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SETI gets big funding boost! :D

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Careface

Careface

Member
​
Joined
Jul 4, 2004
Location
Auckland, New Zealand
*cheer* Such good news that Russian billionaire Yuri Milner is giving $100 milllion to the search. Obviously we have no idea how much, if any, will go to the @home project, but I suspect there will be as he has mentioned that he wants to use @home to continue processing signals. At the very least, he's bought a lot of telescope time in US and Australia, so plenty of work to go around for quite some time to come!

Read more at NY times here

Well, that coincides well with me coming back to the project after a long leave (my bad! :rain: )... Still trying to work out why lots of GTX 6xx series crunchers are running CUDA42 app (Fermi) instead of CUDA50 app (Kepler+).. Time will tell :) Looks like I'll be averaging ~14,500 cr/day at this point, so after it stabilises, I'll switch to the CUDA42 app and compare it. It's winter here in NZ, so my 660 Ti is running 24/7 happily heating my room at 1201/3110mhz and crunching 2 units at a time :D

Crunch on! :attn:
 
I was thinking about getting back into crunching and maybe starting to fold also. How are the work units coming? I have two gtx 980 ti's that could be put to use.
 
You totally should mate :D as long as you have a reasonably always-on internet access, you should have a really good cruncher there :) for the foreseeable future, everyone is limited to 100 WU per *device* "In Progress".. Partly the issue I'm having with running out of work is that I dont have internet connected on this rig for 8-9 hours during the day each day :/ Oh well, I'll sort something out lol
 
I have a couple note Nvidia cards laying around. I know I can't mix and match sli but could I run my two 980 ti's, a geforce 8800gtx, and a gtx 250 in the same machine? Would using those older cards even be worth it? I know and doesn't care much for mix matching cards. I have a couple of those on the way also that I could put on a benching rig to crunch also.
 
Sorry for the long reply time mate, had a bit of SETI issues I was trying to sort out.

Yes you can run multiple unmatched cards on SETI; in fact, last time I checked it was actually a performance *decrease* when running SLI vs independent cards. The 980 Tis are absolute beasts when it comes to crunching, but I'm not sure about the viability of running the 8800GTX, I've been a bit out the loop recently and the optimised apps are starting *not* to support the older cards (even pre-Fermi cards are loosing their continued support it seems).. As for the GTX 250, that could still probably pull 3-4k+ RAC I'd imagine (trying to think back to when I was crunching on my GTX 260-216).

With regards to how to get the most out of your 980 Tis (so jealous btw!), you'd likely be looking at running at least 2, possibly 3 instances simultaneously. Do check GPU-z or similar program though to test out first - obviously if 2 instances are putting your card to ~98-99%, then a third will likely only hinder performance. Definitely keen to see your results with however you set your rig up :) and a big thanks in advance for lending your support to the cause! :) :beer:

Lastly, you may want to dedicate some CPU threads/cores to feeding the GPU, especially with those 980 Tis. I've noticed that if I'm running 8/8 CPU threads (i7 960 @ 3.6) and 2 GPU threads (GTX 660 Ti OC), the GPU usage according to GPU-z and MSI AfterBurner will show reasonably frequent drops of GPU load from 98/99% to anywhere between 50 and 97%.. I disabled a thread (so 7/8 running) and it helped it a bit, maybe spiking between 80 and 98%, but when I disabled 2 threads, it quite happily sits back at 98-99% solid. Might be something to consider seeing as your cards are far more beastly than mine, so might see an even bigger drop in performance if you're running full CPU alongside full GPU.

Good luck my friend!
Crunch on!
 
Hey all, quick question - Im looking to upgrade (or add) a GPU to my system - any recommendations? the nVidia GTX 970 looks nice for performance/price/feasability, what does everyone think? I currently have a GTX 660Ti 1220/1555, but im definitely interested in adding another GPU (most likely at this stage a 970 GTX) so I'll have both crunching and *hopefuly* break 21k RAC :)

Cheers,
Careface*

EDIT: spelling zzz...

EDIT2: Boy I suck at spelling lol.
 
Well just thought I'd keep people updated - about 30mins ago I bought an EVGA GTX 970 (made sure I got the ACX2.0 HSF), can't wait for it to arrive in a few days and test the beast out!

As for my current rig, looks like I was doing ~20k credit/day with the GTX 660 Ti and 6/8 CPU cores.. Previously with exclusively GPU crunching, I was pulling ~12.5k credit/day, and that GPU in theory pulls 1344*1250*2 = 3,360 GFLOPs oc'd (1344*915*2 = 2,460 GFLOP/s stock).. And the GTX 970 in theory does 1664*1178*2 = 3,920 GFLOP/s at stock, and even with a modest oc of 1250 would be 1664*1250*2 = 4,160 GFLOP/s.. Given my CPU (i7 960 @ 3.6ghz) gives ~3.4 GFLOPs per core, the 970 in theory should double my RAC.. Would be upper happy with 30k RAC :) if so, :beer: on me my friends!

Crunch on!
 
I still haven't got around to setting up Seti. I need to stop procrastinating and do it. Although it is summer time and my electric is high enough.
 
Ahh yeah, I know that feeling.. The local council recently put our rates up 18.9% (!!) and our power has spiked a fair bit owing to it being winter at the moment.. Guess I'll have to see what the bills look like at the end of the month!

As for you not getting around to setting SETI up, maybe this will help? SETI.Germany are holding a race to celebrate the 38th Anniversary of the WOW! Signal, starting 15th August - you should sign up! I figured why the heck not, hopefully the 970 will have arrived by then so I can really start turning up the heat! :mad:

Signup page is on the SETI.Germany site

On a related note, I recently put my phone to crunching SETI.. It's a Sony Xperia Z running Cyanogenmod11 - other than the fact it's slow as all hell (@ 1512MHz [max], it's crunching VLARs in ~54hour, and VHARs in ~12hour), the problem I'm having is that BOINC drains the battery quicker than it can recharge - even when plugged into the wall so current is 1500mA. I'm tempted to find a fix for this, maybe get one of those dual USB->single microUSB adaptors to give it a bit of extra power. I tried crunching on only 3/4 cores, still no go. Underclocked to 1134MHz and 3 cores and it seems to be *almost neutral* in power consumption/discharge.

No idea what kind of RAC it will get, and really I don't care much - it's mainly just a wee nerdy project I'm enjoying messing around with :) Here's a link to the system; it should be sending back its first 3 WU in abou 5hours... Exciting!

Crunch on! :beer:

EDIT: Forgot to add; I gave the dust bunnies a bit of a clean out and re-AS5'd the 660 Ti - seems to have dropped temps by ~8-10C, which is nice. Previously it was staying 71-72C @ 1228/1550, now it's been crunching for a little over 24 hours @ 1254/1550 and temp is currently 63C, 24hour max @ 67C, 24hour average @ 63.4C.. So I'm quite happy about that at least :) Shame I couldn't get much else out of the core clocks though, I can't seem to add any mV to VCore using AfterBurner.. the slider is enabled; it just doesn't actually change anything (even if -100mV, or +100mV).. Oh well...
 
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(is anyone even reading this? lol)

Yay the 970 arrived! Updated drivers as 312.xx didn't seem to support it, now it's crunching away :) It's boosting to 1265mhz straight out of the box, pretty happy about that! Wonder how she will OC? ;)

Ran into some pretty silly problems along the way, though.. So, I have a Silverstone DA850 modular PSU; couldn't find the second dual 6pin cable.. The card came with 2 dual molex->6pin cables, so 4 molex free. Sweet, I find the molex modual, plug it in... only has 3 molex and a FDD connector.. Oh well, I can sort that tomorrow at a PC store, thought I may as well put the cards in anyway, save me having to do it tomorrow. :eek: but no, the 970 doesn't fit in PCI-e slot 1 because of the SATA connectors at the edge of the board (i7 960 on GA-EX58-UD4P). But the 660 Ti's fans touches the exposed RAM chips on the 970.. Now, the UV acrylic case I bought 11 years ago obviously wasn't designed with triple-SLI in mind :p neither the 660 Ti nor the 970 will go in slot 3. To further complicate things down the track, I have a PCI-e 1x SoundBlaster Z to wiggle around somewhere.. It won't fit in slot 1 because it hits the mobo's MCH10 HSF, and it won't fit between the 970 and 660 Ti if they're in slot 1 and 2..

Sooo... I pulled the 660 Ti out, 970 in slot 2, SoundBlaster in slot 2. It sucks, but it will have to do for now until I can figure out how best to fix it haha. I *think* my RAC will basically be plateauing at ~17500 anyway I think, roughly given the average daily credit over the 27 days I've been crunching on the 660 Ti, and taking into account the increase I saw when I added CPU crunching, and also OCing the card further... So it will be interesting to see what happens to my RAC at stock boost.. It's 10pm here and as much as I *really* want to stay up and play with this beast, unfortunately.. :shrug:

I've noticed that over the last hour or so I've been crunching, average GPU load is 95%, and while different AR WU will give varying levels of load..HAR/VHAR aka "shorties" are usually quite spiky in GPU load, rarely if ever having long patches of consistent high GPU load sees them constantly bounce between 97-98%, with the occasional 96% and 99% popping up. The yummy long WUs with the 0.38-0.44 AR that are long and give good credit keep the load at 98-99%, with the odd dip to 97%.. But I've never seen this much variation before; I think it's going to trend down soon too as I'm seeing quite a few 93-94%. This is running 2 WU at a time, btw. So obviously I'd be debating doing 3 WU at a time.. I really have no idea; memory controller load is at 80%+ (which is ~11% higher than the 660 Ti), so I'd imagine adding a 3rd in there would just cause congestion and decrease output.. Thoughts? Otherwise I have a good few weeks ahead of me testing things and waiting for RAC to stabilise lol :rain: . The temps at stock boost are staying around 66-67C; which means the fan is on ~11% and I can't hear a thing. Obviously this will all change when I OC it and change the fan profile (I did give 100% a go though :p just for funsies~ boy do they motor! lol), but I was still quite impressed with it :) hopefully this means there will be quite a bit of headroom for OCing! :D

Oh, regarding the Xperia Z crunching - I still haven't figured out a way around the battery problem. Using 2 cores and setting it to 1512mhz (max, stock) while wall charging will charge very slowly, but it will charge. I had it plugged in all night last, started with ~34%, ended with ~71%, and all day at work today and it added ~9% or so as it was in very ocassional use. On the plus side, in the almost 3 days since it's been crunching, it's got 522 credit and 47 RAC :beer: go go!

Crunch on! :cheers:

EDIT: Well, after nearly a month of crunching it looks like the rig is pretty stable at ~35,000 RAC which puts it in the top 125 rigs across SETI... woo! The even better news is that I bought another GTX 970 - this time the Gigabyte Windforce GTX 970 OC.. Will be interesting to see how it compares to the EVGA vanilla ACX2.0 in terms of OCing and RAC. I bought myself a Kill-a-Watt recently and it's been showing ~490W draw 24/7 which is going to be a tad pricey for the power bill, but we'll see. Even though it's still quite a beast, I'm thinking of retiring the 660 Ti as it's literally almost drawing double that of the 970..

660 Ti is rated 150W and GPU-z is showing ~97-103% TDP draw (so let's say 150W average)
970 is rated 145W and GPU-z is showing ~65% TDP draw (~95W average)

Obviously the 970 OC will draw more than this, not the least of which will be due to the *huge* HS and 3 fans... In fact, I'm worried it's not even going to fit! But I'll find a way ;) Hopefully this will push me into the Top 100 rigs, which would be pretty cool! I'll post some pics of the rig when the card arrives, and I do a bit of cable management and possibly physically modding the mobo (darned 90degree SATA slots in the way)

Crunch on! :cheers:
 
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I'm getting back into folding for seti@home. Just started today with a new BOINC/SETI account after many years away. Just going to have to put more pennies in that electric meter :/
 
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