Thanks - good to know for when I make the move. Does the 5850 require a higher power supply profile than the 4850?

The 58xx series does have double precision, it is the 68xx series that does not have it.

We are still waiting to see what happens with the 78xx series.

I know my 5830 needs 2 pci-e power connectors, but I think the 4830 only needs one.

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The Guru3D 5850 review:

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-5850-review-crossfire/

Regards
Zy

Right, the 4870 requires two leads, the 4850's only one.

I know my 5830 needs 2 pci-e power connectors, but I think the 4830 only needs one.

What command would be added to the the app-info file to throttle back GPU usage? It's currently at 99% and I'd like to pull it back to 80-85%.
Win7 64 bit. Radeon 5830.

With the new app you don't need the app_info-file to control GPU load - it's now only necessary if you want to run multiple instances on one GPU. If you want to use it anyway the command line parameter apparently wasn't changed from the old app:
--gpu-target-frequency XX

Raising XX lessens the GPU load and increases the run time (default is now 60).

With the new app it's easier controlled in the Milkyway@home preferences: Frequency (in Hz) that should try to complete individual work chunks

For some reason the frequency setting in the M@H preferences is ignored. The GPU runs @ 99% no matter what the setting. I tried a target frequency in the app-info file with separation 1.02 and it caused the GPU frequency and power draw to be all over the place. Had to switch back to 0.82 to get things running smoothly again. Only thing I can figure is it must be some kind of a hardware thing on my setup.

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I found that once I had everything set to go, I needed to just leave it alone. The WUs came in one at a time and it took a few minutes to get the next one. I had to force myself not to babysit and manually update Boinc trying to get more work every time it ran out. I let it go overnight with no other GPU projects running. By morning it was running just as before.

That worked for me too, all 4 of my 5870's now have lots of work!

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Results

Config:
HD6950, unlocked shaders (HD6970), 900 MHz GPU, 625 MHz memory, Win 7 64, i7 2600K @ 4.0 GHz, BOINC 6.12.34

Before:
0.82 CAL + app_info, 1 WU at a time, parameters: --process-priority 3 --gpu-disable-checkpointing
Times: 53 - 54s GPU, 2.4s CPU

Now:
1.02 OpenCL, no app_info, using AVX code path
default: 56s GPU, 3.3s CPU
setting refrseh rate to 10 Hz: 55s GPU, ~2.9s
setting refrseh rate to 1* Hz: 55s GPU, ~2.9s

That's about 3.5% slower. Previously the error rate was ~0.7%, so if these were fixed now (can't tell yet) overall throughput would be less than 3% lower. That's about 7800 credits/day less.. but running without an app_info if nicer.

MrS

(*) No worries, the IGP is driving my display ;)

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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

BOINC 6.10.58 appears to be for Mac OS X. Is it safe to run in windows?

Been running 6.10.58 for a long time on Win before I switched to 6.12.

MrS

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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

For some reason the frequency setting in the M@H preferences is ignored. The GPU runs @ 99% no matter what the setting. I tried a target frequency in the app-info file with separation 1.02 and it caused the GPU frequency and power draw to be all over the place. Had to switch back to 0.82 to get things running smoothly again. Only thing I can figure is it must be some kind of a hardware thing on my setup.

Strange

I'm running now without app_info and the default frequency of 60Hz -> GPU load 82-85%. Before I removed the app_info I was running with "--gpu-target-frequency 40". I left it in when I switched from 0.82 to 1.00. According to the results it was used and run times where lower than now (with 60Hz).
Maybe the varying GPUs react differently to the setting.

Edit: A quick test changing the web preferences to 40Hz: result
The setting change was recognized by the app -> GPU load 90-91%.

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Starfire

Thanks, I'll give it a try.

Why is your CPU load so low? I'm leaving one logical core free on my i7 and that nails GPU utilization at 99%. Otherwise performance suffered too much for my taste (0.82).

MrS

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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

Ok, it has been a long road switching from mw v0.82 with cat 11.3 to mw v1.02 with cat 12.1. Done several tests on the way.

(The driver updates gave several hickups, needing manual cleanup after uninstall and cleaner program before installing the next version.)

System is WinXP 32bit with HD5850 @775MHz
(last tweaking of app settings only days ago)

v0.82 CAL, cat 11.3: ~84.5s
v0.82 CAL, cat 11.8: ~84.5s (reasonable higher system kernel times, less responsive)
v0.82 CAL, cat 11.9: ~92.5s (system kernel times and response a little better)
v0.82 CAL, cat 12.1: ~84.5s (system kernel times high, system response bad)
v0.82 CAL, cat 12.1: ~85.3s (relaxed polling to make system responsive again)

For mw v0.82 CAL, cat 12.1 is slightly slower than 11.3 but far better than 11.9.

For collatz and moo I have the impression cat 12.1 is a little faster than 11.3 but no numbers to verify it. Cat 11.8 and 11.9 did _not_ impress there too.

v1.02 OpenCL with default params showed high system kernel use, polling 0 dropped gpu use to 90%, polling 1 to ~83%. So I am using polling 0 with a far reduced wait factor for now. Still thinking there must be a wait factor + polling > 0 but couldn't find one without loosing bad on gpu load. Need to play more with the params to get a better understanding how they work together in this new version. The actual setting has to do for now.

v1.02 OpenCL, cat 11.9: ~81.3s (cpu time includes system kernel times here!)
v1.02 OpenCL, cat 12.1: ~80.9s (system kernel times hidden again)

Cat 11.9 showed a high system kernel use, that was 'just' to get under control with setting command line params. With cat 12.1 and the same settings the system kernel times are roughly cut into half, so it gives a little more comfort related to system response. I think I got pretty close (within less than 1s/WU) to the best time possible before system response goes downhill again.

Along these lines: I discovered that while futzing around with Catalyst and boinc 7.08 that my online boinc account thinks I have 40 wu's in progress that I don't have in boinc manager. Pretty sure that's why I'm not getting wu's. Any solution besides waiting till 2/23 for the units to time out?

Along these lines: I discovered that while futzing around with Catalyst and boinc 7.08 that my online boinc account thinks I have 40 wu's in progress that I don't have in boinc manager. Pretty sure that's why I'm not getting wu's. Any solution besides waiting till 2/23 for the units to time out?

Detach and reattach would be the quickest method.

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My error rate is down to ~0.1% from a starting value of 0.7 - 0.8%.
Good job here:

The occasional validate errors from empty / truncated stderr should stop

Edit: using the same command line parameters as with 0.82 I'm still seeing the same crunching speed as reported above.

MrS

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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

I've updated all of the separation applications to 1.00. For changes people might care about,

- The old CAL version is gone; it's replaced with the OpenCL application. On AMD/ATI GPUs (older than 79xx) it is using some hackery to use the same IL kernel as before so it should be as fast. However this also means the Radeon 38xx cards aren't supported with new stuff.

- Radeon 79xx stuff should work

- The occasional validate errors from empty / truncated stderr should stop

- AVX will be used if available on Linux and Windows (64 bit only for Windows)

- I've increased the default GPU target frequency so GPU stuff should make things less laggy on average. You can now also configure this with the web preferences now so you don't need to use app_info stuff if you want to play with that.

- Partial workaround with high CPU usage with recent Nvidia drivers.*

As usual post problems you run into here.



* It should cut down on the CPU usage a bit while not sacrificing too much. I would recommend not using it unless you are very unhappy with the CPU usage on Nvidia. There are options to change the polling mode if you want to lower the CPU usage further while not slowing it down. (--gpu-wait-factor (default = 0.75) and --gpu-polling-mode (default = - 2) work similarly to how they did with the old CAL one, but slightly different). With the default of -2 it will use mode -1 unless it is an Nvidia driver newer than the one that introduced the high CPU issue, where it will use mode 0. Mode -1 uses the correct waiting method, mode 0 use the correct waiting method with an initial sleep based on time estimates, and modes > 0 are a polling period in milliseconds. The wait factor is a sort of correction of the time estimate used for the initial wait. The default is 0.75, to wait for 75% of the estimated time before trying to poll.

Well Ok I see someone else has gone all Beta or maybe that should be Alpha, I'm getting 97-98% cpu use(295) and about 78%(285) while doing a gpu app. Help. I run Windows 7 x64b sp2 w/16GB ram, My driver is 275.50 x64(If I use an older gpu driver then Boinc doesn't see any usable gpu cards, 280.xx produce reboot bsods and that leaves 290.53, 291.51 causes problems someone said over at S@H and it's been reported to Nvidia), I have a GTX285 and a GTX295 in this PC and no other PCs. I use Boinc 6.10.58 x64.

Frequency is set at 120, tried 60 that didn't seem to help or am I missing something?

Maximum CPU % for graphics 0 ... 100: 0

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[quoteWell Ok I see someone else has gone all Beta or maybe that should be Alpha, I'm getting 97-98% cpu use(295) and about 78%(285) while doing a gpu app.[/quote]It's yet another Nvidia driver problem introduced in 270.something

Well Ok I see someone else has gone all Beta or maybe that should be Alpha, I'm getting 97-98% cpu use(295) and about 78%(285) while doing a gpu app.

It's yet another Nvidia driver problem introduced in 270.something

Sorry, but My experience with Open CL is all beta so far, so 27x.xx is a problem, would 290.53 do better? I won't touch 28x.xx as that only gave Me reboot Bsods. I've tried 266.58 with Boinc not seeing any cards. An AP Nvidia app over at S@H is only usable with 266.58 or earlier and using It with 27x.xx or newer caused driver crashes as It was only certified to with pre 27x.xx drivers so far and it's an Open CL app too. Otherwise CAL is all that will work for Me and I think You've possibly abandoned that, unless I'm wrong on that, Open CL seems to have some teething problems and the latest 295.51 beta driver is not good as it seems to have some serious problems I've read, I think Arky can confirm this.

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I haven't tried 290 anything yet