Hello UK BOINC Members

An area for greetings to (or from) NEW members of the Team and/or the Forum. Say "HELLO" here - no one will bite !!
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nick
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by nick »

hey nice work so far its hard to get the high daily numbers without some beefy graphics cards but those are respectable figures for mostly cpu work.
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chriscambridge
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by chriscambridge »

Thanks. I am a little bit poor at the moment, but when things improve I will get some decent GPUs and do some upgrades.

I have also got another twin Xeon with Quadro 4000 GPU coming next week so that should add more credit.

Additionally I have now setup 4 processors crunching Asteroids@home via Google Cloud on the $300 free credit!

I am going to do a post on it, and include the link, as well as report back when the credit runs out and say how many credits it generated so others can perhaps gain some extra credits this way.

Next stop will be the free credits at Amazon EC3 and Microsoft Cloud (think its called Azure).
nick
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by nick »

Oh BTW if you don't already run them do you mind adding GoofyxGrid@Home and WUprop@home to your rigs they use no cpu or gpu time and help us rank up. they search the web or something like that.
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chriscambridge
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by chriscambridge »

I initially did add them but they do not provide enough information about what they actually do; additionally I am only committed to projects that 'change things substantially', like asteroid detection, fighting illness etc.

Also, I only crunch for UK/US/EU academic institutions and research projects.

When I get more computers in the future I may consider expanding the scope of crunching.
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by Woodles »

chriscambridge wrote:I am now ranked #35 with UK BOINC Team for Average Credit, #34 for Daily Credit, and #822 for total credit.

Obviously my rank for Total Credit is not so good yet as I have not been crunching for long - it is just 652K which is very low to others!
I remember the struggle I had when I first started BOINC to generate 1,000 credits a day! You're doing much better than that.
chriscambridge wrote:I initially did add them but they do not provide enough information about what they actually do; additionally I am only committed to projects that 'change things substantially', like asteroid detection, fighting illness etc.

Also, I only crunch for UK/US/EU academic institutions and research projects.

When I get more computers in the future I may consider expanding the scope of crunching.
Neither of them "change things substantially", GoofyxGrid uses a random number generator to simulate an infinite number of monkeys typing at an infinite number of typewriters to see how often parts of a specified phrase occur - not really much benefit to mankind, while WUProp captures the characteristics of every work unit you crunch (project, time spent, amount crunched etc) - again, not exactly beneficial to the rest of the world.
chriscambridge
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by chriscambridge »

** A compromise **

On the basis I now confident that I can get the Raspberry Pi up and running, after setting up BOINC on Linux via Google Cloud - what I shall do is set this up tomorrow, and add the projects:

GoofyxGrid@Home and WUprop@home

It obviously won't generate a massive amount of credit, but some credit is better than no credit :} Also it saves having the Pi just sitting here gathering dust.

--

Yeah I guess everyone remembers trying hit that first 1M credit mark.. Today has been a good day though, 51K daily credits. On Tuesday I had around 200K daily credits. To be honest its pretty impossible trying to work out which host machine and project are generating what, as not all the host machines are showing, WCG still seems to be playing by itself, and as ClimiatePredication showed, some projects issue credit when they feel like at some point in the future - not too mention each project issue credits based on their own judgments rather than balanced across projects.

"an infinite number of monkeys typing at an infinite number of typewriters" - Got to love these academics! Although it does remind me of an experiment where they randomly created machine code and then randomly put it together to see what would happen. If I remember right it ended creating some interesting "patterns of code". I guess there is a bit more going on than they are letting on.
Woodles
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by Woodles »

I have three PIs running BOINC under Linux and they all run Goofy and Wuprop. I also run Enigma on them as they also have a "Linux on Pi" application (actually Raspbian on Pi but it works) About 200 credits a day per core.

Regards, Mark
chriscambridge
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by chriscambridge »

Thanks, I'll try and update when done tomorrow.
nick
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by nick »

chriscambridge wrote: To be honest its pretty impossible trying to work out which host machine and project are generating what
When you log into bam.boincstats.com click the host list tab and should show all your connected hosts there totals and daily returns when you click the graph icon after the group column. once that page is loaded click project list to see what i am talking about.

If you do not see all your hosts there check there connected in the manager. if they show no data you will need to click "my account page" on the side bar and click the renew icon next to cpid and in a day or so should fix it.
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chriscambridge
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by chriscambridge »

The problem I have is that within hosts, it either shows the i5 or Core2Quad but not both.

If from the machine, in boinc software I click tools/synchonise with boinc bam stats - then the machine I do this on appears, but the other one then disappears, and vice versa.

1) You say, "if you do not see all your host then check they are connected in the manager" - which manager? Project page 'manager' eg asteroids/accont/hosts?, a manager part at boincbam, or a manager part within the client application? Sorry I am unsure which you mean.

2) Also, the two accounts I added at Google cloud are showing at Asteroids/account/hosts, but not in BamStats/hosts.

and 3) World community Grid got added to my list of my projects at Boinc Bam, is generating credit at wcg/account/, but never shows on the combined credit. eg Projects within the last 24 hours.

It all seems a bit of a mess really :[
nick
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by nick »

the manager on the host. make sure you have unique names for each pc and then use the cpid renew thing should fix it.
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chriscambridge
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by chriscambridge »

Do you mean:

boincstats.com/en/bam/account/ -> Renew CPID ??
nick
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by nick »

yep
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chriscambridge
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by chriscambridge »

Done! I guess it will take a few hours/days for it to propagate across its network?
nick
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by nick »

yeah about a day or so
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chriscambridge
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by chriscambridge »

Hey Nick,.. et al,

I just bought the following new two GPU's so hopefully these will add to the numbers that I am producing.

They should arrive tomorrow so I shall fit them tomorrow and start crunching..

ASUS GeForce GTX 750 Ti (2048 MB)- [640 Cuda Cores]

and

Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU II OC Strix (4096 MB) - [1664 Cuda Cores]


These are slightly better than my existing cards!

GeoForce 210 [16 Cuda Cores]

Quadro 4000 [256 Cuda Cores]

Although I think I read somewhere that 'shaders' are more or as, important as Cuda Cores..
chriscambridge
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by chriscambridge »

I just came across this link which has excellent advice on GPU's (graphic cards for BOINC processing) from this forum..

viewtopic.php?t=5772
Woodles
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by Woodles »

chriscambridge wrote:Hey Nick,.. et al,

I just bought the following new two GPU's so hopefully these will add to the numbers that I am producing.

They should arrive tomorrow so I shall fit them tomorrow and start crunching..

ASUS GeForce GTX 750 Ti (2048 MB)- [640 Cuda Cores]

and

Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU II OC Strix (4096 MB) - [1664 Cuda Cores]


These are slightly better than my existing cards!

GeoForce 210 [16 Cuda Cores]

Quadro 4000 [256 Cuda Cores]

Although I think I read somewhere that 'shaders' are more or as, important as Cuda Cores..
Hi Chris,

Very nice selection there, a little improvement on what you had before :D

The 750Ti is a popular choice and often performs as well or even better than the supposedly next level up cards, you should find it's quite a lot more productive than both your earlier ones combined!

I have 970s myself (although not an Asus variant) and they're quite impressive cards, never had any problem with them.

Cores/shaders/stream processers are all pretty much the same sort of thing - the basic computing part of the graphics card. More is nearly always better but they only give a rough idea for performance comparisons as there may be fewer cores than shaders but they might be individually more powerful. Similarly, there may be fewer stream processors but they could be clocked faster. A useful comparison is finding the two cards you're trying to compare on a project website and see what sort of daily numbers they return.

Regards,

Mark
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by chriscambridge »

Thanks for coming back to me Mark.

I bought the GTX 750 TI OC off Ebay, but then when I checked the top GPU specs on Seti and GPUGrid, the GTX 750 Ti did not seem to rank as high as I thought it would, hence why I bought the 970 as that seemed to rank quite well across projects, like you said; I bought the 790 new as I thought that would be best.

Could you offer me some advice on this potential problem that I have please Mark? as I am not sure what is going?!

The GTX 750 Ti OC arrived today so I fitted it in the Dell Precision T5500 workstation using the Dell 875w PSU and the attached (1 of 2) 6 pins from PSU.

It all installed fine and Boinc GPUGrid assigned a GPU task; at first it seemed to allocate a remaining time of 1 day whereas normal my Quadro 4000 would take 2 days (even though the remaining would say 4 days), which is quite an improvement as using that logic it should actually take around 1/2 day.

So I decided to install to GPU-Z (as I had previously with my other GPUs) and what I noticed is that the GPU load refused to go over 72%. Also I noticed that the PerfCap (performance cap) turned orange and was saying vOP eg Limited by Operating voltage.

Also I then noticed that the GPUGrid task had only done 1.5% in an hour, meaning it would probably actually take over 3 days to complete - longer than the Quadro was actually taking!

So can you offer any advice on what "limited by operating voltage means". The PSU is 875w and the GPU is connected with a 6pin from the PSU.

I have take a photo of the PSU in case I have not spotted something?

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chriscambridge
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by chriscambridge »

Just to add, I have a swapped the 6 pins incase one was faulty but it made no difference.

Also, this is the information from GPU-Z

GPU Core Clock: 1215.0 Ghz
GPU Memory Clock: 1350.0 Ghz
Memory Used load: 715 Mb
GPU Load: 72%
Memory Controller load: 24%
Video Engine Load: 0%
Bus Interface load: 20%
Power consumption: 50-80% TDP
Perfcap Reason: vOP
VDDC: 1.1430V

Thanks for any help you can offer..
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by Woodles »

chriscambridge wrote:Just to add, I have a swapped the 6 pins incase one was faulty but it made no difference.

Also, this is the information from GPU-Z

GPU Core Clock: 1215.0 Ghz
GPU Memory Clock: 1350.0 Ghz
Memory Used load: 715 Mb
GPU Load: 72%
Memory Controller load: 24%
Video Engine Load: 0%
Bus Interface load: 20%
Power consumption: 50-80% TDP
Perfcap Reason: vOP
VDDC: 1.1430V

Thanks for any help you can offer..
Hi Chris,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you, our internet was offline for most of the afternoon.

From what I can find out, everything is fine with both the card and the PSU. 875W is plenty, I have two 970s running off a 750W PSU.

The normal GPU core clock for that card is specified as 1072 MHz going up to 1150 MHz under boost (I'd like to think your card is operating at 1215 GHz but I doubt it :D

What the message means is that the boost logic is trying to increase the clock speed even further but the voltage controller won't let it. As it's already over the specified maximum speed, I wouldn't class it as a fault :)

GPU load is a measure of how much work the GPU cores are doing. The workload depends on how efficiently the application has been written and inversely on how powerful the card is. I think that the card is processing the work as fast as it is being supplied to it but it's just too powerful to need to run flat out. One other thing, the GPU doesn't crunch all by itself, it needs some CPU time to transfer data to/from it and to keep it supplied whilst it's working. If all the CPU cores are committed elsewhere, the GPU will sit and wait for attention, limiting the work that it appears to be doing. A rule of thumb is to leave a core free to support the GPU (The GPUGrid WUs should list themselves as "x.xx CPUs + 1 NVIDIA GPU" to give some idea of how much CPU core they need) If it's being supported correctly and is just too powerful for the work needed, there is a way of running more than one task at a time to fully utilise the rest of the cards capability, shout if you want to try that.

As for the 1.5% after an hour, I haven't ran GPUGrid so I don't know if the estimate from them is linear or accurate. I do know that estimating the completion percentage is very hit and miss on most projects and it's even worse when the hardware has been changed as BOINC has no historical data to go on. I've had projects reach 90% after an hour and take a further five hours to finish, I've also had projects that took an hour to get to 10% and then finish ten minutes later. About all you can do is let it finish and see how long it takes. The estimates should get more accurate as more tasks are finished.

I'm off to the coast in about an hour and won't be back until Tuesday night so I won't be any help until then if you need it. I'm sure there's others around that can help out though.

Regards,

Mark
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by chriscambridge »

I believe your right, ll monitor it for a few days and report back in full on Tuesday.

Thank you so much for your help.

Have fun at the coast, I hope the weather's nice
chriscambridge
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by chriscambridge »

Hi Mark,

I think i have now tracked down the problem to one of two things..

Either GPUGrid is constraining GPU load which seems unlikely as i guess there would be a lot of people complaining, or more likely it is being caused in GPUGrid on my systems due to a lack of RAM. All the other GPU projects run at 100% load just fine.

I will know tomorrow when I install from 8GB to 32GB. I will report back then.

Just as a side note, I hit a personal best today of 708k credits per day!

Chris
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by Woodles »

chriscambridge wrote:Hi Mark,

I think i have now tracked down the problem to one of two things..

Either GPUGrid is constraining GPU load which seems unlikely as i guess there would be a lot of people complaining, or more likely it is being caused in GPUGrid on my systems due to a lack of RAM. All the other GPU projects run at 100% load just fine.

I will know tomorrow when I install from 8GB to 32GB. I will report back then.

Just as a side note, I hit a personal best today of 708k credits per day!

Chris
Hi Chris,

I've had a quick poke around and going by this thread https://www.gpugrid.net/forum_thread.ph ... true#43098 on GPUGrid, you're only likely to see 70% - 80% GPU usage unless you run more than one task at a time. It is indeed GPUGrid limiting the GPU load. You could have a play around with bus clocks and memory clocks on the card and see if it increases any but it looks like that's how it's meant to work.

The GPU tasks use the RAM onboard the GPU itself so increasing the system RAM won't have any affect on GPUGrid ... but it's always nice to have more memory :D

Congratulations on your personal best :clap:

Regards,

Mark
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by chriscambridge »

I can confirm that it made..... no difference!

But like you said adding extra RAM can never hurt, and future proofs the system to last longer.

Can I ask Mark, do you have 2 GPUs running in the same box? If so, does it not cause an issue with the second GPU being so close the first and having 2/3 fans blasting hot air into the back of the second GPU?

Or am right in remembering the GTX970 had a metal plate on the back of it that was perhaps exactly for this problem?

Just thinking about future upgrades...

Anyway thank so much for your, and everyones, help so far.
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by Woodles »

Hi Chris,

No problem, ask away. I have one box with two GTX970's in it but most of the air is not exhausted from one to the other.

For direction naming conventions, picture the motherboard as horizontal, the GPUs mounted vertically and being viewed from the end furthest from the connectors. For the right most card, the air is sucked in by the fans on the right and blown horizontally left onto the heatsink, exiting out of the top, bottom and both ends. Air flow towards the other card is blocked by the PCB.

The biggest problem is getting cool air INTO the leftmost cards fan as there's only one slot between them. I selected the cards such that the rightmost card is the shortest one I had and the leftmost card only has a single fan at the furthest edge from the backplate. It's also directly in front of one of the case intake fans so there's a good air supply. There's a side fan directly above them to get rid of the hot air that's produced.

The GTX970s do have a metal plate along the back and this is a heatsink for the onboard memory. It gets reasonably hot but there's no fan on that side so it's all convection.

To date, they've run at stock speed 24/7 with no problems (even though they're both vendor overclocked gaming versions)

Have fun upgrading, it can become addictive :)

Regards,

Mark
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by chriscambridge »

Hi Mark,

I kind of get what you saying but it is hard to visualize how you have your box setup; Any chance you post an image of the GPUS in the box, not just for me but anyone else who may be curious how to best setup multiple graphic cards?

So just to clarify,..

Are you saying the fans on Graphic cards are actually there to pull in air rather than to dispel hot air? (as like you said that goes out the sides, front and bottom).

Also, just to confirm, what your are saying is that the real problem is one of getting air in when you have cards stacked next to each other, rather than getting hot air out?

If it is, then that would make sense why the GPU Box I saw, had 7 or 9 Titan X Pascal cards stacked next to each other in a row eg the hot air is not being removed by the large fans but instead out of the side (where the DVI etc ports are) etc.

Also, it would also answer another question why some 990 Ti's have a fan attached to them, I am guessing to solve the problem of pulling in air when they is little space around the graphics card.

--

The problem when you assign things like credits, or rather receipts for work done, and then rank people next to each other on these credits, is a I guess one of human nature - everyone wants to be the best they can and get ranked as high as possible! Hence the addiction of upgrades!! :}

In truth I have spent many months of the donations I would normally give and hence I will have to wait a few to do anymore upgrades; Right now the boxes and cards that I have are already hitting already 1 KWh which is quite a lot in electricity cost for my current income so I will need to address that first! :{

And, I have a commitment to non-gpu projects, hence I will need to get my cpu-threads upgraded - so probably my next spend will be to try and build this project...

... A self-build 32 core workstation using 2x E5-2670 xeon chips (@2.6Ghz - 3.3Ghz turbo, with 20 MB L3 Cache) for less than $1000!

Image

"Building a 32-Thread Xeon Monster PC for Less Than the Price of a Haswell-E Core i7" - Image copyright (c) TechSpot

http://www.techspot.com/review/1155-aff ... l-xeon-pc/

Which after viewing higher end workstations at Broadberry, Scan X3S, PC Specialist, Dell, and HP etc - and viewing their prices of £8-25K per box, would clearly hence make this a worthwhile project to increase CPU processing via more threads and higher specification Xeons.
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by UBT - Timbo »

Hi Chris

Just chipping in here with a few opinions.

1) GPU's seem to be more "efficient" to me, compared to CPU tasks. So, if you just want to earn high credits a newer, less power hungry GPU can actually earn more credits (in a given amount of time) than a multi-core CPU on the same project.

eg: SETI@home supports both CPU and GPU's and in the recent past, the exact same WU has been crunched by both CPU and GPU's, with the following results:
Task Computer Status Run time(sec) CPU time(sec) Credit Application
5086195796 7966351 Completed and validated 800.12 58.11 45.44 SETI@home v8 v8.00 (opencl_intel_gpu_sah)
x86_64-apple-darwin - INTEL Iris Pro (1536MB) OpenCL: 1.2

5086195797 7722731 Completed and validated 8,256.51 6,840.05 45.44 SETI@home v8 v8.00
windows_intelx86 - Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-4030U CPU @ 1.90GHz [Family 6 Model 69 Stepping 1]

5125103213 8075414 Completed and validated 590.46 252.28 45.44 SETI@home v8 v8.00 (cuda50)
windows_intelx86 - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 (1536MB) driver: 372.54 OpenCL: 1.1
So, 8,000+ seconds using a quite recent CPU, against 600-800 seconds with a GPU. !!

You can see that GPU's still hold the upper hand in pure crunching terms and the newer NVidia cores use far less power too.

2) The biggest issue with GPU's is clearly heat dissipation - they get hot and that heat needs to be removed from the case, else the entire system could overheat.

Some NVidia GPU's have a single fan at the end furthest from the VGA/HDMI sockets and draw internal air into the graphics card, which is then drawn over the internal heatsinks and is then funnelled out of the PC, via exhaust vents in the end. Other cards seem to have multiple fans, which draw air directly down onto the GPU heatsinks, but then this hot air can still be circulating inside the case, as the card might not have exhaust vents on it's end.

Graphic card cooling therefore, is an area where common-sense and some lateral thought is therefore required, to ensure that room temperature air is drawn in through (say) the front (and/or sides) via a large (say 120cm) fan and warm/hot air is pushed out via the graphics card own vents, as well as any case/power supply fans at the rear.

And needless to say (as I found out, having bought some 2nd hand GTX580's a while ago) that the internal heatsinks can easily become clogged up with detritus and this significantly affects the ability of the GPU to shed heat...after I did a complete stripdown and clean of one of my cards, the measured temperature when running a specific BOINC task on the GPU, came down over 20 deg C. !!

Hope this helps
Tim
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by chriscambridge »

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the info. I think I understand most of it; its difficult as all the cards are different, even with the same gpu, and all boxes (cases) are different some with just 1 fan, others with multiple fans, and some like my dell precision t500 with fans really aimed at the CPUS rather than graphics card, to the extent they even have "plastic channels" that seem to direct the cpu heat from the heatsink, (i think is the term), out of the box..

--

If I had not made a commitment to non-gpu projects, such as climatepredication and worldcommitygrid, as well as gpu-projects, then I would go GPU all the way, especially after buying my GTX 970 and seeing the credits that is/has/can produce. Indeed I would probably just bitcoin mine as I understand that gives you most credit, probably via dedicated boxes.

If anyone wants to guy down that route to make profit from crunching, this is quite a good article:

"How a total n00b mined $700 in bitcoins"

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/06/ ... -bitcoins/

--

In terms of energy consumption and cost, I have seen and worked out exactly what you are saying. Clearly CPUS vs GPUS lose hands down!

At the moment I have the following cards..

Quadro 4000
GTX 750 Ti
GTX 970

However now my CPU processing of the projects above is now well below par hence I am now thinking it would be worthwhile to have a go building that workstation above.

The Xeons that I am running are really old and hence the power consumption, and what they produce is far worse than more modern chips like the E-5 and E-3; my chips are E5620 Xeons that do not particularly bench mark that high.
Last edited by chriscambridge on Thu Sep 08, 2016 1:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by Woodles »

Hi Chris,

Thought it might be a bit difficult. i don't know about it being the best way to set up the cards but it worked for me. I'll take some pictures tonight if I remember, it's about time that machine had a bit of a rest and a clean out anyway.

Usually (always in my experience but it's not been that extensive) the GPU fans pull air INTO the card and onto the internal heatsink(s) The heated air is then either directed to the end of the card and vented out of the back where the connectors are or just allowed to exhaust back into the inside of the case.

Usually, the fan inlet is on the side of the card so stacking them next to each other tends to block the air intake. Cases with multiple GPUs generally tend to have the cards on extender cables or risers to enable them to be spread out. That would be a very impressive motherboard that could support 7 or 9 Titan GPUs!

So true. Originally, BOINC was set up to use the SPARE cycles in your existing machine, nowadays, people have filled garages up with multiple systems purely running BOINC.

Unless you have a specific project that doesn't have a GPU application, GPUs will always outperform CPUs both credit and power wise. An i7-6700k is rated at 91W and 1.2 Teraflops, a GTX970 is rated at 145 W and 3.49 Teraflops - 300% of the computing power for 150% of the electrical power. As Tim pointed out (and I found before) the same SETI workunit finishes 10-15 times faster on a GPU than a CPU (and SETI GPU applications are amongst the worse for GPU efficiency - not well written at all!)

There are many projects that don't have a GPU application, some processes just can't be transferred efficiently (for example operations that depend on previous results so paralleling them just means they have to wait for the earlier calculation to finish) so CPUs will always have a place.

That looks like an interesting build and quite affordable. you'll have to let us know how you get on if you end up building one.

If you want to have a go at mining bitcoins let me know, I have a few boxes you could borrow that only need a 12 volt power supply and a USB cable :D

Regards,

Mark
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by chriscambridge »

Hi Mark,

I am just on the tablet at the moment, so I'll write reply later, the following link show x8 gpu racks, although tesla cards.

http://www.tyan.com/solutions/TYAN_GPU_ ... forms.html

And the APEXX 5 workstation below has x5 GPUS

http://www.boxx.com/products/workstations
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by chriscambridge »

Hi Mark,

I just re-read that last reply; when I said I was "on the tablet", I of course meant tablet computer, not some other pharma type tablet :@

If you could add some photos it would be very interesting but not essential; I guess us smaller players are always interested in what boxes the big cruncher's are running and how they have these setup.

--

Typically I could have sworn I had saved the URL for that 9 Titan-x GPU Monster but I cannot seem to locate it anywhere; if I remember rightly it had been built, I think by Boxx, as a bespoke GPU box to show what is possible, for some trade show in America.

I will try and find it if I can because it looked quite impressive. However noticing that the other link shows 8 Tesla cards then perhaps it was 9 Tesla's instead of Titan-x's but I could have sworn it was these.

I do wonder if PCIE is a bit outdated now, given our discussion of heat expulsion as well as air flow inwards - but also outdated especially if you take the fact that there is a Full A.I deep learning Compute Accelerator built as a USB Stick eg The Movidius Fathom; perhaps this shows the way that Boinc projects could go in the future instead of Graphics cards, as Bitcoin mining boxes have shown.

Image

http://www.movidius.com/news/movidius-a ... -framework - Image (c) 2006 Movidius

--

In terms of building that box, I will have to wait a few months until I get my monies back up, and to be honest being more software than hardware I would have to do some research to find out if it is just a case of connecting every thing, inserting the Windows CD, and then booting up; if not then I would have to get someone else involved that had a more hardware experience than I.

Perhaps I will post it into this forum to see if anyone has the skills and confidence to build one of these - or even better to build one, and then do a post with clear examples on how to do this; clearly loads of these running will help CPU crunching as well of course credits

--

Talking about credits! Tim just gave me a heads up explanation on Bitcoin Utopia and why you guys got involved, as well as what kind of numbers these dedicated boxes can produce; wow!

** Update **

Found out from Tim that a RBox2 would only consume a small amount of electricity, about the same as an i3M laptop - and should only cost about £30 + PSU; so did a quick search on ebay but no RBox2's available, only a Antminer S3 + PSU, which was costing around £160 including 2x p&p, which was the cheapest out of all the listings that I could find. Way to expensive for my current budget..

So perhaps I will take you up on your offer; Thank you soooo much! :}

How would we go about doing this so that it definitely did not get damaged in transit from you to me, and me to you back later? Also I am pretty reclusive so would it just be a matter of popping it back in the packaging it arrived in, and then taking it to the post office and getting it sent back to you via Royal Mail recorded/registered delivery?

Let me know how you think this could best work? Would you also provide a PSU as these seem quite expensive on Ebay.

Also let me know if you perhaps you would want to sell me a unit? Especially an RBox2 + PSU.

Chris
Last edited by chriscambridge on Thu Sep 08, 2016 11:27 pm, edited 7 times in total.
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by UBT - Timbo »

Hi Chris

Just a quick reply for you. Please be aware that Bitcoin Utopia only supports specific ASIC miners and these all connect via USB.

These are:
Antminer U1 or U2 (from 1.6 - 2 Gh)
Antminer U3 (about 60 Gh)
HexFury USB (about 6 Gh)
RBox 2 (about 32 Gh)
RBox 4 (about 100 Gh)
Butterfly Labs Jalapeno (about 5 Gh)
Butterfly Labs SIngle (both 30Gh and 60Gh models)
Butterfly Labs Monarch (450Gh) (runs on PCie bus, or via USB)

The Antminer S3 wasn't compatible say about a year ago...it might have changed, so tread carefully on buying a new or 2nd hand ASIC.

regards
Tim
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by Woodles »

chriscambridge wrote:Hi Mark,

I just re-read that last reply; when I said I was "on the tablet", I of course meant tablet computer, not some other pharma type tablet :@
Hi Chris,

Of course, I never thought anything else :angelic-green: :eusa-shhh: :law-policered:
chriscambridge wrote:If you could add some photos it would be very interesting but not essential; I guess us smaller players are always interested in what boxes the big cruncher's are running and how they have these setup.
Well I took a couple of photos but they're not all that informative. I'll see about taking the motherboard out of the box next week, things might be clearer then.
chriscambridge wrote:Typically I could have sworn I had saved the URL for that 9 Titan-x GPU Monster but I cannot seem to locate it anywhere; if I remember rightly it had been built, I think by Boxx, as a bespoke GPU box to show what is possible, for some trade show in America.

I will try and find it if I can because it looked quite impressive. However noticing that the other link shows 8 Tesla cards then perhaps it was 9 Tesla's instead of Titan-x's but I could have sworn it was these.
Not a big deal, it looks like they might be bespoke boards anyway so no chance of the normal cruncher (is there such a thing?) getting their hands on one.
chriscambridge wrote:I do wonder if PCIE is a bit outdated now, given our discussion of heat expulsion as well as air flow inwards - but also outdated especially if you take the fact that there is a Full A.I deep learning Compute Accelerator built as a USB Stick eg The Movidius Fathom; perhaps this shows the way that Boinc projects could go in the future instead of Graphics cards, as Bitcoin mining boxes have shown.
PCIe is just the interface specification and it's still evolving (upto revision 3.2 at the moment), you could plug whatever you like into it. It does have it's limitations which is why Crossfire and SLi evolved with their own busses. That does look like an interesting concept though, I'll have a deeper look into it.
chriscambridge wrote:In terms of building that box, I will have to wait a few months until I get my monies back up, and to be honest being more software than hardware I would have to do some research to find out if it is just a case of connecting every thing, inserting the Windows CD, and then booting up; if not then I would have to get someone else involved that had a more hardware experience than I.
After a break, I've recently built three boxes up, two from all individual components and one starting from a motherboard already populated with RAM and CPUs and each of them was just a case of putting everything in the box, connecting them together, turning it on and installing an operating system. These days, unless you're going for a more exotic, cutting edge build, it's pretty straightforward.
chriscambridge wrote:Perhaps I will post it into this forum to see if anyone has the skills and confidence to build one of these - or even better to build one, and then do a post with clear examples on how to do this; clearly loads of these running will help CPU crunching as well of course credits
I could do with another project so I might price it up and look at the availability of components. Who knows, you might get your step by step build guide :D
chriscambridge wrote:Talking about credits! Tim just gave me a heads up explanation on Bitcoin Utopia and why you guys got involved, as well as what kind of numbers these dedicated boxes can produce; wow!
Thanks for the reminder, I spent a pleasant couple of hours re-reading the thread last night, fun times :D
chriscambridge wrote:Found out from Tim that a RBox2 would only consume a small amount of electricity, about the same as an i3M laptop - and should only cost about £30 + PSU; so did a quick search on ebay but no RBox2's available, only a Antminer S3 + PSU, which was costing around £160 including 2x p&p, which was the cheapest out of all the listings that I could find. Way to expensive for my current budget..

So perhaps I will take you up on your offer; Thank you soooo much! :}

How would we go about doing this so that it definitely did not get damaged in transit from you to me, and me to you back later? Also I am pretty reclusive so would it just be a matter of popping it back in the packaging it arrived in, and then taking it to the post office and getting it sent back to you via Royal Mail recorded/registered delivery?

Let me know how you think this could best work? Would you also provide a PSU as these seem quite expensive on Ebay.

Also let me know if you perhaps you would want to sell me a unit? Especially an RBox2 + PSU.

Chris
The original RBox 32 used a 12 volt supply rated at 3 amps so less than 40 watts and about a kilowatt per day if left on all the time, I never had an RBox2 so can't vouch for that and the R4s were a LOT more power hungry!

When bought, they came pretty well packaged in expanded polystyrene and I still have the original packaging so posting it shouldn't be a problem if you have a destination address? Otherwise, there's a few drop-off-and-collect schemes going on (I've picked up quite a few EBay bits from the local Argos shop or Shell garage) so I can have a look into them. Same for returning it I guess? I believe I've got a couple of stand alone PSUs knocking around, I'll sort one out and wire it up to a connector.

As mentioned, I don't have an RBox2, I have four original RBox 32s and a couple of R4s (but I doubt you'll want them ... yet! :)) you're welcome to buy any or all of them as I've stopped BU for the foreseeable future and would probably restart with new miners if I took it up again.

I'm out of town this weekend (back Monday evening) so no rush to decide anything.

Regards,

Mark
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by chriscambridge »

Hi Mark,

Just as an update about the GPU Boxes, just came across these which one is now commercially available:

Both the GPU Boxes are basically geared towards AI Deep Learning..

The NVIDIA DGX-1

8x GPU (Tesla's) + 2x 20 Core Xeon E5 v4
$129,000

Image

http://www.nvidia.com/object/deep-learning-system.html


3U GPU Server by Supermicro

15x GPU (12x Tesla's + 3x Quadro M6000) + 132 Broadwell-EP Xeon cores

http://vrworld.com/2016/04/14/can-super ... own-dgx-1/

***

Did a quick cost and availability analysis on that 'build your own workstation' and in my opinion the figures do not really add up anymore.

http://www.techspot.com/review/1155-aff ... l-xeon-pc/

Total cost (cheapest) was about £800

Also, the article forgot to include the fact you would need a Hardisk, Operating system, and Box to put it all in.

So if you add say an extra £200 for these than that comes to around £1K.

The thing is you can pick up a newer HP Z820 workstation, or Dell Precision workstation, with the same Xeon Dual chips (E5-2670) for around £1000-£1400, and the boxes are obviously going to be a lot better designed in terms of air flow and removal, have higher PSU's, and most cases come with larger RAM than 32MB and its ECC not UDIMM.

Image

Also you can fit 3x GPU's in the Z820!

Image

So that is probably the way I would go; however a great article as those Chips (E5-2670) are benched very well (on Thread performance).

***

I have been doing a lot of thinking about these BitCoin crunchers and what I have decided is not to get involved in that just yet, for many reasons.

Clearly 49% of me want's the excessive credits and to get into the Top25 spot, however 51% quite likes the fact I am doing over 1 Million credits every 2 days just using CPU/GPU's.

So apologies for asking you to think about selling them, and then changing my mind.

What I would say though if you are not desperate to sell them, just keep them and in the very near future, before Xmas perhaps, I will definitely have them off you. I would just want to use a separate account for coin crunching, and also only start that a bit later once I had got my monies back up.

However, if the team that shall not be named, ever decides to start (and lose) a credit war with UBT (again), and you still have these available, then I will buy them straight away and start crunching 247 with them, as I am sure others will too.
***

Chris
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by Woodles »

Hi Chris,

There's a bit of a difference between 'available' and '$129,000' as far as I'm concerned! :shock:

Nice machine but I'm sure it could be made more cheaply than that.

I'd got a similar price figure from my calculations, I made it £774 plus case, keyboard and mouse so slightly over £800 all in. I wasn't necessarily using the suppliers that they did as the RAM and equivalent coolers can be got elsewhere for less and by trading the motherboard for an ATX version for slightly more, you can get a cheaper and easier to find case. I already have a copy of Windows 7 available and a couple of spare discs so that also kept the price down. I agree though, £800 - £1000 is a bit much to spend on a 'toy' at the moment. Something to keep in mind and I may pick up a couple of the Xeon chips 'just in case' :D

No problem about the Bitcoin ASIC, it never left my cupboard :)

I'm not desperate to sell them, they've been mothballed since February and I'm quite content for them to stay that way indefinitly. You (or anyone else) is welcome to them at any time, I will point out though that should that mythical other team ever start getting close again, I'll be starting them up again myself (I do share though :) )

Regards,

Mark
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by chriscambridge »

I agree, its way over priced. You could get about 10 of the latest multi-gpu workstations, with 2-4 Titans X's + 36 core 2x xeons in each for that amount..

:}
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by UBT - Timbo »

Woodles wrote:I will point out though that should that mythical other team ever start getting close again, I'll be starting them up again myself (I do share though :) )

Regards,

Mark
Hi Mark,

"That" team HAS restarted on BU...they put on half a billion yesterday...but that is through 2 of their members. If they get serious then we might need to put on a spurt, just to keep them at arms length. (Though we can probably wait a few weeks until it turns cold again and we need some extra room heaters !!)

regards
Tim
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by Woodles »

Hi Tim,

With a lead of just over 170 billion at the moment, I think you're right and we can wait a while yet :D

Regards,

Mark
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by chriscambridge »

Hey Mark, (or anyone; I just know Mark has multiple GPU boxes)..

Are you about to answer a quick question on multiple GPU's; hopefully you are still subscribed to this post?

I have installed a 970 and 750 Ti in a box.

The 750 was the original GPU with drivers.

When I started Windows 7 the VGA from the 750 was not being reconised (no signal) but the 970 DVI-I was okay so I used that.

I then installed a 970 driver for Windows 7.

GPU-Z is reconising both GPUs and is showing power and clock / fan speed on both - however Boinc is only using the 970 rather than the original, or both cards.

Any ideas on how to get Boinc to use both cards?

When I put the old GTX 210 in my i7 it automatically started crunching with both the 210 and the on-board Intel GPU - but not in this case for some reason?

Thanks,

Hopefully you will see this post sooner rather than later!

Chris.
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by chriscambridge »

Scratch that, I have work it out.

Create a XML file (text file) called cc_config.xml

(In Windows 7) - Save it to:

C:\ProgramData\BOINC\

Use the following to put into the cc_config file..

<cc_config>
<options>
<use_all_gpus>1</use_all_gpus>
</options>
</cc_config>

Save, and restart Boinc.

Your multiple GPU's will now be recognised.

Chris
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by Woodles »

Hi Chris,

I'm on holiday at the moment so don't pick posts up too quickly. You're in luck this time though :)

By default, BOINC will only use the most capable GPU that it finds, you need a

Code: Select all

<use_all_gpus>1</use_all_gpus>
entry in your cc_config file to make it use both of them.

As an aside, I believe Windows uses the GPU in the lowest number slot as its video output unless the BIOS is set up to tell it otherwise.

Regards,

Mark
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by chriscambridge »

See previous post lol :)

Thanks for the info about Windows, I was not aware of that.

Chris
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by Woodles »

Hi Chris,

Seen it but in my defence, I started typing five minutes before I posted :P

Glad it's sorted.

Regards,

Mark
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by UBT - Timbo »

Chris

Mark is on holiday this week and hence might not be able to answer directly, as he only has his phone (and his partner) with him !!!

regards
Tim
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Re: Hello UK BOINC Members

Post by chriscambridge »

No worries..

Tim, Mark, etc

Just as a heads up..

There are some brand new boxed 1070 and 1080 cards on Gumtree priced very cheaply.

If I remember rightly, the 1080 was £450, and the two 1070s were £330 and £350.

Just search the graphics cards section in London, on Gumtree for more info.
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