how do you use boinc with a nvdia video card
16 Feb 2011 18:15:33 UTC
Topic 195654
(moderation:
how do you set up boinc and the gpu of the card to work. The computer use a 8400gs on a core duo mother board. Both boinc and the video driver is the most recent version.I set it in the preferences to always run. The message from boinc is down loaded 3 files unable to run. they say I have to update the driver to 26000. I have never heard of that # where do I get that driver?
how do you use boinc with a nvdia video card
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nvidia.com
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- Crunch, Crunch, Crunch -
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I don't believe that your GPU
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I don't believe that your GPU is capable of double-precision math. If I recall correctly, both E@H and MW@H GPU apps now require double-precision capable cards for the GPU apps. If that's the case, no driver upgrade is going to make a difference.
To find out your card's capability, start up Boinc Manager and click on the "Messages" tab. Go to the start of the messages and start scrolling down. A short ways down, you'll see where it recognizes your card and on that line it will say something like "compute capability 1.1" or whatever. Anything less than 1.3 is NOT double-precision.
Can anyone else out there confirm or correct any of this?
Regards,
Steve
RE: I don't believe that
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No requirement for double-precision here. MilkyWay can speak for itself.
David's "NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS (495MB)" will be fine here once he updates the driver, though not particularly fast. The important feature for Einstein is that it has enough memory.
As Snow Crash says, the NVidia download page is the place to go, and pretty easy to use.
I would grab the latest
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I would grab the latest driver for your OS. Currently that is 266.58. This driver version supports the 8400 GS.
RE: how do you set up boinc
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As others have said once you download and install the drivers and then restart the pc Boinc should recognize your video card and you can then attach to a project that will support it, like Einstein. Unless it shows up in the Messages tab though it WILL NOT WORK, so after you restart the pc check there to make sure all went well. You are looking for a line similar to this:
2/16/2011 8:40:51 AM ATI GPU 0: ATI Radeon HD 4600 series (R730) (CAL version 1.4.900, 1024MB, 480 GFLOPS peak)
Obviously mine is an ATI card and is not attached to Einstein, but you get the idea. It will be near the top as Europa said.
There are a couple of things to be careful of though when using a gpu to crunch with...first DO NOT switch users!! This is a Windows thing and all gpu units will crash if you do, if you do plan on switching users then using a gpu to crunch with is not a good idea. There is a work around but it is not automatic, you must do it manually each and every time! Second your pc WILL be slower in responding to your commands and loading webpages etc. This is because you are using your video card to do other things now. Again you can sort of fix this but it is not perfect. You are moving towards the pointy end of technology in Boinc and there are still many non perfect things going on.