PS3Grid GPU?

[Bender10]

I found this posted on PS3Grid a few days ago. The project admin was kinda weak on the answer...


I saw "GPU Grid - PS3 Grid" in BOINC project list.
I thought PS3 Grid is only crunching on PS3. Does it support GPU now??
If so, which GPU(s) are currently supported?

We will support NVIDIA GPUs, but we cannot say more now.
g


g is the project admin...(as in gdf)

It looks like they are exploring gpu crunching. I wonder why they have the link posted on BOINC, if they are not ready to support the gpu yet...unless they are doing closed testing...hmmmm...

[mitchellds]

interesting.

The thrill of the ps3 has kinda died down now after all of the initial great folding@home ps3 returns. I doesn't seem like other projects are doing anything new on the ps3 front other than the couple that already have efforts out there. I was hoping that by now boinc would run native under the sony OS without having to do the linux thing. I think that scares alot of people off. Running boinc directly under the sony OS would definitely bring more projects on board. It seems like that idea has died on the vine unfort.

[Bender10]

I just "cranked up" my first GPU cruncher on PS3Grid. I picked up a $70 Nvidia (8800GS), and bolted it onto my AMD 9550 cruncher with some duct tape and paper clips. It seems to be werking so far, after a few dayz of cursing at Linux and trying to load drivers and apps, Holy Crud!!.

It should (might?) complete a wu by the time I get home this afternoon (fingers crossed!!).

[mitchellds]

Yo Bender,

Just curious; so you are running that droid under linux then? Did the card MFG have linux drivers available, or did you have to go with a third party driver to get it to work with the ps3grid project?

[liuqyn]

whats with this NVIDIA only crap? I just nicely installed my HD4850, first off its output on folding sucks compared to NVIDIA (for now at least), now I can't even try it here either.

ps. my best NVIDIA card is an old 7600GT.

[Bender10]

Yes.

PS3Grid (or GPUgrid) only supports Linux64 right now. And I am running Ubuntu 8.04 (64bit). Some are using Fedora. And there is a custom Boinc client (6.3.8) that you get from the ps3grid site.

And Nvidia has the necessary drivers for Linux 64.

The project runs a wu in ~18 hours with my card (8800GS, 96 stream processors). The more expensive cards (9600 or newer) run the wu's faster (sometimes). Some faster are around 12 hours per wu.

They request you run a card with a minimum of 100 stream procs. An 8600 (32 stream proc i think) takes around 50 hours.

There are still some gremlins in the werks. It is in BETA test still....

[mitchellds]

I see, thanks for the info.

[Bender10]

They just released the (alpha) app for XP as of 8/11. The PS3Grid people are keeping the release quiet, So I missed that. There were hints about this....

http://www.ps3grid.net/apps.php

I happened to be in the forum and someone was complaining about XP not getting wu's....But it is now. So crank up those Nvidia 8800's and get to werk!




EDIT: Not a special PS3Grid client. But it provides GPU support. Just the latest from BOINC (6.3.8) download site. No ATI support yet...

[Bender10]

My Linux GPU cruncher is still wading through wu's. It seems to work fine if I leave it alone, and let it do it's thing. I may have to update the Nvidia drivers to the current release soon.

It should complete it's second wu in a few hours. Most of the problems seem to occur on startup of a follow on wu..

I guess since it's BETA, they are awarding fixed points per wu. It's around 1,900 pts. No points for corrupt wu's...

[mitchellds]

Bender,
Any chance of running the GPU boinc for the video and also the standard linux boinc for the cpus at the same time? Want to give that a whirl if possible and they do not cancel themselves out in real world operation to see how they affect each other? Has anyone posted on this idea yet?