Posts by mikes

1) Message boards : Number crunching : GPU Requirements (Message 51039) Posted 13 Sep 2011 by mikes Post: Based on the numbers above, the A8-3850's 6550D (600MHz core, 400 stream processors) is approximately 1/4 the speed of the HIS 6950 (840MHz core, 1408 stream processors) for number crunching purposes. The IGP is 25 times faster than a single core on the A8-3850 for the same kind of Collatz and Primegrid tasks. The HIS 6950 is 101 times faster. Thanks much for posting this, pretty interesting. It seems the A8 IGP is much faster than anything previously integrated with the CPU. Not a bad crunching option for corporate users and those not wanting to buy expensive GPUs. One last question, any idea of the power draw (total watts: GPU running WUs, not running WUs). Unfortunately, I managed to kill my kill-a-watt and my UPSs with meters in them are all tied up. Anand puts the A8-3850 at 43.6W idle and 126W loaded, however. At stock speeds, with all cores and the IGP crunching, with a CM Hyper 212+ HSF installed, it heats up to somewhere between 36 and 38C in a room that is between 82 and 85F.
2) Message boards : Number crunching : GPU Requirements (Message 50994) Posted 9 Sep 2011 by mikes Post: What completion times are you getting on other projects (Collatz, Moo!, Primegrid)(OCed and stock speeds)? Due to some strange issues I had with the Gigabyte A75M-UD2H, I swapped to an ASUS F1A75-V PRO which is proving to be a much better board. I can now use both the integrated GPU on the A8-3850 and the 6950 simultaneously. This is a very small sampling at stock speeds (everything is stock, no tuning at all yet since I just got the system together) but here are some timings. A8-3850 IGP on mini_collatz 2.09 (ati13ati) Run 1: 12:56 Run 2: 13:09 Run 3: 13:25 HIS 6950 on mini_collatz 2.09 (ati13ati) Run 1: 3:11 Run 2: 3:07 Run 3: 3:14 A8-3850 single core on mini_collatz 2.00 (sse) Run 1: 5:24:27 Run 2: 5:12:03 Run 3: 5:04:34 A8-3850 IGP on collatz 2.09 (ati13ati) Run 1: 1:44:46 Run 2: 1:46:21 HIS 6950 on collatz 2.09 (ati13ati) Run 1: 26:34 Run 2: 26:12 A8-3850 IGP on Primegrid task (I forgot to capture the application name): Run 1: 2:05:34 HIS 6950 on Primegrid task: Run 1: 31:57 Based on the numbers above, the A8-3850's 6550D (600MHz core, 400 stream processors) is approximately 1/4 the speed of the HIS 6950 (840MHz core, 1408 stream processors) for number crunching purposes. The IGP is 25 times faster than a single core on the A8-3850 for the same kind of Collatz and Primegrid tasks. The HIS 6950 is 101 times faster.
3) Message boards : Number crunching : GPU Requirements (Message 50980) Posted 7 Sep 2011 by mikes Post: What completion times are you getting on other projects (Collatz, Moo!, Primegrid)(OCed and stock speeds)? I will get back to you on this. I am still playing around with the system and threw a HIS 6950 in it last night, thinking I would be able to have BOINC recognize two distinct GPUs but it seems that the Gigabyte A75M-UD2H BIOS disables the IGP when a discreet card is added that it cannot do hybrid crossfire with. Any options to tune the IGP just vanish from BIOS with the 6950 plugged in (at least in the x16 slot, I haven't tried the x4 slot yet).
4) Message boards : Number crunching : GPU Requirements (Message 50969) Posted 6 Sep 2011 by mikes Post: Has anyone had a chance to see if the new AMD Llano APUs have DP Graphics and any experience with getting MW@H to run on them? I know AMD has put a lot into marketing these chips as having integrated direct computer capabilities, but it wont help us here if the double-precision ability is not there, otherwise it looks like a very power-efficient alternative. I recently built a system using the A8-3850 and it does not support DP on the GPU. Figured I would post my experiences in case anyone goes looking through these threads. The other projects that support AMD/ATI GPUs that do not require DP math will recognize and use the A8-3850's integrated GPU, however. The IGP only runs at 600MHz by default and, while there are BIOS out there (I'm looking at you, A75M-UD2H) that offer you an option to overclock the GPU only, it does not work. The only way to overclock the IGP currently is to raise the BCLK for the entire CPU. I was able to get the IGP from 600MHz to 876MHz with 146 x 6 but it came at significant cost of power and heat. So no, no DP on the Llano IGPs.