Hey all.

I have a Mac Pro dual 2.66 Quad running 10.14. It has a single RX580 (8GB).

I'm looking to make the most out of what I have at the moment. Eventually I'll get around to buying a Nvidia card and upgrade the processors to 2x 6-core. In the meantime, how do I do more work with it (i.e. get my daily credit count up?)

Thanks!

Hey all.

I have a Mac Pro dual 2.66 Quad running 10.14. It has a single RX580 (8GB).

I'm looking to make the most out of what I have at the moment. Eventually I'll get around to buying a Nvidia card and upgrade the processors to 2x 6-core. In the meantime, how do I do more work with it (i.e. get my daily credit count up?)

Thanks!

The normal things. Have plenty of the fastest RAM. Use a fast SSD drive. Turn off all services you aren't using. Set the checkpoint interval higher. Don't over commit the CPU so it can keep the GPU happy. Use optimized applications. Keep it cool so you don't have thermal throttling.

Without testing on your specific machine hard to say if any or all of these will make much difference.

24GB of 1066 RAM (trying to get it to read 1333MHz sticks but can't get it to for whatever reason)
Runs an SSD (moving to NVME soon)
CPU running at 70% Max

Not sure what you mean about the checkpoint interval and optimized applications (do you mean Einstein/RNAworld/Rosetta/SETI/etc and if so how do I check?)

Thanks

Not sure what you mean about the checkpoint interval and optimized applications (do you mean Einstein/RNAworld/Rosetta/SETI/etc and if so how do I check?)

Under option>Computing preferences>Computing> there is an option "Request tasks to Checkpoint at most every x seconds. Default is 60. Depending on the projects you run increasing this may or may not make a difference. With CPDN (which has no work for Macs currently anyway) the tasks I am running, it is hours between checkpoints so it will make no difference. Indeed, I need to avoid reboots and just use suspend if I want to turn computer off or I can lose two or more hours of work as it restarts from the last checkpoint. I am sure some others will have an idea of how often different projects checkpoint.

Interesting. My computer spent 6 days on a single Collatz problem only for the power to go out momentarily. 26% (!) progress was wiped out immediately!

Some projects don't checkpoint. Makes the switch between tasks every XX minutes impossible. Those tasks have to run until done.

Haven't seen this recently so it may be fixed, but in the past BOINC didn't pick up that the science app didn't quit when asked to switch, but BOINC started another task anyway making an over commit of the CPU.

GPUGrid does checkpoint, but it also takes a long time to quit its science app when requested. When I've suspended it manually, BOINC Manager displays the status as 'suspended', but the counters continue to click up progress and time. And no new task starts. After what seems an age (probably about 10 seconds), the counters stop - and BOINC starts a new task. It's clunky, but I think it's true that BOINC monitors the 'suspended' task and doesn't switch until it really has left the room.

... In the meantime, how do I do more work with it (i.e. get my daily credit count up?)

On just the RX 580 alone, you would be able to get a RAC of around 500K at Einstein (gamma-ray pulsar search). Your CPU cores are old and slow (and probably power hungry) and wouldn't contribute a whole lot more. The gamma-ray pulsar search needs very little CPU support when run on AMD cards. It's a different story with nvidia. It's also a different story if your preference was to run the new gravitational wave search using GPUs, currently in beta test. It is hampered by older and slower CPUs.

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Cheers,
Gary.