Bitcoin GPU-based Mining Machines good for BOINC / SETI?

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Message 1956792 - Posted: 22 Sep 2018, 14:16:57 UTC

This morning I see that the BOINC manager on the MINER rig has a BUNCH of work units "stuck' in it that it wont send up.
I've tried everything I can to get it to transmit them but it wont.

Any idea whats going on?

Is the system not feeling well?

I have confirmed its NOT a network or access problem on my end.
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Message 1956811 - Posted: 22 Sep 2018, 15:51:30 UTC - in response to Message 1956792.  

This morning I see that the BOINC manager on the MINER rig has a BUNCH of work units "stuck' in it that it wont send up.
I've tried everything I can to get it to transmit them but it wont.


There is a thread here https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=83204#1956134 that is continuously revived that is essentially a "Seti Server" watch where comments on what is being processed or not processed goes on. They may say something like "no downloads are ready for distribution" etc.
I will freely admit, when I hit "Update" on the Projects tab with "SetiatHome" it almost always uploads.

Every once in a while either a server goes down on the weekend/holiday or sometimes they have a networking issue at Berkely where the DNS box stopped working. Either of those could produce the problem you are experiencing.

Unless your HD dies, no data is lost even if it is not uploading.

Because you are running a high gpu rig, under Windows, there is that unknown element.

For a wild hair, shut it down, unplug most of the gpu's. And start it up again. Or you could do a cold start without removing the gpu's and see if that clears the issue. If not, then try removing most of the gpus.

That is a "wild hair" except cold boots do clear up problems that we have no idea why they are occuring :(

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Message 1956812 - Posted: 22 Sep 2018, 16:06:38 UTC - in response to Message 1956811.  

It still seems to be clogged up....
I unplugged the network and plugged it back in and that poked it to download a bunch more work units.
I see NO GPU's have been crunching at all today! Only cores!

I think it is downloading GPU work units.

Lets see...
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Message 1956813 - Posted: 22 Sep 2018, 16:09:08 UTC - in response to Message 1956812.  

There it goes! Whew!

Also, I think I lost one of my PC's.
Turned the power SW off at the power supply and cooked the CU while it was VERY busy!
Opps... That was a $200 mistake...
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Message 1956816 - Posted: 22 Sep 2018, 16:37:21 UTC - in response to Message 1956813.  

I wonder whats better on a laptop for number of work units??
Run 100% at a lower clock speed thanks to Intel's throttling or run fewer threads at a higher clock speed or does it come out equal in the wash?
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Message 1956818 - Posted: 22 Sep 2018, 16:42:26 UTC - in response to Message 1956816.  

I ran a little experiment to see if 1 CPU for the GPU on my super laptop made a difference and it doesn't seem to affect the GPU load therefore I have to conclude it doesn't enhance GPU crunching...
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Message 1956819 - Posted: 22 Sep 2018, 16:43:18 UTC - in response to Message 1956818.  

Therefore, no need to dedicate a whole CPU to the GPU in this case is my conclusion...
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Message 1957361 - Posted: 26 Sep 2018, 20:11:11 UTC

I have decided to cancel the China order of the 8 GPU's as the typhoon seems to have permanently disrupted that effort. I will find some that are housed in the U.S...
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Message 1957374 - Posted: 26 Sep 2018, 21:44:26 UTC - in response to Message 1956816.  

I wonder whats better on a laptop for number of work units??
Run 100% at a lower clock speed thanks to Intel's throttling or run fewer threads at a higher clock speed or does it come out equal in the wash?


Somehow more cores running at a lower GHz seem to produce more output than fewer cores at a much higher Ghz. This is true for a 32 thread slower vs. a 8 thread faster cpu.

For cpus with near identical thread counts it is likely to be more iffy.

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Message 1957376 - Posted: 26 Sep 2018, 21:47:01 UTC - in response to Message 1957361.  

I have decided to cancel the China order of the 8 GPU's as the typhoon seems to have permanently disrupted that effort. I will find some that are housed in the U.S...


When I price used Gtx 1050Ti's their price is often within yelling distance of used Gtx 1060 3GB's . It is possible because former miners are dumping them the price is lower than it otherwise might be.

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Message 1957461 - Posted: 27 Sep 2018, 16:06:18 UTC - in response to Message 1957376.  

Tom,

Are you suggesting that the Gtx 1060's are a better card for the money? (For Seti)
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Message 1957530 - Posted: 27 Sep 2018, 23:58:31 UTC - in response to Message 1956819.  

@ eng4hire

Your conclusion is spot on!
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Message 1957704 - Posted: 29 Sep 2018, 0:10:47 UTC - in response to Message 1957461.  

Tom,

Are you suggesting that the Gtx 1060's are a better card for the money? (For Seti)


If the price on a used Gtx 1060 3GB continues to be $150USD on eBay and the price for a used Gtx 1050Ti continues to be near or over $150 on eBay. YES!

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Message 1958095 - Posted: 1 Oct 2018, 23:30:47 UTC

Okay swim fans,

I will transition over to ATI RX 580 cards. I see a bunch fairly cheap on eCrap. I made an offer on 8 of them to get me started.
Once I get a batch working on the rig, I will just keep buying them until I get all 19 in and running not counting the extra 10 I can run in my PC's.

Hold on to your work unit counters. I might be able to set them on fire.

Gotta try, just once.

Anyone know what the record is?
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Message 1958096 - Posted: 1 Oct 2018, 23:32:00 UTC

By the way, dont get confused. The only reason I'm going to RX 580's is because I can load all 19 slots on the bitminer board. I confirmed you can only run 8 Nvidia cards at once.
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Message 1958101 - Posted: 2 Oct 2018, 0:27:08 UTC - in response to Message 1958096.  

By the way, dont get confused. The only reason I'm going to RX 580's is because I can load all 19 slots on the bitminer board. I confirmed you can only run 8 Nvidia cards at once.


In another thread somone is claiming that Windows 10 will run as many NVidia's as you want (claims it was a Windows limit of 8 previously). I also read this was a "driver" limit? Oh, well. Once you get them you see what happens and tell us :)

For whatever reason, the Amd RX gpus are not showing up in the top tier machines for the most part. I think it has something to do with less Floating point processors than the equivalent NVidia cards.

On the other hand I am pretty sure the RX 580 runs faster than the Gtx 1050/1050Ti :)

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Message 1958151 - Posted: 2 Oct 2018, 12:57:14 UTC - in response to Message 1958101.  

Tom,

I've seen some pretty good comparisons between the two n the net.
Not wanting to run into the hard limit of 8 regardless of reason, I decided to try and avoid that by going with ATI.
The ASUS miner mobo clearly states the same so it must be valid regardless of reason.

Dave
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Message 1958152 - Posted: 2 Oct 2018, 13:09:52 UTC - in response to Message 1958101.  

I am hoping I can get each of these cards to crunch two work units at a time without a drastic performance decrease.
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Message 1958153 - Posted: 2 Oct 2018, 13:20:46 UTC - in response to Message 1958101.  

Opps! I made a mistake in my post! I'm not buying ATI cards, I'm buying the AMD cards specified by the manual for the ASUS miner mobo.

In it, it says, "To support more than 8 cards for mining, you need to install AMD Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition 17.10.2 driver. Please go to AMD website to download the driver and view more information. "

So I went there and found this...

"GPU Workload
A new toggle in Radeon Settings that can be found under the "Gaming", "Global Settings" options. This toggle will allow you to switch optimization between graphics or compute workloads on select Radeon RX 500 and Radeon RX 400 series graphics products.
Compute Support Radeon Software now supports compute workloads for up to 12 installed Radeon RX 400, Radeon RX 500 or Radeon RX Vega series graphics products on Windows®10 system configurations."

Looks like I might get 12 of those working together and then I will have to have some of the 1060's as well...


Whew!
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Message 1958160 - Posted: 2 Oct 2018, 15:05:04 UTC - in response to Message 1958153.  

Before you spend all that money on GPUs that can't run the CUDA Special App, you might want to consider running Linux with the CUDA Special App. I currently have 9 nVidia GPUs running on a Gigabyte FinTech board without using any special settings. The board will handle up to 12 GPUs, without using any 1x4 switches. The 1x4 switch will work if you wanted to add more.

Try comparing the Run-Times the Special App produces against anything the OpenCL Apps produces. The Special App is anywhere from 2 to 3 times faster on the same hardware.
Coprocessors: [9] NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB (3011MB) driver: 410.57 OpenCL: 1.2
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Message boards : Number crunching : Bitcoin GPU-based Mining Machines good for BOINC / SETI?


 
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