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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: BOINC Agent Support
Thread: Boinc overload/damage of GPU? |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 23
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I see that BOINC shows using CPU and also GPU. Is it possible that the GPU is being over-taxed by this work?
I have been running CEP2 @ 4 X 100% load 24/7 from the beginning with a 4 core AMD 610e energy efficient chip. Pumping out lots of results while still having a fully responsive computer for home use. Never had a problem or crash for the last year or more while doing other various crunching. CPU and motherboard always run cool per ASUS probe. Some days ago I noticed one of the 4 work units was paused while a high priority work unit was loaded and run. During this time I got a BSOD due to infinite loop of ati2dvg.dll. Very rare for my equipment but I thought it might be from the work unit swap midstream. Problem got worse over the next few days with many crashes. Updated graphics driver, fully deleted and reinstalled graphics software, and various other windows fixes including reloading BOINC all to no avail. Last night I replaced the ASUS motherboard with the onboard ATI Radeon 3200 graphics with a newer ASUS board, also with onboard graphics. Now all is OK. Having an ASUS board fail after a few years just a coincidence, or should I be concerned about the stress on the GPU from this work? I did not know the GPU was involved with this work. I thought only the CPU was being stressed - which I am not concerned about because I keep it cool. Thanks for any thoughts. Mark |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Hi Mark,
----------------------------------------WCG sciences do as yet not use the GPU other than to show the science graphics when you want it to, either in call-off or through the BOINC screensaver. That's rather light-weight graphics, which uses only a fraction of the GPU's capacity and a few percent of the CPU. -- SekeRob Edit: BOINC standard from about 6.6 does identify if there is a GPU in the computer and if it could do GPU computing, but that is till now only at other projects such as GPUGrid. [Edit 1 times, last edit by Former Member at Jan 12, 2011 4:01:27 PM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Thanks for the amazingly quick response.
I don't use the screen saver at all, preferring to max out the useful work. I will chalk this up to one of those rare failures of a quality brand. Newegg delivered the new motherboard in 26 hours from the time I ordered it so I am back online & crunching. Powered by the sun from my rooftop PV system that provides over 100% of my household electrical needs. Cheers, Mark |
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Coleslaw
Veteran Cruncher USA Joined: Mar 29, 2007 Post Count: 1343 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I will contest, that if you are in deed using GPU with other projects, it will burn your card up much quicker then standard use. It will generate a lot of heat and demand more electricity. I had one that developed swollen capacitors pretty quick because of crunching. Granted some will clame I couldn't possibly know that was the cause, but if you poke your head into many forums, you will find that there are a lot of gearheads that eat cards crunching.
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Most sane car drivers would react with horror at the thought of pushing the rev counter of their engine to within a millimetre of the red before changing gear, as a routine driving technique. Wisely so.
The same perectly sane individuals who nurture their car engines wisely, can also be found overclocking and pushing their graphics cards to within a millimetre of the absolute limit of the card - many times including overvolting - punching out enough heat to fry a steak - then complain the application burnt out their card ....... duuhh The overwhelming majority of cards will perform quite happily at a max of 10% overclock with vitually no effort, and tick away forever - more than that is feasible of course but some serious attention to detail would be needed by those who claim to be sane. Some do fail, some people do get knocked over with crossing the road, both are rare events. Its the old story, bad news is good news, we only hear about the failures. Fact remains GPU crunching is perfectly safe providing an eye is kept on temperature and cooling. The card will wear out quicker if used for 7x24 crunching as its use is 4 to 5 times the anticipated designed useage life for non crunching, but that should not surprise anyone. A card sensibly used for crunching, and carefully monitored and cooled appropriately, will almost invariably exceed the pratical useage of the card when it would be replaced anyway as technology has marched on. Regards Zy |
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Dataman
Ace Cruncher Joined: Nov 16, 2004 Post Count: 4865 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Not true Coleslaw. If you have good air flow, keep them cool and don't try to OC them to some crazy degree, they have no more problems than with CPU's. You will want to replace it with a newer, faster card long before you burn it out. I've been crunching GPU for 2 1/2 years and have purchased close to 30 cards starting with 8800/9800GT's, then GTX260/285's and now some GTX4xx. I currently have 12 cards in the farm. I have had only one failure due to unknown causes. This is better than the 3 that arrived DOA from the seller and had to be RMA'ed.
---------------------------------------- The rest I replaced with a better card and sold the old one on Craig's List for a decent price or gave away to friends.Keep them clean and do good cable management and you will be fine.    [Edit 2 times, last edit by Dataman at Jan 13, 2011 5:38:14 PM] |
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Coleslaw
Veteran Cruncher USA Joined: Mar 29, 2007 Post Count: 1343 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I disagree Dataman with much of that statement, but I seriously doubt you will ever be convinced otherwise. I will simply agree to disagree. I will agree though that cooling does a lot for extending the life of GPU's as well as CPU's and OC'ing contributes to a lot of problems. ( I never OC )
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Coleslaw
Veteran Cruncher USA Joined: Mar 29, 2007 Post Count: 1343 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Zydor on the other hand is correct. I would not rely on offloading cards often as proof of concept.
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kateiacy
Veteran Cruncher USA Joined: Jan 23, 2010 Post Count: 1027 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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[OT] Mark, I just built a new crunching machine with an AMD 610e chip. What do you get for BOINC benchmarks on yours? I don't think mine is running quite as fast as it should, although it's certainly cranking out those WUs while running very cool and low-power as hoped.[/OT]
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Dataman
Ace Cruncher Joined: Nov 16, 2004 Post Count: 4865 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I disagree Dataman with much of that statement, I was just relating my personal experience with many cards over 2 1/2 years. I'm not sure how one disagrees with someone's personal experience but be that as it may.  I seriously doubt you will ever be convinced otherwise. I will be easily be convinced when I see a lot of card failures after I run them long, hard and ocassionally hot. |
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