Focusing on World Community Grid

[ZipSpeed]

I currently have my GTX 480 @ 775 MHz dedicated for HCC. Crunch times are about 3 mins give or take 5 seconds.

 

[StitchExperimen]

Stitch thinks about his new Citi Mastercard and a pair of Radeon HD 7850 Graphics cards.
I wonder what times I could get? any guesses?

 

[blckgrffn]

Stitch thinks about his new Citi Mastercard and a pair of Radeon HD 7850 Graphics cards.
I wonder what times I could get? any guesses?

It would probably be good...

But for DC, I think (?) the consensus is that you should shoot for a 7950/7970 instead. Their dual precision performance is much, much greater than any SKUs below that.

It may not make a difference for this particular project, but some require DP and it could make a big difference. Just my $.02.

 

[ZipSpeed]

Stitch thinks about his new Citi Mastercard and a pair of Radeon HD 7850 Graphics cards.
I wonder what times I could get? any guesses?

This guy on the WCG forums got this runtime with his 7850:

Re: GPU performance with HCC-GPU v 6.56
AMD Radeon HD 7850:

Around 2 Minutes per WU, give or take 10 seconds.
Around 20 Seconds on startup for just CPU.
Around 40 Seconds on shutdown for just CPU.

CPU time used = 54.054347
Total kernel time: 39.114185 (1026 kernel executions)

http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/viewthread_thread,34020_offset,10#396284

 

[ZipSpeed]

Added my 5850 into HCC GPU. At 900 MHz core, seeing times ~00:03:45.

 

[StitchExperimen]

I was told that the 7950 and 7970 were to hot to run 24/7 in the summer.
Any opinions?
And price wise a 7970 costs so much that buying 2 to run in crossfire would take the fun out of it. Just musing.

 

[StitchExperimen]

What are your suggestions for motherboards to run in Quad-fire mode? and processor to keep the GPUs happy? What speed do they need and number of cores?
I need a space between the 2 GPUs for air flow
And what about a case maybe one that has holes/vents above the cards.
And who to purchase the GPUs from?
Also what power supply wattage? I guess get a 80 plus gold rated (since it runs 24/7 that will save at least $6 a year on electricity @400 watt power supply over a 80 plus.)
Stitch
I ment quad-fire mode not crossfire.

 

[ZipSpeed]

What's your budget? Intel or AMD? The Asus ROG motherboards are nice and some of them do away with PCI slots and are populated completely with PCI-E slots. As for cases, get a full-size tower. I have a Corsair 700D and while it's ok, the airflow could be a bit better. I would look at something like the Cooler Master HAF 932 or HAF X. Power supply wattage is dependent on what you're going to have inside the case. My personal favorites are the Corsair AX or Seasonic X lines.

 

[StitchExperimen]

I have questions about what speed of processor a GPU needs to keep it happy in Boinc. I presume 4 cores or threads. Also Intel is faster in clock speeds, less heat, faster motherboards with more incorporated (other than that I use to prefer buying AMD). But as such my mobile processor in my laptop a first gen i5 is still faster as far I know than any AMD as I understand from reading on Toms hardware AMD compares to a i3 in processor ranking.

Also I have a question if I got a Intel processor with on-board graphics and didn't use the on-board graphics would the chip run cooler to be able to overclock more?
Stitch

 

[ZipSpeed]

For WCG, each GPU will take up an entire CPU thread. Definitely grab a GPU that has hyperthreading. As far as I know, there is no way to shut off the integrated graphics completely even if you disable it in the BIOS. I wouldn't worry about it. Get a nice cooler on it and you'll be good to go.

 

[StitchExperimen]

I found this ASRock Fatal1ty X79 Professional LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard $264.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157288

 

[ZipSpeed]

I found this ASRock Fatal1ty X79 Professional LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard $264.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157288

Nice board! Though to put a CPU on to that board would be more expensive than LGA 1155.

 

[ZipSpeed]

Haven't had a stats update for a bit so here it is. GPU crunching has definitely made an impact. It certainly has for me. A team like EVGA where they have a history of using GPUs for crunching is on the threat list. On a positive note, we might even be able to break into the mid-70s by year's end!

Current producers based on yesterday's data:

Opportunities:

Threats:

 

[petrusbroder]

Thanks for the stats ...

 

[StitchExperimen]

Thanks for the stats... I always like to see my name/stats.

If your interested in motherboards for QuadFire or 4 way SLI read on.

I found this... Gigabyte Z77-G1-Sniper 3 Intel Z77 $268 @ Amazon This has 4 PCI-E slots. This board is a E-ATX 13 inch instead of 9.6. Everything else I looked at was easily $100 more. There was one motherboard way cheaper a EVGA Z77 FTW Intel Z77 @ 199.99 but the BIOS had lots of complaints... Amazon rating was 2 stars... horrible for overclocking.

I have a question... in the Intel i7 series are any of the 4 core 8 thread cpu's overclockable? They run in price from ~280-320 dollars.

Stitch

 

[ZipSpeed]

What you want are the CPUs with a 'K' or 'X' suffix. 2600K, 2700K, 3770K, 3930K, 3960X. These are easy to overclock via an unlocked multiplier. Non-K CPUs can be overclocked up to 4 bins (100 MHz per bin) above their max turbo speed (I think... someone correct me if I'm wrong).

 

[VirtualLarry]

What you want are the CPUs with a 'K' or 'X' suffix. 2600K, 2700K, 3770K, 3930K, 3960X. These are easy to overclock via an unlocked multiplier. Non-K CPUs can be overclocked up to 4 bins (100 MHz per bin) above their max turbo speed (I think... someone correct me if I'm wrong).

Socket 2011 CPUs can also be overclocked via their baseclock settings, which is something that is not available with socket 1155.

 

[ZipSpeed]

Socket 2011 CPUs can also be overclocked via their baseclock settings, which is something that is not available with socket 1155.

Good to know, thanks! Is it similar to overclocking on X58?

 

[blckgrffn]

Good to know, thanks! Is it similar to overclocking on X58?

I think it is less granular, you get to choose from a number of bclk values - as I understand it.

Good news , sorta - you only need the "use my GPU's for HCC to kick into gear, you don't need to select it as an active project for your CPUs. All of a sudden my ppd shot up

 

[ZipSpeed]

I think it is less granular, you get to choose from a number of bclk values - as I understand it.

Good news , sorta - you only need the "use my GPU's for HCC to kick into gear, you don't need to select it as an active project for your CPUs. All of a sudden my ppd shot up

Thanks for tidbit! I'm currently retiring and rebuilding some crunchers but good to know that I can run HCC GPU exclusively once I bring my GPU cruncher back online.

 

[brownstone]

A little slow to the party, but is this HCC a specific project or anything BOINC related? I'm getting ready to get going on DC again now that things are cooling down outside.

Also, although I know that it has probably been answered at least 12.7 times, what projects are recommended for AMD 79** cards?

Thanks!

 

[ZipSpeed]

A little slow to the party, but is this HCC a specific project or anything BOINC related? I'm getting ready to get going on DC again now that things are cooling down outside.

Also, although I know that it has probably been answered at least 12.7 times, what projects are recommended for AMD 79** cards?

Thanks!

Help Conquer Cancer is a project that is part of World Community Grid. You're in luck, HCC performs quite well with 7900 series cards. Milkyway@home is another I can think of. I'm sure there's more.

 

[brownstone]

Help Conquer Cancer is a project that is part of World Community Grid. You're in luck, HCC performs quite well with 7900 series cards. Milkyway@home is another I can think of. I'm sure there's more.

Thanks Zip!

 

[mmstick]

For WCG, each GPU will take up an entire CPU thread. Definitely grab a GPU that has hyperthreading. As far as I know, there is no way to shut off the integrated graphics completely even if you disable it in the BIOS. I wouldn't worry about it. Get a nice cooler on it and you'll be good to go.

I heard only NVIDIA cards consume a full core. I use a FX-8120, for the most part the cores are only loaded 30% on all cores with 9 work units running simultaneously. What matters more is your system memory speed, an overclock of my 1600Mhz RAM to 1800Mhz increased throughput by a huge amount, while also upping the GPU load of my 7950 to 95% at all times.

My 7950 is OCd to 1100Mhz core, and crunching at a nice speed of about 22 seconds per work unit (18 seconds of GPU kernel time, the other 4 are from memory transfer and CPU time). Who said AMD FX is about the same as an i3?

It also seems that because people with graphics cards like mine are completing work units too fast and running out of cache, WCG techs are going to double the amount of work in each work unit, although I'd prefer at least 100 work units packed into one for my 7950.

 

[ZipSpeed]

I heard only NVIDIA cards consume a full core. I use a FX-8120, for the most part the cores are only loaded 30% on all cores with 9 work units running simultaneously. What matters more is your system memory speed, an overclock of my 1600Mhz RAM to 1800Mhz increased throughput by a huge amount, while also upping the GPU load of my 7950 to 95% at all times.

My 7950 is OCd to 1100Mhz core, and crunching at a nice speed of about 22 seconds per work unit (18 seconds of GPU kernel time, the other 4 are from memory transfer and CPU time). Who said AMD FX is about the same as an i3?

It also seems that because people with graphics cards like mine are completing work units too fast and running out of cache, WCG techs are going to double the amount of work in each work unit, although I'd prefer at least 100 work units packed into one for my 7950.

Yeah, I had to manually hit update a few times with my 7950 rig to get more work. Good to know about the doubling amount of work.