Discussion Thread for the Continuous GW Search known as O2MD1 (now O2MDF - GPUs only)

Mr P Hucker
Mr P Hucker
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TBar wrote:It's starting to

TBar wrote:

It's starting to look as though the Einstein Server is too old to properly execute the Exclude option. The only way I've been able to download any different tasks is to remove the other task from the preferences and then drastically increase the cache setting. I currently have only gravity selected in the preferences, I have 16 gamma tasks onboard estimated to take 23 minutes each, and the cache setting is One day. The Server refuses to send any tasks alleging none are needed.

So far, the only Wingman I've seen for a gravity task is a machine running a 2 GB GPU, and that task failed rather quickly, https://einsteinathome.org/workunit/450248518

 

 

I was told elsewhere that Einstein refuse to use the latest Boinc software on their servers.  There may be a good reason though, it's a lot of hassle to change all their programming over or something.

 

What they really need to do is make gravity tasks work on older equipment.  How many of us have a powerful CPU and GPUs with over 4GB on them?

If this page takes an hour to load, reduce posts per page to 20 in your settings, then the tinpot 486 Einstein uses can handle it.

mikey
mikey
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Peter Hucker wrote:  What

Peter Hucker wrote:

 

What they really need to do is make gravity tasks work on older equipment.  How many of us have a powerful CPU and GPUs with over 4GB on them?

So if it took 3 times as long and yet you got the same credits you do right now it would be okay with you? How about 5 or 10 times as long and the same credits? At some point each Project has to leave older gpu's behind and move forward as the things we are doing also move forward.Most Projects have left less than 1GB gpu'sbeindand nolong support them. a couple do but they are dwindling, the same thing will happen to less than 4gb gpu's. I just did a quick search of 2080 gpu's and they come with 8gb standard and up to 11gb was easy to find and they were released 2 or 3 years ago.

On a personal note I use an AMD/ATI 460 gpu here which has 4gb and cost me $100 used and it works just fine for the units I crunch here.

Mr P Hucker
Mr P Hucker
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mikey wrote:Peter Hucker

mikey wrote:
Peter Hucker wrote:

 

What they really need to do is make gravity tasks work on older equipment.  How many of us have a powerful CPU and GPUs with over 4GB on them?

So if it took 3 times as long and yet you got the same credits you do right now it would be okay with you? How about 5 or 10 times as long and the same credits? At some point each Project has to leave older gpu's behind and move forward as the things we are doing also move forward.Most Projects have left less than 1GB gpu'sbeindand nolong support them. a couple do but they are dwindling, the same thing will happen to less than 4gb gpu's. I just did a quick search of 2080 gpu's and they come with 8gb standard and up to 11gb was easy to find and they were released 2 or 3 years ago.

On a personal note I use an AMD/ATI 460 gpu here which has 4gb and cost me $100 used and it works just fine for the units I crunch here.

Not everyone is as rich as you.  I buy 2nd hand cards, they're 3GB.  I buy them because they give the most flops per £.  If Einstein can't work on them, I'll use another project.

If this page takes an hour to load, reduce posts per page to 20 in your settings, then the tinpot 486 Einstein uses can handle it.

mikey
mikey
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Peter Hucker wrote:mikey

Peter Hucker wrote:
mikey wrote:
Peter Hucker wrote:

 

What they really need to do is make gravity tasks work on older equipment.  How many of us have a powerful CPU and GPUs with over 4GB on them?

So if it took 3 times as long and yet you got the same credits you do right now it would be okay with you? How about 5 or 10 times as long and the same credits? At some point each Project has to leave older gpu's behind and move forward as the things we are doing also move forward.Most Projects have left less than 1GB gpu'sbeindand nolong support them. a couple do but they are dwindling, the same thing will happen to less than 4gb gpu's. I just did a quick search of 2080 gpu's and they come with 8gb standard and up to 11gb was easy to find and they were released 2 or 3 years ago.

On a personal note I use an AMD/ATI 460 gpu here which has 4gb and cost me $100 used and it works just fine for the units I crunch here.

Not everyone is as rich as you.  I buy 2nd hand cards, they're 3GB.  I buy them because they give the most flops per £.  If Einstein can't work on them, I'll use another project.

As I said I bought mine for only $100 which is a used price as well.  In fact I've bought several used gpu's lately all thru FaceBooks Marketplace and from people near me.

As far as which Project you run that's always one we crunchers have to make. I would love to put my AMD cards on  Asteroids but they don't have an app for that so they are elsewhere.

Tom M
Tom M
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What I think I am hearing

What I think I am hearing everyone say is you can run either GW or Pulsar#1 on your GPUs but they don't "share" very well?

So you should pick one or the other but not both.

Which means run one on the GPUs and one on the cpus?

Tom M

 

A Proud member of the O.F.A.  (Old Farts Association).  Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® (Garrison Keillor)  I want some more patience. RIGHT NOW!

Ian&Steve C.
Ian&Steve C.
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No you can run both, but you

No you can run both, but you can’t run both while restricting One or more cards in your system to only 1. 

either run 1 or the other, or both. But not something in between like running both one 1 GPU and only GR on another GPU

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Mr P Hucker
Mr P Hucker
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mikey wrote:As I said I

mikey wrote:
As I said I bought mine for only $100 which is a used price as well.  In fact I've bought several used gpu's lately all thru FaceBooks Marketplace and from people near me.

It depends on what you choose - you might factor in electricity usage, price, flops on double or single precision etc.  The best one for me was the 280X, which I bought four of.  I buy everything through Ebay in my entire life except for food which is Tesco home deliveries.  Ebay is easy to use, loads of choice, and a good price.  Ok, I forgot Gumtree.  If I want a 2nd hand washing machine or some left over bricks, I look on Gumtree, it's like a local Ebay for stuff too heavy to ship.  I never understood using Facebook to buy things.  Facebook is a chatroom, it's way too complicated to find and arrange purchase of things.  On Ebay or Gumtree I can type what I want into a search, and if it's large and I want to pick it up myself then I can ask for things within x miles of my address.

mikey wrote:
As far as which Project you run that's always one we crunchers have to make. I would love to put my AMD cards on  Asteroids but they don't have an app for that so they are elsewhere.

Is it just me or does Boinc get addictive?  I'm putting way too much money into this.  I get things running then think "but I'd like to run that project too", or "they've got a really cool new sub project I want to put more power into".

 

 

If this page takes an hour to load, reduce posts per page to 20 in your settings, then the tinpot 486 Einstein uses can handle it.

Mr P Hucker
Mr P Hucker
Joined: 12 Aug 06
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Credit: 519327146
RAC: 14219

Ian&Steve C. wrote:No you can

Ian&Steve C. wrote:

No you can run both, but you can’t run both while restricting One or more cards in your system to only 1. 

either run 1 or the other, or both. But not something in between like running both one 1 GPU and only GR on another GPU

 

So if you have two types of GPUs, best to put one lot on a different machine, then you can easily set different rules for each.

 

I wonder, could this be done by running multiple clients on one computer?  Can you restrict each client to only see some of the GPUs?

If this page takes an hour to load, reduce posts per page to 20 in your settings, then the tinpot 486 Einstein uses can handle it.

Mr P Hucker
Mr P Hucker
Joined: 12 Aug 06
Posts: 838
Credit: 519327146
RAC: 14219

Tom M wrote:What I think I am

Tom M wrote:

What I think I am hearing everyone say is you can run either GW or Pulsar#1 on your GPUs but they don't "share" very well?

So you should pick one or the other but not both.

Which means run one on the GPUs and one on the cpus?

Tom M

 

CPUs are way slower than GPUs, so it's pointless getting them to do stuff that your GPU could do.  But Einstein (I think it's the only project that does this) allows you to not "Run CPU versions of applications for which GPU versions are available" - it's in the project preferences on the website.  This means your CPU will only do stuff that cannot run on a GPU.

If this page takes an hour to load, reduce posts per page to 20 in your settings, then the tinpot 486 Einstein uses can handle it.

Ian&Steve C.
Ian&Steve C.
Joined: 19 Jan 20
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Peter Hucker wrote:I

Peter Hucker wrote:

I wonder, could this be done by running multiple clients on one computer?  Can you restrict each client to only see some of the GPUs?

yes that's definitely possible. I've done that. but it's not very elegant, you have to do some manual configuration to exclude some GPUs from the each boinc instance and allow multiple clients, and start the second boinc instance in the terminal and manually attach another boinc manager using a different port number.

but it will work if you are willing to go through the process and do this manual configuration.

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