Posts by JLConawayII

1) Message boards : News : New 40% faster applications are now fully deployed (Message 26196) Posted 6 Jul 2012 by JLConawayII Post: When will you be shutting down the 3.1 applications?
2) Message boards : News : New CUDA4.2 applications are out for Kepler GPUs (Message 26118) Posted 3 Jul 2012 by JLConawayII Post: The 4.2 units actually run slower on my old GTX 260, and additionally the newer drivers are still causing threadsafe exit downclocks with other projects. I guess it may finally be time to get some new hardware and relegate the old card to running einstein full time.
3) Message boards : News : Farewell (Message 26117) Posted 3 Jul 2012 by JLConawayII Post: Congratulations on your doctorate and best of luck to you in your future endeavours.
4) Message boards : Number crunching : Suitability of Dell computers? (Message 24233) Posted 3 Apr 2012 by JLConawayII Post: Good PSUs are expensive and most system builders use the minimum possible device. It's the one component you really shouldn't skimp on, yet people do it all the time with predictable results. A good predictor of whether you have a good PSU (besides brand name and specifications) is the weight. A good PSU should feel like a giant lead brick. If instead it has the approximate weight of a cotton ball, you are almost guaranteed to have issues with it.
5) Message boards : Number crunching : x16 vs. x8 Performance Difference Inquiry (Message 24142) Posted 25 Mar 2012 by JLConawayII Post: There is no difference between PCIE 2.0 x8 and x16 for most current cards. Not entirely sure about the new HD 7970 and GTX 680, but nothing before that really needs x16, except for the dual-GPU cards.
6) Message boards : Number crunching : GPUGRID and notebook (Message 24130) Posted 24 Mar 2012 by JLConawayII Post: That processor is rated for 85°C max for PGA and 100°C max for BGA. Either way that's pretty warm.
7) Message boards : Graphics cards (GPUs) : gtx680 (Message 24121) Posted 24 Mar 2012 by JLConawayII Post: No, that seems to be the case. OpenCL performance is poor at best, although in the single non-OpenCL bench I saw it performed decently. Not great, but at least better than the 580. Double precision performance is abysmal, it looks like ATI will be holding onto that crown for the forseeable future. I will be curious to see exactly what these projects can get out of the card, but so far it's not all that inspiring on the compute end of things.
8) Message boards : Graphics cards (GPUs) : gtx680 (Message 24082) Posted 22 Mar 2012 by JLConawayII Post: So its compute power has actually decreased significantly from the GTX 580?! The Bulldozer fiasco continues. What a disappointing year for computer hardware.
9) Message boards : News : New publication, new badges! (Message 24048) Posted 20 Mar 2012 by JLConawayII Post: Wow! Finally I've got my own personal Chuck Norris badge :) Congratulations, but it doesn't make up for the extraordinarily unfortunate shape of that lysine badge. ^^
10) Message boards : Graphics cards (GPUs) : gtx680 (Message 23979) Posted 16 Mar 2012 by JLConawayII Post: I wouldn't worry about it. I'm pretty sure the 6xx cards will be great. If they're not, you can always buy more 5xx cards at plummeting prices. There's really no losing here I think.
11) Message boards : Graphics cards (GPUs) : gtx680 (Message 23976) Posted 16 Mar 2012 by JLConawayII Post: What sort of "bad feeling"?
12) Message boards : Number crunching : NATHAN_FAX3 and FAX4 discussion (Message 23967) Posted 15 Mar 2012 by JLConawayII Post: My GTX260 completed the FAX3 WU in 36.5 hours. The FAX4 it's working on now looks like it will finish in around 22.5 hours. I think upload is still going to put it over the 24h limit, but anyone with a newer card should probably be okay now.
13) Message boards : News : monitor suspend/resume bug in 295/296 drivers (Message 23964) Posted 14 Mar 2012 by JLConawayII Post: The 266.58 are the last drivers that seem to be problem-free, no downclocking bug and obviously no sleep mode bug. AFAIK they support everything up through the GTX 580. Unless you have a game or other software that requires the newer drivers, I would suggest rolling back to those. You will have to do a clean install though and be absolutely sure that no Nvidia software remains on your system before installing them. Otherwise certain core files will remain and you might still get the same issues.
14) Message boards : News : New task on long queue, significantly longer than traditional tasks (Message 23962) Posted 14 Mar 2012 by JLConawayII Post: I'm leaving this project. My card could handle those CB1 ones. They took about 12/13 hrs (my limit of computer use) on my 460SE card. But these FAX things are too long for me and because of the time limitation I also ran out of any bonus points with these wu's. I am not interested in your short stuff. For the fast cards and 24/7 people, 'good luck' with these FAX batch(es.) Its time to change to a other project. Bye. Wow. I guess this project is done for then. Time to shut down the servers, Mikkie is leaving.
15) Message boards : Number crunching : NATHAN_FAX3 and FAX4 discussion (Message 23919) Posted 12 Mar 2012 by JLConawayII Post: Target acquired. FAX3!! At the current rate of progress, it SHOULD take 37 hours on my GTX 260. We'll see how this estimate evolves as the WU progresses.
16) Message boards : Number crunching : NATHAN_FAX3 and FAX4 discussion (Message 23906) Posted 11 Mar 2012 by JLConawayII Post: I think one should get the bonus anyway whether you finish these behemoth tasks within 24 hours or not. Well, the posted estimate for long runs is 8-12 hours for the fastest cards. This was a gross overestimate until now, as my 260 would complete most of them in 8 hours, and some of the biggest ones would take 12-15 hours. Now it seems we've gone in the other direction, taking well over half a day to complete on 5xx series cards. If the size of the tasks is putting such a demand even on the most powerful cards, it seems reasonable that the bonus cutoffs would be extended a bit, maybe to 36/72 hours for 50%/25%, or something along those lines. Obviously you don't want to go crazy with bonus points, but it's something to consider if we're going to be modeling larger molecular systems that take considerably longer to complete.
17) Message boards : Number crunching : NATHAN_FAX3 and FAX4 discussion (Message 23890) Posted 11 Mar 2012 by JLConawayII Post: I just heard a tiny scream from my GTX 260.
18) Message boards : Number crunching : GPUGRID and notebook (Message 23827) Posted 8 Mar 2012 by JLConawayII Post: If you can actually get proper cooling on it and your temperatures don't run too high, then it could be viable. Just monitor it very closely. If temperatures skyrocket, you are either going to have to perform surgery on your laptop to improve the cooling, or just abandon the idea for that particular piece of hardware.
19) Message boards : Number crunching : GPUGRID and notebook (Message 23804) Posted 6 Mar 2012 by JLConawayII Post: I highly recommend against running distributed computing on a notebook. They don't have the heat dissipation capability for it. I tried it once on a Dell XPS and it significantly shortened the lifespan of the computer.
20) Message boards : Number crunching : Suitability of Dell computers? (Message 23787) Posted 6 Mar 2012 by JLConawayII Post: Sure, you can use a Dell. Don't be surprised if you hear a loud "SNAP!!" followed by a funny smell. Your lights will probably go out from the blown circuit breaker, but that's okay because the resulting fire will provide plenty of light. Seriously, I wouldn't try to get too much out of a retail machine. Most of them seem to use the absolute bare minimum power supply, as well as other inexpensive components. That's how they get their prices so low and still manage to make some profit. You never, ever want to push the upper end of a power supply, even a high quality one. Using just one good high end video card will be reaching the limit of power draw for a 450W PSU when you take into account the CPU, chipset and all that. 2 GPUs on a 450W PSU is simply out of the question, unless you use low end cards that when combined are less powerful than one good higher end card. If you really want to know about ATI video cards, they're very powerful but have poor support from the distributed computing world. They are fairly horrible in folding@home compared to Nvidia, and there are fewer BOINC projects that support them as well. Probably the only project I've seen where ATI actually pulls far ahead is MilkyWay@home. Bottom line, with your limited options you would probably be better off sticking with a nice Nvidia card for now.

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