The machine I'm typing this message on is a stock Dell Dimension E520, with Pent D 2.8 processor, 5Gb RAM, and Win 7 Ultimate 64bit. It has an HD4770 card in it running Milkyway at 94% and 73C, and CPU's running at 100%. The whole shebang draws 220W from the wall socket via my powermeter, which is well withing the 305W stock PSU.

I'm getting virtually the same RAC from it as my 4850 cards with less heat and less power needed. In terms of bang for buck I can't beat a 4770 for a lower end DP card.

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Don't drink water, that's the stuff that rusts pipes

Hey! Wanted to mention AGP bus cards. I am currently running an ATi HD3850 on an AGP bus with the most recent CCC, drivers, and AMD/ATi AGP bus patches.

Though this card does not * officially* support Stream or Open CL on an AGP form factor (the 3850 PCIe does), it seems to perform well.

I am currently running MW@Home on my AGP rig (2.8Ghz Pentium Dual core, Radeon HD3850 AGP) and am currently running out an average credit of ~10,000 with a turnaround time of 0.09days. This is using BOINC. I am unsure if its using ATi Stream or Open CL.

Joined MW@H 4 days ago, and have already racked up 123,000 credits on my AGP computer.

Long and short of it:

Please add the HD38XX AGP series as a supported GPU.

Also, if you have an older AGP number cruncher, and want to add some punch, now you know what to pick up lol. :)


http://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/show_host_detail.php?hostid=298446

It would appear that you are using your three i7 computers' CPU's as well as your 3850.
While the 3850 is doing about twice as much work as one i7 (all 8 threads), together the three i7's could do about 1.5 times (ball park) as much as your 3850:

63434273 43112228 2 Jul 2011 | 17:25:34 UTC 2 Jul 2011 | 19:37:23 UTC Completed, validation inconclusive 857.24 32.78 pending MilkyWay@Home v0.82 (ati14)
63404084 43091741 2 Jul 2011 | 16:20:48 UTC 2 Jul 2011 | 18:37:33 UTC Completed, validation inconclusive 722.74 41.12 pending MilkyWay@Home v0.82 (ati14)
63377855 43074532 2 Jul 2011 | 15:26:52 UTC 14 Jul 2011 | 15:26:52 UTC In progress --- --- --- MilkyWay@Home v0.88
63317894 43034981 2 Jul 2011 | 13:27:38 UTC 2 Jul 2011 | 15:40:05 UTC Completed, validation inconclusive 427.71 20.36 pending MilkyWay@Home v0.82 (ati14)
63268920 43002552 2 Jul 2011 | 12:05:42 UTC 14 Jul 2011 | 12:05:42 UTC In progress --- --- --- MilkyWay@Home N-Body Simulation v0.66 (mt)
63098450 42875711 2 Jul 2011 | 5:41:11 UTC 14 Jul 2011 | 5:41:11 UTC In progress --- --- --- MilkyWay@Home v0.88
63090193 42885939 2 Jul 2011 | 5:40:04 UTC 14 Jul 2011 | 5:40:04 UTC In progress --- --- --- MilkyWay@Home N-Body Simulation v0.66 (mt)
63083446 42881359 2 Jul 2011 | 5:33:56 UTC 2 Jul 2011 | 19:13:30 UTC Completed, validation inconclusive 5,919.47 10,948.85 pending MilkyWay@Home N-Body Simulation v0.66 (mt)

My HD 5850 run times vary from 212sec down to 91sec, making it about 5 times as fast as an HD 3850 or roughly 20 times as fast as an i7.
The Enthusiast (Cayman) cards are about 2 times as fast as an HD 5850 - Just a bit of perspective.

PS. If I remember correctly the 3870 should also work.

Well, 3 computers' CPU's (no idea where I got 3 i7's from).
Furl, while I'm glad to see your 3850 works, why are you using your HD3850 but not really using your HD 4700/4800?

By the way, I would suggest you use Boinc 6.10.33 rather than 6.10.26.

@Furl Hawkens
and as I read you are a very new cruncher: There is an option in the
Assistant/Settings Menue:

"Use GPU during computer is used" This makes sure if you are doing some other work on the PC (Mail, Office, WEB-Browsing, etc) the GPU chruches.

Wenn you need the GPU for gaming or video etc., you can pause the GPU working for BOINC in the Quick- Taskbar.

This makes sure if you are doing some other work on the PC (Mail, Office, WEB-Browsing, etc) the GPU chruches.

And you need to be aware that having MW crunch using the GPU all the time can make using IE8, MS/Word, Excel, or even scrolling through a long list of files in a folder a painfully slow experience. With an HD5870 crunching, I'm frequently reaching for the Snooze GPU option just to do basic work.

This makes sure if you are doing some other work on the PC (Mail, Office, WEB-Browsing, etc) the GPU chruches.

And you need to be aware that having MW crunch using the GPU all the time can make using IE8, MS/Word, Excel, or even scrolling through a long list of files in a folder a painfully slow experience. With an HD5870 crunching, I'm frequently reaching for the Snooze GPU option just to do basic work.

I'm not seeing that on my machines (3850/4870/4870/5970).

This makes sure if you are doing some other work on the PC (Mail, Office, WEB-Browsing, etc) the GPU chruches.

And you need to be aware that having MW crunch using the GPU all the time can make using IE8, MS/Word, Excel, or even scrolling through a long list of files in a folder a painfully slow experience. With an HD5870 crunching, I'm frequently reaching for the Snooze GPU option just to do basic work.

On my machines, that essentially stopped when I told BOINC to use all but one of the CPU cores on each computer, and leave the other one free for other uses. However, I seldom do much other than BOINC projects which makes heavy use of the GPU, such as computer games or watching videos.

In case you're not aware of it yet, few if any of the Nvidia GT 3xx series boards are likely to have double precision, since most of them were essentially older designs with new part numbers.

I'm not seeing that on my machines (3850/4870/4870/5970).

Then I wonder what the difference is. The HD5870 is running under XP SP3. Since the new MW ATI apps, the system has been nearly unusable due to this UI lag.

The HD5870 is running under XP SP3.

XP tends to have this lag problem much more than Win7 on many GPU projects. PrimeGrid is another one. XP also tends to have higher GPU utilization because of the way graphics are handled (as the GPUGriders know). On MW you can use an app_info.xml and set parameters:

--process-priority (-b). On Windows this is 0 (lowest) - 4 (highest) 

--gpu-target-frequency 

--non-responsive 

Thanks for the info on running the GPU always, though I had already set it. I have been crunching with Boinc for a few years now, just new to MW@H lol.


As for why I'm not using my 4890, only the 3850, its cuz the 4890 overheats. It always has unfortunately,

Its an XFX Radeon HD4890 XXX edition, with a "lifetime warranty". When running stress tests, or distributed computing projects (ie anything that actually pushes it) it will completely overheat (ie pass 100c and lock the comp). It does ok for games, but still averages in the 95c mark when playing things like crysis and GTA-IV.


When I contacted XFX they actually told me that the card was never designed to be pushed the way that furrmark or DC projects do. They said that unless it started to fail from overheating with normal PC games that they refused to warranty it out. They straight out told me not to run the programs that are overheating it lmao...

This was when the card was brand new, still has the issues, still holding me back, and they still refuse to warranty it...

All this was through email, so I still have it in writing, if anyone here wants to see.

My advice, avoid XFX.

As for why I'm not using my 4890, only the 3850, its cuz the 4890 overheats. It always has unfortunately,

MW@H is very low dependant on memory-clock; that means, you can 'underclock' your card without significant loss of credit, but remarkable loss of heat. I use 'Afterburner' for that.

There were several discussions in the past. Many crunchers tested that, it works.

As for why I'm not using my 4890, only the 3850, its cuz the 4890 overheats. It always has unfortunately,

MW@H is very low dependant on memory-clock; that means, you can 'underclock' your card without significant loss of credit, but remarkable loss of heat. I use 'Afterburner' for that.

There were several discussions in the past. Many crunchers tested that, it works.

already tried. If I underclock my gpu, mem, or both, to points that are thermaly acceptable, I begin to get constant corruption of the data thats being processed.

I cant get it low enough, and have it stay stable enough, for DP calculations apparently...

Is that model designed to have a fan that pushes air past the GPU, then out of the case, instead of circulating it within the case? When I switched from a model circulating the hot air within the case to a model using about the same power but blowing the hot air out of the case, the GPU temperature dropped about 30 degrees C.

I think we are spaming again this thread.


I invite you to go on here here

I have a question for the GPU nVidia crunchers,

I have a pc with a 425W power supply so only a GeForce GTX 550Ti
will work. According to this threat it will run MW.
However when I go to the nVidia site, there is no information available about this card. What does that mean?
And which brand do you suggest?

Thanks.

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Greetings from,
TJ

Hi TJ I have a similar problem. I see that ATI 4870 is on the list but it is aborting 100% of the WU and then it says computation error.

I run MW@home stock app 0.82 and I have the latest drivers....
So I am at a loss.

I have 100% failure rate for last 3 days and I dont know why.

Martin

It abort it then it keeps crunching until it reaches 100% then it say computaion errors?

Any help anyone?

ATI 4870 driver version 8.861.0.0
Boinc 6.12.33

Martin

Martin, I have a HD 4770 and had similar problems when I updated the ATI drivers. I kept going back to 10.12 which worked consistently. I finally got 11.6 to work by first completely uninstalling the old drivers and rebooting before the new install.

This may or may not work for you, but it's worth a try if you didn't do this already.