Stream

[Nflight]

Bok made this statement which will rock the world of AMD. 8-18-09

They've just announced that they should have the ATI integration into the BOINC 6.10.x stream within a month, it's basically the major thing they are working on now that the gridrepublic/facebook 6.8.x version is out the door..

Woo Hoo

[Brucifer]

yup, these cards rock!!!

[liuqyn]

boinc 6.10.0 is out now (beta), but I can't get it to run on my AMD systems, runs fine on my only intel(P4 2Ghz) though.

[NeoGen]

I'm running it here (the beta) on AMD Phenom II X3 720, just upgraded from 6.6.36

23/08/2009 04:07:29 Starting BOINC client version 6.10.0 for windows_x86_64
23/08/2009 04:07:29 log flags: task, file_xfer, sched_ops
23/08/2009 04:07:29 Libraries: libcurl/7.19.4 OpenSSL/0.9.8k zlib/1.2.3
23/08/2009 04:07:29 Data directory: C:\ProgramData\BOINC
23/08/2009 04:07:29 Running under account NeoGen
23/08/2009 04:07:29 Processor: 3 AuthenticAMD AMD Phenom(tm) II X3 720 Processor [AMD64 Family 16 Model 4 Stepping 2]
23/08/2009 04:07:29 Processor: 512.00 KB cache
23/08/2009 04:07:29 Processor features: fpu tsc pae nx sse sse2 pni
23/08/2009 04:07:29 OS: Microsoft Windows Vista: Ultimate x64 Edition, Service Pack 2, (06.00.6002.00)
23/08/2009 04:07:29 Memory: 3.99 GB physical, 8.21 GB virtual
23/08/2009 04:07:29 Disk: 148.08 GB total, 106.61 GB free
23/08/2009 04:07:29 Local time is UTC +1 hours
23/08/2009 04:07:29 NVIDIA GPU 0: GeForce 9600 GT (driver version 19038, CUDA version 2030, compute capability 1.1, 512MB, est. 31GFLOPS)
23/08/2009 04:07:29 No CAL Runtime Libraries installed.
23/08/2009 04:07:29 Not using a proxy
23/08/2009 04:07:30 Version change (6.6.36 -> 6.10.0)

I highlighted in red the part that seems to be what identifies ATI GPU's

[liuqyn]

but does it run on cpu? when I installed it, it keeps setting number CPU is 0. and no matter what I change in preferences it stays that way.

[BobCat13]

but does it run on cpu? when I installed it, it keeps setting number CPU is 0. and no matter what I change in preferences it stays that way.

In your BOINC Data directory, open the cc_config.xml file. Find the entry like this:

<ncpus>0</ncpus>

Change the 0 to -1, save the file and either stop/start the boinc client or in BOINC Manager choose Advanced/Read config file.

Earlier versions of boinc ran even though that setting is 0, but 6.10.0 will set usable CPUs to 0. -1 tells the client to use all availabe CPUs.

Also, be aware that on newer versions of boinc, the checkpoint (Write to disk at most every) setting is multiplied by the number of CPUs on the machine. If you had set it to 5 minutes (300 seconds) on older versions, it will now save checkpoints every 10 minutes on a dual core, 20 minutes on a quad, 40 minutes on an octo. This can cause a fair amount of lost work if a reboot or some other restart of boinc is required.

[liuqyn]

ahhhh, that did it. many thanks.

ps. sorry for hijacking the thread.

[Nflight]

Speaking of hijacking a thread, just which is the AMD ATI GPU's that are referred to as Stream Capable. I would like to know?

EDIT: I would also like to know if you can run separate BOINC Projects while the cpu's are crunching the GPU's are crunching something else?

[NeoGen]

EDIT: I would also like to know if you can run separate BOINC Projects while the cpu's are crunching the GPU's are crunching something else?

That is possible, but you have to go to the website and set one project on the preferences to use only gpu and the other only cpu. (or leave as is if no gpu apps)

[liuqyn]

most of the HDxxxx cards are stream capable, however, milkyway@home which was the first boinc project to use ATIs requires the double precision capable cards which is the 38xx and 48xx series models.

and yes you can(and actually have too) run different projects as the ATI optimized apps run CPU tasks via the anonymous platform in boinc which make it impossible to also run regular CPU tasks at the same time for the same project.

check out Milkyway and Collatz Conjecture message boards for more info.