All Encompassing Guide to POEM

[mmstick]

The below guide is created for AMD only.

I am back here with POEM with my Radeon HD 7950 and two Radeon HD 6850s crunching as much as possible since there is now an insane amount of work units to process.

First of all, new users to POEM@Home absolutely need a powerful AMD Radeon graphics card running on Windows with the latest driver from AMD's website. Linux has some performance issues so it isn't recommended for this project unless you are simply running CPU tasks, in which case do make sure you have installed the latest BOINC client manually if you are running a Debian/Ubuntu based distribution.

Secondly, you must place an app_info.xml and the app in your ProgramData\BOINC\projects\boinc.fzk.de_poem directory (and be sure to restart). A sample of a perfectly working app_info.xml is here: http://www.mediafire.com/view/?dkvu0gck6vlhd0z as well as the latest opencl app.

Finally, and one of the most important aspects, there are some basic problems with POEM that can prevent you from getting best utilization, as I have learned through a lot of testing. The basic problem with POEM@Home is that it is constantly sending data to and from CPU -> GPU -> CPU -> at a fast rate, this causes a bottleneck problem with RAM. So, the most important component here, besides the graphics card, will be the speed of your RAM. Therefore, there will come a time when adding more work units simply will not increase GPU utilization at all. At best, my FX-8120 and 16GB of 1866Mhz RAM is only capable of getting 60% utilization at max (most often ~55%) of my Radeon HD 7950. Overclocking your memory and northbridge will help out a LOT in this project, your processors frequency takes a seat in the back in priority. To improve memory performance, you may simply close most of your programs, and get a program like this: http://bitsum.com/prolasso.php to get the most out of your processor and input/output utilization. Having BOINC on a SSD can help as well, but only minimally.

Useful tools:
Process Lasso : To improve efficiency, utilization, and monitor processor cores and memory
MSI Afterburner : To overclock, overvolt, and monitor GPU usage.

On a final note, this HD 7950 is really fast, even if it only gets ~55% utilization it makes 480,000 BOINC PPD. If it could be fully utilized that would be in the 800,000 PPD range. It completes a work unit every 9 minutes, with each work unit worth close to 3,000 points.