hi

      After a few years and many PC's crunching climate prediction at home, I've decided to share my computing power here at Einstein. :)

      To be honest I find it hard to follow any thread here on the forum, they tend to get bogged down in detail mainly to do with GPU and WU's, which I'm no expert on.

      Unfortunately I have a ATI GPU which rules me out of some WU's. That however is my question. What WU can I NOT do on my PC, and can I edit my preferences either in Boinc or here, so I don't get the error message:

      "Einstein@Home Message from server: Your computer has no NVIDIA GPU"

      No kidding! :)

      Or can all WU's be processed on GPU's and CPU'S?

      Cheers

      Hi Martin,

      welcome to E@H. Above message is no error-message, just a statement of a fact. You can do all WUs. Which WUs you can, or can not crunch, the BOINC server (should) take care of.

      You might want to opt out of BRP work, (see your E@H preferences here at the website) because they are rather slow, if done via CPU. But this (obviously) reduces your chances to discover a new pulsar.

      HTH
      Michael

      Team Linux Users Everywhere

      Martin
      Martin
      Joined: 11 Jan 11
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      Hi Thanks for the

      18 Jan 2011 19:58:58 UTC
      Message 103436
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        Hi

        Thanks for the reply.

        I'll just continue accepting all work. As long as I can make a worthwhile contribution, I might as well crunch what I can!

        Gary Roberts
        Gary Roberts
        Moderator
        Joined: 9 Feb 05
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        Hi Martin - welcome to the

        19 Jan 2011 3:31:06 UTC
        Message 103437
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          Hi Martin - welcome to the Einstein project. We hope you enjoy your stay here.

          Whilst Michael has already answered most parts of your query, there are a couple of extra things you might like to consider.

          Quote:
          ... What WU can I NOT do on my PC ...


          There are CPU apps for both searches - Gravity wave (GW) and Binary Radio Pulsar (BRP) searches, so you can crunch all available types of tasks without a supported GPU.

          Quote:
          ... and can I edit my preferences either in Boinc or here, so I don't get the error message ...


          You wont get this information message if you go to your account page on the website and click on the E@H preferences and set the "Use nVidia GPU" preference to 'NO', (since you don't have one). I believe this will then stop the information message.

          Quote:
          Or can all WU's be processed on GPU's and CPU'S?


          GW tasks are for CPU only. BRP tasks can use both CPU and GPU if you have a supported (CUDA capable) GPU. There is a considerable speedup for BRP tasks if you have a supported GPU, so much so that it makes a lot of sense to invest in a budget GPU (say a GT240 or a GT430) if you really want to do BRP tasks and increase your chances of (re-)discovering a pulsar :-). Unfortunately, ATI GPUs are not going to be supported any time soon (if ever).

          I notice that your host is an AMD Phenom II X4. Phenom II's (in fact all types of AMD CPUs) are a bit more efficient at crunching GW tasks - they seem to do a somewhat better job than Intel CPUs of similar vintage and spec. On the other hand, Intels seem to be a bit better with the pulsar search app. For this reason, I would suggest you consider setting your prefs to accept only GW tasks on your AMD host.

          Cheers,
          Gary.

          Gundolf Jahn
          Gundolf Jahn
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          RE: RE: ... and can I

          19 Jan 2011 9:27:22 UTC
          Message 103438 in response to message 103437
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            Quote:
            Quote:
            ... and can I edit my preferences either in Boinc or here, so I don't get the error message ...

            You wont get this information message if you go to your account page on the website and click on the E@H preferences and set the "Use nVidia GPU" preference to 'NO', (since you don't have one). I believe this will then stop the information message.


            I believe that won't help. That preference tells the client not to ask for nVidia tasks, but since it has an ATI GPU, it will continue to ask for GPU tasks and be told that there aren't any suitable ones. However, I'm just speculating here (again;-).

            Gruß,
            Gundolf

            Computer sind nicht alles im Leben. (Kleiner Scherz)

            Martin
            Martin
            Joined: 11 Jan 11
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            Looks like I'll have to take

            19 Jan 2011 17:43:15 UTC
            Message 103439
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              Looks like I'll have to take what's available:

              Quote:
              19/01/2011 15:21:19 Einstein@Home Message from server: No work is available for Global Correlations S5 search #1
              19/01/2011 15:21:19 Einstein@Home Message from server: No work is available for Global Correlations S5 HF search #1

              The only other work is for BRP tasks...

              Thanks to everyone for their help :)

              Jord
              Joined: 26 Jan 05
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              RE: RE: You wont get this

              20 Jan 2011 1:46:07 UTC
              Message 103440 in response to message 103438
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                Quote:
                Quote:
                You wont get this information message if you go to your account page on the website and click on the E@H preferences and set the "Use nVidia GPU" preference to 'NO', (since you don't have one). I believe this will then stop the information message.

                I believe that won't help. That preference tells the client not to ask for nVidia tasks, but since it has an ATI GPU, it will continue to ask for GPU tasks and be told that there aren't any suitable ones. However, I'm just speculating here (again;-).


                That's correct. To get the project to stop sending the message, it would need a "Use ATI GPU" option on the same page. However, since there's no application for ATI cards on this project this option doesn't get enabled by default.

                I believe that the project developers can override this and enable the "Use ATI GPU" option by hand.

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