Cores vs Threads

[wbiz]

Will hyper-threading help Boinc?

ie would a 8 thread 4 core processor be significantly faster on Boinc (specifically) than the equivalent 4 thread 4 core processor? Or is it mainly cores that matter?

I don't expect double the rate but it wouldn't be worth the money for only a 10% increase.

i5-4590S vs i7-4790S

I got the impression that with some Boinc tasks its the memory bandwidth that is restricting rate, the same as my ARM CPU's in which case doubling the threads may make very little difference.

It would be cheaper but less practical for me to get a second i5-4590S than a i7-4790S upgrade so I'm trying to weigh up my options. I tend to be an Intel person, are there better AMD options out there? I get a 8GB ram i5-4590S PC for £40.

[ChelseaOilman]

The extra threads are definitely worth it. You get more than a 10% increase using the extra threads.

This is my collection of old computers out in my shed. I've built 4 new computers since arriving at my Texas winter home. I need to start getting rid of my oldest builds. I only run these computers when the sun is out and my solar panels help with the electricity. My oldest one is better than what your using right now. If your willing to reimburse me for shipping costs I would send you a motherboard, CPU w/cooler, memory and small SSD with Linux on it for free. You could have the entire build but I suspect the shipping costs would be prohibitive. So you would need at a minimum a PSU and video card. Case is optional. There's no iGPU like Intel CPUs have.

MSI X370 Gaming Pro motherboard
Ryzen 7 2700X 8C/16T CPU with stock cooler
16GB memory (3000)
SSD (120GB)

[ChelseaOilman]

@Timbo, if your interested in my two 2P servers this is the last winter I plan on running them. Similar deal, free, just pay shipping.

Edit: Down to one 2P server. I was reading posts over in the BOINC Games site and noticed Skillz might be able to use one. He said yes when I DMed him.

[wbiz]

The extra threads are definitely worth it. You get more than a 10% increase using the extra threads.

This is my collection of old computers out in my shed. I've built 4 new computers since arriving at my Texas winter home. I need to start getting rid of my oldest builds. I only run these computers when the sun is out and my solar panels help with the electricity. My oldest one is better than what your using right now. If your willing to reimburse me for shipping costs I would send you a motherboard, CPU w/cooler, memory and small SSD with Linux on it for free. You could have the entire build but I suspect the shipping costs would be prohibitive. So you would need at a minimum a PSU and video card. Case is optional. There's no iGPU like Intel CPUs have.

MSI X370 Gaming Pro motherboard
Ryzen 7 2700X 8C/16T CPU with stock cooler
16GB memory (3000)
SSD (120GB)

Thanks very much for the exceedingly generous offer. I should have explained I'm a low energy freak hence the "S" processors and my many Raspberry Pi's. I have had some serious gaming CPU's and motherboards but never used them, its not my thing, I end up giving them away.

Thanks again.

[ChelseaOilman]

My computers running BOINC is how I heat my house in the winter. And my large 39 x 325W solar array helps with the electric bill.

[UBT - Timbo]

@Timbo, if your interested in my two 2P servers this is the last winter I plan on running them. Similar deal, free, just pay shipping.

Hi Carl

Thanks for the kind offer.

Like you, I have got a collection of old mobo's, that need to be either sold off, or recycled so I will pass on this for now...although if you still have one of the 2P boards available in a few months, then I'll PM you and I can see what the shipping cost/import duty/VAT would be payable...

I have been looking for X79 chipset mobos on eBay so, I can use the spare 16 core CPUs I have, but s/hand mobos on sale here in the UK seem to attract high prices...although one can get cheaper boards direct from China...but you never know if they are OK, as few are branded with quality brand names ! (And hence they could easily be fake boards that do not work !).

regards
Tim

[ChelseaOilman]

Like you, I have got a collection of old mobo's, that need to be either sold off, or recycled so I will pass on this for now...although if you still have one of the 2P boards available in a few months, then I'll PM you and I can see what the shipping cost/import duty/VAT would be payable...

One of the 2P server boards with CPUs and memory is on the way to Skillz right now. He may have it on Friday. If he can come up with a server case with PSUs and heatsinks he may be hosting the BOINC Games site on it. The other one is yours if you want it. I would need to know before I leave for Colorado in June.

Supermicro X9DRL-iF with Xeon E5-2697 v2 CPUs and 64GB memory

[wbiz]

To answer my own question. It very much depends on the project, most projects appear to be primarily single threaded, some use one thread and partially use a second thread, others, especially amicable numbers, use two threads flat out so would greatly benefit from multi-thread processors.

I spent a lot of time looking at speed vs cost vs energy for the i5-4590S and expected much better out of it, it is much better on paper and standard benchmarks than what boinc gets out of it.

I'm amazed how well the ARMv8@1.8GHz is holding up against the i5-4590S@3.3GHz, from normal benchmarks the Intel should be way ahead of the ARM but in practice on boinc it is only about 50% faster.

Speed-wise the Intel appears to be much worse with boinc than other applications but I guess the Intel is designed for normal applications rather than number crunching.

Energy wise the Intel is better than I expected probably because its being used headless but the ARM is more than twice as efficient per boinc credit.

I couldn't get the Haswell GPU working with Boinc at all, I guess that is a lack of vRAM, it errors out immediately.

I have suspicions that I actually have a XEON processor rather than the i5, every CPU interrogation says i5 but every GPU interrogation says XEON. As it is cruising at 3.3GHz with four cores flat out would lead me to think it is more likely to be XEON but the power consumption should be higher if that was the case .... I think? I'll open it up once I find my heat compound. God knows what has been bodged in microcode if it is a XEON

Its a shame more projects don't support ARM but now that the apple and PC ARMs are out I think that will change.

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi

May I interject a little?

I spent a lot of time looking at speed vs cost vs energy for the i5-4590S and expected much better out of it, it is much better on paper and standard benchmarks than what boinc gets out of it.

I think you also need to consider the specific OS that the processor is operating under...and hence how well the project application is optimised for each OS.

So, you could find that on one project, an Intel/AMD x86 or x64 CPU running WIndows gives poorer results (ie slower to complete the tasks or earns fewer credits) than say the exact same CPU running Linux. And the same can be true comparing an x86/x64 CPU with an ARM CPU.

And this all comes down to the programmers and their specific code writing skills and which framework they use to create the application for each OS in the first place.

I remember some years ago, there were a few projects that employed less skillful programmers to create their applications which lead to a significant number of BOINC members, who clearly were better programmers.

They took it upon themselves to re-write the applications such that they were optimised for specific motherboard and CPU chipset features and these revised applications took far less time to complete specific tasks and yet were still validated and were perfectly acceptable to the projects. SETI@home was one and Einstein@home was another as I recall.

Some of these optimised applications then became "official" (or the revised code-base was integrated into the official versions) as project admins saw that their code could be improved on.

regards
Tim

[wbiz]

I noticed that with Einstein, shorter tasks were going to Intel and longer (different) tasks were going to ARM. Towards the end of the sprint I was closing tasks down as they couldn't complete before the end but I couldn't find a way to force the shorter tasks to take up the remaining slack.

I have the same issue with memory, I've got more memory on Intel but there is a tendency for the ARM tasks to need more memory.

Some Einstein tasks were using so little memory on Intel that I thought the 512KB single core Pi Zero would have coped easily but it wouldn't happen. A delusional idea of getting 20 cores running during the sprint, 6 Intel and 14 ARM, I had to settle for 12 of which many points were wasted due to other mistakes.

I'm learning bit by bit, since Covid I'm having a lot more trouble assimilating information, its extremely frustrating, not helped by the threat of being homeless soon, I can't find anybody to take my money off me so we might be stuck in hotels for a while, I'm hoping to find somebody to power my 24/7 boinc computers throughout and keep my points rolling in.

[UBT - Timbo]

I noticed that with Einstein, shorter tasks were going to Intel and longer (different) tasks were going to ARM. Towards the end of the sprint I was closing tasks down as they couldn't complete before the end but I couldn't find a way to force the shorter tasks to take up the remaining slack.

I have the same issue with memory, I've got more memory on Intel but there is a tendency for the ARM tasks to need more memory.

Some Einstein tasks were using so little memory on Intel that I thought the 512KB single core Pi Zero would have coped easily but it wouldn't happen. A delusional idea of getting 20 cores running during the sprint, 6 Intel and 14 ARM, I had to settle for 12 of which many points were wasted due to other mistakes.

Hiya

Each project might have different applications over time and as such they may build specific OS dependant applications in order to both appease crunchers who have the necessary hardware, but also to take advantages of CPU-specific features.

And in my experience, there is no easy way of finding out which application from which project works the best (effciency-wise) although asking relevant questions on project forums can usually help.

I'm learning bit by bit, since Covid I'm having a lot more trouble assimilating information, its extremely frustrating, not helped by the threat of being homeless soon, I can't find anybody to take my money off me so we might be stuck in hotels for a while, I'm hoping to find somebody to power my 24/7 boinc computers throughout and keep my points rolling in.

What?? You should get where you live sorted out BEFORE worrying about BOINC...I was in a similar situation last year when my landlord wanted to sell the house I rented so I had 2 months to find somewhere...it was a very hectic time, as I had to go to various viewings and sadly, as it was the first summer after Covid (when people could actually move house), there were few properties available and LOTS of people wanting them.

Things seem to have settled down now, so, I suggest you register on rightmove.co.uk, zoopla.co.uk, onthemarket.com and just enter the minimum type of property you want (ie flat/house, number of bedrooms etc, furnished/unfurnished) and the areas you'd consider and maybe a price range you can afford.

Hope you can get something sorted out ASAP.

regards
Tim

[wbiz]

Can't get viewings around here, been first or in the first few of the queue many times and it just never happens. In three weeks of trying we have only managed to get one viewing out of about 25 properties, a few cancellations and loads have not got back to us.

The really frustrating thing is I'm not short of money but the landlords are asking for a higher criteria than the mortgage companies at the moment eg £27k income required for a two bedroom property that is £900/month and capital is irrelevant, I can afford that with ease indefinitely, there's only two of us, no family to pay for.

I've had to register as homeless with the council as a backstop but there are families with babies not being able to get anywhere either.

Its looking like storage and hotels for a few months, incredibly hotels are significantly cheaper than airbnb around here. Hotel for a month Ibis double £1200, travelodge family room £1400, airbnb for a month £2,000 - £10,000.

I can afford to stay in hotels indefinitely but I doubt I'd find it healthy mentally.

There are a few people that have offered to put us up if we bring a bed but I absolutely wouldn't impose on others, especially as I don't need to

Life goes on, you can't fight reality, something will work out in the end.

[UBT - Timbo]

Hiya

OK, I did a search on rightmove for the Wirral area (+/- 10 miles, as I assume this is where you are)...and there were over 800 properties available (and I have excluded student properties).

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to ... &keywords=

Secondly: There is one trick I have used which works - offer to pay 3 or 6 months in advance (if you can afford it). The problem with estate agents and landlords is that they want to ensure you are a long term tenant and will not miss making monthly rent payments...but paying in advance helps to negate that issue and it gives the estate agent/landlord confidence that you are well funded...and that you will pay the rent on time.

So, maybe try that?

regards
Tim

[wbiz]

I've offered to pay months in advance from day 1, rolling on monthly so it always stays in advance and said "whatever you want, talk to me" but you can't get past the middle-men who are muscling in with their own rules to justify their silly fees. We've had at least four estate agents laugh at us when we've said we are heading towards being homeless.

There are lots of dodgy zones around, I'm getting too old to be pratting around with idiots especially now off-road bikes, guns, knives and stamping on heads are so rampant around many areas. Plus I have the responsibility of ensuring my partner is safe.

Merseyside has had a huge problem with drugs following on from the 1970s de-industrialisation of the area, it is not got any better, The Police and the Public's tolerance to crime and drugs is a lot higher than most other areas of the country, that doesn't make areas safe, it just means crime is under-reported.

[UBT - Timbo]

Hiya

Maybe you need to consider a different area, slightly further away? Warrington, St Helens, Newton-le-Willows, Runcorn, Frodsham etc.

Still within touching distance of Merseyside/Wirral, but with more available houses?

Whatever you are looking for, perhaps, compromise a little about areas or housing requirements and see what then appears on your searches. It can be tough and time consuming...and I really hope you can find somewhere soon that suits you both.

regards
Tim

[wbiz]

By comparison.....

After a quick search on the internet this morning, I phoned up the landlord of a commercial property and had a quick chat, paid a visit to the site and checked out two others I passed on the way, emailed my ID etc across, they've emailed me back the contract and invoice, I've paid the deposit and first months rent, I will have the keys in 4 days time.

So simple when estate agents aren't involved, if only residential was that easy.

Its not my property criteria that is stopping this happening, we have applied for two houses at the bottom end of the market and got turned down quicker than ones nearly twice the price - perhaps they assume we are really looking for temporary accommodation given our circumstance, whichever, we can't win.

I've talked to estate agents in Cheshire and North Wales and they have the same financial criteria - capital is not taken into account (even if you are a millionaire - which I'm not).

There was only one property we could afford to buy (shared ownership) and someone beat us to that .... or we were de-prioritised, it appeared to have got sold overnight.

We have a large-ish property (four large bedrooms, four reception rooms, three proper bathrooms), our mortgage has quadrupled, our energy bills are sometimes over £30 a day, I give away hundreds of pounds every month, I can afford all that indefinitely. I can afford to live in hotels indefinitely. Yet I am being told I cannot afford to rent a small two bedroom house anywhere through lack of earned income.

[wbiz]

To follow up on my original post (sorry for the off-topic rant, which is now sorted), the 4-core, 8-thread 4790s is working out almost exactly at a 50% increase in boinc performance over the 4-core, 4-thread 4590S.

With turbo on the 3GHz 4590S and 3.2GHz 4790S both end up averaging around 3.3GHz but the fans can start getting a bit wild. Switching turbo off the power consumption reduces considerably for only a 3% loss of boinc performance on the 4790S but a 10% loss of performance on the 4590S.

The fan management is interesting, initially it maintains the cores at 60C but if it finds there are no wild fluctuations it will then switch to maintaining the cores at 70C inside the first 15 mins or so. With turbo off and cores at 70C the fans are usually near enough at idle speed for most projects.

For the greater majority of projects the 4790S's are performing quite well per thread compared to other more recent CPU's.

I'm having a think about GT1030 GPU's which appear to be a good price/energy/performance choice for an occasional boost in performance.

[ChelseaOilman]

I'm having a think about GT1030 GPU's which appear to be a good price/energy/performance choice for an occasional boost in performance.

I have a GT1030 that was just sitting in storage. Just stuck it in a recent 12900K build that had no dGPU installed. I'll let you know how it does on NumberFields after it does some GPU tasks. Looks like it may be 10 times slower than my slowest GPU right now. It does use a lot less power but how much power it uses per task is what counts.

This card: https://www.evga.com/products/Specs/GPU ... 6228db90bc

I paid $70 for it in March of last year when it was hard to find a cheap GPU for my Ryzen systems that have no iGPU.

[wbiz]

I'm having a think about GT1030 GPU's which appear to be a good price/energy/performance choice for an occasional boost in performance.

I have a GT1030 that was just sitting in storage. Just stuck it in a recent 12900K build that had no dGPU installed. I'll let you know how it does on NumberFields after it does some GPU tasks. Looks like it may be 10 times slower than my slowest GPU right now. It does use a lot less power but how much power it uses per task is what counts.

This card: https://www.evga.com/products/Specs/GPU ... 6228db90bc

I paid $70 for it in March of last year when it was hard to find a cheap GPU for my Ryzen systems that have no iGPU.

That's great thanks, I will be interested to see how that performs because a GT1030 should slot straight into my SFF PC's powerwise. I'm not expecting crazy boinc results, if it exceeds CPU by a factor of more than two that would be a win in my eyes. The official card is a NVS300 (GT2185) which I believe just about matches the CPU. the GT1030 should be about ten times faster.

GT1030's appear to sell at about £50 at the moment so that gives me a target of £35-£40 on the right day with the wind behind me. Some of the surplus places are absolutely full of stock and need to move some on, while they don't like to advertise cheaper prices they are willing to negotiate.

[ChelseaOilman]

GT1030's appear to sell at about £50 at the moment so that gives me a target of £35-£40 on the right day with the wind behind me. Some of the surplus places are absolutely full of stock and need to move some on, while they don't like to advertise cheaper prices they are willing to negotiate.

If you end up getting one you may want to pay attention to the memory on the card. Apparently these were sold with GDDR3, GDDR4 or GDDR5. Mine is a GDDR5 varient with a large passive heatsink. I'm not sure how much of a difference the memory type would make. I've had mine for over a year and never ran BOINC on it before now. This is a first for me.

I bought a mini PC the other day to play around with.
This one from Amazon for $520 ---> https://www.amazon.com/Beelink-4-75GHz- ... s9dHJ1ZQ==

Review: https://www.techradar.com/reviews/beeli ... 5hs-review

[ChelseaOilman]

Here are some NumberField results from the GT 1030 overnight.

[ChelseaOilman]

NumberField GPU tasks are poorly optimized. Task times are all over the map. They fully load the GT 1030 but not any of my faster cards. Normally I would run NumberFields on CPU but all my CPUs are doing TN-Grid tasks right now.

[wbiz]

I was looking at the beelinks sometime back, I'm sure they were a lot cheaper, I'm kinda thinking of getting a small windows machine at the moment. Although I was a great fan of Raspberry Pi's their recent behaviour has put me off buying new computers from them, they are about to float the company and as their officials and employees have shares and/or virtual shares in the company I think they have lost a lot of their ethos.

Getting a micro-PC would free up another Pi4 to go on boinc 24/7 and also I would go down to one desktop again instead of two, I use a Pi4 95% of the time but my main data backups are remaining on Windows plus there are some programs that don't really have an equivalent in Linux.

My bargain hunting has been looking at some thin clients but haven't spotted "the one" yet, I want a minimum of 4 cores and 8GB Ram at a bottom price (per usual), the only ones that have met the spec are notorious for their horrible fan noise.

Presumably the beelink must have a fan?

Thanks for the GT1030 stats, I'll have a compare later, its FOOD time now and I'm starving (as usual).

[ChelseaOilman]

This is from GPU-Z while running NumberFields on the GT 1030.

[ChelseaOilman]

Presumably the beelink must have a fan?

It has 2 fans and you can't hear them unless you try real hard.

There are much cheaper Beelink mini PCs. This happens to be a pretty top end one with a very recent 8C/16T CPU. Also 32GB DDR5, 500GB M2.NVME and Windows 11 Pro.

[wbiz]

The GT1030 results look a little disappointing speedwise especially if its on the DDR5 model but how many concurrent tasks was it running?.

This is from GPU-Z while running NumberFields on the GT 1030.

GPU-z results are impressive energy-wise

[ChelseaOilman]

The GT1030 results look a little disappointing speedwise especially if its on the DDR5 model but how many concurrent tasks was it running?

I'm only running one NumberFields GPU task at a time on all my GPUs. I tried running 2 at a time on my RTX 4070Ti but didn't see enough improvement to make it worthwhile so went back to one at a time.

These are tasks on the RTX 4070Ti:

[ChelseaOilman]

Except for the GT 1030 all my GPUs are power limited to 65% The RTX 4070Ti is using about 100 watts more than the GT 1030 but processing tasks much faster even though the tasks aren't fully loading the GPU. I could run the RTX 4070Ti for one day and it would probably take the GT 1030 a week to catch up. So what's more power efficient? The RTX 4070Ti running for one day or the GT 1030 for a week to end up with the same amount of tasks done?

[wbiz]

That's the thing, I have considered getting something much higher power and promising myself to only run it for a few hours at a time - but I know that will be a false promise, like chocolate - I'm disciplined in what I buy but if its sitting in front of me the rule book goes out the window.

I misunderstood how the GPU's are used, I thought they ran loads of tasks in parallel and that's what made them so powerful, I didn't realise they were effectively used as a co-processor, they are macro-processing rather than multi-processing.

It doesn't look like a ddr3 GT1030 would be worth the trouble, I'd get more throughput on my 8 thread cpu's which are more versatile. I'm taking about 7000 seconds a task on numberfields but eight tasks in parallel so around 900 seconds per task per cpu for the same 194 points. Numberfields doesn't have ARM, for other tasks the times are from X0.8 to X3 of the Intels, the ARMs are insanely fast on pure integers for what they are but few applications take full advantage of that.

Thanks for your efforts, it has been extremely helpful.

[ChelseaOilman]

@wbiz, I'm in Colorado now. Set up the Beelink to run BOINC. Does pretty good.

[wbiz]

@wbiz, I'm in Colorado now. Set up the Beelink to run BOINC. Does pretty good.

Not dissimilar thread speeds to my 4790S's on Ramanunjan except you have twice as many threads and probably half the power consumption, so yes, I'm jealous

Is the fan noise staying quiet?

I've put another Raspberry Pi4 online 24/7 and also put Samsung Fit Plus USB flash drives on the Pi4's instead of regular SSD's. I assumed the USB flash drives used less power than the Kingston A400 SSDs but now I've got them it looks like they may actually use more - win some, lose some. The tiny flash drives are a lot tidier so I'll probably stick with them.

I've also been replacing some thermal pads, I bought Arctic Pro but was actually supplied with Gelid Gp-Ultimate, the Gelids are definitely performing a lot better than my old Arctic pads and is much easier to use.

[ChelseaOilman]

Is the fan noise staying quiet?

The stock fans are quiet but don't keep things cool enough to my liking. BIOS is very limited and doesn't give any way to control fan speeds. No clue if they are running at full speed. So my solution was to order a 120mm fan from Amazon that has a speed controller and plugs into my power strip. The top cloth grill/filter just pops off the Beelink and I set the fan on top of the Beelink. I'm running the fan at half speed which keeps the CPU temp at 80C. At half speed fan noise is noticable but not annoying.

This fan: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09YLQXB9N?ps ... ct_details

I'm happy with the Beelink SER6 Pro and when a Reddit post alerted me to another sale at Amazon that probably was a mistake as they accidentily left a $100 coupon code in place in addition to the flash sale of $130 off I purchased a 2nd Beelink. The first 1 cost me $520 and the 2nd 1 cost me $420. Not bad for what you get.

[wbiz]

I'm happy with the Beelink SER6 Pro and when a Reddit post alerted me to another sale at Amazon that probably was a mistake as they accidentily left a $100 coupon code in place in addition to the flash sale of $130 off I purchased a 2nd Beelink. The first 1 cost me $520 and the 2nd 1 cost me $420. Not bad for what you get.

Well done, I pay whatever I need to pay for things but I prefer not to pay more than I have to.

Those fans are a really neat solution, good find! I hate wall-warts, always prefer leads.

[ChelseaOilman]

Those fans are a really neat solution, good find! I hate wall-warts, always prefer leads.

The fan is the same size as the Beelink, LOL. It works great though. Gives me total control over the cooling. The Beelink could use a better heatsink but there's not a lot you can do inside such a small case.

I opted for the 38mm thick fan because the CFM was much higher. A 25mm thick fan might require running it at full speed to get the same cooling and make more noise than the 38mm fan running at half speed. It doesn't show it in the ad at Amazon but the fan came with 2 black fan grills. With a grill mounted on each side I don't have to worry about cutting a finger by accident!

[wbiz]

After spending far too much time thinking instead of doing and spotting a good price, I've bought two TrigKey S5 Ryzen 7 5800H 32GB mini pc's, TrigKey are the same company as Beelink (both are AZW).

I've had one running on long Einstein tasks all day, initially keeping CPU temperature to 70C which clocked at 2.8GHz, later I put the processors up to 3.2GHz and its holding at about 74C, fan is quiet and pleasant, power is under 30W and exhaust temperature is about 45C, case is cool apart from at the exhaust port.

I've never seen so many bios settings, found the setting that stops it Turbo-ing and left most else alone..

Plan to keep one on Windows and the other on Linux. I installed boinc+virtualbox for Windows, I forgot to check if VTx was on in the bios.

Absolutely no idea about boinc & gpu tasks, one thread is running "0.9CPU + 1GPU", I forgot to switch GPU tasks on until half way through downloading. Computer is set for 4GB GPU memory.

Next plan is to buy a second Raspberry Pi5 8GB and then I'm planning on selling most of the HP SSF computers and Raspberry Pi4's, probably keeping one of each. The HP's are fetching a lot more than I paid for them, I'll price them somewhere in the middle.