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floyd

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Message 53024 - Posted: 10 Feb 2012, 16:09:38 UTC

Until recently I was crunching with this setup:
    Intel Core2Duo running Debian Squeeze
    Nvidia GTX260 with driver 260.19.44, specifically selected for Milkyway because of the excessive CPU usage in later versions
    BOINC 6.12.34

Everything was running fine, but then I started to get MilkyWay@Home v1.00 jobs. Yes, I got those without any tricks, but they all crashed with what I think were OpenCL errors. So I decided to try a later GPU driver, first 275.43, now 290.10. But I don't get work any more. The log says

Rejecting newer opencl_nvidia application due to older Nvidia drivers

Right, BOINC doesn't seem to recognize the driver:
NVIDIA GPU 0: GeForce GTX 260 (driver version unknown, CUDA version 4010, compute capability 1.3, 895MB, 560 GFLOPS peak)

And sched_request_milkyway.cs.rpi.edu_milkyway.xml contains this line in the coproc_cuda section:
<drvVersion>0</drvVersion>

So how do I get GPU work from Milkyway again? If you'd like to make any suggestions, please keep this in mind:
    I'm not running alpha software (BOINC 7)
    I don't do babysitting (app_info.xml)
    I can't afford to burn a full CPU core just to keep the GPU busy so I'd like to revert to the 260.19.44 driver

Perhaps you could drop the version check? Oh, and Nvidia's recommended Linux driver is still a v275. You shouldn't require more than that if you really need a minimum version, but from the announcement I got the impression that the old drivers should still work.
Sorry if my first post here sounds like a rant, but I am a bit disappointed because everything is messed up again after it started to work flawlessly with the new server. I was just about to order a second GPU, will have to cancel that for now. Hopefully I will be back in business soon.

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Matt Arsenault
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Message 53029 - Posted: 10 Feb 2012, 17:50:08 UTC - in response to Message 53024.  

I can't afford to burn a full CPU core just to keep the GPU busy so I'd like to revert to the 260.19.44 driver
The new version has a workaround for it. By default it isn't particularly aggressive about trying to reduce it, but for me it keeps around 50%.

Right, BOINC doesn't seem to recognize the driver:
NVIDIA GPU 0: GeForce GTX 260 (driver version unknown, CUDA version 4010, compute capability 1.3, 895MB, 560 GFLOPS peak)
I added the fallback version check against the CUDA version which is still reported.

Perhaps you could drop the version check?
A bug showed up in the older drivers. I'm not sure which ones but I knew that 280.xx+ was OK. I'll loosen the version restrictions as I know more about which versions are bad. 1.02 possibly avoids the issue but I'm not sure yet.
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Matt Arsenault
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Message 53038 - Posted: 10 Feb 2012, 19:02:24 UTC - in response to Message 53024.  

It looks like my workaround did work on a variety of drivers so I dropped the limit back to what it was before.
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floyd

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Message 53042 - Posted: 10 Feb 2012, 19:23:51 UTC - in response to Message 53029.  

I can't afford to burn a full CPU core just to keep the GPU busy so I'd like to revert to the 260.19.44 driver
The new version has a workaround for it. By default it isn't particularly aggressive about trying to reduce it, but for me it keeps around 50%.

Right, BOINC doesn't seem to recognize the driver:
NVIDIA GPU 0: GeForce GTX 260 (driver version unknown, CUDA version 4010, compute capability 1.3, 895MB, 560 GFLOPS peak)
I added the fallback version check against the CUDA version which is still reported.


Thanks Matt, I got a batch of 1.02 work units and right now I am watching the first ones run. The numbers look excellent. With the 290.10 driver CPU load is about 2%, just as good as the 0.90 application with the 260 driver. So there's no need to go back to that. I'll try Nvidia's stable 275 driver though, no doubt that will work, too.
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floyd

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Message 53043 - Posted: 10 Feb 2012, 20:06:50 UTC - in response to Message 53042.  

I'll try Nvidia's stable 275 driver though, no doubt that will work, too.

Well, it does work, but with 40% load. Back to 290 then.
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