UK BOINC Team Forum

New here, well sort of, signed up to seti@home back in 2008 (joined this team, searched for "UK Team" or something and this one came back so I put it in, didn't do much crunching (some 2,000 credits) but now getting into it.

Hi XTeminator8, and a very warm welcome to the team.  

Hi XTeminator8, so you have tried the rest but now found the  Best?

to the team, hope you enjoy your crunching and involvement with the team.

Mark

Hello XTerminator8, welcome to the forum.  

hi XTeminator8 and welcome to the forum

Welcome to the best team in the UK.
May your stay be along one.
Need any help ? Then just ask there is
always someone around to give advice.


b.

Nice 1 - Welcome to the team

Thanks! Looking forward to it.

I'm actually building a gaming computer soon, so we'll get the numbers rolling on there soon!

Timby - I actually joined this team first by chance, just googled a "UK boinc team" and this popped up so I joined it (this was back in Feb 2008), but was not too serious about it - only got about 2,000 credits on it!

Now I am thinking how much time my computer sits idle and it could have done something more productive you know!

N1 XTerminator8, well its good to see you have got the Bug as it were, as you can see we all have our own favorit projects to push  :lol:  mine being ABC should you wish to take a look?
If you turn into a credit whore please See MilkyWay posts  for exact details  :lol:
Seriously though if you need help or pointing in the right direction just ask.

I'm sorry but I do not understand what the "credit whore" means  :oops: and I'll be honest! I haven't a clue what the ABC@home is onabout lol

This is amazing, I can't believe how many projects are available these days.

Sorry (again ^^) to say this, but I see that lots of people have lots of points across the whole range, I would rather concentrate on 2 projects at most, is this "allowed" and would you guys mind?

Previously, (and some extent now) I currently running the SETI@home and looking for one other candidate, perhaps world community grid because I would like to do something "good" that relates to us on earth if this makes sense!

Oh yes and thanks for the other welcomes (don't wanna sound rude)  :D

XTerminator8 wrote:I'm sorry but I do not understand what the "credit whore" means  :oops: and I'll be honest! I haven't a clue what the ABC@home is onabout lol

haha, credit whore refers to those users who prefer projects that award higher than average credits.

This is amazing, I can't believe how many projects are available these days.

Yep, there's some 60+ active projects to choose from.

Sorry (again ^^) to say this, but I see that lots of people have lots of points across the whole range, I would rather concentrate on 2 projects at most, is this "allowed" and would you guys mind?

run whatever projects you like, 1 or 60, it doesn't matter one bit

I'm actually building a gaming computer soon, so we'll get the numbers rolling on there soon!

that could open up other projects for you, Milkyway and GPUGrid (and others) have science applications that can run on your graphics card. Modern graphics cards have the ability to crunch work units in very short periods of time and can award huge amounts of credit, something to bear in mind when spec'ing your new PC

Temujin wrote:haha, credit whore refers to those users who prefer projects that award higher than average credits.

LOL !

I'm the Milky Bar Kid

Hello and Welcome!

A 'credit whore' is also a cruncher who doesn't care about the actual benefits of the project, just the amount of credits the project awards per work unit.

Ty for response

Temujin thanks for the infos. Does that mean I could run numerous projects simultaneously as well as the CPU?

I was wondering why the GPU are faster then the processor - is it because the graphics cards have more cores then the CPU i.e. 216 on GTX260 as opposed to the quad core CPUs?

XTerminator8 wrote:Does that mean I could run numerous projects simultaneously as well as the CPU?

You can certainly run multiple CPU projects with an nvidia GPU running GPUGrid, I do that myself and you're meant to be able to run multi CPU projects with an ATI GPU running milkyway but I've not tried that.

At the moment there are so few GPU capable projects that not many people would've tried multiple projects on the GPU at the same time. It may be possible to run, say, gpugrid and seti both on the GPU but I think at best it would run 1 project at a time ie 1 hour of seti, 1 hour of gpugrid or maybe 1 seti WU then 1 gpugrid WU
I've not heard mention of anyone doing that type of thing, it tends to be either/or rather than both but who knows, it may work

I was wondering why the GPU are faster then the processor - is it because the graphics cards have more cores then the CPU i.e. 216 on GTX260 as opposed to the quad core CPUs?

and 800 on a ATI HD4870
I dunno the technicalities of why they are as fast as they are but I'm mighty pleased they are

wow, check this out, my first proper WU!

My Core 2 2GHz mobile processor vs Xeon 2.5GHz got crushed 6 times over!
50,000 sec vs 300,000 on mine!

Are the Xeons (as I understand server processors) better at number crunching? How are they compared against, say the i7? -Thanks.

Thanks Temujin will do! Didn't know about that (the ATI that is) --would be interesting to see how they compare.

XTerminator8 wrote:My Core 2 2GHz mobile processor vs Xeon 2.5GHz got crushed 6 times over!
50,000 sec vs 300,000 on mine!

Don't panic

If you compare the results for yours and his you'll see that he's using a special optimised version of the science app.
Optimised apps can make a huge difference to the processing time of a WU. His Xeon could be something like 2 or 3 times as fast as your T7200, the rest of the difference being made by the opti app

If you're interested in trying it out, have a look at lunatics site

Okay nice one thanks.
That's good to know.
On the case


edit:

heyhey!!!
I *think* I did it.

For every 1 "real" second goes by, 15 "estimated" seconds are reduced!
I don't think the "show graphic" works but oh well!

This SSE3 is amazing (if it is working ^^) I think it is because it says "anonymous" platform?

editedit:

I've been reading alot, and basically I think I selected the wrong sse instructions. It seems that Windows XP (i.e. my current o.s.) does not support SSE3 (or so it seems/read). Before I change the the other version (SSE/2) can someone please confirm this --thanks.

Wow XTerminator8 you been busy since I last looked !!
http://www.cpuid.com/ Is what most people use to check which instruction sets the CPU can handle, I may be wrong but all my XP X64 bit machines run SSE3 OK.

XTerminator8 wrote:This SSE3 is amazing (if it is working ^^) I think it is because it says "anonymous" platform?

Yep, thats what it should say, its looking good :thumbup:
The WUs would error straight away if it wasn't working.

I don't think the "show graphic" works but oh well!

oh yeah, I forgot about that, the graphics don't work because it steals valuable processing time

I've been reading alot, and basically I think I selected the wrong sse instructions. It seems that Windows XP (i.e. my current o.s.) does not support SSE3 (or so it seems/read). Before I change the the other version (SSE/2) can someone please confirm this --thanks.

Which SSE level is supported is dependant on your CPU rather than the OS. Your T2700 should at least support SSE3 and maybe higher. Do as Timby suggests and download CPUID, that will tell you what SSE levels your cpu supports.

Nice work XTerminator8

A late post, but welcome aboard! Good to see another member on the forums.  :)

I had a go at SETI recently using my graphics card (8800GT) and that was quite amusing to see it outdoing similar quads by a huge time factor! Mwhaha

And in regards to Temujins post about why a graphics card is so much more powerful. From Wikipedia:
A new concept is to use a modified form of a stream processor to allow a general purpose graphics processing unit. This concept turns the massive floating-point computational power of a modern graphics accelerator's shader pipeline into general-purpose computing power, as opposed to being hard wired solely to do graphical operations. In certain applications requiring massive vector operations, this can yield several orders of magnitude higher performance than a conventional CPU. The two largest discrete (see "Dedicated graphics cards" above) GPU designers, ATI and NVIDIA, are beginning to pursue this new market with an array of applications. Both nVidia and ATI have teamed with Stanford University to create a GPU-based client for the Folding@Home distributed computing project (for protein folding calculations). In certain circumstances the GPU calculates forty times faster than the conventional CPUs traditionally used in such applications.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_processing_unit

ty guys !

cpuid confirms SSE3 instructions  :)

14 hours and it is already 63% amazing, before it took like well a lot more  8)

I just got a watt meter, and full load (with screen off) ~80W that's brilliant!

ty again

Amazing, they done it in 66,000 seconds!

So much for that guys xeon muuhahahahhaha!!!

Thanks again!

XTerminator8 wrote:Amazing, they done it in 66,000 seconds!

Tis good stuff :thumbup:
Installing opti apps can be quite daunting but you look to have managed it fine,  well done mate

Thanks

Okay. I built the rig. Well sort of, just testing at the moment. I thought what could I throw at it?

So far I am testing the CPU and will do the GPU another day when I get used to it.

I am now running Windows XP 64-bit and 64-bit client and I have downloaded:
http://lunatics.kwsn.net/index.php?modu ... ads;catd=9
the optimised application for SSE4.1  (cause of it supported) and I notice that it is "multibeam". The astropulse seems to be only 32-bit, is this correct?
Does that mean it is only optimised for standard SETI enhanced WUs? Thanks.

XTerminator8 wrote:I am now running Windows XP 64-bit and 64-bit client and I have downloaded:
http://lunatics.kwsn.net/index.php?modu ... ads;catd=9
the optimised application for SSE4.1  (cause of it supported) and I notice that it is "multibeam". The astropulse seems to be only 32-bit, is this correct?
Does that mean it is only optimised for standard SETI enhanced WUs? Thanks.

Multibeam is the older seti application, Astropulse is their newer application.
If the Lunatics only have a 32bit astropulse app, then yes, its correct

Take a look at the Combo MB+AP App_info.xml Template link, that should allow you to run both multibeam and astropulse at the same time

Okay thanks I'll look into it.

I also trying this CUDA - it does not work for some reason... there is one task and it says "Ready to Start" but it does not?

EDIT: ACTUALLY! I have got it running - it was in the website "suspend work while in use" I changed this to "No" and it is rolling...

I'm not sure how fast it meant to be so I will come back and tell you the results.

EDITEDIT: It took ~22 minutes on one card and the other is still going on 12% @ 30 mins.

and a different unit did it in 10.5mins ?

I'm not sure if CUDA is worth it in my case because my CPU can do
8 units in 60 mins so I'm not sure whether to keep it on? I suppose it would be worth it if they (GPU+CPU) could run simultaneously but since it is not it is nor worth it I think.

I'm crunching 4 primegrid work units and 1 seti cuda task running all the time.
Those cuda tasks credits certainly add up. Cuda is the only seti task i'm running and its accounting for at least 25% of my credit.
It all depend on what cpu tasks are running as to whether you get 3 cpu's and a cuda or 4 cpu's and a cuda.

Not experimented much yet as to what app will run 4+1 yet. I just know these 64 bit psp sieve W/U's will let me run 4+1 so thats what i'm doing for a bit.

Hope that makes sense.......

Real ale FTW

nicenice.

Could I ask you how long it takes you to complete some of the WUs? Is it normal for some to take a big big time in difference?