x38g reports

[Jason G]

Well over 24 hours now and everything is going along great. Guess I was just pushing the limit by running three at a time.

OK.  Keep an eye on things when you can.  With things running a bit more smoothly, I am currently starting a rewrite of the problem pulsefinds once and for all (i.e. VLAR & display lag related).  That's going to take time & care, but at least the experience garnered so far should see things get a lot better from this point, in terms of both reliability & performance.

Jason

[Jason G]

For those following this thread & using the x39c diagnostic, please update to the attached build with some added diagnostic info printed on errors.

[Removed old build]

[perryjay]

Got it Jason, now if only SETI would cooperate. I've just started getting the can't connect to server message when trying to upload. I hope it's Hurricane Electric working on the problem. But anyway, another day of no problems, seems dropping back to two tasks has cured my problem.



Okay, finally got some reports through. Here's the link to one of the validated WUs I finished on x39d just in case you wanted to look at it.  http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/result.php?resultid=1967582734

[Jason G]

In the meantime, I've noticed Cuda 'freaking out' here on the 480 with newer builds ... but only when FireFox is Running... weird. No Errors, but certainly seems to stick in some funky lag-mode. 

 I'm trying your solution of stepping down from 3 to 2 tasks.   If that helps I'd take it as an indication that the loading presented by the newer builds is indeed substantially higher overall.  I may have to retest which number of tasks gives the most throughput here, as 2 task loading seems to be >95% now.  I wasn't expecting that to change until later when I get a bit more optimisation in... Will see.

[Edit:]  Stepping down to 2 seems to have helped here too, will keep an eye on it for a while.

Jason

[perryjay]

. No Errors, but certainly seems to stick in some funky lag-mode. 

If you mean it seems to stick for a little while, I'm seeing that too. Mine seems to stick at around 96 to 98% and hold for somewhere around 30 seconds to a minute then pick up and run on to completion. I haven't tried it with firefox closed and I don't know exactly how often this happens.

[Jason G]

If you mean it seems to stick for a little while, I'm seeing that too.

Yeah that, & only with firefox running, when I run 3 tasks at once.  All fine so far with 2 tasks at once, but will periodically try to induce the behaviour.

  I've just now upgraded to the newer Beta drivers (just to throw a confusing change into the mix). I will satisfy myself that all is operating normally with 2 tasks & heavy firefox usage, then try reproduce the behaviour with 3 tasks running.  If it doesn't reoccur I'll pin it on something to do with 275.33 under heavy load, if it does then the increased load of updated firefox & newer apps.

[Update:]  Back up to 3 tasks at once with the 275.50 beta drivers.  No sign of weirdness yet, will thrash firefox tabs periodically & see what happens. 
[Update2:]  That didn't take long.  Poking at firefox for 5 minutes switching between tabs repeatedly did induce the behaviour.  Going back down to 2 to watch that setting again. It looks like we're creating a slightly heftier GPU load    Oh well.

Jason

[arkayn]

Running 39d on my 460, luckily it is not my main surfing computer and mostly just crunches.

[Ghost0210]

In the meantime, I've noticed Cuda 'freaking out' here on the 480 with newer builds ... but only when FireFox is Running... weird. No Errors, but certainly seems to stick in some funky lag-mode. 

 

I've noticed the same with Firefox, but only with either 4 or 5. The 3.6.x versions don't seem to have any effect on the builds.
If I try to open Firefox with the builds running (from around the mid x38 builds) Firefox will hang for around 10 seconds then open and the applications will slow for around 20 seconds and GPU utiliisation will dropm from 93%+ down to ~87\88% utilisation.
Then as soon as I close Firefox, all is good again. Haven't seen this behaviour with either IE9 or Chrome as yet
AS I've been testing Raistmer NV r521 build I thought it could be related to this so wasn't exactly sure what could have been causing this

[Jason G]

I think we should petition MS & Mozilla to stop trying to use our precious GPU resources 

[Ghost0210]

I think we should petition MS & Mozilla to stop trying to use our precious GPU resources 

So inconsiderate of them 

[Josef W. Segur]

I think we should petition MS & Mozilla to stop trying to use our precious GPU resources 

Heresy! There's no more important use of computing resources than web browsing!

I don't know which browser started the "hardware acceleration" thing, but the best we can hope for is that they provide an option to turn it off.
                                                                   Joe

[Jason G]

Ahah!,

firefox's built in  about:support page shows:

GPU Accelerated Windows1/1 Direct3D 10

on mine, now to find out how to disable that rubbish...

[Mike]

I think we should petition MS & Mozilla to stop trying to use our precious GPU resources 

Heresy! There's no more important use of computing resources than web browsing!

I don't know which browser started the "hardware acceleration" thing, but the best we can hope for is that they provide an option to turn it off.
                                                                   Joe

Agreed.
Thats one of the reasons i stick with firefox 3.

[Jason G]

Found it.  In firefox 5.0 the setting is on the advanced options page.  unticking 'Use hardware acceleration when available' has resulted in about:support showing now:

GPU Accelerated Windows0/1 

Cranking the 480 back up to 3 tasks 

[Edit:] Found an equivalent looking setting in IE9's advanced options as well.  ticked "Use Software Rendering Instead of GPU rendering" & restarted the browser as directed by the fine print.  Hah! eat cpu cycles browsers 

[Claggy]

[Edit:] Found an equivalent looking setting in IE9's advanced options as well.  ticked "Use Software Rendering Instead of GPU rendering" & restarted the browser as directed by the fine print.  Hah! eat cpu cycles browsers 

I switched that off on my Laptop's 128Mb 8400M GS almost as soon as IE9 came out as it made the Desktop Very Laggy when collatz was running,
i was going to post today asking if Firefox 4 & 5 had a similar option, but afternoon snooze got in the way, 

Claggy