Thank God for air conditioning.

[VirtualLarry]

Well, anyways, I've started to run the AC (already? It's just May!), and so I've also decided to re-start my quad-GPU cruncher. Lets see if I can get to 1Mil this summer, or at least by December (then hopefully I won't have to run the AC).

Had a bit of a scare though. I had taken out the RAM to use in another computer (my quad-core gaming rig), so I finally got some more ram for my cruncher. I have to remove the first graphics card to get at the DIMM slots. So I did that. But when I powered on, one of my four GPUs wasn't showing up! Not in display properties, and not in Device Manager. Uh-oh. So I turned off the machine, and re-seated each card, and then turned it back on. Thankfully, everything started working again.

FAHMON shows 14500 PPD starting off.

Overclocked the 9600GSOs to 650/1620/900, and now it is showing 16500 PPD total. At that rate, it will take me two months to hit 1Mil.

So, Mark, how does this rig compare to your 1090T, as far as PPD/dollar?
K9A2 Platinum mobo - $150
AMD BE-2350 CPU - $35
2GB DDR2-800 - $50
two EVGA 9600GSOs - $60 ea
two PNY 768MB 9600GSOs - $90 ea (would have been $60 ea if I had sent in the rebates)
Antec 300 - $40
EarthWatts 650W - $70
two PCI-E power splitters - $12
three Antec 120mm TriCool fans - $18
WD 640GB AAKS HD - $65
DVD burner - $30

total - $770

21.43 PPD/$

 

[Markfw]

I had to start mine 3 days ago....But I do have 113k ppd to support...

VL, lets see
cpu $300 (could have used the 1055t, just lazy)
mb free from anand, but its normally $80
memory I think the same, $50
video card was open box, I think $150
case $15 newegg specia (fee shipping)
psu 700 watt OCZ (>85% efficiency) refurb from svc, $40
8x cdrom free
15 gig hd free

$635 for 22000 ppd

So more ppd for less money. I can't figure how you came to your number.

 

[Assimilator1]

No AC here, if it gets hot enough we just cook

Btw I bet you breathed a big sigh of relief after that card came back to life .

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

I'm so envious. I haven't bought or built anything tech in a long time it seems.

 

[rabrittain]

Impressive!!

 

[dajeepster]

you all are a bunch of light weights.... I've been running my AC all winter D:

 

[VirtualLarry]

Hmm, I think that the K9A2 Platinum is going to get upgraded for Thuban. If so, I could turn that rig into a quad-crossfire, six-core, gaming rig. I wonder if I could sell it at that point. I do have four 4850 single-slot reference cards. I don't do enough gaming to justify that, but it would be a neat build just for fun. But that would mean decommissioning the cruncher aspect of it, unless the GPU3 client runs better on ATI 4xxx series, which I doubt. (Open CL support?)

Edit: Scratch that idea. It only has a 4-pin ATX12V connector, no extra headroom to OC a Thuban to 4Ghz. There's another, newer, MSI 4-slot PCI-E x16 board available, let me try and find that one. Maybe it has an 8-pin EPS12V connector.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130223
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130274

 

[VirtualLarry]

Hey, while I've got your attention - should I upgrade the CPU in the quad-GPU cruncher, and then run projects on the CPU too? It has a BE-2350 in it right now, that's a 2.1Ghz AMD AM2 dual-core CPU. The mobo is AM2+. I originally chose that CPU, because I had it available, and the newer 180.x drivers for NVidia allowed running CUDA apps using basically zero CPU, so I didn't need a quad-core to run F@H anymore. I have an EarthWatts 650W PSU powering the CPU and all four 9600GSOs. I figure running a low-power CPU leaves more headroom for the graphics cards. Not sure how much room I have power-wise for a CPU upgrade? CPU power uses 4-pin ATX12V connector.

Ideally, I would like to run SeventeenOrBust on the CPU, which I could probably do with the dual-core, but I wouldn't want to slow down the GPU crunching any.

Edit: Well, I installed the Prime95 SoB client onto the machine, it seemed to have spawned two worker threads, so it's using both cores. It remains to be seen how much that lowers my F@H GPU2 PPD.

I do have another question. According to the directions, you download and install the Prime95 client, and you edit the prime.txt file and insert your username. But there appears not to be a place to insert the team name. Do they give team credit still? I want to make sure that I'm crunching for the TeAm, not just solo.

 

[Markfw]

I think that PSU has its hands full with the 4 video cards, but not sure. I have burned out a 700 watt PSU on a quad@3.4 and 2 9800GTX+ cards (they take as much as 2 9600 gso cards I think)

 

[GLeeM]

The GPU client can be set to a little higher priority which should allow it to get enough CPU over other low priority apps.

 

[Assimilator1]

you all are a bunch of light weights.... I've been running my AC all winter D:

Lol, well I've had to drop the vcore & down clock my quad yesterday as it was peaking at 68C, a little too close to it's ~71C limit for my liking. Especially seeing as it's only hit ~25C outside so far!

Now running at 3.2 GHz @1.3875v(setting) instead of 3.34 GHz @1.40625v, that's knocked off 3-4C off peak temps & curiously reduced the difference between the coldest & hottest core too. I need to do some tweaking though as I might be able to get more MHz out of that voltage.

What temps do you guys get from Q6600s? (at what speed).

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, what do you know? AMD has just released a 2.4Ghz quad-core, at 45W TDP!
I could drop that in, and I would double the number of cores, and increase the clock speed, while still staying within the same TDP envelope. Sounds like a win to me.

http://hothardware.com/Articles/AMD-Athlon-II-X4-640-4Cores-On-The-Cheap/

Athlon II X4 610e - $145 (2.4GHz, 45W max TDP, 4 cores)

Only drawback is, it's a little bit on the pricey side. I could practically buy a Q9550 at Microcenter for not much more.

Edit: Q6600 loads at 85C with OCCT:Linpack, depending on whether or not that run hits the CPU hard or not. It's wierd, even though it shows 100% CPU load, different runs vary greatly in terms of temps. I figure it has something to do with cache alignment, whether or not it hits the CPU very hard.

 

[Assimilator1]

Yea that would be a nice upgrade .

So what temps does your Q6600 run at?

 

[Ken g6]

Still haven't turned on my A/C, yet. But it's getting warm enough in here that I turned down my Q9400's speed from 3GHz @ 1.21V, ~53C to 2GHz @ 0.97V. It's now at 38C, the same as my secondary hard drive! (The cores are warmer, of course.)

 

[dajeepster]

Lol, well I've had to drop the vcore & down clock my quad yesterday as it was peaking at 68C, a little too close to it's ~71C limit for my liking. Especially seeing as it's only hit ~25C outside so far!

Now running at 3.2 GHz @1.3875v(setting) instead of 3.34 GHz @1.40625v, that's knocked off 3-4C off peak temps & curiously reduced the difference between the coldest & hottest core too. I need to do some tweaking though as I might be able to get more MHz out of that voltage.

What temps do you guys get from Q6600s? (at what speed).

most of mine are running on water... which reminds me... i need to be replacing some water.

 

[Assimilator1]

Replacing water?? don't those water cooling setups basically use diluted car antifreeze? (that lasts for years before needing replacement, ~4yrs IIRC, for some).

I've upped the clock to 3.25 GHz, same vcore, so far so good (no EUEs).
On the 3.34 GHz setup (~3% faster MHz) the RAM was only running at 1043 MHz, now it's at 1083 MHz (4% faster), so hopefully they'll be minimal performance loss, if any.

 

[dajeepster]

Replacing water?? don't those water cooling setups basically use diluted car antifreeze? (that lasts for years before needing replacement, ~4yrs IIRC, for some).

I've upped the clock to 3.25 GHz, same vcore, so far so good (no EUEs).
On the 3.34 GHz setup (~3% faster MHz) the RAM was only running at 1043 MHz, now it's at 1083 MHz (4% faster), so hopefully they'll be minimal performance loss, if any.

antifreeze is too corrosive... I found out the hard way one year way back when.

I just go for distilled water with an additive (HydrX by swiftech)

I just have a couple systems with distilled water and a different brand additive that didn't live up to it's name... so I have to flush and clean those systems.

 

[Assimilator1]

Ah I see.
Which type of anti-freeze did you use? OAT (pink/orange) or normal (blue/green)?

 

[dajeepster]

Ah I see.
Which type of anti-freeze did you use? OAT (pink/orange) or normal (blue/green)?

it was pink

 

[Assimilator1]

Ah yea, that's more corrosive than the blue stuff. I know you not supposed to put OAT in cars with copper core radiators or heat matrixes as it disolves the solder!
Btw OAT stands for Organic Acid Technology .

Ever tried the blue stuff?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Something's going on with the GPU-cruncher. Task Manager | Performance, with "show kernel times" enabled, shows a big red curve, that seems to be taking up quite a bit of CPU time. My GPUs are now running 5C cooler, and FAHMON shows my total PPD down to 10,000, instead of 13-14,000. Something is up. I don't know if that has anything to do with me running the Prime95 SoB client too, or what.

 

[dajeepster]

Ah yea, that's more corrosive than the blue stuff. I know you not supposed to put OAT in cars with copper core radiators or heat matrixes as it disolves the solder!
Btw OAT stands for Organic Acid Technology .

Ever tried the blue stuff?

the stuff i used is called water wetter... don't know what the blue stuff is.

 

[Assimilator1]

I was refering to anti-freeze.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I figured out what was taking up the CPU time. It was FAHMON!
All that reading of the logfiles to display, somehow was taking up massive amounts of CPU time when the logfiles got kinda large (360KB?).

Are there better alternatives out there that don't eat CPU time?

Edit: Updated to most recent build of FAHMON. Among the fixes in the changelog, it now only parses the last 16KB of the log files. So it doesn't have to read and parse the whole thing, so it's much faster now.

 

[theAnimal]

No AC here, but I did get myself an 18" fan. Good thing it's "whisper quiet".