Radon R7250 slow

ROBERT
ROBERT
Joined: 30 Mar 12
Posts: 2
Credit: 11807492
RAC: 0
Topic 197322

I've been running boinc for over 2 years now and finally burned out my old Graphic card. I had a Nvidia GTX260 that came with my computer. I recently purchased a Radon R7250 with 1 gig 5dddr and its been running for 2 weeks and my boinc average for that computer has been nearly 4000 credits slower than my old card. I have the settings maxed out so im not sure why my newer faster graphics card would be slower. i already have the newest drivers. could someone enlighten me with any ideas of why its so much slower or what i could do to bring that average up?

mountkidd
mountkidd
Joined: 14 Jun 12
Posts: 176
Credit: 12580492555
RAC: 8034765

Radon R7250 slow

Hi Robert,
A couple of things stand out with your setup. The GTX260 and R7 250 are very similar in terms of GFlops/s. Your 930 host and the GTX260 are both PCIe2, but the R7 250 is PCIe3, so there will be a bit of a performance hit running as PCIe2. This shows up in your GPU Task run times where there is a huge (100+%) variation. Something is getting in the way of keeping the GPU fed with data.

To get your RAC up, simplify. Stop the CPU tasks and select only one of the GPU streams to get a better idea of what your system might be capable of achieving. You should be able to get the GPU loading up into the 90% range. Once task times stabilize and the variance in run times goes away, then you can add other processing streams, one at a time, monitoring the effect on GPU loading and run times.

Gord

ROBERT
ROBERT
Joined: 30 Mar 12
Posts: 2
Credit: 11807492
RAC: 0

so are you suggesting to stop

so are you suggesting to stop running CPU tasks and only run GPU takes.. Should i currently run the GPU takes at 0.3.. should i change that? I have an i7

Gary Roberts
Gary Roberts
Moderator
Joined: 9 Feb 05
Posts: 5872
Credit: 117607039711
RAC: 35205951

RE: so are you suggesting

Quote:
so are you suggesting to stop running CPU tasks and only run GPU takes..


No, you don't need to go that far. You could try setting your preferences so that BOINC only uses 7 of the 8 cores available. Before doing that the suggestion was to temporarily suspend CPU tasks to see if that resulted in a big speedup of GPU processing. If it did, you could then investigate preferences to see what the optimum mix of CPU tasks and GPU tasks might be.

Quote:
Should i currently run the GPU takes at 0.3.. should i change that? I have an i7


What do you mean by "run the GPU takes". Do you mean 'GPU tasks'? And what is 0.3? Is this the GPU utilisation factor that is part of your preferences?? When asking for help, it's a good idea to make the effort to give a bit more detail about the basic settings you are using.

I had a look through your tasks list - FGRP2 tasks taking between 55Ksecs and 94Ksecs, BRP5 (PAS) tasks taking between 45Ksecs and 197Ksecs, BRP4 tasks taking between 40Ksecs and 106Ksecs. This sort of variation is not normal and is NOT what you would expect if there was a bit of a lack of CPU support for the GPU. I would think the most likely cause is thermal throttling. Do you use anything to keep track of CPU and GPU temperatures? If not, then get one of the many free utilities that can monitor temperature, amongst other things. When was the last time you gave the insides of your machine a good clean? You need to check fans and heatsinks for dust buildup.

You could also try running with the case open and a good strong desk fan pointed at the CPU area of the motherboard. If things magically improve, you know you have a heat buildup problem. The problem could be due to the thermal interface material between the heatsink and the CPU. Renewing that can often lead to significant improvement.

Cheers,
Gary.

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