As the title says... I've got a host that has a 5870 in it and it performs quite well.

My question is, if anyone is running a mixed setup using a 58x0 and a 48x0 card in the same host and if that setup slows down crunching (that's what i expect compared to running a 58x0 card in single mode) or is worth running.

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I tried to get an HD5850 and an HD4850 running on the same PC about a year ago and never succeeded. I just could not get BOINC to recognise the HD4850. The HD5850 was in the primary graphics slot. I tried to move the GPUs around and only got the HD5850 recognised.

Obviously it was not on this project, but DNEC.

I and others concluded that mixed series ATI cards could not be mixed and work together.

But, your software skills may be able to do so.

As the title says... I've got a host that has a 5870 in it and it performs quite well.

My question is, if anyone is running a mixed setup using a 58x0 and a 48x0 card in the same host and if that setup slows down crunching (that's what i expect compared to running a 58x0 card in single mode) or is worth running.

IF you get it running reports from others say that the slower card will bog down the system ALOT!! The faster gpu will finish its part of a unit but not start a new one until the slower card finishes its part of the unit, so no advantage for doing it. Now IF you install Boinc TWICE to two DIFFERENT locations on your hard drive, you CAN tell each each Boinc to not use one of the gpu's, so Boinc will think you have only one gpu in the system, which you will...one for each Boinc! You STILL have the problem of making your system find both gpu's first though!

I tried to get an HD5850 and an HD4850 running on the same PC about a year ago and never succeeded. I just could not get BOINC to recognise the HD4850. The HD5850 was in the primary graphics slot. I tried to move the GPUs around and only got the HD5850 recognised.

One problem is that graphic drivers get activated only when the graphics adapter is used. This means that when no monitor is attached, the system (BOINC) will not recognize the card. The easiest way to fix this is to fake a monitor with a dummy plug.

Read more here; http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=167450

I think it should be possible to get both cards recognized in 1 boinc instance. Although I'm not sure about performance...

As the title says... I've got a host that has a 5870 in it and it performs quite well.

My question is, if anyone is running a mixed setup using a 58x0 and a 48x0 card in the same host and if that setup slows down crunching (that's what i expect compared to running a 58x0 card in single mode) or is worth running.

http://moowrap.net/show_host_detail.php?hostid=5542 5870 & 4870 running together for over a year now. Had some trouble last week, when I unknowingly managed to start a second boinc client, which broke things a bit until I noticed it.
BR

Vid,

Power off the 4870, and run WUs against the single 5870. The times should be around the same as what you now have. The 4870 is slowing the 5870 down to 4870 speeds to no gain (maybe 1 or 2 mins), you just waste power running an extra card for no real time increase.

A single 5870 should be doing these in around 25-28 mins depending on the clock settings - pretty much the same as what you have using both a 5870 & a 4870.

Easy to check - just unplug the power lead to the 4870 and run a WU, there will be no significant time change, in terms of justifying additional power draw, to completion compared to both running.

Regards
Zy

As the title says... I've got a host that has a 5870 in it and it performs quite well.

My question is, if anyone is running a mixed setup using a 58x0 and a 48x0 card in the same host and if that setup slows down crunching (that's what i expect compared to running a 58x0 card in single mode) or is worth running.

http://moowrap.net/show_host_detail.php?hostid=5542 5870 & 4870 running together for over a year now. Had some trouble last week, when I unknowingly managed to start a second boinc client, which broke things a bit until I noticed it.
BR

Bit like what Zydor said, the 5870 does 9 to 10 of the Stat Units and the 4870 only does 3 to 4 (depends on whether 12 Stat Unit or 14 Stat Unit WU).
Times with both cards has a low of 1400 seconds (23 minutes) to around 1600 seconds (27 minutes) against the Single 5870 doing them in 1500 seconds (25 minutes) to 1800 seconds (30 minutes).

So you are only speeding things up by 2 minutes.

But it is good to see that you got them working together, proves it can be done.
For games it would probably work great, just not so good for crunching unfortunately.

Conan

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Vid,

Power off the 4870, and run WUs against the single 5870. The times should be around the same as what you now have. The 4870 is slowing the 5870 down to 4870 speeds to no gain (maybe 1 or 2 mins), you just waste power running an extra card for no real time increase.

A single 5870 should be doing these in around 25-28 mins depending on the clock settings - pretty much the same as what you have using both a 5870 & a 4870.

Easy to check - just unplug the power lead to the 4870 and run a WU, there will be no significant time change, in terms of justifying additional power draw, to completion compared to both running.

Regards
Zy

Did that. It was even easier, no plugs to pull out, just a checkbox to uncheck. 4870 is now sleeping and WUs take on average 300s more to complete, which amounts to a cca. 20% slowdown. Must check electricity bill if savings are in the same or similar range.
BR

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