Loading up on milkyway GPU clients, which GPU should i pick???

[faxon]

So i have 2 roughly identical rigs as many of you may remember from my prior post. i decided to drop F@H entirely from my list and im now running exclusively milkyway@home starting today. the rig in sig is running @ max load starting today, but im still not quite ready to fire up my second nearly identical rig. so i have a question! my second rig has a free PCI-e slot, in which i could put a 4670. if i were to do this, would milkyway know how to handle sending workloads to both it and my 5870? the PSU i have in there can easily handle both and i figure it will be a nice addition to my PPD, i just want to make sure it isnt going to cause problems or slow things down before i do it.

ed: ran into another problem as well. when running the client with GPU computing enabled (ATI 10.3A, latest version of BIONIC), video playback is choppy. this occurs when watching basically any content 720p or higher, in any media player. i cant seem to find a way to throttle how much GPU time is used at all. is there a way to fix this besides getting a pci-e x1 card for video playback acceleration or disabling GPU computing?

 

[Rattledagger]

So i have 2 roughly identical rigs as many of you may remember from my prior post. i decided to drop F@H entirely from my list and im now running exclusively milkyway@home starting today. the rig in sig is running @ max load starting today, but im still not quite ready to fire up my second nearly identical rig. so i have a question! my second rig has a free PCI-e slot, in which i could put a 4670.

Hmm, the 4670, isn't this a single-precision card only? If so, it won't run with Milkyway at all. See http://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/forum_thread.php?id=1505

if i were to do this, would milkyway know how to handle sending workloads to both it and my 5870? the PSU i have in there can easily handle both and i figure it will be a nice addition to my PPD, i just want to make sure it isnt going to cause problems or slow things down before i do it.

ed: ran into another problem as well. when running the client with GPU computing enabled (ATI 10.3A, latest version of BIONIC), video playback is choppy. this occurs when watching basically any content 720p or higher, in any media player. i cant seem to find a way to throttle how much GPU time is used at all. is there a way to fix this besides getting a pci-e x1 card for video playback acceleration or disabling GPU computing?

AFAIK there's no other way than to disable GPU-computing during video playback. This can be done by using the "Snooze GPU", and it will pause for 1 hour, or go into "activity"-menue and select "Use GPU never" (remember to enable it afterwards).

Or, you can use the <exclusive_gpu_app>-option in cc_config.xml, and gpu-crunching will be stopped as long as this application runs.

To use this option, either edit cc_config.xml or make a new if not already present in BOINC data-directory. It should minimum include:

<cc_config>
<options>
<exclusive_gpu_app>your_main_video_player.exe</exclusive_gpu_app>
<exclusive_gpu_app>any_other_player.exe</exclusive_gpu_app>
</options>
</cc_config>

After saving the file, in BOINC Manager select Advanced, "Read config file", and you should see something like:
16.05.2010 13:53:43 Config: don't use GPUs while your_main_video_player.exe is running

In case you're got any games you're going to run, including these as <exclusive_gpu_app> also is probably a good idea.

Please remember, the application-name is CaseSENsitivE, so make sure you're using the same case as shows-up with dir-listing or file-manager and so on. Also, you'll need to include .exe in the application-name. You should not include the full path to the application, only the name.