@Coolstream The GPU part definitely had a learning curve to it. It does look like you did a good job figuring out the project by your signature Tflops score. I made a mistake of gearing up to soon and picked up a few used 5xxx cards with water-blocks and they ended up performing way worse then the 7xxx series. I am still have to look into getting 3 cards in one machine to work in Linux yet for projects like this.

It looks like I may not make sapphire x73 for this project.

Got any tips for a noob on getting ATI drivers to install and work in Linux ?

During the GPU betas, I held off and followed the feedback closely. Once enough information had been gathered, I started to look around eBay and gambled on a couple of 6000 series cards that were sold as being 'faulty or cannot get it to work' do my own testing. I put them in machines I had built purely for WCG work and it didn't matter to me if they produced the odd artifact on the desktop. The artifacts were resolved by improving airflow within the cases and regularly keeping air vents clear.

I only bought two 7000 series new after careful price comparisons and bought other RMA'd ones at bargain prices. My only regret is that once I had them up and running, it took me way too long to experiment with 1/x CPU + 1/x GPU configurations as mentioned earlier in this thread which gave me a 50% increase in crunching power. I'm sure that I could have got it higher but as the project was in its last few weeks, I decided to stick at that performance increase.

Again as I mentioned on this forum, the first two 5000 series GPUs just didn't cut it so I decided to use them as WCG disabled primary GPUs with more powerful GPUs as secondary devices. This allowed the machines to be able to crunch at maximum capacity without interfering with the desktop so that 1080P HD content files would play with no jerkiness in output.

I also have to thank Fred, the author of BoincTasks and CPUThrottle. Without these programs, it would have been so much more difficult to be able to check up on my machines and do micro-management when required. I am happy to have been able to give feedback on his always developing programs and am proud to be in his 'beta team'.

It's going to be hard to return to solely CPU tasks, Jason1478963. All of a sudden it's going to look as if I've switched off a lot of crunchers when these GPUs become redundant. Once they were all running, I realised the amount of heat they give off. The upside is that I managed to go all winter with no central heating apart from the 28 days when my ISP (Virgin UK) lost me my connection to the WCG servers.

Since my crunching power is going to drop with GPUs unused, I am seriously considering doing more research into bit mining. I know I have developed a fairly powerful farm but I think bit mining is going to be another learning curve. I wouldn't even consider it if there were another cancer project at WCG since Mum, Roppa and Aunt Audrey were all lost to cancer, but maybe it is time to start reaping some rewards from the machines I have built...

Bitcoin mining is way more GPU intensive than WCG.

Just struck gold so all 256 tasks that were in cache are going back into the pool! Good luck to anyone who still wants their badges! :)