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Thread: New GPU UP and Running - Hopefully a good deal

  1. #1
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    New GPU UP and Running - Hopefully a good deal

    So I was at the computer store today looking for a simple notebook computer memory upgrade. While I was in the build your own PC section I decided I needed to stroll through the video card isle since I had gotten an email about some sales and i have been itching for a GPU upgrade. I came across a card that I ended up snagging for $79 USD. Hopefully it ended up being a good deal. It is the Gigabyte Radeon RX460 with 2GB DDR5.

    Apparently the AMD website does not like you trying to download the AMDGPU Driver directly to your Ubuntu box. It was only about half as large as it was suppose to be and would not extract. I had to download to my mac first and then send the tar file over to my Ubuntu box. At least I got it up and working, and it is playing nice with my other card as well which I had to demote to my PICEX4 slot so I could put the more powerful card in the x16 slot on my motherboard. So far it is whisper quite and I had to use a flashlight to make sure it was actually getting power to the fans on the card. (Hurt too many fingers checking without a flashlight).

    The GFLOPS that my BOINC manager says it will get seem pretty good as well '2172 GFLOPS peak', not sure if those are super accurate or just a generalized average. Ready for some GPU crunching now. I like the Moo! tasks because they seem to only use 0.25 of the CPU and I can get the maximum number of WUs going at one time on CPU and GPU.
    Last edited by Tweeder; 05-22-2017 at 08:38 PM. Reason: able to download newest AMDGPU version

  2. #2
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    The GPU is recent enough to work flawlessly in Ubuntu 16.04 and above, using the AMDGPU-PRO driver.
    Strange enough I discovered that when your GPu is old enough -but not too old- you don't have problems under Unbuntu 16.04 either, the IGP of my A6-3500 works well under Lubuntu 16.04!
    I will upgrade/reinstall my Xubuntu 13.10 box with its A8-3850 to Kubuntu 17.10 and add a HD 6670 to see whether I'm right.
    Last edited by Dirk Broer; 05-23-2017 at 08:38 AM.


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    It seems to be working without an issue. For some reason I could not get the whole AMDGPU-Pro driver to download using wget on my Ubuntu Server. It was about half the size it was supposed to be and would not extract. Downloading via my browser and then FTPing it over to my server worked without a problem except for the extra steps.

    I think MOO Wrapper may have overestimated what the new card can do, because it sent a WU that is an estimated 1 million GFLOPS and estimated it would finish in less than an hour. After working for 5 hours it is only 14% done. The older GPU is getting 44 thousand GFLOPS WUs in about an hour and a half.

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    "Flawlessly"

    Quote Originally Posted by Dirk Broer View Post
    The GPU is recent enough to work flawlessly in Ubuntu 16.04...
    Well, after letting it run for some time it seems to randomly freeze the computer up and I can only do a hard reboot. Nothing seems to be in the syslog right before the freeze. Looking at others on google with this random freezing seem to suggest looking at the Xorg log which seems a lot less easier to read, but I am watching it now to so I can see it crash while I am watching to help with the troubleshooting.

    Curious if it may be the dual video card set-up which should be supported by my mobo, or something else entirely. At least it gives me something to tinker with. Hopefully it will crash when I am home more often than away so I can reboot.

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    If it is running OpenCL code on multiple GPUs, it can easily being overloaded. Try setting the application to crunch One WU at a time, and crunch something easy with the other GPU in the meantime.
    Last edited by Dirk Broer; 05-24-2017 at 12:47 PM.


  6. #6
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    I don't know a thing about Linux but if you can find a software that can get the GPU/CPU and system temperature readings it may be worth taking a look into it as well. If some component is overheating it may cause odd behaviors (apps crash, system crash, system hang, throttling, etc)
    Adding a second GPU to a computer usually increases the average temperature inside a computer case by a quite a bit.

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    Thanks for the temperature advice. I have been watching it closely, and it was no higher with both cards trying to run. It was like my new AMD card did not even get warm because it was not actually working. I removed the old GPU and then the AMD card starting actually working and came up to a temperature you could expect under load.

    I tried to give the old GPU some Seti@Home tasks that use CUDA only to not have them booth use OpenCLI, but that did not work either. Makes me think the issue is something more at they system level because I left the old card in for a bit after shutting all boinc work off to it, and the AMD card still would not seem to actually do any work. My mobo advertised dual card support, but I will have to do some more checking around to see what may be going on.

    On the plus side:
    Amazing how quick you can get Moo Wrapper credit when the GPU is working like it was intended!
    Last edited by Tweeder; 05-25-2017 at 01:27 AM. Reason: No luck trying to run both cards

  8. #8
    Interested to see what you find, I am having the same issue under 14.04.1 in a box with a 6970 using the fglrx drivers. I also thought it was a heat issue, as the fan could be heard from outside, but after reworking the airflow I cannot hear the GPU fan over the case fans. I thought this fixed it, as it ran happy for over a day, however it started acting up again and upon hard reboots it will run 30m-2d before freezing. Average run-time seems to be about 18 hours.

    I got the main desktop working well enough in the environment I wish to live in, however it is not recognizing the cards as CAL and we are back to only seeing 512MB VRAM, so Einstein is out. Milkyway is not sending tasks, but unclear at this time if that is me or them. SETI is currently running happy, and if the WUs are validated, I am going to go forth with the rest of the software installs and leave well enough alone until I upgrade to something modern enough for AMDGPU-PRO and Ubuntu 16. I really have my eye on a new Zen, and when I press forth with that I am sure I will be getting some higher end R9 or above to go with it. Second hand on the GPUs, always found that to be MUCH more cost effective for BOINC.

  9. #9
    How do I delay the launch of BOINC? I set it as the last daemon to start, but on a SSD that doesn't mean much, then in the script file located in init.d I added a 30 second sleep. Either that is not going to work, or I put it in the wrong place, because it still doesn't see GPU upon initial launch.

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    There seems just one solution using Ati/AMD Radeon cards: restart the boinc client.
    The open source driver under Ubuntu 16.04 has solved this error to replace it with a non-crunching OpenCL 1.1 driver (for my R3 that is, YMMV).
    The same R3 requires a restart under Xubuntu 15.10.
    Under Lubuntu 16.04 my older, both OpenCL 1.2 and CAL-capable cards CAN be used, but it requires a restart too.
    Last edited by Dirk Broer; 05-27-2017 at 06:47 PM.


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