C'mon ..... AMD FX's aren't THAT bad at CPU crunching. ;o}

<he says with a grin> They do out-run my old single a dual core Droid phones... that's true.

Of course, everything is relative. Relative to an i5, they are slow, and burn electricity like it's going out of style per WU they complete.

Using them for nothing more than GPU-support seems to be fine and they are inexpensive to buy. That's why I have them --> cheapness of the part plus a board.

CPU-crunching is a losing proposition anyway unless it's all you can do or the project you want to crunch only offers CPU work units.

I've got some awfully slow CPUs crunching but only because I really wanted to crunch some of the project they crunch and that project only offers CPU work. I would prefer to use the GPU, but that machine doesn't have a usable GPU.

I have found that if I don't care about my power bill I *can* crunch eight GPU work units and one CPU work unit on the 8350 simultaneously. Two is iffy and "depends" and three slows everything down no matter what.

I almost assuredly will have to knock down my concurrent CPU tasks when we get CPU work again as these new 970's are a lot more demanding on keeping fed. Still have saved 100 watts per machine with the new cards compared to the old 670's. As far as power consumption goes .... I don't worry about it during the spring and summer as I generate net negative power from the solar array. The power bill doesn't get hit by running the crunchers ..... during the daytime when I am generating. I did turn the machines off at dusk when I started pulling power from the grid so I could continue to build credit for winter time. I use the crunchers to heat the house during the winter, chewing into the net negative power cushion I built during the summer. If I come out net zero at the end of the true up period, my power utilization scheme worked as planned and I am happy.

I just wish I could justify the high cost of an Intel system as far as power demand and processing power. In my situation, its still a better deal to go with an AMD system. And I've always been an AMD fanboy ever since I realized I was getting suckered by Intel every new generation and living on the bleeding edge of technology ever since my first 8088. At some point I wised up, I think around the NX686 product, and have never looked at Intel again. If Intel would knock about $100 off the CPU and motherboard each, I might consider them again. Anyway .... my $0.02.

Cheers, Keith

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

I wonder if there is also a question of strategy for number of concurrent tasks.

2 per GPU might be sweet spot for shortest time per task but I find 4 gives most tasks completed in a given time even though they run slightly longer per task, they are running simultaneously. Still quicker than running 2 groups of 2 tasks sequentially in time.

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I wonder if there is also a question of strategy for number of concurrent tasks.

2 per GPU might be sweet spot for shortest time per task but I find 4 gives most tasks completed in a given time even though they run slightly longer per task, they are running simultaneously. Still quicker than running 2 groups of 2 tasks sequentially in time.

Unless you were giving each setting 4-6 weeks for the RAC to settle down your tests maybe wrong and did you test doing 3?

3 is the sweet spot on my 3570K's dual GTX 660's, but they do have a 50% wider memory bus than those 650Ti's have (also how much of the GPU's memory you can use is irrelevant, it's the GPU and memory controller loads that are the deciding factors) and doing 4 on each of mine started my RAC going backwards (as if I was doing 2 again).

Cheers.

Hi Wiggo
I have tried 1 thru 4 each time with varying CPU allocations from 0.01 to 1.0
I find judging performance by RAC is too long term and variable due to outages and time taken waiting for validations.

I judge my computer by how many GPU tasks it can complete in a 24Hr period, a physical count.

For my combination of hardware it is with 0.035 CPU + 0.25 GPU - this keeps each GPU at a constant 99% load and memory controller around 60 to 70% with the rest of the CPU being taken up by Rosetta and the Intel GPU running a single AP task (13 tasks simultaneously)

Works for me.............

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I look at credit per hour.

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All hardware has arrived and the new machine has been build. Bonic installed. Seti started crunching about an hour ago. Installed only 2 GTX 750ti cards to start. Looks like three will be the max that will fit on the mother board. So far the scheduler is only delivering tasks for the GPU's, no CPU tasks have downloaded.
Thanks everyone for you help. Looks like I have not made any mistakes that would have cost me $$$.

Herb

Take back the remark about no CPU tasks. As I was writing a bunch came down. All good.

Herb

Take back the remark about no CPU tasks. As I was writing a bunch came down. All good.

Herb

It always seems to work out that way with tasks. :-D

Happy crunching. ;-)

Cheers.