The Scottish Boinc Team

http://boincstats.com/en/stats/challenge/team/chat/713

Name Crunch into autumn - PrimeCrunch
Status Upcoming
Project PrimeGrid
Issued by BOINC@Frankfurt
Start time 2015-09-14 00:00 UTC
End time 2015-09-21 00:00 UTC
Late entrants allowed? Yes
Number of teams participating » 7
Number of users participating 0

This one just popped up. At least it's not a competitor of the POGS challenge that has been up for quite a while.
Going to stick a few nVidias on it for show. I know they sieve well. Can't remember if the AMD's did as well or not. Have had the nVidias on Asteroids so will be nice for them to actually get some GPU points. The returns for a GPU on Asteroids is dismal to say the least.

Looking at the top computers on the project the nVidias completely rule the sieving application. In fact my 660ti's are very effective under linux The 7970's by comparision are terrible and not worth the effort. They seem to more than hold there own on the Genifer short app though so might try one on there and see how it goes.

I'll put some gpus on it.

Nvidia GPUs run sieve much better than the AMDs (mm:ss).
GTX 770_____08:20
GTX 660ti____10:30
HD 7970_____15:20
GTX 960_____17:30
GTX 750ti____33:00

Roughly the same as what I am seeing. My 660ti's under Lubuntu are actually a tad quicker ( according to fastest GPU list faster than 970's on nix ). Very poor from the 7970's considering how much more powerful they are. Code must be heavily optimised for either CUDA or nVidia architecture.
Only running sieve on the nVidias, going to try short Genefers on the 7970 and see what they pay as never tried them before.

both pps sieve and short Genefer use a quorom of 2 so get those pendings building .....

Alez wrote:both pps sieve and short Genefer use a quorom of 2 so get those pendings building .....

...or bunker

For 1 day not going to bother.
The short Genefer app on 7970 pays slightly better than running sieve on it.

My GTX 770 runs sieve better than my GTX 780 and the 780 is in an all around faster system

GTX 770_____08:20
GTX 780_____09:22
GTX 660ti____10:30
HD 7970_____15:20
GTX 960_____17:30
GTX 750ti____33:00

It must be the way the app is optimised as my 660ti's have always been good on it but they should not be as close as they are to your ( better in most respects ) cards. Also the 750ti should not be that bad as on most other projects my 750ti is very close to the 660ti in performance.
I think the 660ti is the last of the kepler cards, the 750ti onwards is maxwell is it not ?

Yes, the 750ti was the first of the Maxwells. This one is installed on a LGA1366 PCIe 2.0 mobo, so maybe that's why it's slower.

Now that's how you start a comp

Anyone any ideas why I can't get any gpu work.
I'll double check when I get home but preferences set to use gpu but not cpu, genefer ticked, I've even reset the project but I don't seem to pick up any units......

That should work ???
I have use cpu ticked but only have Generalized Fermat Prime Search n=17,18,19,20 (GFN-Short) AMD/ATI GPU (OpenCL) selected.
Do you have lots of other project GPUunits downloaded ? Try setting NNT for other projects or bumping the project percentage. Might be a boinc schedular bug. If that doesn't work, close Boinc and then restart.

Thanks Alez, I'll try ticking the cpu box tonight and see what happens, I used to swap between running cpu or gpu tasks by checking/un checking the boxes but maybe you can't do that anymore.
I did still have poem tasks but only a few hours worth and it was set for no new work when I tried this morning.
I've not picked up any work since getting my new graphics card but I never looked into it as I had other things to run and just assumed there weren't tasks the couple of times I tried.
I'll do some further poking about tonight.

Which card is it ? R9 290 or 295 if I remember. Seems they have a problem being recognised by Boinc on Primegrid. Basically you need to add an app_info.xml and manually download the app you want to run and then it should pick it up.
See these 3 threads for info.
http://www.primegrid.com/forum_thread.php?id=6370#86742
http://www.primegrid.com/forum_thread.php?id=6145#83396
http://www.primegrid.com/forum_thread.php?id=5254

Do you want to sieve or run genefer short ? If you can't get the app_info together give me a shout and I'll knock one together tonight.

primegrid_genefer_3_2_6_0_3.08_windows_intelx86__atiGFN.exe

Download this Files

http://www.primegrid.com/download/prime ... atiGFN.exe

and Paste it here

C:\ProgramData\BOINC\projects\www.primegrid.com

together with this app_info.xml

<app_info>
<app>
<name>genefer</name>
<user_friendly_name>Genefer</user_friendly_name>
</app>
<file_info>
<name>primegrid_genefer_3_2_6_0_3.08_windows_intelx86__atiGFN.exe</name>
<executable/>
</file_info>
<app_version>
<app_name>genefer</app_name>
<version_num>308</version_num>
<api_version>7.4.36</api_version>
<avg_ncpus>1.000000</avg_ncpus>
<max_ncpus>1.000000</max_ncpus>
<file_ref>
<file_name>primegrid_genefer_3_2_6_0_3.08_windows_intelx86__atiGFN.exe</file_name>
<main_program/>
</file_ref>
<platform>windows_intelx86</platform>
<coproc>
<type>ATI</type>
<count>1.000000</count>
</coproc>
</app_version>
</app_info>

Shutdown boinc and restart. Primegrid should then abort all work you have and pick up short genefer tasks for your system. I looked at your system and filled in the api_version as boinc 7.4.36. If this is not the version of boinc you have then change it to the one you are using now.
This should work in theory .....

Amazing, thanks Alez!!
That's done the job and a Genefer unit is now crunching away

You're welcome.
Remember that it will only work for the short Genefer units and when that changes you need to update the app_info. Also when you leave the stone age and update to Boinc 7.6.9 you need to change the api entry. If you want to run pps sieve I can put together an updated app_info but to be honest the sieve works far better on nVidia than it does on AMD.
Hopefully at some point PrimeGrid will update it's server software to actually recognise the new AMD cards, but they knew about it 6 months ago, so don't hold your breath.....

Alez wrote: Also when you leave the stone age and update to Boinc 7.6.9 you need to change the api entry.

One day.....
I keep getting the notice pop up about the newer version but I always seem to be part way through crunching something or with a heap of wu's downloaded that I don't like to abort.
And I need to remember to take a copy of all my config files so I don't have to start from scratch, again!

Anyway back on topic; great start to the comp everyone, me excluded obviously , keep up the good work and hopefully you'll see me towards the end of the leader board soon.

I don't even shut boinc down when I update it, never bother and never had any problems.
I'm pretty certain we could also just remove the api entry totally as I never normally use it, I simply put it in this time because it's such a weird case.

Work now seems to be flowing quite nicely and I'm slowly climbing up the list; thanks Alez.
Everyone is doing a fine job and we seem to be holding 3rd from our French chums, 2nd looks a way off

The short Genefer tasks are starting to take a long time to finish, like they slipped in some nearly genefer world record WUs in on me. I have several short genefer WUs from different systems running 7970 gpus and it took over 11 hours to complete the WU. Anyone else seeing that or is there a problem on my systems? If there's no problem and it takes 11 hours to finish a short genefer WU, it better pay a lot more than the 8k the others do.

@leecarver...from the POGS thread...

leecarver wrote:

Alez wrote:Get that GTX 770 over onto the Primegrid challenge on pps sieve Lee. Think we will need all the horsepower we can muster .

Joined PrimeGrid this morning. Should I leave the resources as 50/50 (split with POGS)?

I wouldn't bother running anything but the sieve GPU apps. BTW, your primegrid preferences don't appear to be set to run the sieve gpu app though. It's running the cpu app. Under the primegrid preferences, uncheck the CPU box, make sure the Nvidia box is checked, then scroll down the sub project list and under Subproject (Sieve) in the Proth Prime Search Sieve (PPS-Sieve) section, make sure the cuda box is checked and cpu box is unchecked.

scole250 wrote:The short Genefer tasks are starting to take a long time to finish, like they slipped in some nearly genefer world record WUs in on me. I have several short genefer WUs from different systems running 7970 gpus and it took over 11 hours to complete the WU. Anyone else seeing that or is there a problem on my systems? If there's no problem and it takes 11 hours to finish a short genefer WU, it better pay a lot more than the 8k the others do.

Alez got a few also and has had one go from pending to valid for 74k! Good deal. I was worried I had major amd gpu issues.

scole250 wrote:

scole250 wrote:The short Genefer tasks are starting to take a long time to finish, like they slipped in some nearly genefer world record WUs in on me. I have several short genefer WUs from different systems running 7970 gpus and it took over 11 hours to complete the WU. Anyone else seeing that or is there a problem on my systems? If there's no problem and it takes 11 hours to finish a short genefer WU, it better pay a lot more than the 8k the others do.

Alez got a few also and has had one go from pending to valid for 74k! Good deal. I was worried I had major amd gpu issues.

I was just away to post that I've a few to crunch that are estimated at 11+ hours.

scole250 wrote:Alez got a few also and has had one go from pending to valid for 74k! Good deal. I was worried I had major amd gpu issues.

full fat points kaaaaaa-ching

Position update since the leader of the pack doesn't appear to be doing daily updates
TSBT 3rd from 14. No chance of catching the topguns of SUSA and SETI.Germany but we should try and beat LAF. They dropped a 1 million bomb a few hours ago and so are closer now than comfortable.

Individual positions
scole of TSBT 3rd
alez [ TSBT's Pirate ] 7th
Paul of TSBT 79th
Megacruncher TSBT 86th
David Jackson 182nd
Skywalker TSBT 239th
Snowdog of TSBT 252nd
leecarver 258th
Rabbie 316th
James 349th
Krzysztof Frukacz 371st

Alez wrote:Position update since the leader of the pack doesn't appear to be doing daily updates

Sorry. Took my truck in for service today and I've been biting my nails all day waiting to hear why I hear a whining in the drive train. With my luck, I was scared to death it was the tranny. Just got a call and they said it was right front tire. I've never been so glad to have a tire wearing badly!

Longer genefer run times explained here...http://www.primegrid.com/forum_thread.php?id=6439#88119

If they start getting too long without validating in a quick fashion then unfortunately it might be better to run the inefficient sieve on the AMD's as well. Will give it another day or so to see. Bad timing as far as the challenge is concerned.

The new, large genefer pay less per run sec than sieve. On my tahiti gpus, new genefer pays 1.8 per run sec while sieve pays 2.65 per run sec. DIfference even bigger on the pitcairn. Switching back to sieve.

Got a bunch of Genefers on nVidia which is killing me. Aborting them and forcing back to pps_sieve. 12 hours or so wasted on each card but they still estimated at another 36 hours. Doubt the pay off would be worth it. Bad timing for the Genefer shorts to become Genefer longs
Still in 3rd with LAF behind us. Think they may have hit the Genefer wall to.

Jeez, one look at my output graph on the competition and it's obvious when I started picking up the Genefer units. My output has almost flatlined

I'm going to try running some sieve after I've finished the unit I'm on.
And when I say I'm going to try running I mean that I've updated the app_info file that Alez kindly wrote to hopefully allow me to run some sieve.........
I'll let you know when I need some help Alez

Alez wrote:Position update since the leader of the pack doesn't appear to be doing daily updates

What-ever

Less than 3 days to go! (these 7 day challenges! ) TSBT is in a solid 3rd from 15. :)

Individual positions
scole of TSBT 3rd
alez [ TSBT's Pirate ] 8th
leecarver 34th
Megacruncher TSBT 80th
Paul of TSBT 87th
Snowdog of TSBT 191st
David Jackson 242
Skywalker TSBT 261
Rabbie 354th
Krzysztof Frukacz 406th
James 428th

I can't believe how many WU credits this project has garnered... Almost 1.5M in around 72 hours. It's probably going to double my cumulative credits for the past few months by the end of the weekend.

GTX 770 is one of the top GPUs on sieve. Be careful running primegrid CPU WUs. Some of those apps will smoke your CPU if the cooling isn't adequate.

16 hours left to try and grab 4th place individually

Winding down the work on this one.

I'm just waiting for all my units to validate

TSBT finished 3rd of 15

Individual kudos:
scole of TSBT 3rd
alez [ TSBT's Pirate ] 5th
leecarver 26th
Paul of TSBT 98th
Megacruncher TSBT 99th
Snowdog of TSBT 221st
Skywalker TSBT 293rd
David Jackson 296th
James 370th
Rabbie 372nd
Krzysztof Frukacz 432nd

Another great team effort.
Well done everyone

I have to give Alez credit for out-crunching me every day except for my bunker drop. That was the only reason I ended up 3rd.

Still couldn't quite grab 4th though. Must have swapped places dozens of times in the last 12 hours Oh well next time. Well done all and thanks to scole for doing these updates whilst I have been busy putting food on the families plate .