Posts by Beyond

\n studio-striking\n
21) Message boards : Number crunching : Low CPU utilization with differing GPU models (Message 2053)
Posted 2 Jan 2012 by Profile Beyond
Post:
I'm unsure if having differing GPU models is causing this, but I've got a GTX460 and a GTX570 in a machine. The WUs are attempting to use both GPUs but i'm getting 0% utilization with occasional spikes.

Hmm, that spiking doesn't sound good. If everything is optimal, the cards should be constantly loaded, if not 100% but close. (Except occasionally your faster card would finish all work before the slower one so faster card would flatline until slower card finishes the last packet.)

This might be a driver issue, or it could be due to not having enough CPU power available for the D.Net Client to keep feeding work to your GPUs. It's also possible that the cards are overheating, or OS/some other apps is interfering, to the level to stop running our workload. -w

My Moo! machines are all ATI and I'm seeing this spiking also on all 7. Drivers are 11.9 and 10.12, both run about the same here. Doesn't matter if there's any other CPU load or not, Afterburner shows the GPU load jumping from around 40% to as high as 99% (sometimes staying at 40-80% for most of the WU). A very few WUs will run at ~99% all the way. Looking at the WU completion times for these boxes compared to similar machines on the stats pages they seem to be as fast as anything out there so I assume this is normal.

Tried running 4 dual ATI GPU boxes again. One (2 x 5850 cards) ran OK but now and then a WU would just stop processing until I intervened. Not good. Two others ran miserably slow and I mean SLOW, so they got pulled quickly. The 4th is running OK so far. Interestingly it has 2 x 4770 cards and 10.12 drivers. Go figure. The BOINC clients are 6.12.41-43 on everything. All are Win7-64.

Edit: Also the dual GPU machine uses about 40% of a CPU core for Moo! while the single GPU machines all use < 1%.
22) Message boards : Number crunching : Unbalanced credit awarded between AMD and Nvidia (Message 2038)
Posted 1 Jan 2012 by Profile Beyond
Post:
Those with several PCs and mixed ATI and nVidia GPUs, not in the same box, can pick and choose their projects.

Actually project flexibility is greater if the machine does have mixed ATI & NVidia GPUs.
23) Message boards : Number crunching : Unbalanced credit awarded between AMD and Nvidia (Message 2026)
Posted 1 Jan 2012 by Profile Beyond
Post:
It's because your AMD is MUCH faster for this project than your NVidia. The NVidia WU sizes are much smaller and therefore get fewer credits.
24) Message boards : News : Happy Holidays! (Message 1966)
Posted 28 Dec 2011 by Profile Beyond
Post:
I am here right now - and want to use the moment to send
New Year greetings to all of you. ;-) May 2012 become a good
year for each and one of you - and a fun and interesting year
for crunching. ;-D

Thanx for all good times in 2011! And Teemu.. thanx for
the work you do with this project. ;-)

Well said on all accounts. Wishes for the best for everyone in 2012 and beyond.

Namaste/Beyond
25) Message boards : News : Happy Holidays! (Message 1911)
Posted 25 Dec 2011 by Profile Beyond
Post:
Santa is so sweet :)
26) Questions and Answers : Windows : Cannot ignore 2nd ATI on Moo (Message 1078)
Posted 23 Sep 2011 by Profile Beyond
Post:
Actually, you can't use the command line switch since you'd need to give it to the client part but there are only ways you can give it to the wrapper part, which ignores it. Sorry about adding to your confusion there. :(

Err, no, wait. You actually can if you use Anonymous platform and modify job XML file that has the d.net client command line right there. More confusion. :)

Did you try this way and it didn't work? -w

Yep, that's what I did. It didn't work at DNETC either. I'm running my multi ATI boxes at MW/Collatz and the ATI card on the 4 machines with mixed ATI/NVidia here. One GPU/WU works way better than two (for me at least).
27) Questions and Answers : Windows : Cannot ignore 2nd ATI on Moo (Message 855)
Posted 29 Jul 2011 by Profile Beyond
Post:
Just to be clear: you don't have to physically remove the video card from the PC, just disconnect the video cable (VGA, HDMI or DVI) before launching Boinc Manager so only 1 card is detected at startup

Tried it and the Moo! client still grabbed both cards. Downloaded the WUs with only 1 GPU detected by BOINC and restarted after replugging the 2nd GPU. Unfortunately, no go.
28) Questions and Answers : Windows : Cannot ignore 2nd ATI on Moo (Message 836)
Posted 24 Jul 2011 by Profile Beyond
Post:
So shutdown and remove one of the video cards every time we need to DL work. Download the WUs then shutdown, replace the 2nd GPU and restart. Ouch. Might work but a PITA. Over time this can't be good for the machine either.

Just to be clear: you don't have to physically remove the video card from the PC, just disconnect the video cable (VGA, HDMI or DVI) before launching Boinc Manager so only 1 card is detected at startup

Ah, that makes it a lot easier. Might give it a try. Thanks for the explanation.
29) Questions and Answers : Windows : Cannot ignore 2nd ATI on Moo (Message 832)
Posted 24 Jul 2011 by Profile Beyond
Post:
Try using method 2/ (load as many WUs as possible with 1 video card plugged before you start Boinc Manager) before restarting Boinc Manager with 2 GPUs connected/recognized + using the exclusion tag in the config file.
This should work fine...

2/ If you start BM with only 1 GPU plugged THEN load as many WUs as desired, each of them will only require 0.4 CPU + 1 GPU in the future (even if BM is restarted with 2 cards installed)
In this case, you can process 2 WUs in parallel without problem and the CPU usage is less than 1% per task. You can even mix DNETC WUs with Collatz ones (didn't try with Milky but I guess this should work as well)

So shutdown and remove one of the video cards every time we need to DL work. Download the WUs then shutdown, replace the 2nd GPU and restart. Ouch. Might work but a PITA. Over time this can't be good for the machine either.
30) Message boards : Number crunching : CPU Benchmark appeared to cause WU error (Linux_AMD64) (Message 827)
Posted 23 Jul 2011 by Profile Beyond
Post:
I have observed a couple of intermittent failed WUs on a Linux_AMD64 machine.

These failed WUs occurred very far apart.

I was unable to work out what exactly was causing the problem until one occurred while I was watching.

Normally I can manually suspend and resume a WU without any problems.

On this occasion the BOINC Manager suspended all projects to execute the scheduled CPU Benchmark cycle.

At the start of that event the WU failed.

It was approximately 80% through.

It may be related to the problem I posted here:

http://moowrap.net/forum_thread.php?id=91

WUs that are stopped and restarted are marked invalid. All other WUs validate fine.
31) Questions and Answers : Windows : Cannot ignore 2nd ATI on Moo (Message 809)
Posted 16 Jul 2011 by Profile Beyond
Post:
But really, if other projects such as DNETC can use the distributed.net programs while honouring BOINC's preferences, why can't Moo! Wrapper do that?

AFAIK no one has been able to run WUs on 1 ATI GPU in a machine with 2 or more ATIs at DNETC either. It was also a big issue over there. The difference is that Teemu has been forthcoming with good explanations on the subject rather than trying to cover up or ignore it.
32) Questions and Answers : Windows : Cannot ignore 2nd ATI on Moo (Message 806)
Posted 16 Jul 2011 by Profile Beyond
Post:
I have been testing this and I cannot reproduce it. The <ignore_ati_dev>0</ignore_ati_dev> does ignore my only ATI GPU on this project. I only request and actually do get work for the CPU.

To completely ignore ATI or NVidia or CPU all you have to do is uncheck the appropriate box in the project preferences. His problem is that once the dnet client starts an ATI WU it detects and grabs both GPUs at the client level. Since you're ignoring your only ATI, BOINC manager isn't DLing the ATI WUs at all so no problem in your case. It's very different.
33) Questions and Answers : Windows : Invalid WUs (Message 803)
Posted 15 Jul 2011 by Profile Beyond
Post:
Looking at some of the top computers shows that the above pattern holds. All the WUs marked invalid are ones that have been restarted at some point. All the valid WUs I've checked (a lot) are ones that have been run to completion without being interrupted in any way. Anyway if this is a known problem let me know and I'll not investigate further...
34) Questions and Answers : Windows : Invalid WUs (Message 795)
Posted 14 Jul 2011 by Profile Beyond
Post:
Looking through my 4 invalids on various machines there appears to be a commonality. All of them are WUs that have been restarted after a BOINC restart. The WUs that process without interruption are always marked valid. A bug in the client or validator?
35) Questions and Answers : Windows : Cannot ignore 2nd ATI on Moo (Message 792)
Posted 13 Jul 2011 by Profile Beyond
Post:
The client does have a -numcpu command line option and also related ini-file settings. However, I'm not sure if those are effective for GPUs or only for CPU crunchers.. Regardless, selection of device it runs on is missing so one can only "ignore" devices in the end of detection chain. -w

I tried the -numcpu switch a while ago and it didn't work for GPUs. Is the code available for the distributed.net client? If so would it be possible to remove the "use all GPUs" part?
36) Message boards : Number crunching : Too high CPU core estimation (Message 679)
Posted 21 Jun 2011 by Profile Beyond
Post:
Thanks Teemu for posting the information on BOINC task scheduling and changing the CPU reservation. The WUs are running great at .05 CPU on all my machines and it allowed me to increase my Moo! participation. Thanks again for the change.
37) Message boards : Number crunching : AMD 11.6 seems to be Ok on 5XXX (Message 678)
Posted 21 Jun 2011 by Profile Beyond
Post:
Zydor thanks for the info. All my ATI cards are 4770, 5850 & 5870 so it looks like 10.12 is a good place to stay for now. It works well when running with mixed ATI / NVidia too.
38) Message boards : Number crunching : AMD 11.6 seems to be Ok on 5XXX (Message 676)
Posted 21 Jun 2011 by Profile Beyond
Post:
v10.12 works great on all my boxes (on Moo!, MilkyWay, Collatz, PrimeGrid). Any particular reason to upgrade?
39) Message boards : Number crunching : Too high CPU core estimation (Message 647)
Posted 17 Jun 2011 by Profile Beyond
Post:
There's no reason it should be calling for .84 CPU Can this estimation be lowered or do I have to go to the bother of an app_info.xml?

The code that calculates that value is default and I tried to figure out why it sets it to a high number like that. It's calculating that by assuming 1% of the task is run on CPU, which also scales up if you have more than one GPU. Unfortunately CPUs are so much underpowered compared to GPUs (especially ATI cards) that the value usually ends somewhere in .8 to .95 on most power crunching rigs. :(

I'll change that value on the server side. Probably will set it to a static 0.05 that's popular on other GPU projects.

-w

Thanks Teemu. Interesting that the CPU reservation doesn't really affect how much CPU is being used, just that when it's set too high it keeps BOINC CPU tasks from running.
40) Message boards : Number crunching : Too high CPU core estimation (Message 638)
Posted 14 Jun 2011 by Profile Beyond
Post:
Some of my combination NVidia / ATI GPU machines alternate between Moo!, Collatz & MW. When Moo! is swapped in often one of the CPU tasks is suspended. I believe this is because Moo! is set to use .84 GPU even though it uses very little. When it pairs with the .17 GPU used by the PrimeGrid app that is always running on the NVidia it adds up to over 1 CPU and suspends a CPU process. There's no reason it should be calling for .84 CPU Can this estimation be lowered or do I have to go to the bother of an app_info.xml?


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