Hello - it seems I'm the first one to run into this problem, or other use different words to describe their problem and I'm not smart enough to find their Q & (possible) A.

I'm proud owner of several Macbooks, and one has a rathe wicked setup. It is a Mid 2014 15 in., running in Sierra 10.12.6, it has a built-in INTEL Iris Pro (1536MB) and a separate eGPURadeon RX580 (detected by BOINC as: AMD Radeon HD Baffin Unknown Prototype Compute Engine (8192MB) ) in a case under my desk with its own power supply and mighty cooling fans which nicely warm my feet.

This separate eGPU is to spare me of the howling fan on my desk when I have to run Excessive graphics, and to prevent possible damage due to overheating, as the system panicked in past several times and went off with no notification.

So now I want to donate time to BOINC when I leave my desk, but please not use my internal IRIS GPU. I managed to set the CPU cores nicely to prevent the fan to run havoc, but as soon as I grant GPU usage the client will run one unit on each of my GPUs.

I am aware of the help page for cc_config.xml and set up one, trying to forbid the internal GPU to be used, but grant usage of eGPU. I seem to fail on setting it up properly, tried to find examples, but none show up for this specific setup.

Is anybody able to guide me through the <exclude gpu> ... <device num> and associated options, please?

Also a second (not that important) problem arises, my other Macbook Pro is a 2018 one, with two built-in GPU, switched by the system itself normally between "office" and "graphics" usage. BOINC grabs these and hands down a task for each of them, but naturally only one will work at a time, I got confused + worried and suspended BOINC usage on that system. - Any advice here?

Best regards, Matt

<cc_config>
<options>
<ignore_intel_dev>0</ignore_intel_dev>
</options>
</cc_config>

OR

https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/prefs.php?subset=project
Simply de-select the Intel GPU option and you will stop getting tasks for the Intel GPU from SETI

Thank you, your simple as 5 lines do the job.

Out of curiosity I tried de-selecting the GPU in the web interface too, but after a restart it still attaches the Intel to the job.

So the XML file will stay active and I'm happy.

HI, I have a 2019 Mac Pro (with dual internal GPU: Intel and Radeon). I also have an eGPU with a Radeon VII. How do I get SETI to send work units to my eGPU? At the moment the eGPU has a working display and shows my desktop, but, SETI doesnt send it any work units. How do I enable eGPU to compute?

Thank you,

Mark

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HI, I have a 2019 Mac Pro (with dual internal GPU: Intel and Radeon). I also have an eGPU with a Radeon VII. How do I get SETI to send work units to my eGPU? At the moment the eGPU has a working display and shows my desktop, but, SETI doesnt send it any work units. How do I enable eGPU to compute?

Thank you,

Mark

Might need the "use all gpus" option set to 1 in the cc_config.xml file

 <options>
   <use_all_gpus>1</use_all_gpus>
   <save_stats_days>365</save_stats_days>
 </options>

And then set the use Intel gpu on the seti website for your account to "no".

Then it will feed both Nvidia gpus but not your intel gpu. So far running an intel internal gpu slows the whole system down.

Tom

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A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association).

Tom, thank you! I'll try this tonight when I get home and report back.

Question on the Intel 630 GPU: The average S@H work unit takes ~5 hours on one of my CPU cores, but only ~1 hour on the Intel GPU (and of course even less on the internal Radeon of ~15 minutes). Given that the Intel GPU is ~5x faster than a single CPU core, why would I not continue to use the Intel?

Thank you,

Mark

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Tom, thank you! I'll try this tonight when I get home and report back.

Question on the Intel 630 GPU: The average S@H work unit takes ~5 hours on one of my CPU cores, but only ~1 hour on the Intel GPU (and of course even less on the internal Radeon of ~15 minutes). Given that the Intel GPU is ~5x faster than a single CPU core, why would I not continue to use the Intel?

Thank you,

Mark

You may find that is good choice. However, MOST of the time crunching on an intel iGPU slows production on the whole machine. Basically the cpu processing times balloon. The only experiment I can suggest is if you have at least 4 cpu cores, disable 1 (75% in local Boinc Manager settings) and see if the whole system crunches faster. This is usually how you make the AMD iGPU crunch faster.

This advice will need to be re-visited once Intel starts shipping higher end iGPU's because it is possible to run the AMD iGPU's without slowing down the whole system. (75% trick).

Tom

---

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association).

Hi Tom,

I disabled my intel GPU and ran S@H for a while. The CPU work unit time hasn't changed. So, my conclusion is that having the Intel GPU enabled will increase productivity. Am I perhaps missing something?

Thank you,

Mark

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This worked! Got my eGPU (Radeon VII) working! Thank you!

Mark

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This worked! Got my eGPU (Radeon VII) working! Thank you!

Mark

HI, I have a 2019 Mac Pro (with dual internal GPU: Intel and Radeon). I also have an eGPU with a Radeon VII. How do I get SETI to send work units to my eGPU? At the moment the eGPU has a working display and shows my desktop, but, SETI doesnt send it any work units. How do I enable eGPU to compute?

Thank you,

Mark

Might need the "use all gpus" option set to 1 in the cc_config.xml file

 <options>
   <use_all_gpus>1</use_all_gpus>
   <save_stats_days>365</save_stats_days>
 </options>

And then set the use Intel gpu on the seti website for your account to "no".

Then it will feed both Nvidia gpus but not your intel gpu. So far running an intel internal gpu slows the whole system down.

Tom

---

Hi Tom,

I disabled my intel GPU and ran S@H for a while. The CPU work unit time hasn't changed. So, my conclusion is that having the Intel GPU enabled will increase productivity. Am I perhaps missing something?

Thank you,

Mark

No you are not missing anything. If there is no reduction in performance by the cpu's when crunching with the Intel iGPU then all is good! However, there is a very good chance that your cpu tasks "should" be running in under two hours. Since they are not, I suspect you need to run without any Intel tasks for a week or so.

Tom

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A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association).