end of XP, Maxwell and such

Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Bikeman (Heinz-...
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Thanks for the numbers, looks

Thanks for the numbers, looks promising.

I guess my ole GTS 450 should slowly prepare for retirement ;-)

Cheers
HBE

ExtraTerrestrial Apes
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RE: 2 x BRP5 jobs right

Quote:
2 x BRP5 jobs right now. Time to complete 2 jobs ~14,777 seconds, so approximately 39K credits / day.


WUProp says a GTX650Ti would need 22000 s on average for Binary Radio Pulsar Search (Perseus Arm Survey) tasks. That would be a massive advantage for Maxwell! The only problem is the "average", which would be ruined by people running 3 or more concurrent tasks. Does anyone have better numbers for comparison?

MrS

Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
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Hi! I have a GTX 650Ti,

Hi!

I have a GTX 650Ti, but in a rather outdated Core2 era Xeon with PCI Exp. V2 slots.

It takes ca 26200 sec per BRP5 unit , running 2 units in parallel.

Just as a rough idea. I'd be interested to see measurements from people doing an actual upgrade 650Ti to 750Ti on the same host.

Cheers
HB

Jeffy
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BRP5 on a 750Ti mated to an

BRP5 on a 750Ti mated to an i5 4570S at 2.9GHz completes in around 8500 seconds with just one task running. That's on par with a Titan and 780Ti. It runs Gamma Ray Search #3 in around 4500 seconds with one task running, which is faster than a Titan or 780Ti.

stewjack
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RE: BRP5 on a 750Ti mated

Quote:
BRP5 on a 750Ti mated to an i5 4570S at 2.9GHz completes in around 8500 seconds with just one task running.

WOW I have read that the NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti Maxwell versions both with & without a 6 pin power connector. Are you using the power connector?

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-750-ti/specifications

My current slot powered NVIDIA GeForce 405 GPU completes a task in about 74,764 sec ~ 20 hrs! For reasons I won't go into I am limited to a computer with a 300 watt power supply. Needless to say, I am very very interested in the slot powered version of this card.

Jeffy
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This is the non overclocked

This is the non overclocked slot powered EVGA version with just one fan. It's an amazing little beast!

archae86
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RE: From what I remember of

Quote:
From what I remember of posted comments about HD4x00 graphics, you need a free CPU core at least to support a single GPU task and that it's possible to to run two tasks in parallel but you don't gain from doing so. However, if you don't have an external GPU, the Intel GPU tasks run well enough to add something like 7-10K to your RAC - so quite worthwhile.


I just reached the commissioning stage for my new moderate-power, moderate-cost build today. As intended I did the Windows install and first installation of BOINC and connection to Einstein before installing the GTX 750 card.

I enabled all options regarding work selection, and was a bit surprised perhaps an hour after I had had Einstein running a couple of GW S6 CasA tasks to see openCL work running. It turns out that without my doing any special measures at all, BOINC/Einstein had detected that I had Intel onboard graphics (HD4400), applicable to a class of Arecibo work, allocated some tasks, and started running. I had not consciously installed Intel Graphics drivers, and had done only about 4 of the many offered installations from the motherboard driver disc, so suspect that mine came when I installed the poorly named INF chipset drivers.

In any case, though my intention tomorrow is to install the GTX 750 (non-"ti") graphics card and focus on it, my initial results indicate that this host running a Haswell 2-core HT i3-4130 on an Asrock Z87 Extreme3 motherboard is operating at approximately RAC 8000 total performance running 2 CPU S6 CasA tasks and 2 HD4400 GPU Arecibo tasks. The gain from going from running 1 to 2 intel GPU tasks seems indeed quite modest (elapsed time increases from somewhat over 1000 seconds for a single task to over 1900 seconds for a pair of tasks). Happily the real CPU load from the Intel GPU Arecibo task appears to be quite small, though the software scores it as requiring "0.5 CPU + 1 intel_gpu GPU", so the number of pure CPU jobs gets forced down.

Still, an indicated RAC processing rate of about 8000 for a host consuming slightly under 80 watts at the wall is not so bad considering that the prime role for the host is intended to be providing support for a graphics card hoped not to burn much over 40 watts. As of now (before I install the graphics card and a 3TB hard drive not involved in BOINC) incremental power cost of my BOINC computing is just a little over 30 watts, as suspending all BOINC tasks (but no sleep states or clock rate reduction) gives system power around 47 watts.

There is a bewildering range of things one could investigate for this combination of a low-end Haswell CPU+GPU chip and low-end Maxwell graphics card. I'm mostly interested in getting a stable and productive configuration up and running, but will post some more observations soon--focusing on the Maxwell side. I might entertain an investigative suggestion or three.

Kudos to the Einstein and BOINC folk for the fact that Einstein on intel HD4400 came to life without effort on my part. The major opportunity for this platform is likely to come not from enthusiasts, but from ordinary folks who happen to have this capability as part of their CPU. In the months to come, there may be many more such hosts joining Einstein than the rare birds of high-end carefully tuned graphics cards. But most of them will probably lack both the time and the inclination to fiddle around getting things to work.

Claggy
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RE: I enabled all options

Quote:

I enabled all options regarding work selection, and was a bit surprised perhaps an hour after I had had Einstein running a couple of GW S6 CasA tasks to see openCL work running. It turns out that without my doing any special measures at all, BOINC/Einstein had detected that I had Intel onboard graphics (HD4400), applicable to a class of Arecibo work, allocated some tasks, and started running. I had not consciously installed Intel Graphics drivers, and had done only about 4 of the many offered installations from the motherboard driver disc, so suspect that mine came when I installed the poorly named INF chipset drivers.

In any case, though my intention tomorrow is to install the GTX 750 (non-"ti") graphics card and focus on it, my initial results indicate that this host running a Haswell 2-core HT i3-4130 on an Asrock Z87 Extreme3 motherboard is operating at approximately RAC 8000 total performance running 2 CPU S6 CasA tasks and 2 HD4400 GPU Arecibo tasks. The gain from going from running 1 to 2 intel GPU tasks seems indeed quite modest (elapsed time increases from somewhat over 1000 seconds for a single task to over 1900 seconds for a pair of tasks). Happily the real CPU load from the Intel GPU Arecibo task appears to be quite small, though the software scores it as requiring "0.5 CPU + 1 intel_gpu GPU", so the number of pure CPU jobs gets forced down.


When you get to install the GTX750 and i assume connect the monitor to it instead, you'll probably find Boinc will no longer see the HD4400,
the solution is to extend the desktop onto the HD4400 (you can try a monitor or a dummy plug but some have said that is not always 100% reliable),

To extend the desktop, right click on the desktop, choose 'screen resolution', on the 'screen resolution'/'change the appearance of your display' screen hit the 'Detect' button,
now click on each of the not detected displays until you get to the HD4400, now set the 'multiple displays' selection to 'try and connect anyway on: VGA', click apply,
now on 'multiple displays' select 'extend these displays', then restart Boinc.

Claggy

archae86
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Claggy wrote:When you get to

Claggy wrote:
When you get to install the GTX750 and i assume connect the monitor to it instead, you'll probably find Boinc will no longer see the HD4400


Thanks. In my personal case, I decided to continue the connections I've used for an Ivy Bridge CPU + GTX660--leaving the monitor plugged into the CPU graphics connection. I don't play games, and believe the Intel graphics to be way beyond sufficient for my DVD watching and other PC use, and had the idea that I might get somewhat higher BOINC productivity if my more capable graphics processor was not distracted by servicing my browsing or movie-watching needs.

So far the GTX 750 card install has been trouble-free. I just put the card in, ran the driver package downloaded as most current and appropriate for this card and operating system from EVGA (which just passed along the latest NVIDIA 334.89 version), rebooted, and then re-enabled Einstein downloads. At this very moment, the system is running two CPU CasA jobs, two Intel GPU Arecibo jobs (the only flavor currently available for iGPU, I think), and on the GTX750 one each of BRP4G and BRP5-Perseus. Wall socket power consumption is running about 122 watts. It appears that adding the GTX750 raised the zero BOINC work running power consumption about 10 watts (from 45 to 55, roughly).

I've not even thought about performance tuning, and don't plan to until some work has completed and been validated or failed. GPU-Z thinks my average GPU load has been 85% averaged over the last few minutes, so there is probalby not a huge gain to be had from tuning, but I'll still have a try. (I customarily use Process Lasso to nudge things using both priority adjustment and affinity).

Before I installed the GTX750, I did some power measurements which can help address the i3-4130 Intel graphics usefulness.

[pre]CPU tasks iGPU tasks watts
0 0 44
0 2 61
2 0 60
2 2 77[/pre]
So in RAC terms the incremental power productivity of enabling the iGPU is several times higher than that of running CPU jobs.

archae86
archae86
Joined: 6 Dec 05
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With less than a day's

With less than a day's experience on my low-end Haswell host with the lowest-spec GTX 750 card, my numbers are rough and preliminary. So far I have had the pure CPU side usually running two CasA jobs, and the Intel on-chip graphics running a pair of BRP Arecibo jobs. Here are approximate indicated credit productivities vs. application, for three Nvidia CPU applications.

[pre]Application ngpu/day cpu/day igpu/day tot/day watts cred/day/watt
BRP5 Perseus 27521 2288 5168 34977 119 293
BRP4G v1.39 25543 2084 5294 32922 120 274
GRP3 v1.11 6789 1114 4227 12130 101 120[/pre]
The Gamma-Ray Pulsar #3 pair, as expected from experience on other platforms, got very low GPU loading, very low credit production, restricted the possible count of pure CPU jobs to 1 (as compared to two for the other two cases) and took enough resources to drive down the iGPU productivity as well. I intend to take a look at the method recently posted by Gary Roberts to allow GRP3 pure CPU jobs but not GPU of the current flavor.

While none of these measurements has so much accuracy as I'd like for fine-grained comparisons, and there is probably a least at modest tuning opportunity (which I'll have a try at) and overclocking opportunities (which I won't), I think for those considering the base-model GTX-750 as an add-on to a reasonably capable system they won't be far wrong in thinking:

card cost US $120 (probably lower in a few months)
added system power consumption when running 43 watts
added standby system power consumption 10 watts
added credit/day 25,000 to 30,000 at Einstein

While certainly not a champion of the high end, it is an attractively low-cost, low impact option. In particular the short card length makes it a much easier fit in even a slightly crowded case than were my Gigabyte GTX460 or GTX660. The low power consumption greatly reduces the likelihood that one needs an upgraded power supply. (I'm using a repurposed Nexus 430 watt model which I had lying around).

Happily the Einstein/BOINC software made getting use of both the Intel HD4400 graphics on the Haswell CPU chip and the nVidia graphics on the GTX 750 free of trouble or complication. Both just worked with the first drivers I installed, and without any special BOINC configuration save for changing the Einstein preferences for the particular location (aka venue) to which I assigned the card to allow use of the GPU types and work types involved.

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