I'm brand new to the idea of GPU processing, and need some VERY basic help.

Right now I'm running a HP Pavillion P6654y. It has an N Alvorix RS880 UATX motherboard, at least two open PCI slot, and is currently using onboard ATI Radion 4200 processor.

1) When I check my computers in the BOINC manager, it shows the computer and the processor, does that mean that the processor is being used?

2) I am running seti@home. I understand that they do not have ATI suppot. Does that mean that BOINC sees the card, but it isn't being used? If this is the case, if I were to sign up for (for example) MilkyWay@home which does support ATI, would it use the power of the mighty Radion 4200 in addition to the CPU?

3) I'm looking to boost my numbers. What NVDIA cards should I be considering?

4) is there somewhere on this site with a good GPU processing for dummies area? I'm at a very basic level here.

Thanks. I'll try to have smarter questions next time.

Hi there,

Sorry for the belated answer, I saw your post this morning, but real life got in the way and I had to run out for work. After that was done, the rest of my afternoon was booked as well.

1) When I check my computers in the BOINC manager, it shows the computer and the processor, does that mean that the processor is being used?

Depends on what you mean by processor. Your CPU? Then yes.

2) I am running seti@home. I understand that they do not have ATI suppot. Does that mean that BOINC sees the card, but it isn't being used? If this is the case, if I were to sign up for (for example) MilkyWay@home which does support ATI, would it use the power of the mighty Radion 4200 in addition to the CPU?

To be able to use an ATI GPU or APU, you need to install the drivers from the AMD website. The drivers that Windows installs lack the necessary components necessary for doing work on the GPU.

Just install the latest Catalyst Control Center, this includes the older CAL and newer OpenCL components. Plus adds OpenGL graphics capability, another thing Microsoft demands is cut out of the drivers they distribute.

You will be able to use the GPU at Seti, when you use the third party Lunatics applications. Do know that each time Seti releases new applications, you will have to update them then by hand, as with using third party applications the automatic update option stops working.

You will not be able to use your videocard at Milkyway as their application requires double precision, a thing that only the top-of-the-range ATI cards have. It is a hardware switch, it cannot be added by drivers or a software or BIOS update. See their GPU rquirement thread for more information.

3) I'm looking to boost my numbers. What NVDIA cards should I be considering?

Any PCIe 2.0 Nvidia card will do, GTX 460, 480, 520, 540, 550, 560, 680. It really depends on how big your case is, how high your case is and how much money you want to spend on it. But then the options are almost limitless.

4) is there somewhere on this site with a good GPU processing for dummies area? I'm at a very basic level here.

What is it you want to know?

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Thanks Jord! I'm still running a little behind.

When I said that the computer and the processor were showing, I meant the computer and the graphics "card". This is how it comes up:

Cross-project stats:
BOINCstats.com Free-DC 2 175.32 6,772 7.0.25 AuthenticAMD
AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 630 Processor [Family 16 Model 5 Stepping 2]
(4 processors)

AMD ATI Radeon HD 2300/2400/3200 (RV610) (256MB) driver: 1.4.636 Microsoft Windows 7
Home Premium x64 Edition, Service Pack 1, (06.01.7601.00) 3 May 2012 | 23:57:50 UTC

So if I'm getting this right, I need to download the drivers for the Radeon 2XXX driver from AMD.Com. I'm on a win7, 64 bit machine, so it brings up the catalyst software, rev 12.4. No problem. I'll install it.

As to the Lunatics Third Party Apps. I found the installer, V 0.40 64bit. When I run this, what is it doing? Will it synch up with the standard BOINC manager that I am using?

Sorry to be a pain:
R

Cross-project stats:
BOINCstats.com Free-DC 2 175.32 6,772 7.0.25 AuthenticAMD
AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 630 Processor [Family 16 Model 5 Stepping 2]
(4 processors)

AMD ATI Radeon HD 2300/2400/3200 (RV610) (256MB) driver: 1.4.636 Microsoft Windows 7
Home Premium x64 Edition, Service Pack 1, (06.01.7601.00) 3 May 2012 | 23:57:50 UTC

What does it say in the BOINC start-up messages (Event Log)?
For instance, on my system it says this:

04/05/2012 17:29:03 |  | Processor: 4 GenuineIntel        Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz [Family 6 Model 42 Stepping 7]
04/05/2012 17:29:03 |  | Processor: 256.00 KB cache
04/05/2012 17:29:03 |  | Processor features: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss htt tm pni ssse3 cx16 sse4_1 sse4_2 syscall lm vmx tm2 popcnt aes pbe
04/05/2012 17:29:03 |  | OS: Microsoft Windows 7: Ultimate x64 Edition, Service Pack 1, (06.01.7601.00)
04/05/2012 17:29:03 |  | Memory: 7.91 GB physical, 15.83 GB virtual
04/05/2012 17:29:03 |  | Disk: 205.08 GB total, 150.42 GB free
04/05/2012 17:29:03 |  | ATI GPU 0: Barts (CAL version 1.4.1720, 2048MB, 2015MB available, 2976 GFLOPS peak)
04/05/2012 17:29:03 |  | OpenCL: ATI GPU 0: Barts (driver version CAL 1.4.1720 (VM), device version OpenCL 1.2 AMD-APP (923.1), 2048MB, 2015MB available)

(You can select lines to copy from the event log, and then copy them to clipboard with the "copy selected lines" button and then paste them into an answer window here.)

According to the stats, your Radeon is detected (a HD2400 by the looks of it, using Catalysts 10.5, which are very much outdated, and which do not have the OpenCL component, so yeah please install newer drivers first. The HD2400 is still not double precision capable, so you still can't use it at Milkyway.

As to the Lunatics Third Party Apps. I found the installer, V 0.40 64bit. When I run this, what is it doing?

Well, it is a bit outdated, but still valid. Follow this FAQ for seeing how to identify the CPU applications you want to run. For the GPU, it'll state in the which apps you can use on the 2400. Or see this post (the first one in the thread) in the Seti forums.

Will it synch up with the standard BOINC manager that I am using?

It's not an account manager, it's third party science applications that you use to do the science with. But instead of BOINC managing them, it's you who manages them through the anonymous platform (app_info.xml) file. So when Seti releases their Seti v7.0 applications in the coming months, you'll have to add them to the app_infox.ml file manually --albeit, by that time Lunatics will have a new installer that will do it for you.

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4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | | No config file found - using defaults
4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | | Starting BOINC client version 7.0.25 for windows_x86_64
4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | | log flags: file_xfer, sched_ops, task
4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | | Libraries: libcurl/7.21.6 OpenSSL/1.0.0d zlib/1.2.5
4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | | Data directory: C:\ProgramData\BOINC
4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | | Running under account Ray
4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | | Processor: 4 AuthenticAMD AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 630 Processor [Family 16 Model 5 Stepping 2]
4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | | Processor: 512.00 KB cache
4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | | Processor features: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 htt pni cx16 syscall nx lm svm sse4a osvw ibs skinit wdt page1gb rdtscp 3dnowext 3dnow
4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | | OS: Microsoft Windows 7: Home Premium x64 Edition, Service Pack 1, (06.01.7601.00)
4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | | Memory: 3.75 GB physical, 7.50 GB virtual
4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | | Disk: 686.46 GB total, 523.65 GB free
4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | | Local time is UTC -4 hours
4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | | ATI GPU 0: ATI Radeon HD 2300/2400/3200 (RV610) (CAL version 1.4.636, 256MB, 224MB available, 80 GFLOPS peak)
4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | SETI@home | URL http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/; Computer ID 6560195; resource share 100
4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | SETI@home | General prefs: from SETI@home (last modified 19-Apr-2007 19:48:36)
4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | SETI@home | Host location: none
4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | SETI@home | General prefs: using your defaults
4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | | Reading preferences override file
4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | | Preferences:
4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | | max memory usage when active: 1919.64MB
4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | | max memory usage when idle: 2879.46MB
4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | | max disk usage: 20.00GB
4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | | max CPUs used: 2
4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | | don't use GPU while active
4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | | suspend work if non-BOINC CPU load exceeds 25 %
4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | | (to change preferences, visit the web site of an attached project, or select Preferences in the Manager)
4/28/2012 5:06:57 PM | | Not using a proxy
4/28/2012 5:07:01 PM | | Running CPU benchmarks
4/28/2012 5:07:01 PM | | Suspending computation - CPU benchmarks in progress
4/28/2012 5:07:33 PM | | Benchmark results:
4/28/2012 5:07:33 PM | | Number of CPUs: 2
4/28/2012 5:07:33 PM | | 2282 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU
4/28/2012 5:07:33 PM | | 6285 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU
4/28/2012 5:07:34 PM | SETI@home | Restarting task 27no11ab.1490.24769.5.10.148_0 using setiathome_enhanced version 603 in slot 1
4/28/2012 5:07:34 PM | SETI@home | Restarting task 27no11ab.1490.24769.5.10.182_0 using setiathome_enhanced version 603 in slot 2
4/28/2012 5:07:52 PM | | Suspending computation - CPU is busy
4/28/2012 5:08:03 PM | | Resuming computation
4/28/2012 5:33:25 PM | SETI@home | Computation for task 27no11ab.1490.24769.5.10.148_0 finished
4/28/2012 5:33:25 PM | SETI@home | Starting task 27no11ab.1490.24769.5.10.158_0 using setiathome_enhanced version 603 in slot 0

After this, it's mostly CPU busy, starts, stops, and that kind of thing. I figured out pretty quickly that I couldn't run milkyway. Fine with me. I can stick with SETI.

So, after I update the graphics card driver, I go to CPUZ, and run the file to find the best version of lunatics. After that, I download lunatics, unzip it, copy the "files to install" into the directory containing my seti@home, go to processes and note that 2 versions of seti are running and restart SETI. This should result in blazingly faster speeds.

1) am I missing anything?
2) will I have to download another version of lunatics when I get another card?

1) am I missing anything?
2) will I have to download another version of lunatics when I get another card?

1) Lunatics 0.40 is a full-blown installer, you don't have to unzip it any longer, just start it and walk by the options. But do read the Seti thread I pointed out earlier, first. Also best to ask questions about the installer in that thread, as it's really their beast, you'll get answers from people with more knowledge on the subject than I do/have.

2) No, although you may want to run the installer again and adjust the GPU applications, especially when you go install a better ATI GPU, or when you switch to an Nvidia GPU. ATI applications cannot run on Nvidia and Nvidia applications cannot run on ATI. Tsk, computers... ;-)

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OK. Got the new driver installed, no problems. I ran CPUID, which told me:
MMX(+), SDNow(+), SSE (1,2,3,4a), x86-64, AMDV. I figure that tells me that I'm SSE4. I went to KWSN.NET, and all I can find is the 0.4 installer. Is there a better place to look?
[/img]

The 0.40 installer is the latest one.

Again, please first read at least the first post in this thread. It'll hold the same information as is available in their readme file, but the readme file is only available after you ran the installer to the end at least once.

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Got the install done, but I'm getting computation errors. It looks like there is some trouble with ati V12.4 and lunatics, so I installed V12.1, and I'm still getting the problem. As a matter of protocol, is there a better place to ask about how to get these things talking to each other?

I see you went over to the Seti thread I pointed out plenty of times. Good. They'll be able to help you further.

By the way, one thing of importance. Nvidia and ATI are two competing graphics chip makers. Their technology isn't one on one compatible. You keep saying you have an Nvidia 4200, when in reality you have an ATI HD2400 (or something similar). Or as BOINC reports it earlier in this thread:
ATI GPU 0: ATI Radeon HD 2300/2400/3200 (RV610) (CAL version 1.4.636, 256MB, 224MB available, 80 GFLOPS peak)

I didn't check this earlier, but this could well be the problem, is that you don't have enough memory on it. 256MB isn't much in today's world, where 1 gigabyte is becoming the norm and GPUs with 2GB or more RAM are quickly taking over.

You may want to look into getting a better GPU, or a co-processor card, for your PC, but then you do have some things to check upon:
1. Is your Power Supply Unit (PSU) strong enough? What's in the system now? Anything below 480Watt isn't sufficient.
2. Does your PSU have the right connectors? These days most GPUs need a 6 and 8 pin 12 Volt connector.
3. Can the new videocard fit inside your present case? Do measure what the maximum length is between the backside of the computer case (backplates) to the front, or to wherever the bays begin.
4. Can the case still be shut after you installed a new card? Do measure the height from the top of the PCI-E 2.0 slot to the maximum width of the case (where the side or top comes on again to close it).

There are videocards out there that are "low profile GPUs". When you do have space constraints, make sure to look for these.

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Got the install done, but I'm getting computation errors. It looks like there is some trouble with ati V12.4 and lunatics, so I installed V12.1, and I'm still getting the problem. As a matter of protocol, is there a better place to ask about how to get these things talking to each other?

You can't run OpenCL apps on your HD 2300/2400/3200 as it isn't supported, for OpenCL support you need a HD4300 or later GPU:

System Requirements & Driver Compatibility

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/results.php?hostid=6560195&offset=0&show_names=1&state=0&appid=

<stderr_txt>
Number of period iterations for PulseFind setted to:20
Number of app instances per device setted to:1
Running on device number: 0
Priority of worker thread raised successfully
Priority of process adjusted successfully, below normal priority class used
OpenCL platform detected: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
ERROR: clGetDeviceIDs: -1
ERROR: No devices found.

The only Seti ATI GPU app that you can run is the Brook Hybrid Astropulse app, ie AP6_win_x86_SSE_Brook_r555.exe

Claggy

OK, the whole problem here is how the GPU is being seen by BOINC. Thus far something in the system was detected as the ATI Radeon HD 2300/2400/3200 (RV610).

I've checked into your CPU now and have seen its chipset should sport a Radeon HD4200: The ATI Radeon™ HD 4200 Graphics with the AMD 785G Chipset enables an exceptionally power-efficient platform at an incredible value. (Source = ATI).

However, this video chipset is integrated into the motherboard, not the CPU. So then we get to that, what kind of motherboard do you have? Make and model, please. You can use CPU-Z to determine that (use the 64bit version for 64bit Windows and 64bit CPUs).

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