Wow it's been a decade for me

MAGIC Quantum Mechanic
MAGIC Quantum M...
Joined: 18 Jan 05
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It won't be long until I hit

It won't be long until I hit that 11th year mark and start my 12th year here.

The best thing is I have no idea how much money I have spent on electricity and computers to get this far

Gary Roberts
Gary Roberts
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RE: ... no idea how much

Quote:
... no idea how much money ...


Whatever it is, it's not enough ... so get cracking man!! ;-) :-).

I just saw a good deal (~$US90) at my favourite local store (ie. not newegg) on these GPUs, (R7 260X) so I decided to give one a go. I've been waiting to see what GTX 950s would be like but at a local price of ~$US190, they're way too expensive for me at the moment. Even a 750Ti costs around $US130 so I'm waiting to see some 'throw-out' prices on 7xx as the 9xx series takes over. I know the 260X isn't in the same league, but at least it's cheap and gives me something new to play with :-).

I've just installed the 260X in an old Q8400 quad core and it's running the first two tasks right now. They have just on an hour of elapsed time and are 22% complete so looks like two tasks in ~4.5 hours. At that rate it should eventually get to +50K RAC. I have a HD7770 that gets ~45K and since a 260X is basically an overclocked 7790, it should do quite a bit better than a 7770. I started it at 2x to get a baseline in performance but (based on the 7770) it will do better at 3x and since it has 2GB RAM, I'll probably even give 4x a go. At the moment there is one free core (3 FGRP4 tasks running) but that will change to 2 free when I try 3x or 4x.

EDIT: With both GPU tasks at 50% complete, the time was 2hrs 18mins so the estimate was 4hrs 36mins for the pair to be 100% completed. At that 50% point, I edited app_config.xml to change the 2x settings of gpu_usage & cpu_usage (0.5 & 0.5) to 0.33 & 0.67 respectively (these being the appropriate values for running 3x with 2 free cores) and forced a re-read of the config files through BOINC Manager.

The third GPU task started up and reached 25% at 1hr 36mins. The other two tasks progressed to 75% over the same interval so all three were progressing nicely at equal rates. Full completion at 3x should be around 6hrs 24mins. At 2x the time for a single task is around 2hrs 18mins. At 3x it should be around 2hrs 8mins. So 3x will be better than 2x by close to 8%.

I'll let this host continue at 3x for a while (probably just overnight. :-). Tomorrow, I'll give it a run at 4x to see what happens :-). I expect to be going back to 3x but you never know if you don't try :-).

Cheers,
Gary.

MAGIC Quantum Mechanic
MAGIC Quantum M...
Joined: 18 Jan 05
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Yes I always keep an eye on

Yes I always keep an eye on the price for any of the faster video cards Gary, but it would be hard to catch up with you and not let the wife know I added several more pc's to my collection

I do have one desktop that might come back to life if I can get a new HD or SSD with the OS installed and probably drivers for this particular HP version so it will even boot up (had that happen before) it is a quad-core with about 5 years under its.....CPU belt.

Plenty of ram and I have an extra GeForce 550Ti with just 1gb to test it with before I upgrade the card with a better one on sale.

I only use newegg to read those reviews they always have and check tigerD for a sale price but I sure have seen some nice deals at Ebay and since I didn't trust that I tested one dealer there by buying an exact replica of this pc that is on the repair list and had it sent to me and it only took 3 days and it works perfect AND was only $255 total so I guess I can at least trust that one dealer @ Ebay

The only version I have ever used have been GeForce but those other cards look tempting.

johannes
johannes
Joined: 6 Jun 05
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It bears

It bears repeating:
Congratulations to the project team for creating and maintaining this most excellent of distributed science projects!
Thank you for a fruitful and entertaining decade!

KWSN-GMC-Peeper of the Castle Anthrax
KWSN-GMC-Peeper...
Joined: 6 Oct 05
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providing free resources to

providing free resources to grad students for over 16 years now.

mikey
mikey
Joined: 22 Jan 05
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RE: The only version I

Quote:

The only version I have ever used have been GeForce but those other cards look tempting.

There are advantages to adding other brands of gpu's to the group of crunchers, it not only let's you spread out a little bit into other projects, but it also let's you see which brand is better in YOUR machine as opposed to someone elses machines. And as Gary has shown you don't need the latest and greatest gpu as long as you have massive quantities of gpu's.

Chris S
Chris S
Joined: 27 Aug 05
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15 years this month at Seti

15 years this month at Seti and 10 years at Einstein :-)

Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)

Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now

Der Mann mit der Ledertasche
Der Mann mit de...
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Ten years done! Have a look

Ten years done! Have a look for a bottle of "Malt" for this Event.😎😉

Greetings from the North

Harri Liljeroos
Harri Liljeroos
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Ten years for me also! :-)

Ten years for me also! :-)

Mike Hewson
Mike Hewson
Moderator
Joined: 1 Dec 05
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Ooops, missed the very day !

Ooops, missed the very day ! Ten years and a fortnight today ..... congrats to all 'tenner' crunchers thus far and all those who will be. :-)

Cheers, Mike.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

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