Project Update

[JugNut]

Yea for us little guys mining is just an exercise in futility i'm afraid Chooka. Since we ozzies pay the highest power prices in the world bitcoin mining is not an option for most of us, if any of us at all?  At least not the way it is now.  I suppose you could do it as a hobby in the knowledge that you probably never break even, let alone ever turn a profit. 

Soo.. unless there's some word that another project like BU will take it's place,  all my miners will soon be appearing on an ebay near you ;)


PS:  Did you see bitcoin prices have rebounded, I think Blurf may have made a boo boo..
http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-price-rebounds-to-near-2640-following-yesterdays-losses/

[chooka03]

Can't be long to go now with EVERYONE crunching #5.
It will take some getting used to once I pack up the relatively noisy U3.

[JugNut]

Well BU has finally ended,  work generation for campaign #5 has stopped.  The WU's you have now & the few left in the hopper should be the last.
http://www.bitcoinutopia.net/bitcoinutopia/forum_thread.php?id=1141#12083

Mmm talk about conflicted i'm not sure if i'm happy  or sad  that BU has ended?  But it's kinda been like that for the entire ride,  hasn't it?  And a crazy ride it sure was...

[kashi]

Yes, know what you mean. It was interesting and fun in parts and frustrating in others. Overall, think I'll be relieved that it's over and soon be able to reboot any time I need to.

When I saw those sticks knew I had to have one: "I shouldn't really, but gadget". Plus the masochistic streak in me was entertained by adjusting that damnable little silver screw so many times and trying to dim the blinking bedroom strobes with marking pen and then teensy pieces of packing tape. And getting a suitable USB hub from Amazon who refused to send me the most recommended 70W Superbpag. The alternative 60W one being not powerful enough to support 5 Gekkos with the resulting burn out of one stick run separately without a fan. The recommended USB fans with a penetrating whine I couldn't stand. The case fan used instead falling over numerous times and razzing my fingers when I picked it up.

But most of that was in the past, although still get a youch! from that fan occasionally. Even the regular dropout of one stick, losing half a days production before an unplug and replug restored connection became routine. The lack of checkpointing combined with the 4 hour runtime although such a minor issue remained surprisingly inconvenient. As the Gekkos and the fan were connected to separate computers couldn't reboot or turn off either box without losing 4 BU tasks in progress. And even though BU credits are totally out of whack with the rest of BOINC, at 2.4 million credits each, still preferred not lose tasks in progress.

Which brings us to the fun part. When I wasn't crunching BU, the credit rate was ridiculous and unfair and even the concept of Bitcoin itself appeared unwholesome in some respects. But once on the inside crunching away then wowee, my daily credit went to town. The tiny sticks yielded oodles each and used very little power compared to a CPU or GPU. The loss of personal ranking that happened when others began scoring big on BU started to be whittled back. The term "roaring up the charts" sprang to mind, haha.

Our big hitters who spent up big on the more hard core mining hardware and power to run it greatly increased the team's daily output.  So the overall BOINC team ranking made an excellent recovery too which is great. From 49th to 14th ain't just whistlin' Dixie, great work. Plus, even if the economics of it were more than a little dubious, those who received the donations from the campaigns were grateful for the support.

However, the interest generated, extra forum posting and sharing of information and experience of those of us crunching BU I probably found the most enjoyable of all.

So crunch on, I've read that Puppy Linux runs in memory and can run from a USB stick so that will be one of my next experiments after the AA.

Think this "big grin" may be big enough, haha.  

[Dataman]

I am glad it is over! I posted what I felt about it several times before. I never wanted to run it but could not just sit by and watch the team drop in the standing. Now we can get back to a more-or-less level playing field. It will be interesting to see how things sort.

My new EVGA GTX 1080 SC arrives today.  Dumping the 2 x 570's.

A toast to the end of BU. 

[Dingo]

Sad to see it go and it took a long time to start crunching it.  My numbers now will be back to ridiculously small amounts but that is all I can do. 

[Hurricane]

Impressive looking graphics card Dataman. Should be fast to.

[kashi]

Ooh, shiny!

[tazzduke]

Greetings All

Yeah once it left the GPU and was only ASIC's, the friendship ended lol.

Oh gawd, look out, DM has another GPU to crunch with, and will do way much better than two GTX 570s lol, well the only person that will keep him at bay on the GPU side of things, will be JN, hopefully he gets well enough to get his GPU's up and crunching as well.

I hopefully would like to add another GTX 980 to the mix, and well could really do a bit of damage lol, but I think I will need to be a bit more patient lol.

Happy Crunching
Mark

[Dataman]

That shiny little thing runs Einstein in 14 - 15 minutes. *giggle*

The 2 570's were packed so full of dust it is no wonder they failed. Can't sell them so off to the boneyard they go. *Taps playing in the background*

EDIT: Two fans ARE better than one. My 1070's run stock at 51C. The new 1080 runs at 48C.   The 970's run at 65-70C. This is at factory clock and I have not fiddled with them yet using EVGA Precision. Here I am off topic again.  

[tazzduke]

Hey DM

I gather that is running two tasks at a time??

Regards

[Dataman]

Hey DM

I gather that is running two tasks at a time??

Regards

No the GPU utilization is 1.00 on all of them. I tried 0.50 on the 1080 this morning but did not think I gained much and I lose another whole CPU thread that could be doing POGS. I use 0.50 at Milkyway and that works great as as MW does not use much CPU.

[kashi]

Good that the new one installed without problem and runs cool.

Was a bit surprised at the great variability in Einstein runtimes for the same cards and the sometimes smallish difference between 970s, 980s 1070s and 1080s.

At first thought it was sometimes due to configurations with multiple cards slowing GPU processing down a bit but I've seen some slower times with single cards. And no, not that slow that it is likely 2 or more tasks run concurrently.

Then thought perhaps the speed of the CPU can have an affect because there is a portion of CPU processing after the semicoherent output stage is completed by GPU.

Then realised that various models/brands of the same card type can run at different speeds or boost differently. This could also perhaps be affected by cooling solution used on card, case cooling, room temperature.

Then there's potential CPU starvation issues, some may get a GPU speed up by leaving a CPU core free in addition to the CPU core automatically allocated to GPU tasks.

In some projects the higher model cards don't get to more fully utilise their performance potential unless they run multiple concurrent tasks but Dataman's experience with his 1080 and 2 concurrent means possibly not on Einstein.

So don't know, perhaps it could be a number of those issues. Strange though, I'd expect a much greater difference considering the differences in hardware specification. In other words, would have thought a 1080 or even a 1070 should absolutely blitz my 970 but doesn't seem to be the case on Einstein.

Do know it's hard to research many different configurations now in Einstein as the website has been horridly vandalised so only shows 50 hosts.

Noticed the task list is almost unusable now as well as no task numbers are shown and also no listing of different task types for those who crunch more than 1 type or do Einstein CPU as well.

What is it with these projects completely mucking up their websites lately? Is it some misguided and poorly implemented attempt to make the websites "mobile friendly" or what? Next they'll be hiding wingman details as well on quorum tasks like the horror, the horror of WCG. Bah, humbug.

Running multiple cards can be a pain sometimes and is something I resolved not to do again. I too would choose a single higher model GPU if I was getting stuck right into GPU crunching again. However this all makes me wonder if a couple of lower models such as 1050 Ti or 1060 would give better bang per watt on Einstein than a single top model. Because the electricity bills keep coming in after the cost of GPUs is forgotten.

[chooka03]

When I had my R9 280x I could run more than 1 WU with Einstein but the models after that could only run 1 WU at a time. It was well talked about on the forum.
I wasn't worried really. 1 WU was enough to occupy most of the card.

[tazzduke]

Greetings

Running 2 workunits on my GTX 980, 960 and 950, the 980 blitzs through 4 workunits per hour, whereas the 960 and 950 do 2 per hour.

I think I should put the 960 and 950 back to 1 task, but I cant be stuffed lol.

So in other words the 980 is doing the same work as the 960 and 950 combined, go figure.

Regards