BOINC@AUSTRALIA FORUM

Active BOINC projects => GPUGRID => Topic started by: veebee on July 26, 2009, 08:53:28 PM

Title: MUST update to 190.38 driver .. or else ???
Post by: veebee on July 26, 2009, 08:53:28 PM
Just saw this mentioned o n the BS shoutbox... anyone else heard this?

apprently must update to (at least) this driver or we wont be able to process WU's ...

Title: Re: MUST update to 190.38 driver .. or else ???
Post by: Wang Solutions on July 26, 2009, 08:57:48 PM
There was some talk of this when the new drivers came out, but since then most people who have installed them have experienced massive errors so at this stage it seems unlikely.
Title: Re: MUST update to 190.38 driver .. or else ???
Post by: Furlozza on August 15, 2009, 04:14:30 PM
Well, until today's lot of new work, with the 190.38 driver the GTS 250 was performing quite well. However, each wu doenloaded ran for 5 secs and then conked it. I think I have CUDA 2.2....... any way of being sure? cause if I have CUDA 2.3 that would also explain the fun and games. Maybe a drop back to the previous driver?

Any help/answers to this mystery would be gratefully accepted and received.

EDIT: of course, this means that I can now play a game or three for a few hours whilst I try and figure this mess out.
Title: Re: MUST update to 190.38 driver .. or else ???
Post by: veebee on August 15, 2009, 04:24:51 PM
well, I'm still using 180.51 on my single remaining Ubuntu x64 box, no probs.. (except it is slow... 9600GT - even though it is overclocked a bit it's soooo slow )
Title: Re: MUST update to 190.38 driver .. or else ???
Post by: Dataman on August 16, 2009, 12:34:31 AM
Quote from: Furlozza on August 15, 2009, 04:14:30 PM
Well, until today's lot of new work, with the 190.38 driver the GTS 250 was performing quite well. However, each wu doenloaded ran for 5 secs and then conked it. I think I have CUDA 2.2....... any way of being sure? cause if I have CUDA 2.3 that would also explain the fun and games. Maybe a drop back to the previous driver?

Any help/answers to this mystery would be gratefully accepted and received.

EDIT: of course, this means that I can now play a game or three for a few hours whilst I try and figure this mess out.
You need to have both the 190.38 driver and CUDA 2.3 DLL's. If you didn't install 2.3 then you are on 2.2 or 2.1 depending on when you started doing GPU crunching. You can either drop back on your driver or install 2.3 (recommended).  Go  here  (http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_get.html) to get them. If you decide to roll back the driver, I would recommend that you drain your queue and report them before doing so. I have had mixed results trying to go back on drivers and BOINC. It's a bit like a dog chasing its tail trying to align the BOINC version, nVidia driver and CUDA, and the OS.  :shock
Good Luck!
Title: Re: MUST update to 190.38 driver .. or else ???
Post by: veebee on August 16, 2009, 05:53:27 AM
Dataman, just had a look there and 2.2 seems to be the latest CUDA release available (at least it is when I[?b] use that link and select Ubuntu 8.04 Linux 64 bit....
Title: Re: MUST update to 190.38 driver .. or else ???
Post by: Dataman on August 16, 2009, 06:00:12 AM
Quote from: veebee on August 16, 2009, 05:53:27 AM
Dataman, just had a look there and 2.2 seems to be the latest CUDA release available (at least it is when I[?b] use that link and select Ubuntu 8.04 Linux 64 bit....
Sorry, I should have seen the machines in your sig. I only have Windows and don't know much about Linux. Does it show 190.38 as the driver? Either way I would use the current combination they show for your version of Linux.
Title: Re: MUST update to 190.38 driver .. or else ???
Post by: Furlozza on August 16, 2009, 10:22:01 AM
As noted elsewhere, I rolled back to 185.38 and everything is now fine. Crunching as before and crisp game play (just gotta clean mouse's area)

I had a look at those files/drivers and remembering the fun and games with Ubuntu, decided to pull head in until such time as it IS necessary.

Probably this time next week *sigh*
Title: Re: MUST update to 190.38 driver .. or else ???
Post by: Furlozza on August 19, 2009, 10:25:48 PM
And have now had a run of "error in computation" using above driver. I know I have the Cuda 2.2 buuuuuuuuuuutt maybe it is too hot inside the box??
Title: Re: MUST update to 190.38 driver .. or else ???
Post by: Dataman on August 19, 2009, 11:06:23 PM
That is not unusual. When I have all 15 cards at GPUGrid I get 1-2 comp errors every day or two. They are those well documented "unknown error" type errors.  biggrin Yesterday I moved the 9800GT's to Collatz. I am still looking at the results but they appear to be getting more credits/hr there even without factoring in the comp errors at GPUGrid. I left the GTX260's at GPUgrid because they can get the bonus credits where the 9800GT's cannot.
The run time at Collatz is 20 minutes on 9800 as opposed to 16-18 hrs at GPUGrid and it is less GPU intensive. The temps have dropped 5-8C on the cards. The only down side at Collatz is their servers seem to go up and down. They went down at least 5 times yesterday but came back up within 5 minutes.  ???
Title: Re: MUST update to 190.38 driver .. or else ???
Post by: veebee on August 19, 2009, 11:22:00 PM
I have had EVERY WU error out on my 9600Gt (Ubuntu OS) the last cpl days.. enuff is enuff.

will try collatz I think.
Title: Re: MUST update to 190.38 driver .. or else ???
Post by: Dataman on August 20, 2009, 01:16:28 AM
I think that is a good idea as then you will know if the problem is project specific or it is with your machine. Good luck!
Title: Re: MUST update to 190.38 driver .. or else ???
Post by: kashi on August 20, 2009, 01:33:17 AM
Quote from: Dataman on August 19, 2009, 11:06:23 PM
.....The run time at Collatz is 20 minutes on 9800 as opposed to 16-18 hrs at GPUGrid and it is less GPU intensive. The temps have dropped 5-8C on the cards. The only down side at Collatz is their servers seem to go up and down. They went down at least 5 times yesterday but came back up within 5 minutes.  ???

Yes when I had a little test of Collatz on my ATI card it only used 50% GPU load and ran nice and cool. It's Slicker's internet connection that goes down regularly. When the connection is lost and then reconnects the server does not always restart. Sometimes it can be down all day here and doesn't come back until Slicker wakes up in the morning and kicks the server, which of course is night here. "This is tomorrow callin', send those Collatz WUs."
Title: Re: MUST update to 190.38 driver .. or else ???
Post by: Dataman on August 20, 2009, 02:04:26 AM
Quote from: kashi on August 20, 2009, 01:33:17 AM
Quote from: Dataman on August 19, 2009, 11:06:23 PM
.....The run time at Collatz is 20 minutes on 9800 as opposed to 16-18 hrs at GPUGrid and it is less GPU intensive. The temps have dropped 5-8C on the cards. The only down side at Collatz is their servers seem to go up and down. They went down at least 5 times yesterday but came back up within 5 minutes.  ???

Yes when I had a little test of Collatz on my ATI card it only used 50% GPU load and ran nice and cool. It's Slicker's internet connection that goes down regularly. When the connection is lost and then reconnects the server does not always restart. Sometimes it can be down all day here and doesn't come back until Slicker wakes up in the morning and kicks the server, which of course is night here. "This is tomorrow callin', send those Collatz WUs."
Thanks Kashi! After doing some "finger & toe math" it looks like I am getting ~400credits/hour @ Collatz as opposed to ~325 at GPUGrid on 9800GT's. I didn't even factor in the comp errors at GPUGrid. I compensated for their server problems by increasing the queued work to 0.50 days from 0.01 days. I moved most of the AQUA CPU's back to WCG and immediately lost almost 50K per day.  :cry2: I am trying to make it up on the GPU side. I wish WCG would get their <Beep> together and get their credits in line with the rest of the DC world. They have good science but are so far behind with their technology.
Title: Re: MUST update to 190.38 driver .. or else ???
Post by: kashi on August 20, 2009, 03:04:58 AM
Well there is a new optimised Collatz application being prepared that promises to speed up GPU processing by a large amount, so perhaps the cards will have a greater load resulting in higher temperatures when it is introduced. It also speeds up CPU computation even more so the rate of credit for GPU work may not increase. This is because the credit is based on a benchmark computer which is a 800MHz P3. I was thinking that it would increase quite a lot but I didn't know then that the CPU application would be optimised greatly also.

Yes I hear what you are saying about WCG, I am doing some now while I can babysit it. The credit just crawls, I've been doing it on and off for over a month now and still can't even scrape into the top 100 for the team. I prefer to be in the top 100 so I don't have to go to the next page on the stats sites. :)
Title: Re: MUST update to 190.38 driver .. or else ???
Post by: veebee on August 20, 2009, 07:04:23 AM
I gave up on trying to get seti GPU running last night, and left collatz open for work..all night, without getting a single WU....  how often does it have "no new work"?
Title: Re: MUST update to 190.38 driver .. or else ???
Post by: Dataman on August 20, 2009, 07:37:18 AM
The have over 200K wu's ready to send. Go into Your Account => Collatz Preferences and make sure GPU Wu's are enabled. The default is off. If you do not want CPU wu's, turn that one off.
Title: Re: MUST update to 190.38 driver .. or else ???
Post by: veebee on August 20, 2009, 07:41:08 AM
yeah,,, Im sitting here right now with those prefs... and have even suspended al other work/ projects... nuthin.

I have GPU set to yes and cpu to "no".
Title: Re: MUST update to 190.38 driver .. or else ???
Post by: Dataman on August 20, 2009, 07:57:44 AM
Quote from: veebee on August 20, 2009, 07:41:08 AM
yeah,,, Im sitting here right now with those prefs... and have even suspended al other work/ projects... nuthin.

I have GPU set to yes and cpu to "no".
Humm ... I would start with with the basics. Is GPU processing turned on in BOINC? (Advanced => Preferences => Processor Tab=> Use GPU) Is BOINC seeing your card? Message: 8/12/2009 6:12:39 AM CUDA device: GeForce GTX 260 (driver version 19038, compute capability 1.3, 896MB, est. 104GFLOPS) You already said you upgraded drivers and have enabled GPU in Collatz.
That's all I can think of at the moment.  ???

EDDIT: Can you post the message you are getting.
Title: Re: MUST update to 190.38 driver .. or else ???
Post by: kashi on August 20, 2009, 01:49:45 PM
Quote from: veebee on August 20, 2009, 07:04:23 AM
I gave up on trying to get seti GPU running last night, and left collatz open for work..all night, without getting a single WU....  how often does it have "no new work"?

Collatz GPU applications both nVidia CUDA and ATI CAL run only on Windows. If you are trying to receive work to process on your video card on a Linux box you will not get any. CPU only on Linux.
Title: Re: MUST update to 190.38 driver .. or else ???
Post by: veebee on August 20, 2009, 03:40:46 PM
ahah... therein lies the problem...

maybe I should have read a bit more ion their site ! it is on alinux box ! but as for seti.. I have decided  it's too much work to get that going.
Title: Re: MUST update to 190.38 driver .. or else ???
Post by: Dataman on August 20, 2009, 11:51:38 PM
Win7 would solve that problem. biggrin I didn't notice it was windows only either.
Title: Re: MUST update to 190.38 driver .. or else ???
Post by: veebee on August 21, 2009, 07:24:27 AM
I have worked out why GPU grid was erroring out.... I had it over clocked a bit high, I'd say the problem was caused by heat...

Have gone back to stock speed for now....