Hi guys,

I'd really love to crunch for you but I'm the owner of a not-so-fast GPU (GT 440) and even though I've only selected the short WUs in my preferences, the reporting deadline is just not enough for me. Maybe extend it with 2 more days and I'll be happy. I also GPU crunch on other projects (PrimeGrid, M@H, E@H, etc) and after a few "experiments" trying to crunch for GPUGRID, I see I barely can report in time...

And I don't want to hear "buy a faster card" as my budget doesn't allow it. Is there really a reason for such short deadlines?

To follow up a bit on it, could this be my problem for WUs taking so long? The GT 440 has 96 cuda cores, while the GPUGRID seems to think it only has 16, if I'm interpreting this correctly

# There is 1 device supporting CUDA
# Device 0: "GeForce GT 440"
# Clock rate: 1.64 GHz
# Total amount of global memory: 1073283072 bytes
# Number of multiprocessors: 2
# Number of cores: 16

GPUGRID needs short deadlines because new work units are generated from the results of the previously completed work units. The faster work units are completed, the quicker the GPUGRID team can investigate the target research, whether it be protein simulation/drug binding etc. If your budget doesn't allow for anything greater than a GT440, then unfortunately GPUGRID really isnt't the project for you (unless the devs have something planned for the future).

If you don't have any loyalty to the BOINC framework, you should really try folding@home, where the GT440 gets very respectable numbers for the $ and watt.

Regards

To follow up a bit on it, could this be my problem for WUs taking so long? The GT 440 has 96 cuda cores, while the GPUGRID seems to think it only has 16, if I'm interpreting this correctly

To follow up a bit on it, could this be my problem for WUs taking so long? The GT 440 has 96 cuda cores, while the GPUGRID seems to think it only has 16, if I'm interpreting this correctly

I think what's happening is that the GPUgrid application can use only 16 of the 96 cores due to the GT 440's architecture or compute capability. You can probably find other projects that have apps that can use all of your 96 cores.

Thanks for the reply, guys :)

I'm currently eyeing a GTX 560 from ASUS. Though I only have a 450W power supply in my cruncher. Not sure if that'll be enough for it...

When its not a no name PSU then it will be no problem. This card does not take that much. About 150W
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DSKAG Austria Research Team: http://www.research.dskag.at

Thanks for the reply, skgiven :)

Yes, I also crunch on the GPU for 3 other projects (Einstein, Milkyway and PrimeGrid) so with GPUGRID in it, I have 4 projects on the GPU. My cache setting is set to 0 so it should report results immediately. I haven't touched the "switch between applications" option so it is currently set at 60 minutes. I'll increase it as suggested

My cache setting is set to 0 so it should report results immediately

My cache setting is set to 0

My cache setting is set to 0

Create the cc_config.xml as Retvari suggested.

Also, your statement that your cache is 0 isn't absolutely clear so I offer the following suggestion just to make sure. The cache is governed by 2 settings. The "Connect about every__days" should be 0 and the "Additional work buffer__ days" should be very small, I use 0.1.

Some news...

My last WU took 34 hours to compute on the GT 440. I barely made it and was actually 5 minutes over the deadline (which was set at 19:45 CEST) and I reported at 19:50. Luckily I did get the credit. I've no idea why I got it as I was full 5 minutes late in reporting. Still nice to have it, though :)

The stderr output for that 34 hour task shows you're not using swan_sync=0 and the task seems to have restarted repeatedly. Did it get preempted repeatedly by other projects or did it run uninterrupted? If you set the "switch between tasks every..." to 900, the task should run 15 hours without being preempted, unless you have other tasks that go to high priority mode. Any high priority tasks?

Put "export SWAN_SYNC=0" in your .bashrc file so it initializes SWAN_SYNC every time you boot and then run that command in a terminal to initialize it for the current session. Then exit BOINC client and restart it to restart the task with SWAN_SYNC=0. Some say it makes no difference, others claim it does.

You allow BOINC to use all 6 of your cores. So then you have 6 CPU tasks running plus the GPU task, right? Try allotting BOINC only 5 cores so that 1 core is free to service the GPU. To do that set "On multiprocessor systems use at most..." to 83%. That might decrease your run times too.

Hey Dagorath

Yes, I have SWAN_SYNC=0 in my bashrc, but I haven't rebooted yet so I shall initialize it now and restart boinc. About freeing one CPU core, I don't think that'll make a difference as the Linux scheduler switches tasks dynamically between different cores - it doesn't lock a task to a single core for the whole time. I also set the "switch between applications" to 10 hours instead of 15. And no, there were no high-priority tasks running on the GPU

Hey Dagorath

Yes, I have SWAN_SYNC=0 in my bashrc, but I haven't rebooted yet so I shall initialize it now and restart boinc. About freeing one CPU core, I don't think that'll make a difference as the Linux scheduler switches tasks dynamically between different cores - it doesn't lock a task to a single core for the whole time. I also set the "switch between applications" to 10 hours instead of 15.