Last chance to get your PSP Sieve badge!

Crunching exclusively to get one! I will only make bronze (hopefully!). Once the badge is earned, should I abort any WUs in my cache to give others a chance to get their badges?

Well, there's ALWAYS a bigger fish. Look at this guy's RAC. (Since you're colorblind, I'll point out that his badges, except for one, are all sapphire.

to me this is as pink as it can get... ;)

endless mike wrote:

First, you need to be running a project that has a GPU application, as not all do. Primegrid used to with AP26, but that is done now.
Next, look in the boinc manager message tab for a line towards the beginning that looks something like this
"ATI GPU 0: ATI Radeon HD 4700/4800 (RV740/RV770) (CAL version 1.4.427, 512MB, 1000 GFLOPS peak)"
Yours might be different as you have an Nvidia video card.
That lets you know that boinc sees your video card.
Finally, you should see 9 tasks running, 8 on your CPU, and 1 on your GPU.

I found this in the BOINC message log, which tells me that BOINC "sees" the GPU:
6/4/2010 8:26:54 PM NVIDIA GPU 0: Quadro FX 580 (driver version 19038, CUDA version 2030, compute capability 1.1, 512MB, 72 GFLOPS peak)

However, I do not have 9 tasks running. Currently, I am running 2 sieves (Proth & Cullen/Woodall) and 1 LLR (Proth). I guess there is no CUDA based code for any of these. I'd like to test this new machine with something CUDA based. I guess you and Michael Goetz are saying there are no Primegrid CUDA projects right now?

Michael Goetz wrote:

In order for a BOINC task to run on an nVidia GPU, all of the following must be true:

• You must have a CUDA-capable nVidia GPU in your computer. Not all of their GPUs are capable of running CUDA, although all recent cards can.
  
• You must have the CUDA drivers installed. Note that this is separate from the video drivers, and is normally not installed automatically by OEMs.
  
• The BOINC project must have specifically written application code to run on CUDA. This software is usually very, very different than the normal application so there are actually very few projects that can run on CUDA.
  
• You must enable the "use GPU" selection on the BOINC project's preferences.
  
• Not all CUDA GPUs are equal in capabilities. I'm not referring merely to speed, but the ability to perform certain types of operations. Some CUDA projects REQUIRE certain capabilities, and if your GPU can't do that, you won't be able to run that project. Your GPU must meet the minimum specifications for the project.
  
• Older GPUs, as well as entry-level new GPUs, sometimes have comparatively little video memory. The GPU must have enough video memory to run the BOINC application PLUS do its normal video work.
  

That being said, getting CUDA running is usually as simple as plugging the card into the computer, installing the video drivers, installing the CUDA drivers, and selecting "use GPU"
...
At the moment, there are no GPU projects at PrimeGrid. AP26 could run on a CUDA GPU, but AP26 is completed and there's no more work for AP26. So in the context of PrimeGrid, the answer is simple: it never does.

The BOINC message tells me that BOINC sees the GPU. Thanks for the info. I installed the Operating system from scratch, so I loaded the CUDA drivers at that time.

I only run Primegrid. I don't have any interest in extraterrastrials or so-called climate modeling. Finding primes is a very exact science based on fully known rules and laws, not educated guesses, assumptions, and suppositions. Also, some of the other projects are too esoteric for me.

Michael Goetz wrote:

In the more general sense, however, if you're running another project, or when PrimeGrid gets another GPU project (which hopefully will be sooner rather than later), when you get a CUDA task it will be pretty obvious when you look at the BOINC manager task display. The status line will say something like "Running (1.00 GPU + 0.30 CPU)" instead of the "Running" you're used to seeing.

Please note that you have to explicitly install nVidia's CUDA drivers in order to do any CUDA processing for BOINC or for any other purpose. Unless they've changed it recently, the CUDA drivers are not included in the standard video drivers. You can download them from nVidia's website.

BTW, I don't know which GPU you have and I don't know where you live, but I've got a GTX280 which is one of nVidia's fastest cards other than the newly released Fermi's. It draws a lot of power and produces a lot of heat (lots more than the rest of the computer combined, even with all 4 cores crunching 24/7.) It's summer here now, and it's been hot and humid the last few days. The air conditioners have been on for the first time this year. When the A/C goes on, the GPU crunching gets turned off, both because it's making it harder for the room to cool down as well as using a lot of electricity -- first to produce all that heat, then even more for the air conditioner to remove the heat.

I live in Florida, so the A/C has been on for well over a month, after our coldest winter in over 25 years. The computational heat was great in the winter. This time of year, I pay twice for the indoor machines, once for the heat and once to remove it from inside the house.

Scott Brown wrote:

...2) Before grabbing that "fastest" DDR3 memory, check very carefully in the BIOS to see if the higher clock is supported. Dell is infamous for limiting this in the BIOS; my i7 XPS 435 mini-tower came with faster DDR3 memory installed, but it cannot run it faster than PC3-8500 speeds.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! That was close. You saved my $$$. It was well hidden in the documentation that "E-Series processors will limit memory speed to 1066 MHz". After checking my order and chatting with a Dell tech rep, I confirmed that I have an E-Series processor, so it's only 1066MHz DDR3 memory for me.

While I was chatting with Dell, they insisted I have 9 memory slots. I do not. I have six. I told them I was looking right at the motherboard and there are six, not nine. So, now I'm confused.

Question, when running Boinc with the "use GPU" selection checked, how do I know that Boinc is in fact running CUDA on the GPU?

Good progress is being made on developing another GPU application using ppsieve which can be implemented in the PPS sieve.