ASUS HD7850 graphics card.

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adrianxw
BOINC@Denmark member
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Joined: Tue May 04, 2021 3:47 pm

ASUS HD7850 graphics card.

Post by adrianxw »

I run two machines, both have ASUS HD7850 graphics cards. I am using one of the systems to crunch Einstein for the BOINC Pentathlon. I stopped running GPU projects on the other machine when I noticed a problem, arrays of dots in a rhomboidal shape over about a quarter of the screen, not always the same area, and the dots are not always the same colour. The question is really, is that problem indicative of a dodgy GPU or is it a video memory issue? I ask now because the BOINC pentathlon for the next few days is running on Einstein. If the GPU is fine, I can put it back on the machine, if the problem is indicative of GPU troubles, I would not trust it to do valid work.
UBT - Timbo
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Re: ASUS HD7850 graphics card.

Post by UBT - Timbo »

adrianxw wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 3:43 pm I run two machines, both have ASUS HD7850 graphics cards. I am using one of the systems to crunch Einstein for the BOINC Pentathlon. I stopped running GPU projects on the other machine when I noticed a problem, arrays of dots in a rhomboidal shape over about a quarter of the screen, not always the same area, and the dots are not always the same colour. The question is really, is that problem indicative of a dodgy GPU or is it a video memory issue? I ask now because the BOINC pentathlon for the next few days is running on Einstein. If the GPU is fine, I can put it back on the machine, if the problem is indicative of GPU troubles, I would not trust it to do valid work.
Hi Adrian

I've seen this sort of problem on an NVidia GTX980 GPU and I've put it down to a couple of things:

1) Some GPU tasks do stress the GPU quite a bit and some projects do have a number of different "sub-projects", where one type of task might run perfectly well on your GPUs and another might give you issues.

2) Of course the GPU is also trying to display on your monitor, so if the task is taking away some memory or resources, then the display can be affected. If you suspend the GPU (via BOINC Manager) you can see if the issue goes away.

3) Also that GPU is quite old, and I've seen that the memory on some video cards using that GPU is quite low - maybe 2Gb? So this could be why the display is breaking up.

4) It's also worth mentioning that sometimes, if you are using a DVI cable from GPU card to monitors, that you can have a connection issue - so it might be worth trying swapping the video cables between your two systems and see if the problem transfers to the other video card (in which case it's the cable), or stays with the original GPU (which points the problem towards the GPU and maybe the tasks it is running).

Be aware that on Einstein there are 3 different GPU tasks - I've been getting both Gravitional Waves and Gamma-ray GPU tasks - the Gamma-ray tasks earn more credits and on my GPUs, they seem to take less time. So it might be an idea to visit your account on the Einstein website and maybe select the sub-project which has fewer or no display issues?

regards
Tim
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