26 April 2009
GPUgrid 1 million
After a bit of manual intervention I hit 1 million credits for GPUgrid today. Below is my certificate.
25 April 2009
This week had Einstein off the air pretty much for the whole week. Apparently their database server crashed and they had to build another machine to become a DB server. Their database was so huge that it wouldn't stay up so they had to purge large numbers of old work units to get it to a size that would work. As of today they are back on the air but may run out of work during the weekend.
As a result of Einstein being off the air the CPU's ran dry a couple of times, but the GPU's had plenty of work thanks to GPUgrid. I rejoined CPDN (climateprediction.net) and have 4 tasks running on one machine. They will be going all week.
Highlights of this week
While I was updating graphics cards I had to reinstall (in the 2 machines that had the 9800GT's) the drivers. I put the 182.50 driver on all the machines with the GTS250 cards. I am yet to update the drivers in Maul.
With all the new graphics cards my GPUgrid score is rising and not too far off the 1 million credits milestone.
Seti@home is coming up on its 10 year anniversary and they are having an open day. Not that I have been crunching Seti for that long. I did reach 10,000 "classic" work units on the 8th of July 2005. This was before they started using the BOINC platform. As I am nowhere near Berkeley, California it would be rather hard for me to attend. I will have to settle for an anniversary T shirt.
The BOINC software is having a few issues with swapping tasks out when it shouldn't be, so there is much discussion going on about the best approach to use when scheduling cuda tasks in particular. I will be testing it again.
As a result of Einstein being off the air the CPU's ran dry a couple of times, but the GPU's had plenty of work thanks to GPUgrid. I rejoined CPDN (climateprediction.net) and have 4 tasks running on one machine. They will be going all week.
Highlights of this week
- Additional pair of GTS250's installed
- nVidia drivers update to 182.50
- GPUgrid nearing 1 million credits
- Seti@home 10 year anniversary
- Further BOINC testing
While I was updating graphics cards I had to reinstall (in the 2 machines that had the 9800GT's) the drivers. I put the 182.50 driver on all the machines with the GTS250 cards. I am yet to update the drivers in Maul.
With all the new graphics cards my GPUgrid score is rising and not too far off the 1 million credits milestone.
Seti@home is coming up on its 10 year anniversary and they are having an open day. Not that I have been crunching Seti for that long. I did reach 10,000 "classic" work units on the 8th of July 2005. This was before they started using the BOINC platform. As I am nowhere near Berkeley, California it would be rather hard for me to attend. I will have to settle for an anniversary T shirt.
The BOINC software is having a few issues with swapping tasks out when it shouldn't be, so there is much discussion going on about the best approach to use when scheduling cuda tasks in particular. I will be testing it again.
20 April 2009
GTS250 GPU-Z screenshot
Here is a GPU-Z screen shot of one of the new GTS250's.
Highlights of this week
- Two GTS250 cards arrived and installed
- Ordered another pair of GTS250 cards
- BOINC 6.6.23 being beta-tested. Seems to be a bit better for GPU work
- Downloaded (but yet to try) nVidia drivers 182.50
As mentioned above BOINC 6.6.23 was released. It has a couple of improvements for GPU handling. It seems to be more reliable with GPU work. It still has (from earlier 6.6 versions) issues with suspending tasks for no reason and running others, but still its an improvement.
18 April 2009
GTS250 - part 1
The two GTS250 cards arrived this week, so I installed them. I like them so much I have ordered another pair. Speed-wise they seem to be about 20-25% faster than the 9800GT while using the same wattage. Price-wise they cost about $20 more than the 9800GT.
On Wednesday I swapped the 9800GT card for a GTS250 in Luke. I did this one first as it has already had its power supply upgraded. After a reinstall of the drivers its off and running.
On Friday I replaced the power supply in Obi-Wan. I then put the other GTS250 in there. As with Luke I had some fiddling with the black plastic clip that holds the metal plates on the back plane. I ended up filing it back for the GTS250. After installing the drivers its off and running.
You can see the heat pipes from the heatsink in this shot and the fan. Its hard to tell from the photos (the plastic shroud gets in the way) but there is a heatsink between the circuit board and the fan. It is slightly wider than the heat pipes.
On Wednesday I swapped the 9800GT card for a GTS250 in Luke. I did this one first as it has already had its power supply upgraded. After a reinstall of the drivers its off and running.
On Friday I replaced the power supply in Obi-Wan. I then put the other GTS250 in there. As with Luke I had some fiddling with the black plastic clip that holds the metal plates on the back plane. I ended up filing it back for the GTS250. After installing the drivers its off and running.
You can see the heat pipes from the heatsink in this shot and the fan. Its hard to tell from the photos (the plastic shroud gets in the way) but there is a heatsink between the circuit board and the fan. It is slightly wider than the heat pipes.
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