Thank you for joining, Vester.

This forum is made exlusively for members of Mensa. You shouldn't see it when logged out.

At the moment I run GPUGRID with BOINC 6.4.5, Windows XP 32bit, two GTX 295 and one 9800 GTX+.

I had a lot of problems with the GTX 295 and my old PCs. At the moment I am struggling with installing a third GTX 295. In a week or so I will have a new Intel quad. Then this video card should get awaken to life, too.

I'm very, very impressed about the vast step forward in the development of video cards.
Now it is a whole quarter of a century that I have witnessed the awful progress in the technology of personal computers. I hadn't believed that the high speed of improvement would last so long.

Hi, Dieter. I overlooked this hidden topic for two days! I am very impressed by the performance of video cards. I wasn't aware of the great value during a recent sale at www.newegg.com when they had reconditioned GTX 295 cards for about $200 each. I wish I had bought one because new ones are about $500.

Did you have physical problems fitting the GTX 295 cards or were there issues with performance on single core processors? I've read that they work best with dual or quad core processors.

I have a PS3 that I bought in November 2007 to use for Folding@Home. F@H wasn't much fun because it was so easy to do. I installed Yellow Dog 6.1 Linux on the PS3. My main computer is an HP Pavilion Elite m9047c Desktop PC. It has a Core 2 Quad Q6600 (K) 2.4 GHz (95W) processor and an Intel G33 chipset. I tried GPUGRID on the GeForce 8400GS, but the computer was sluggish when crunching because the card has only 256 MB of DDR memory. Space in the case is limited and the power supply would be inadequate for the GTX 295.

My wife of 43 years, Johnnie, died of heart failure in 2007 and I married again last April. Pam is a retired media specialist and is geeky like me. She doesn't complain when I experiment with software or operating systems on her computer. I haven't lost any of her data yet.

Pam has gotten me to start playing tennis again. Our granddaughter, Ansley Speaks, is a very good 14 year old tennis player. Pam and Ansley are still in Dothan, Alabama, where Ansley finished fourth in a national tournament yesterday. Results. We play tennis at Brookstone Meadows which is near our home.

Pam goes to Mensa meetings with me, but hasn't joined yet. Piedmont Area Mensa (PAM) has started activities for children and grandchildren of Mensa members. I like it because I was an "outsider" for years until I joined Mensa. The Outsiders. I am taking my grandson, Drew, age 11, to meetings.

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Hi Vester,

no, the problems with the GTX 295s are of another kind: rebooting the PC makes it to disfunction. I had written a short post about it in these forums. It's strange that I should be the only one who experiences this problem.


You wrote that you have been an 'outsider' as described in the article, but I can't believe this. In contrary, your post reflects you to be a very happy family man. Enjoy it!

The next week are holidays, so I can relax. Currently, on each working day I sit in front of the monitor and watch the movements of stock prices at the New York Stock Exchange although I am already invested. These are very exciting days long awaited. Fortunately, with investments I can make full use of my IQ with appropriate reward.

Because you consider yourself a computer geek, I hope for an answer to the following question. Last week one of my PCs died, but the hard disk is okay. Do you know whether I can use it in a new computer with all programs being installed? That would help me a lot (otherwise some data is lost).

Dieter, you can use that hard drive and the installed operating system on a new computer if the chipset (controller) is the same. The safest bet is to use an identical motherboard in the new computer.

In any case the data is not lost. You could just install that hard drive as a secondary hard drive (or in a USB hard drive enclosure) and get the data files from the hard drive.

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Thanks, Vester!

I plugged the hard disk instead of the original disk into an equal PC with the same chipset. It worked - what a relief for me! :-)
In the future I should buy all new PCs exclusively in pairs.

Access to the data is only granted with the installed program because it is encoded with a uniquely processed key. Now I have made a data export with which access is possible from another program installation.
You have saved me a lot of work, namely typing in the data with the keyboard from hard copies. Thanks again, Vester!

From today on one of my PCs with an installed GTX 295 boots regularly after correction of a wrong BIOS configuration: 'Init Display First' has to be set to 'PCIe' instead of 'PCI' (although the original GeForce 8400GS has tolerated this).
Alas, on the other PCs the problem persists. So I am still puzzled anyway. (As a system administrator I probably would have got already laid off...)
I hope the third GTX 295 will be installed without any problem into the new PC that should be delivered in the next few days.

End of the week the monthly Mensa local gathering in Munich takes place. Perhaps I can get some further ideas from the many IT specialists there.

You wrote that you have a GeForce 8400GS. Due to the few stream processors the card is way too slow for GPUGRID. Not all WUs would finish in time. Therefore I bought the GTX 295s. Although not recommended, a PSU with 550W seems to be enough for it.

[editing for typos]

After making the PCIe setting, also Enable "Reset Configuration Data" and see if that helps. The only times I've seen BIOS settings revert to default were on computers with dead motherboard batteries.

Rebooting doesn't reset my BIOS settings to default values. But thanks for the idea!

Anyway, yesterday I decided to install a 9800 GTX+ in the third quad (such a card had already run). It's on the way to my home and - with luck - will be delivered tomorrow.

With temperatures above ten degrees Celsius (= 50 degrees Fahrenheit) I probably have to turn down some of the devices because my flat then becomes overheated. Currently it snows and its below 0° C (32° F) but I have two windows open a bit to get the computers cooled.
Let us hope that this winter will be long and cold in Germany!

(Hmm, perhaps I should consult the 'anonymous compu-holics' now and then ... ?)

You need Computerholics Anonymous because my RAC is under 4000 while yours is almost 50,000. It is nice that only two members can be 29th in the statistics because of your stream computers.

You may need an air conditioner this summer to cool your computers. My PS3 generates a lot of heat, but it is only using 225 watts. The quad core computer running Climate Prediction uses about 175 watts.

Well, Vester, I heat my flat in winter with my computers. Indeed, I need no other heater. Insofar I am using the electric energy kind of efficiently. In accordance to that I have no intention to heat in a hot summer.

The 9800 GTX+ card has just been delivered.
Plugging it into the computer and installing it was absolutely no problem.
Now it is running for GPUGRID, too. :- )

/edit/
Today on Thursday I've got a new Intel Quad Q6700.
Alas, the GTX 295 doesn't install but causes beeps. Now I think it's damaged.
:- (

Welcome to Everseeker! Now there are three Mensans.

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FYI

Now I prepare most of my PCs for shutting down due to too much heat production.
Sorry.

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I wish we could send you some of our cold air. It is going to be below 0 C on Wednesday morning.

I am in Anderson, SC, USA, 34.54°N 82.63°W.

Got it! :- )

After days with temperatures above 20°C today it is rather cool with only 10°C at 10 a.m.
So my PCs are working further.

BTW
I live in southern Germany at 48°N. But even in winter it isn't as cold as one would think because of mild air from the west due to the famous warm water current into the north Atlantic originating in the gulf of Mexico.

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I lost two weeks of crunching because of bad/incomplete downloads in my "Transfers" tab. I don't understand why BOINC can't purge its own downloads when that happens. The PS3 is connected to a TV and I hadn't closely checked the stats for two weeks. I discovered the problem when reading the forum.

I lost two weeks of crunching . . .

That doesn't matter: At this moment I cause to lose a lot of weeks of crunching.

Daily temperatures approximate 30 degrees Celsius. I have to pause the work for GPUGRID. :- (

This will last perhaps until September when days become cooler.

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We can play Tortoise and Hare until the weather is cooler. Our weather has been moderate so far and due to normal rainfall our local lake is only two feet below normal instead of 17 feet as it was last fall. Our dock and pontoon boat are floating in 5 feet of water.

Pam just finished eight weeks as a temporary media specialist at a high school where she had retired three years ago. The money is nice, but I'm glad the school term ended today. Next week we will be watching our granddaughter play in a tennis tournament only ten miles from our town house. Ansley is seeded number one in girls' 14 singles. She is ranked 14th in the Southern division (seven states) and second in South Carolina. Ansley has made all A's except one B through the eighth grade and she plans to stay in public school. Most of the top-rated tennis players are home-schooled or attend private schools which allow the students unlimited absences to play tennis. Ansley enjoys team tennis and prefers her public school.

Shannah is at Tulane University in New Orleans. She will attend a fifth year of college before graduating with a degree in Art. Remember that she started at the University of Hawaii as a Japanese language major? She decided to change majors after three years in Hawaii. She has a job at the University running a computer lab for Engineering students. Sounds like a Mensan doesn't she? She uses her laptop and Wacom tablet for some of her art.

I know the stock markets have hurt many people, but Pam and I are lucky to not depend on our stocks for income. Hopefully the recovery will be robust and soon. If the number of large trucks on Interstate highway 85 are an indication, good things are around the corner. I've noted before that increased traffic means increased production and rising stock prices.

The first snow has fallen. Hence the hunt goes on: all of my video cards are running again. :-)

BTW
A few weeks ago I've sold all my stocks. Not being invested in stocks is the first time for me for twelve years.
Now I am holding cash for the next months (or maybe years) expecting severely falling stock markets.

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WAVE

Hallo everyone.
It felt strange -- in a good way -- to read your conversations in this forum from so many years ago.

I have been contributing to distributed computing since 1999, starting with SETI@Home. I was half my age now. I was living in my city, Cairo, then.
I have been living for two years now in Berlin, and have subscribed to Mensa Deutschland and gotten to meet a couple of people, after the Corona-time measures were relaxed.

I'm just writing this because, in the time of stressing mega socialmedia platforms, I find myself missing the forums of yesteryears. And because it feels strange -- in a good way also -- to having been contributed for a such a long time in project with so many people. I get this feeling with Wikipedia also, sometimes, but in a different way.

I hope you are all well.

Hello ahmad,

I'm still here but without any contact to Vester. He seemed to like chatting a lot more than me, so he went away from this thread after I didn't answer in June 2009 for some weeks.

It is and always was hard for me to contribute to chats about normal life with family and all that because I have an autistic condition and live alone (but not lonely!). In 2009 it was still a problem for me to talk about this frankly. Now I'm retired and see no problem with that any more.

I live in the south part of Germany some 30 miles south of Munich. The Austrian border is not too far away. Believe it or not, here I had worked as a teacher of maths and physics since 1991.

After leaving school (as a teacher) in 2018, I enjoyed two long lasting cruises to have a look on the (rest of the) world. Now I'm looking forward to a long lasting, calm life at home watching birdlife on my balcony and in the garden.