Greetings from San Antonio

[BeauZaux]

Been in and out from the beginning of SETI. Always on older computers, so never made much of a dent. Still on older computers, but think I'm doing better. A lot of my fun is trying to squeeze the most out of these old machines. Hoping for tips and questions answered from the group. Of course I like the idea of helping scientific research. I'm active on GPUGRID, WCG, and Asteroids@home. Laying off of SETI while I experiment with my computer and the idiosyncrasies of different projects. Thanks for having me. Retired USAF & USPS.

 

[Nick Name]

Welcome to the team and forum, we're delighted to have you! I think a lot of us are running older hardware so you're not alone. You've come at a great time to get some GPUGrid work, after a long dry spell there's plenty available. WCG now requires you to opt-in for your stats to count, so make sure to do that. There are a few projects requiring that, listed here.

https://www.boincusa.com/img/WCG/WCG_optin.png

Let us know if we can help in any way, and again: Welcome!

 

[supdood]

Yes, welcome. I'm also on old, slow machines--I enjoy seeing how keeping these devices out of the e-waste stream and steadily crunching every day can add up to a nice contribution for science. Happy to answer any questions that you have.

 

[BeauZaux]

Thanks for the advice Nick and I'm the same way, supdood. I got a couple of shoe boxes or so of 8 & 16 bit cards I may post on ebay. I've done some GPUGRID work and I thought it was pretty intense. Takes some balancing to run CPUs for other projects (WCG). But then I saw Nick msg about Rosetta and the coronavirus and thought I should jump on that. OMG! GPUGRID and Rosetta on one PC is a disaster. So I had already found Asteroid is pretty gentle and seems to be working fine with Rosetta on my dual GPU machine. Never mind, just looked and Asteroid has 952 days to complete on one GPU, 2 CPU cores open and 4 running Rosetta. Ok, more tinkering. I'll have to search the forums for the best setting. Thanks, again for having me.

 

[Nick Name]

Thanks for the advice Nick and I'm the same way, supdood. I got a couple of shoe boxes or so of 8 & 16 bit cards I may post on ebay. I've done some GPUGRID work and I thought it was pretty intense. Takes some balancing to run CPUs for other projects (WCG). But then I saw Nick msg about Rosetta and the coronavirus and thought I should jump on that. OMG! GPUGRID and Rosetta on one PC is a disaster. So I had already found Asteroid is pretty gentle and seems to be working fine with Rosetta on my dual GPU machine. Never mind, just looked and Asteroid has 952 days to complete on one GPU, 2 CPU cores open and 4 running Rosetta. Ok, more tinkering. I'll have to search the forums for the best setting. Thanks, again for having me.

Unfortunately I don't think BOINC can run on anything less than 32 bit these days. GPUGrid does push cards pretty hard. It might be the most demanding project, along some some of the PrimeGrid apps. If you want to run it but noise and heat are a problem, set a power limit with something like Nivida Inspector. I usually set one for mine around 85%, it doesn't compromise production too much but keeps the cards cooler and quieter.

The coronavirus work at Rosetta requires a LOT of RAM, some have seen those jobs taking up to 3.5 gigs. Most people are going to have problems running out of memory. The best solution is to limit the number of tasks that run at a time with an app_config.

<app_config>

<project_max_concurrent>N</project_max_concurrent>

</app_config>

Set N to a number that suits your needs.

Asteroids is gentler because it's poorly optimized for GPU, plus it requires double-precision like MilkyWay which has been nerfed on Nvidia's consumer cards. It's actually better run as a CPU project.

 

[BeauZaux]

Unfortunately I don't think BOINC can run on anything less than 32 bit these days. GPUGrid does push cards pretty hard. It might be the most demanding project, along some some of the PrimeGrid apps. If you want to run it but noise and heat are a problem, set a power limit with something like Nivida Inspector. I usually set one for mine around 85%, it doesn't compromise production too much but keeps the cards cooler and quieter.

The coronavirus work at Rosetta requires a LOT of RAM, some have seen those jobs taking up to 3.5 gigs. Most people are going to have problems running out of memory. The best solution is to limit the number of tasks that run at a time with an app_config.

<app_config>

<project_max_concurrent>N</project_max_concurrent>

</app_config>

Set N to a number that suits your needs.

Asteroids is gentler because it's poorly optimized for GPU, plus it requires double-precision like MilkyWay which has been nerfed on Nvidia's consumer cards. It's actually better run as a CPU project.

Got GPUGRID to run fine on both GPU as long as I run nothing on CPU. Rosetta ran fine on six cores, as long as nothing on GPUs. Other PCs I have, can't handle much. Asteroid crashed GPU, guess it must run without CPU tasks. Tried leaving some cores open to no avail, it's all or nothing. Or I have a GPU problem. Argh. Asking for help on another thread.