multiple tasks on the gpu? how?
3 May 2012 2:23:04 UTC
Topic 196306
(moderation:
I've read where some folks are running multiple tasks on their gpu's. I looked for info on how to do this, but couldn't seem to find anything. Could someone please enlighten me as to how to accomplish that?
I dropped in a gtx680 yesterday and from looking at SIV, it indicates gpu utilization as anywhere from 8-20%. So it seems I can load this gpu up a bit more.
Does anyone have any numbers for this chip yet? I'm curious as to what I should expect of it when running something like Collatz.
I posted over at Collatz about this, but they have very little traffic in their Cruncher's Corner equivalent, and if anybody replies it could easily be weeks from now, so I posted here because you folks are incredibly knowledgeable about this stuff and I crunch Einstein on my cpu cores.
Thanks for nay help.
multiple tasks on the gpu? how?
)
According to your Tasks list, you have not run any GPU tasks at all. I too have a 680, so feel free to ask questions. A GPU task for a 680 would have the following label:
Binary Radio Pulsar Search (Arecibo) v1.22 (BRP4cuda32nv301)
Since I see that you have run Arecibo tasks on your CPU, I know that you have it ticked. My first question would be, which driver are you using? If you are using the driver that came with the disk, you will have to upgrade to at least 301.10 from NVIDIA's website. The driver that came on the CD is 300.83, and Einstein allows for Kepler series at least 301.
To answer your question in regards to adding multiples, that can be found under Einstein preferences tab in your account page. Towards the bottom you will see GPU utilization factor. The default setting is 1. If you lower this to .5, than you will run 2, .33 = 3.
I would recommend running one first to make sure your temps are acceptable.
If you have a driver that is 301+, and are not receiving WU's than this could be caused by many factors, such as not having Use GPU ticked in BOINC.
Any more questions feel free to ask :)
Hmmmm.... that is weird. It's
)
Hmmmm.... that is weird. It's definitely crunching Collatz. I just manually uploaded about 10 completed tasks, but the response was "communication deferred". I just tried to upload another completed task and got the same result. However, none of those completed tasks are in my list now, so if they're not getting to Collatz, where are they going?
Einstein runs on the cpu's only. Collatz on the gpu only.
Yes, I am using the 301.10 drivers. They were the ones on my cd, but I had been using those drivers for a little while now since my previous card was also an EVGA Nvidia chip based card.
I will try your suggestion on the gpu utilization factor on Collatz' preferences.
Are you by any chance running more than one task at a time on your gpu? What does your gpu utilization look like?
SIV64 is showing me that gpu temp is 72C with 55% utilization. I've done no tweaking yet for speed, and I probably won't.
Tem
Sorry, I thought you wished
)
Sorry, I thought you wished to run the GPU tasks on Einstein.
There is a way to run multiple GPU tasks by editing some things in BOINC, but I do not know how.
I do run multiples on Einstein, and the GPU utilization is what does it. This is specific to Einstein's app though. Normally, an Einstein GPU app tends to hit a "wall" when running one, since it needs a certain amount of CPU work to be done, thereby limiting it's (GPU) utlization.
When running one Einstein app, I typically hit 60% utilization, when running two, this increasing to around 80%.
As a side note, I too have an EVGA brand card, and would HIGHLY recommend downloading the EVGA Precision tool from NVIDIA's website. You will be able to monitor and adjust your GPU to your liking. Since I can see your system is used for crunching, I would HIGHLY recommend picking a steady fan speed, instead of allowing in to dynamically adjust. 72C is quite hot, and your GPU is most likely throttling itself. For instance, I keep my fan at around 68% in order to keep my GPU temp at 50C. Think, not sure, that 680 throttles itself at 70C
P.S. If your card came with 301.10, that surprises me. Only because the 300.83 driver is the only one that will allow their 680 to run at PCIE 3.0 on x79 platform. Guess they started switching drivers on their disks. Interesting.
EDIT: In regards to three tasks at once, I would agree that seems to be the limit, but when you're running 8 other tasks for a different project such as WCG, you begin to sacrifice quite a bit of performance. I know I can free threads, but for me, I prefer to have full force on WCG. Once GPUgrid opens up for the 680, I will be switching over there, and will then be forced to free up a thread, since their tasks use roughly .5-.6 CPU.
I found that running up to
)
I found that running up to three BRP4 tasks at once is optimal for the GTX 680. I saw little to no benefit running more than three tasks at once.
Spot, I run multiple
)
Spot,
I run multiple Einsteins, but on the cpu cores. Of the 8 I have available, I use 6 of them for Einstein. I do have to use a program to steer them to a specific group of cores, but that so far is working great. This way, each task has it's very own core to work with. I leave 2 cores unassigned. One is for gen'l purpose apps and Windows, the other is for Windows itself. The gen'l purpose core also handles whatever cpu needs Collatz has when crunching on the gpu, which are minimal at best. I get real close to 100% cpu utilization on the active crunching cores, and anywhere from 2-99% on the gen'l purpose core depending on whether or not I'm playing a game. The last remaining core Windows seems to find on it's own. It's utilization varies, but is usually above 90%.
I did install PrecisonX. I have yet to mess with the fan speeds. I've never been able to get a handle on Celcius scale. Why doesn't anybody use Farenheit anymore? If someone said 100 degrees F, then I'd know it was hot. 72C is an unknown number to me. I don't know if I can even get my card down to 50C. That seems like a long way from where I'm at.
Hmmmm..... I just opened up PrecisionX. Fan speed was in Auto and appeared to be running at 50%. Temp was 75C. I took it out of AUTO and set the speed to 75%. It's a little bit noisier, but temp is now down to 56C. Maybe that's what happened to my old card. I know it was running in the 70-80C range ever since I installed several years ago. Temp is now down to 55C and seems to be holding.
Here's another question for you. Are you utilizing the Nvidia surround option? If so, does it work good? What's a good pair of monitors to use for that purpose? I want to do that for playing this Star Wars game I'm playing, but I will have to get at least 2 new monitors. I just blew $499+tax on the card, so it will be awhile before I get new monitors. Maybe this summer. Keepin' my fingers crossed!
Alas, I currently do not use
)
Alas, I currently do not use surround. It too is something that I am looking at getting. What I can say, is that currently, there are quite a few threads on NVIDIA's forums in regards to the poor driver support for surround with the current 680 drivers. This will of course by fixed later.
With surround, I will be looking at SLOWLY building a quad setup such as this http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRfadvpyMXNDji6JcNnLm2bCHfuSo7qWg67S4_lg6S9keJhvYN1IA
I would recommend looking through NVIDIA's forums, or even posting a thread there. There will be plenty of people with much more knowledge than I have. 3 in surround + 1 accessory display just looks so bad***!! I am still waiting on my 2nd 680, than will hopefully have surround done by xmas lol!!
Again, I would say post that question at NVIDIA, you'll get much more help there.
Glad you got your temps down by the way. In reality as long as you're below 60C you'll be fine. Set your fan speed to your liking. I just like to keep things nice and cool.
I finally got the surround
)
I finally got the surround mode to work. I've been hammering on it all day. I woke up this morning at 6:45 and came out to wake up the 'puter. Yet another monitor had died. A ways back, a friend was upgrading his monitors so he gave me his two Viewsonic 4x3 monitors. Those plus the one I had gave me 3 monitor setup since I had a spare video card. Long story short, the fan on the low-end vid card, my secondary, died. About the same time, one of the monitors died. So...... I've been running on two monitors up until this morning. Well, one monitor isn't enough for my needs outside of gaming. I need at least two, preferably three given the number of programs I'm likely to be running at one time. So I thought to myself, I have this here Fry's card and I owe nothing on it. If they have a deferred interest plan, then I will buy new monitors. Fortunately, they did!
Here's the rub, to get a monitor that has a Display Port, I had to go to the 25" size. At the time in the store, I was thinking, that's over 6' (3x 24.75") of viewable horizontal width per monitor. Spent all day trying to make it work though. The problem turned out to be the fact that the monitors I bought apparently don't auto-detect active inputs, and I didn't read the manual, so I was sending HDMi to a monitor that was looking to the DVI port for video. I finally got a friend to come over and after about an hour, we got it all dialed in!
Surround is cool! Definitely cool. I haven't hooked up the 4th monitor yet, (the last remaining Viewsonic I have that is working) because I don't have a mounting frame or the desk space, or the money.
So I've got 3 monitors at the desktop, and surround mode with 3 monitors in-game. The center monitor looks just like a single display for the game. The side monitors tend to have a lens effect going on at the extreme left and right. There's a lot of stretching going on way out there, but they definitely give you a much, much wider view of your playing field in the game.
I still haven't figured out my audio problem (I get garbled audio in-game only) I'm beginning to think that my on-board audio chip is not DirectX 11 capable.
That's my progress so far. I really didn't want to spend $1500 this week, especially after getting my car out of the shop which cost twice what I was expecting, but WTF, you only live once, eh?
And did you check your
)
And did you check your discussion over at collatz? I did answer there. Since you are not mentioning nothing about how to get more then one task running, I guess you didn't read my answer yet?
Nice that you got this surround thing working. It sounds interesting.
Greetings, Christoph
RE: And did you check your
)
Your reply at Collatz is true in general, but not needed at this project.
All you (or anyone else) needs to do is to read message 116288, and adjust their project preferences accordingly.
Correct, but he want that
)
Correct, but he want that Collatz is running multiple WUs. That's why I answered his Collatz discussion two days ago. Up to now no other comment was made there, so I thought I would ask him here where he seems to be more often.
Greetings, Christoph