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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Completed Research
Forum: Help Conquer Cancer
Thread: Will HCC publish list of approved GPU cards for Windows? |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 21
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ericinboston
Senior Cruncher Joined: Jan 12, 2010 Post Count: 253 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Hi all...I have tons of Windows XP and 7 boxes and would love to throw in some GPU cards to help HCC. From the August 30 video replay, they claim a GPU can process a WU in a few minutes rather than a full hour by a CPU. I did not hear any stats such as what kind of CPU vs. what kind of GPU.
----------------------------------------It would be FANTASTIC if the HCC team could provide a simple list of Windows XP and/or 7 GPU cards so that we can go out and buy them. It would be extra nice if the list could be sortable by speed/performance. It would be sweet to update some older boxes with a $75 video card that would give extreme new life to the box from an HCC point of view! On a side note, when BOINC processes Work Units on both a CPU and GPU at the same time (I would believe this is true), is there visual representation of which WUs the GPU is processing? I run BOINC in advanced view mode...it would be nice to see my i7 showing 8 cores and then, say, GPU board ABC processing 2 WUs. I have no idea how many cores/threads a GPU can handle, by the way. Thanks in advance!  |
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Speedy51
Veteran Cruncher New Zealand Joined: Nov 4, 2005 Post Count: 1266 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I believe there will be a working GPU list posted after the GPU APP has been tested & been passed for public use. The next beta could be in the near future maybe this week.
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CandymanWCG
Senior Cruncher Romania Joined: Dec 20, 2010 Post Count: 421 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Hi ericinboston,
----------------------------------------Indeed, it would be nice to have that list. I too am anxious on finally putting my lowly GPU to work for the benefit of the WCG, but so far, I am keeping it busy with SETI. I can, however, tell you this much from my experience: depending on how many physical GPUs the card has (one or two), that is how many threads it can handle at once. I will also tell you something else: it's not just a claim that the GPU will be able to process WUs faster. For SETI, a WU that would take a day or two (mind you, I mean 24+ hours of actual processing) to run, is taken apart by a GPU in a matter of an hour or two. Hope this helps answer some of your questions. Cheers! Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world! - Albert Einstein   |
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Jim1348
Veteran Cruncher USA Joined: Jul 13, 2009 Post Count: 1066 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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It would be extra nice if the list could be sortable by speed/performance. It would be sweet to update some older boxes with a $75 video card that would give extreme new life to the box from an HCC point of view! I think you will quickly find that the AMD cards work best for this project, due to a better implementation of OpenCL (or whatever - their architecture is different than Nvidia's). The Radeon HD 7750 is nice, or if you can spend more, the HD 7770 is better. (I use Nvidia myself for Folding, but bought a couple of HD 7770s for this project, whenever it gets here.) |
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CandymanWCG
Senior Cruncher Romania Joined: Dec 20, 2010 Post Count: 421 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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It would be extra nice if the list could be sortable by speed/performance. It would be sweet to update some older boxes with a $75 video card that would give extreme new life to the box from an HCC point of view! I think you will quickly find that the AMD cards work best for this project, due to a better implementation of OpenCL (or whatever - their architecture is different than Nvidia's). The Radeon HD 7750 is nice, or if you can spend more, the HD 7770 is better. (I use Nvidia myself for Folding, but bought a couple of HD 7770s for this project, whenever it gets here.) That's nice to hear. Most projects are sort of biased towards Nvidia. I recently switched sides (an upgrade) from a 9600GT to an HD6870, so I hope you're right! Cheers! Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world! - Albert Einstein |
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mikey
Veteran Cruncher Joined: May 10, 2009 Post Count: 821 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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It would be extra nice if the list could be sortable by speed/performance. It would be sweet to update some older boxes with a $75 video card that would give extreme new life to the box from an HCC point of view! In the original Beta test low end gpu's were quickly excluded and ONLY AMD cards were used. As the Betas progressed Nvidia cards were tested too but again older ones were quickly excluded. This was posted by knreed on 6/26/2012, the Beta guru here at WCG: Re: HCC GPU Testing v6.45 (Started June 25, 2012) Some details by GPU. This view includes all GPU's that experienced at least one of the three major errors from above. It lists the number of error results and successful results for the GPU along with the # devices reporting an error and the # of devices reporting success. errors error_hosts success success hosts gpu % error 7 3 202 15 AMD Radeon HD (unknown) 3.3% 7 4 233 20 AMD Radeon HD 6800 series (Barts) 2.9% 28 7 448 28 AMD Radeon HD 6900 series (Cayman) 5.9% 5 3 411 18 AMD Radeon HD 79x0 series (Tahiti) 1.2% 7 3 269 25 ATI Radeon HD 5700 series (Juniper) 2.5% 41 9 737 44 ATI Radeon HD 5800 series (Cypress) 5.3% 20 2 12 5 ATI Radeon HD 5x00 series (Cedar) 62.5% 21 1 75 8 ATI Radeon HD 5x00 series (Redwood) 21.9% 24 6 184 14 ATI Radeon HD5700 series (Juniper) 11.5% 8 2 136 8 ATI Radeon HD5800 series (Cypress) 5.6% 85 2 9 3 ATI Radeon HD5x00 series (Cedar) 90.4% 12 2 8 2 ATI Radeon HD5x00 series (Redwood) 60.0% 54 6 224 25 ATI unknown 19.4% 1 1 0 0 GeForce 8600 GT 100.0% 2 1 72 1 GeForce 8800 GTX 2.7% 28 3 47 11 GeForce GT 430 37.3% 17 3 4 1 GeForce GT 530 81.0% 42 4 50 10 GeForce GT 540M 45.7% 10 1 0 0 GeForce GT 545 100.0% 1 1 16 4 GeForce GT 555M 5.9% 120 12 264 25 GeForce GTX 460 31.3% 54 1 4 1 GeForce GTX 460 SE 93.1% 3 1 111 4 GeForce GTX 465 2.6% 16 5 36 6 GeForce GTX 550 Ti 30.8% 28 2 53 8 GeForce GTX 560 34.6% 93 11 510 35 GeForce GTX 560 Ti 15.4% 31 6 575 26 GeForce GTX 570 5.1% 44 8 472 20 GeForce GTX 580 8.5% 6 1 122 4 GeForce GTX 590 4.7% 25 5 161 9 GeForce GTX 680 13.4% 2 1 15 1 GeForce GTX 690 11.8% 2 1 1 1 Quadro 1000M 66.7% I would surmise that the cards with the higher error rates would be excluded over time although more testing will be required to narrow those down. WCG DID publish a minimum gpu capability stat but I can't find it right now but it was something like 'must support Cuda or OpenCL' and then something else which I just can't remember right now.   |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Those results are interesting but also odd. For example, the GeForce 460 is a workhorse at most other projects I run. There are some NVIDIA drivers with a bug that causes numerous crunch errors - specifically, 295.xx and 296.xx. Those drivers are banned at Einstein@home, and other BOINC projects have posted warnings. Think all should hold off on purchases pending a list of unacceptable cards. I bought my first low end card several years ago and quickly found out it was not acceptable at Milkyway@Home, which requires hardware double precision math.
----------------------------------------As to earlier questions, the chip manufacturers provide drivers for various operating systems, so the o/s you have is not a real factor in card selection. BOINC will only crunch one at a time unless the project provides a mechanism for multiple instances. Don't know if there are plans for that. Both methods used at the other projects i run are at least a little controversial. To run more than 1 at a time, you need 1G of VRAM. You need 2GB to run more, and that investment won't be worthwhile unless the project does something special to allow multiple instances. You need an available pci-e 1x16 slot and at least a 500w power supply to run the better cards. There are a few pci cards out there, but they are disappearing from the market. [Edit 1 times, last edit by Former Member at Sep 4, 2012 3:24:09 PM] |
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ericinboston
Senior Cruncher Joined: Jan 12, 2010 Post Count: 253 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Although I am a techie, I've really gotten out of the whole video card alphabet soup the past 10+ years...it's truly nuts.
----------------------------------------I think if the list were pretty simple, folks could simply cut and paste the product in Amazon or Newegg and go buy the unit(s). Of course each end user (those purchasing the cards will be somewhat technical) will confirm if the card is for XP or 7 or whatever OS. If there was a list of approved integrated video cards, that would be nice, too...so if you're buying a new machine and notice for an extra $25 you can get an HCC approved GPU, why not! My hope is that for a good/above average GPU card for HCC use, it would be $75-$100. That's much better than buying a new $500 computer. Someone stated that a desktop would need a 500watt power supply...that seems hard to believe...most desktops only come with 300-400 unless it's a gaming system. Can anyone else confirm that the GPU cards even list that as a Hardware Requirement? Usually the requirements are simply OS and slot type. |
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astrolabe.
Senior Cruncher Joined: May 9, 2011 Post Count: 496 Status: Offline |
You need an available pci-e 1x16 slot and at least a 500w power supply to run the better cards. It must be true if you read it on the Internet.Or you can google HD5700, look at the specs and see the TDP: 25 watts |
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nanoprobe
Master Cruncher Classified Joined: Aug 29, 2008 Post Count: 2998 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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It would be extra nice if the list could be sortable by speed/performance. It would be sweet to update some older boxes with a $75 video card that would give extreme new life to the box from an HCC point of view! I think you will quickly find that the AMD cards work best for this project, due to a better implementation of OpenCL (or whatever - their architecture is different than Nvidia's). The Radeon HD 7750 is nice, or if you can spend more, the HD 7770 is better. (I use Nvidia myself for Folding, but bought a couple of HD 7770s for this project, whenever it gets here.) That's nice to hear. Most projects are sort of biased towards Nvidia. I recently switched sides (an upgrade) from a 9600GT to an HD6870, so I hope you're right! Cheers! As a rule GPU apps that are coded with OpenCL ( The WCG GPU app is one) will perform better on ATI cards because ATI has much better driver support for OpenCL than Nvidia. That's not to say that Nvidia cards won't work well. They will. It's just that ATI will tend to be more efficient and faster for cards of equal gaming performance.
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