What's going on ?

Lionel SARRES
Lionel SARRES
Joined: 18 Oct 09
Posts: 21
Credit: 44249495
RAC: 38812
Topic 195744

During the past 4 months, I've been trying to crunch more quickly with my i7 860 and GTX 275, windows 7.

I had some results in january, but since then... It's getting worth and worth. I remove Boinc several times and reinstall, I remove the process managers and reinstall them, I said to boinc use 88 % at most, I wrote an app_info file, I tryed a thousand parameters.

Today is a great day :
BRP3 WU :
running time (during night time !) : 20 800 sec.
CPU time : 9500 seconds
(95078150)

S5HF WU :
running time (during night time) : 147 600 sec.
CPU time : 132 800 seconds - 41 hours to complete !
(94252493)

What's going on ?
How do you explain it takes 30 to 40 hours to complete S5HF ?

Running E@H on a computer is getting harder and harder.
I'm giving up.

Lionel.

Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Bikeman (Heinz-...
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What's going on ?

Hi!

Sorry to hear about your problems.

While I do not trust the BOINC benchmark results too much, the results for your PC in question look way too low for an i7. From here it looks like your PC might actually be slow, at least under load. Your computers are hidden so I can't see how it performs in your other BOINC projects. But I would consider to run some benchmarking and diagnostics software one that host to check whether it is somehow slowed down (e.g. thermal throttling).

CU
HB

Lionel SARRES
Lionel SARRES
Joined: 18 Oct 09
Posts: 21
Credit: 44249495
RAC: 38812

Hello, Thanks for

Hello,

Thanks for answering. My i7 only run e@H.
I allready check the Bios, i'll do it again.

Anyway, What I don't understand is the way e@h WU are "growing".
Don't tell me you increase their size in order to gain bandwidth ?

Bests.

Lionel.

Jeroen
Jeroen
Joined: 25 Nov 05
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Have you checked task manager

Have you checked task manager or better yet, resource monitor to see if another process is using up some of the system resources? 41 hours is far too long for an i7 for S5GC1HF. Generally these tasks should complete in 4-8 hours on an i7 depending on whether the CPU is overclocked or not and if Einstein@home is not competing for resources with another process.

You might also consider setting up Process Lasso and give the Einstein@home binaries higher priority.

Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Bikeman (Heinz-...
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RE: Anyway, What I don't

Quote:


Anyway, What I don't understand is the way e@h WU are "growing".
Don't tell me you increase their size in order to gain bandwidth ?

Bests.

Lionel.

There really is no growing of jobs, every job that belongs to the same search will take about the same time to complete on a given hardware (+/- a few percent).

But tasks for different searches take different time to complete: Tasks for the BRP search (CPU variant) will take roughly 2 ...3 times longer than S5GC1HF jobs (they will also get you more credits). Runtime of the GPU/CUDA variant of BRP of course depends on the power of your GPU, but again, on the same hardware, all BRP CUDA jobs will take roughly the same time.

CU
HB

telegd
telegd
Joined: 17 Apr 07
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I am running an i7-860 with a

I am running an i7-860 with a GT220 on Kubuntu.

You can compare runtimes here:
http://einsteinathome.org/host/3451748/tasks

I run 3 S5HF workunits on the CPU and 1 BRP WU on the GPU, so I have spare cycles and can continue to use it for work. Though, if you use hyperthreading (up to 8 WUs), your individual runtimes will increase, but you should be able to get more Workunits done in the same time period.

As others have said, something seems broken in your system.

Lionel SARRES
Lionel SARRES
Joined: 18 Oct 09
Posts: 21
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Hello telegd, Your results

Hello telegd,

Your results are very different from my computer... now.
They are very similar at my results in january or february.

Yes, I'm using Hyper Threading, running 6 or 7 WU on the CPU and leave one CPU for BRP3' 20% CPU. Parameters :
on multicore systems, use at most 88 % of the CPU
use 100 % of the CPU time.

crunch time for BRP3 is around 9000 to 10 000 seconds, and CPU is around 140 000 seconds !

I flashed my Bios, I killed every process not usefull, I used different process managers to increase priorities, try to write an app_info file to run several BRP3 on the video card... no gain.
The point is, since 1 or 2 months, crunch time seemed to grow. My first reflexion was that new WU need more time to be crunched, could be a way for E@H to reduce bandwidth. ;-)

Last thing I can try is to remove google chrome and sun java machine.
That's the only "new" softwares installed on the computer.

Thanks for your help.
Lionel.

Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Bikeman (Heinz-...
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Hi! Did you check the

Hi!

Did you check the hardware? Is the CPU running at max clock frequency or is it perhaps thottling down because of overheating?

HB

MAGIC Quantum Mechanic
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I had the same thing happen

I had the same thing happen last year and when I checked the processor temp. it was way over what it was supposed to be so it would idle and WU's were taking 30 hours.

So check the temp and if that is it you may need to clean the board and check the fan and heat sink on the processor.

Lionel SARRES
Lionel SARRES
Joined: 18 Oct 09
Posts: 21
Credit: 44249495
RAC: 38812

I'll check that out. I

I'll check that out.
I allready clean the fan and the board, open the box, the fan is running.

I'll be on holydays next week, i'll check that at the shop.
thanks for your help.

Lionel.

telegd
telegd
Joined: 17 Apr 07
Posts: 91
Credit: 10212522
RAC: 0

RE: Yes, I'm using Hyper

Quote:
Yes, I'm using Hyper Threading, running 6 or 7 WU on the CPU and leave one CPU for BRP3' 20% CPU.


I have read that the GPU can be quite demanding in terms of needing the CPU to feed enough data to keep it running at full speed. If you are only giving it one HT Process (not a real core), then the BRP process might be getting starved. I don't have any comparison data to give - you would probably want to experiment for yourself. If the CPU was trying to manage 7 workunits and was also throttled, that might also explain the GPU times.

Until you sort out your GPU time with 1 process, I wouldn't try 2. From reading the other threads, the 2 workunits should complete in close to the same time as 1 if your GPU is up to the task. However, is the GTX 275 fast enough for that? I am almost positive my 220 is too basic for more than 1 GPU workunit.

However, none of the GPU issues would explain the S5HF times. I think the suggestions of heat and/or other throttling are good to check. Do you have a tool to check the temperature of each core?

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