TPU's WCG/BOINC Team

[Jstn7477]

Looks like my 2 Phenom II systems that I was having issues this week with have stabilized. I think the stock Thuban heatpipe cooler was playing up on my M3A78-CM as it froze about 2 minutes after boot, so I went into BIOS and found the CPU running at 55c idle. Threw my leftover Xigmatek Loki on it and brought down that BIOS temp to 38c, and it's still running which is a good thing.

I currently have "money burning in my wallet" disorder and I'm really tempted to build a 3770K mATX rig to crunch and possibly become my home server (currently running an X6800 @ 3.2/ASRock 4CoreDual-SATA2/GF 6200 AGP/4GB DDR2 and a Minecraft server consumes 80% of the addressable 3.2GB RAM and regularly pegs out one or both of the CPU cores). Or, I could use it all for crunching lol.

Norton, I know your 980x really wants a home and makes 12K PPD, but I have no X58 gear and the platform in general is really power hungry. I know a 3770K seems illogical compared to a dime-a-dozen Vishera or whatever, but AMD doesn't seem to have any CPUs that can do 7500 PPD and sip 65w of electricity while doing so.

I'm a hypocrite for running ridiculously old hardware currently, but once it quits working I have no plans to buy any dated hardware or repair it. The low PPD/watt and need for several tons of air conditioning capacity running 24/7 needs to stop soon, preferably when we move into our "new" building in a few months. I'm not going to have the space or the electrical capacity for running 3K PPD or less rigs that consume 200w or more each, as it's really wasteful. One 3770K can easily replace the 6-7 crappiest machines in my signature, and use a fraction of the energy.

 

[HammerON]

Looks like I have a stuck WU on one of my HD 7970's

 

[mstenholm]

Looks like I have a stuck WU on one of my HD 7970's
http://img.techpowerup.org/121219/Capture029279.jpg

I get them once or twice a week on my 7950. They run 40 hours and is either at 0 or 50 % which isn't that great when you are 10.000 miles from the rig and without internet most of the time. I don't know if it is a bad OC (925 to 990 with stock voltage) but this Asus run cool so I'm doubtful. The 61 C you have on GPU 0 is OK in my book but maybe 1100 MHz is pushing it to far? I'm not saying that with our little competition in mind

 

[Xenturion]

Well, gentleman, after stopping my main rig for a while, I've got it back up and crunching. An i7920 and 2 GTX 480's in an NZXT H2 is a bit of a struggle against thermals. When I installed my Antec Kuhler, rather than use the included fan, I used my AeroCool Shark, which had been the bottom intake of my case, and replaced the shark with a simple NZXT Case Fan. That was great, but I started to notice that my GTX 480's were running considerably warmer. So, I put the AeroCool Shark back as the bottom intake and used the case fan as the fan on the Antec Kuhler 620. Then the problem went the other direction with the GTX 480's well provided for, but the weak fan wasn't pulling enough air through the radiator to properly cool the i7-920. Even at full fans and with the front door of the case open, the CPU would creep past 80C. I replaced the fan with a PUREX brand fan I picked up from MicroCenter for $9 and it works great. It's actually surprisingly well rated at 2.1mm-H20, 70CFM, 32dBA. Sure the packaging has some spelling mistakes and the company named themselves identical to a household cleaning supply company, but the thing works wonders. Full day of crunching yesterday and the CPU didn't even break the 80C barrier.

I've also got my brother's Christmas present up and crunching, too, and if I'm honest, pulling down more PPD than mine. 4Ghz i5-2500K and a 7970 is quite the combo. I don't even have multiple Work Units running on the 7970 so it's going under-utilized. WCG is a great strest test. Fairly varied workloads and actually uses some storage and some networking as well. Definitely confident the BitFenix Prodigy build I made for him is stable and ready to go. I'm going to be demanding his current system, Phenom II X3 720 and HD 6870 as tribute, though, which will give me something to mess around with.

Hyper-Threading:
I'm curious what your opinions are on using Hyper-Threading in WCG? Seems like a good way to boost you're total time contribution, seeing as the work units should, theoretically, take twice as long, but you're running twice as many. I leave HT off on my i7-920, in part because I like to know that the Windows Scheduler doesn't even have the option of assigning two threads to a single physical core, but also, because in my experience in WCG, hyper-threading simply raises temperatures assuming you're running 100% utilization. If I turn HT Off and then run 4 threads, my CPU would run, on average, about 10C cooler than if I had HT On with the full 8 threads. I chalk the heat up to the cache swaps that I'm sure have to occur significantly more frequently with 8 threads than 4. I do see that a fair number of people are indicating they're running HT Threads, so I'm curious what other people think of it.

 

[Norton]

@ Xenturion- Hyper-threading will definitely boost your output but not likely by 100% (50-60% boost is more likely). The hyperthreading will fill in the gaps in the processing of the work units with additional work from the other threads.

Case in point- a 2500k will output less than a 2600k at the same clocks with the hyperthreading on. The Team members here running mostly Intel should have more info than I do (I run mostly AMD stuff).

You can experiment a bit by dropping your clocks some and turning hyper-threading back on and checking your output, heat, etc...

 

[[Ion]]

Well, gentleman, after stopping my main rig for a while, I've got it back up and crunching. An i7920 and 2 GTX 480's in an NZXT H2 is a bit of a struggle against thermals. When I installed my Antec Kuhler, rather than use the included fan, I used my AeroCool Shark, which had been the bottom intake of my case, and replaced the shark with a simple NZXT Case Fan. That was great, but I started to notice that my GTX 480's were running considerably warmer. So, I put the AeroCool Shark back as the bottom intake and used the case fan as the fan on the Antec Kuhler 620. Then the problem went the other direction with the GTX 480's well provided for, but the weak fan wasn't pulling enough air through the radiator to properly cool the i7-920. Even at full fans and with the front door of the case open, the CPU would creep past 80C. I replaced the fan with a PUREX brand fan I picked up from MicroCenter for $9 and it works great. It's actually surprisingly well rated at 2.1mm-H20, 70CFM, 32dBA. Sure the packaging has some spelling mistakes and the company named themselves identical to a household cleaning supply company, but the thing works wonders. Full day of crunching yesterday and the CPU didn't even break the 80C barrier.

I've also got my brother's Christmas present up and crunching, too, and if I'm honest, pulling down more PPD than mine. 4Ghz i5-2500K and a 7970 is quite the combo. I don't even have multiple Work Units running on the 7970 so it's going under-utilized. WCG is a great strest test. Fairly varied workloads and actually uses some storage and some networking as well. Definitely confident the BitFenix Prodigy build I made for him is stable and ready to go. I'm going to be demanding his current system, Phenom II X3 720 and HD 6870 as tribute, though, which will give me something to mess around with.

Hyper-Threading:
I'm curious what your opinions are on using Hyper-Threading in WCG? Seems like a good way to boost you're total time contribution, seeing as the work units should, theoretically, take twice as long, but you're running twice as many. I leave HT off on my i7-920, in part because I like to know that the Windows Scheduler doesn't even have the option of assigning two threads to a single physical core, but also, because in my experience in WCG, hyper-threading simply raises temperatures assuming you're running 100% utilization. If I turn HT Off and then run 4 threads, my CPU would run, on average, about 10C cooler than if I had HT On with the full 8 threads. I chalk the heat up to the cache swaps that I'm sure have to occur significantly more frequently with 8 threads than 4. I do see that a fair number of people are indicating they're running HT Threads, so I'm curious what other people think of it.

That's awesome that you're getting so much going, thank you!
The HD7970 is an incredible card (and even the HD6870 is very solid). Unfortunately the GF100 cards just don't do all that well given the heat output (at least my GTX470s don't). But it's all still very worthwhile

You'll want to leave hyperthreading on on all enabled CPUs (with the possible exception of the Atom, which just sucks so much anyways). When it first came out, Movieman @ XS did a bunch of tests and conclusively showed that hyperthreading does benefit WCG. Particularly if you're running different projects; if you run all the same projects I assume that there would be more overlap in terms of needed resources, so HT wouldn't do as much good. Hence, I do suggest leaving on hyperthreading.

 

[mstenholm]

HT on for sure but if temperature is an issue then lose the extra 2K PPD.

The 7970 if left running for the next 2-3 days will more then make up for what you lose untill sometime mid March. Some can get more then 135k PPD on the card alone. Just make sure to run 10-12 at the time. One is clearly as you say under-utilizing it.

 

[Jstn7477]

In the process of buying parts for a 3770K system. My dad received a $200 prepaid gift card that he needed used, so I ordered an ASRock Z77 Pro4-M (digital PWM and should have decent MOSFETs unlike the $20 cheaper boards that use the horribly inefficient D2PAK ones), Corsair CX430, some Rosewill mATX case and I PM'd a guy on AnandTech about one of his 2 BNIB i7-3770K CPUs that he's selling for $265, which saves a ton of money over the retail $320. I have some old DDR3-1600 RAM I can use along with a classic Samsung F3 1TB so I should have a nice system going by next week.

 

[agent00skid]

I had noticed an oddly slow speed at benches, when I downclocked my CPU to previous clocks, so I decided to take a closer look.

First column is SuperPI times. Second is CPU multiplier. Third is amount of time % increase to the one above. And last is % increase in multiplier than the one below.

25,381		21		5,0
26,582		20	4,7	5,3
27,847		19	4,8	5,6
32,541		18	16,9	50,0
42,604		17	30,9	
42,572		16	0	
42,619		15	0	
42,573		14	0	
42,588		13	0	
42,619		12	0	9,1
46,239		11	8,5	37,5
1,02,541	10	35,1	
1,02,447	9	0	
1,02,478	8	0	14,3
1,11,074	7	13,8	16,7
1,22,477	6	16,0	20
1,38,515	5	19,4	25
2,02,554	4	24,4

... I can't explain this. Anybody else got a thought?

 

[t_ski]

I'm going to take my main rig offline for a while, but leave the dual 7770's crunching. I have a third PC that might go up soon for some old fashioned CPU WU's. Maybe I can get a couple more bronze badges at least.

 

[Jstn7477]

My lead for the BNIB 3770K came through on AnandTech so I'm really happy to have another brand new system next week, and I shaved $55 off the cost of a retail CPU. Would have bought it on TPU but other forums seem to have a lot more users (and ones selling stuff for that matter).

 

[Norton]

My lead for the BNIB 3770K came through on AnandTech so I'm really happy to have another brand new system next week, and I shaved $55 off the cost of a retail CPU. Would have bought it on TPU but other forums seem to have a lot more users (and ones selling stuff for that matter).

Nice! Need some pics of your farm one of these days

Any 7950/7970's out there? Or anyone looking to unload a 7950 to finance a 7970?

On my end....
The Xeon hexacore rig is running @ stock for the moment- very smooth/very cool on an H70 and I just installed a 7770 in it (no app_info yet- maybe this weekend)

 

[[Ion]]

I'm going to take my main rig offline for a while, but leave the dual 7770's crunching. I have a third PC that might go up soon for some old fashioned CPU WU's. Maybe I can get a couple more bronze badges at least.

Well, it's been a pleasure to have it running for so long--and I really hope that you consider bringing it back online soon

My lead for the BNIB 3770K came through on AnandTech so I'm really happy to have another brand new system next week, and I shaved $55 off the cost of a retail CPU. Would have bought it on TPU but other forums seem to have a lot more users (and ones selling stuff for that matter).

I'm glad to hear that's working out for you!

I've been pretty busy recently, currently I'm in the process of setting up a pair of C2Q rigs for customers. One has 8GB of RAM, a 320GB disk, and a 9500GT and one has 6GB of RAM, a 500GB disk, and a GTS450. The first is in a Dell, so it'll be left bone-stock, but I'm hoping to OC the second (it's on a Gigabyte P35 board with a huge CPU cooler). I'll only have them for less than twenty-four hours, so no crunching, but I'll buy something exciting with the sales money

 

[brandonwh64]

Look what I got!

 

[[Ion]]

That's a...lot of WUs on a GTS450. The one I have already takes nearly 20 minutes/WU (with a 2.7GHz X2)--I wouldn't even want to think of running so many. Keep us posted how it works through

 

[brandonwh64]

That's a...lot of WUs on a GTS450. The one I have already takes nearly 20 minutes/WU (with a 2.7GHz X2)--I wouldn't even want to think of running so many. Keep us posted how it works through

There is TWO GTS 450's

 

[t_ski]

How long does it take for three WU's each? How long for two WU's each?

 

[[Ion]]

There is TWO GTS 450's

Oh, I saw that--but I saw that there were 3 WUs/card
For me, when it already takes that long, it seems a bit excessive to run so many. But hopefully it works out well for you

 

[johnspack]

I don't bother with trying to run 3 wus even on my 480. You will produce much more work sticking to 2 wus.

 

[BUCK NASTY]

Yeah, that looks like too many for the GTS450, but what we're aiming for is constant GPU utilization. What are your cards doing @ 49.707% and 99.707% other than idling? I load up 4 WU's each on the 570 & the 560Ti 448 and the GPU's are always @ 90+% GPU usage as the WU's get staggered. Elapsed times are between 9min to 18 mins(they vary that much). I thought it was too many at first, but my production keeps going up on that rig. Could not be happier with the work they are producing now(should get 45K out of that rig today).

 

[Mindweaver]

Hey guys I finally got my stuff in.. Here it is! The graphic card box is as big as a Motherboard box! lol I put it in as reference.. lol

 

[[Ion]]

Hey guys I finally got my stuff in.. Here it is! The graphic card box is as big as a Motherboard box! lol I put it in as reference.. lol

http://img.techpowerup.org/121220/IMG_20121220_153820836.jpg

http://img.techpowerup.org/121220/IMG_20121220_153937748.jpg

Woot!

I think you'll be very happy with that HD7770--I'm running 3 with 4 WUs each and they're pulling a rather impressive output

 

[Mindweaver]

WOW.. I opened the box of my HAF 912 and the case is smashed!... I'm in the process of RMA'n it now.. So, I guess I'll have to wait a little longer before I can build it..

Spoiler

 

[manofthem]

WOW.. I opened the box of my HAF 912 and the case is smashed!... I'm in the process of RMA'n it now.. So, I guess I'll have to wait a little longer before I can build it..

Spoiler

http://img.techpowerup.org/121220/IMG_20121220_160800.jpg

Oh man, that's horrible! Sorry to hear, a real bummer not being able to put it together.

Nice parts though, the 7770 is a strong choice

 

[[Ion]]

WOW.. I opened the box of my HAF 912 and the case is smashed!... I'm in the process of RMA'n it now.. So, I guess I'll have to wait a little longer before I can build it..

Spoiler

http://img.techpowerup.org/121220/IMG_20121220_160800.jpg

Wow, I've never seen a new case smashed nearly so badly

Can you at least assemble the rest of the system caseless for now?