Using dual GTX 590's

lupo
lupo
Joined: 8 Sep 10
Posts: 1
Credit: 1760229
RAC: 0
Topic 195973

Has anyone had any luck running dual GTX 590's? This would effectively give me the equivalent of 4 cards using only two PCI-E slots.

Any thoughts, experiences, or recommendations?

Thanks!

Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Bikeman (Heinz-...
Moderator
Joined: 28 Aug 06
Posts: 3522
Credit: 689190749
RAC: 216886

Using dual GTX 590's

Hi!

If you follow the Statistics -> Top Hosts Link on the project home page, you'll see some comparable hosts, I even found one with two such cards:

http://einsteinathome.org/host/4207502.

That PC is not "hidden" so you can try to send a PM to the owner.

To get the most performance, you will want to experiment with app_inf.xml files that allow you to run more than one GPU task per physical GPU. In that case you get slower execution times, but overall higher throughput. More infor is available in this forum. This PC is an example in the TOP 20 that seems to use this kind of app_info file on a single GFX 590:

http://einsteinathome.org/host/4095562

This should give you an idea of the performance to expect from this combination.

There are also some threads here discussing cooling of PCs :-). If I'm not mistaken, your system will consume (altogether) > 1000 W (!!) and dissipate heat like a hair dryer.

Please let us know if you have specific questions.

HBE

Jeroen
Jeroen
Joined: 25 Nov 05
Posts: 379
Credit: 740030628
RAC: 57

I have not tried this but

I have not tried this but have thought of doing a setup like this in the past. My main concern was bandwidth on the PCI-E bus. When running multiple work units per GPU, ideally each GPU would have a 16x slot set at 16x. With the 590, two GPUs would have to share the same slot.

A much lower cost alternative would be the GTX 295 dual GPU card. It actually makes for a decent cruncher with this project. Last time I tried, I was seeing around 2000 second processing time in Linux with one card installed and running a single work unit per GPU. With two cards in 16x slots, in theory you could process 172 work units per day provided two cards are able to perform as well as a single card by itself. A decent CPU overclock also helps performance. In this case, I had my i7 set to 4.3 GHz.

Stranger7777
Stranger7777
Joined: 17 Mar 05
Posts: 436
Credit: 418296394
RAC: 35345

RE: A decent CPU overclock

Quote:
A decent CPU overclock also helps performance. In this case, I had my i7 set to 4.3 GHz.


And what is the mean daily RAC for the host?

Fred J. Verster
Fred J. Verster
Joined: 27 Apr 08
Posts: 118
Credit: 22451438
RAC: 0

Most motherboards having

Most motherboards having (atleast) 2 PCIe 2.0 16x slots, will run them in 8x mode if 2 (or 3)
GPUs, are used. But there are a lot of differences involved.

My (2) ASUS P5E mobos, run 2 ATI cards in PCIe 2.0 16x mode, but not 2 NVIDIA GPUs.
My INTEL DP67BG mobo, runs 2 ATI 5870 GPUs, in PCIe 2.0 8x mode, which is enough
even when 2 (or more) WUs being crunched at the same time. (Well with 3, you'll notice
some extra time!)

I run 2 rigs, 1 Q6600+GTX470 and 1 X9650+GTX480, but only one WU per GPU.
Last time I made an app_info.xml file, I made a typo....................
(Although, I used the same "names", as in the SETI app_info.xml?)

Run SETI with 2 WUs per GPU, no problem and like todo this on Einstein, as well.
Can someone help me with an example, on these 2 FERMIs and the low GPU use
there should be no problem, cause on the 480, I did run 2 per GPU?

Jeroen
Jeroen
Joined: 25 Nov 05
Posts: 379
Credit: 740030628
RAC: 57

RE: RE: A decent CPU

Quote:
Quote:
A decent CPU overclock also helps performance. In this case, I had my i7 set to 4.3 GHz.

And what is the mean daily RAC for the host?

This system has the potential for ~44,000 RAC with the single 295. Unfortunately I don't have enough available bandwidth to feed this system so I have it offline currently.

Stranger7777
Stranger7777
Joined: 17 Mar 05
Posts: 436
Credit: 418296394
RAC: 35345

RE: RE: RE: A decent

Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
A decent CPU overclock also helps performance. In this case, I had my i7 set to 4.3 GHz.

And what is the mean daily RAC for the host?

This system has the potential for ~44,000 RAC with the single 295. Unfortunately I don't have enough available bandwidth to feed this system so I have it offline currently.

That's great! I cannot yet make my I5 (sandy bridge) host do more than 16000 daily with GTS 450 1 Gb. Cannot understand why. :(

FrankHagen
FrankHagen
Joined: 13 Feb 08
Posts: 102
Credit: 272200
RAC: 0

RE: RE: RE: RE: A

Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
A decent CPU overclock also helps performance. In this case, I had my i7 set to 4.3 GHz.

And what is the mean daily RAC for the host?

This system has the potential for ~44,000 RAC with the single 295. Unfortunately I don't have enough available bandwidth to feed this system so I have it offline currently.

That's great! I cannot yet make my I5 (sandy bridge) host do more than 16000 daily with GTS 450 1 Gb. Cannot understand why. :(

do you have the original version with 192 cores or the OEM-one with only 144?

oh, and a GTX295 has 2*240 cores.. ;)

Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Bikeman (Heinz-...
Moderator
Joined: 28 Aug 06
Posts: 3522
Credit: 689190749
RAC: 216886

RE: do you have the

Quote:


do you have the original version with 192 cores or the OEM-one with only 144?

oh, and a GTX295 has 2*240 cores.. ;)

You can check the number of cores in the log output of BRP4 tasks, it's in one of the first lines printed. In this case:

Quote:

[20:35:28][4100][INFO ] Using CUDA device #0 "GeForce GTS 450" (192 CUDA cores / 622.08 GFLOPS)

I think 16k per day isn't too bad. How many GPU tasks in parallel are you running (i'd guess two) and how many CPU cores are crunching CPU tasks at the same time ?

CU
HB

Sid
Sid
Joined: 17 Oct 10
Posts: 160
Credit: 926779388
RAC: 282759

RE: That's great! I

Quote:

That's great! I cannot yet make my I5 (sandy bridge) host do more than 16000 daily with GTS 450 1 Gb. Cannot understand why. :(

I'm using GTX-560 Ti with 2Gb memory so I'm running 6 task simultaneously. For BPR4 and 6 tasks best time on my computer is 2:30. So theoretically I can have 24 / 2:30 * 6 * 500 = 28800 credits for one day.
Nevertheless for some reason I haven't.
I've tried:
1. Switch to the Linux - no gain for my configuration.
2. Use only one PCIE x16 slot - - got only couple of percents.

My guess - Boinc spends a lot of time to finish one task and start next one.

Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Bikeman (Heinz-...
Moderator
Joined: 28 Aug 06
Posts: 3522
Credit: 689190749
RAC: 216886

RE: I'm using GTX-560 Ti

Quote:


I'm using GTX-560 Ti with 2Gb memory so I'm running 6 task simultaneously. For BPR4 and 6 tasks best time on my computer is 2:30. So theoretically I can have 24 / 2:30 * 6 * 500 = 28800 credits for one day.
Nevertheless for some reason I haven't.
I've tried:
1. Switch to the Linux - no gain for my configuration.
2. Use only one PCIE x16 slot - - got only couple of percents.

My guess - Boinc spends a lot of time to finish one task and start next one.

Highly unlikely. In fact, your host is doing very well the last few days, but the RAC displayed here is effectively a running average over several weeks and will take some time to adjust.

This is what BOINCstats reports for that host under Windows:

I think that's quite ok :-) A second effect is that your pending results are not in equilibrium if you switch platform (windows / Linux) so that alos takes some time to level out in the stats.

CU
HBE

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.