Well if the problem with the Toni work units can't be solved a work around better be made. In other projects the participants can chose what work they want to do. Let people chose the Toni if they want to, for instance if knowing that their hardware does not fail them. It is reasonable to give a slightly higher credit on problematic work. I you want to experiment with new work units, make it a voluntary choice.

Right now I do not trust this project, so I supervise the downloads to remove any Tonis that might show up. This also means that my GPUs mostly run another project, something that I am unhappy with.

Do not repeat the mistakes of other projects who have lost most of their donors. Do not put out work units that are of no use. Do not take chances with our time and our money.

I hope you make smart decisions so I can trust you again. Because I like this project.

Jari Pyyluoma,
I broadly agree with your concerns; I too am annoyed by wasting some of my efforts:

Although my GTS250 has recently faired a bit better (RAC 8255), largely due to the changes made by the Techs, my 8800GTS 512MB is all but lost – RAC is about 900!
I know it is old kit, but there are lots of people that have old kit.

However, on a positive note, my recent reviewing has shown that some of the new cards, although not magnificent, can still contribute substantially.
The GT 240 in particular is a worthy card. Very reliable.
So I would suggest to anyone that wants to continue participating, Sell your old cards and buy a new one.
A GT 240's can be purchased from between £60 an £80. The running costs are about one third of top end Compute Capable 1.1 cards, so over 6months crunching you will save:

If you run a 9800 GTX for 6 months the running cost = 180W * £1.20 per Year Watt * ½ year = £108
Sell your card for £25 minimum. Buy a new GT 240 for £65 and you spend a total of £40
Run a GT 240 for 6 months = 60W * £1.20 per Year Watt / 2 = £36
Total cost of buying a new card and running it = £36 + £40 = £76
So, over 6months crunching time you would save £108 - £76 = £32

Over a year of crunching that works out at a saving of £216-36-36-40 = £104
Oh, plus you get a better card!

From a network managers point of view, the fact that you would break even within 4months is Very attractive!

Under full load a GT 240 will use about 50 or 60 Watts and give you about 6900points per day. About 125 Points per Watt day.
Under full load a GTS 250 will use about 184Watts and give you about 8250points per day (perhaps partially due to failures). About 44 Points per Watt day!
Even my GTX 260 sp216 (55nm version) only gets 14000points per day, and eats up about the same Watts as a GTS 250. About 76 Points per Watt day.
Given that Three GT 240 cards would use less electric than One GTS 250 and do more than twice the work, these cards are very efficient!

In terms of Points per Watt, the GT 240 IS BY FAR the most efficient card available to GPUGrid supporters!

It will also do TEN times the work of an overclocked i7-920 running at 3.8GHz and using over 300W. It is a NO BRAINER!

Ref:
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=423&Itemid=72&limit=1&limitstart=11
http://www.guru3d.com/article/msi-geforce-gt-240-review-test/5
My Stats!

Thanx, that sounds like great news. I just happened to get some nvidia cards from a friend. Yes, I also have the feeling that I should pass them on, and now you have proven it with numbers.

Well, I had a bunch of ps3. I never quite understood the reasoning behind stopping that part of the project. Seems that people running the project can change their minds from one day to another. So, buying a card just for this project is out of the question. Ati cards are better for the other projects.

The project has been pushing those flaky Toni work units on me, and I have been aborting them. Seems that it always has been someone with a 295 that finishes them. I wish this project had the back bone that folding@home has, they test their work before putting it in production, and they react to feedback, and most of all - they still support the ps3. I guess the people running this project feel let down by their university and can't find it in themselves to create great work. I have a very hard time trying to understand what the problem with funding is, with a top notch project like this. Maybe the university is to small and insignificant to be able to make its name known, compared with a university like Stanford.

Sony apparently stopped allowing the use of Linux on the PS3, required to run GPUGrid. Lots of G92 cards are struggling due to a number of things outside the control of the project, including the reliance on NVidia for code. If there is a bug in their code and the project team are not allowed to correct it, there is nothing they can do. If the project team was larger I am sure they would be better equipped to make more changes, perhaps even write tasks for the older cards, but as is things appear to be tight.
This is a good project and needs support. To me it makes sense to sell on old parts and replace them with new parts that are better and actually work well.

I agree that manually aborting WUs should not be necessary. In any case, BOINC does not currently foresee a mechanism for letting people chose WUs. As already said, some classes of WUs have higher probability of triggering bugs in some cards, but to the best of our knowledge this is not as simple as fixing a bug in our code.

We are working on the problem, of course; in the meantime, I've suspended the generation of the last HERG workunits (most of them were stopped before Christmas), even though this is not really a "solution": any bugs it triggers will not go away.

I'm sending a few more workunits of the HERG type. In the meanwhile, if you want to see images of what you are crunching, have a look at the flickr page!

I agree that manually aborting WUs should not be necessary. In any case, BOINC does not currently foresee a mechanism for letting people chose WUs. As already said, some classes of WUs have higher probability of triggering bugs in some cards, but to the best of our knowledge this is not as simple as fixing a bug in our code.

World Computing Grid allows participants to choose workunits by making different types of workunits different subprojects and allowing the participants to choose which subprojects to run. Any particular reason why you can't do the same, even if it requires providing the same application program under more than one name?

Well, bugs may come and go with cards, drivers, and versions of the application. We try to make all WUs run equally well, rather than fork (and maintain) separate queues.

I also have another compute error with this type of workunit.
My workunit
My computer

As soon as the new application will be available, I'll migrate the workunits to it, crossing fingers it will improve the situation.

Feel free to see the new molecular images on flickr...

The new HERGqext are out (note the middle "q"). I'm trying a variation of the FFT parameters, using a slightly longer computation than necessary, to see if they run more stably on more cards. Thanks for your support and patience...

I have had two crash and no sucess on a stable card.

---

Thanks - Steve

Which of the two hosts?

BTW, for those of you crunching beta, the L*_TONI_TEST WUs are the same as the HERG and HERGext ones.

Another compute error with a GTX295 on this computer .

Does not seem to be HERG specific, you also had an error on task 1816245 of another batch.

.. No, it seems to be related to specific model types. TONI_HERG is a fairly recent addition to the list of problematic models - searching the message boards suggests that my report on 24 November was the first sighting. Previously, we had been commenting on IBUCH_TRYP and OTTO_HERG in thread 1468

Pleased to report that one of my 9800GT cards has successfully completed a TONI_HERG qext.

Good!

D1s30c47-TONI_HERGqext-2-60-RND0387_0

http://www.gpugrid.net/workunit.php?wuid=1148761


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Thanks, well spotted. I tried to replace a parameter on the fly. Please post if it happens again.