Forum > GPU crunching
Driver, application and VRAM requirement?
Richard Haselgrove:
Heads up guys - tidy the place up a bit, we've got a professional in our midst ;D
--- Quote from: Miep on 24 Jul 2010, 04:57:40 pm ---V12nokill and 2.1 dll (are you sure they are 2.1 and not 2.0 Richard? They don't have a version number on the details tab.) boinc 6.10.58 nvidia driver 195.62
--- End quote ---
You're quite right to call me out on that one - the original (and probably still current) v6.08 Berkeley download supplies 2.0 DLLs
I've updated SkyDrive, getting the number right this time, and adding genuine 2.1 DLLs. I don't remember anybody testing anything between the original release, and 2.2 (which were certainly tested, and a big improvement) - we were too busy getting the darn thing to run at all, any which way. 2.1 look to be close in size to 2.2, so might have some improvements over 2.0 - but no idea how much memory they need to run, or what the improvement might be. Miep, care to give them a whirl?
In researching the above, I came across http://developer.nvidia.com/object/cuda_archive.html - version numbers with release dates, and link through to the matching toolkit and driver downloads. That's gone onto my favourites list for future reference.
Miep:
--- Quote from: Richard Haselgrove on 26 Jul 2010, 01:25:42 pm ---Heads up guys - tidy the place up a bit, we've got a professional in our midst ;D
You're quite right to call me out on that one - the original (and probably still current) v6.08 Berkeley download supplies 2.0 DLLs
I've updated SkyDrive, getting the number right this time, and adding genuine 2.1 DLLs. I don't remember anybody testing anything between the original release, and 2.2 (which were certainly tested, and a big improvement) - we were too busy getting the darn thing to run at all, any which way. 2.1 look to be close in size to 2.2, so might have some improvements over 2.0 - but no idea how much memory they need to run, or what the improvement might be. Miep, care to give them a whirl?
In researching the above, I came across http://developer.nvidia.com/object/cuda_archive.html - version numbers with release dates, and link through to the matching toolkit and driver downloads. That's gone onto my favourites list for future reference.
--- End quote ---
Bah, again nothing on the details page. how are you supposed to tell them apart, aprt from the datestamp?! *mutter*
Professional? Nice joke. I only pay attention, and the stock dlls were refered to as 2.0 on the SETI boards. As I said nothing on the details tab to indicate version number.
So, dropped the new 2.1 in. I see less maximum RAM usage on the new 258.96 driver, so I'll revisit the higher numbers.
EDIT: If we get verification from Chelski on SETI NC about his being a mobile GPU there might be justification for adding 2.0 dlls to the installer...
Jason G:
--- Quote from: Miep on 26 Jul 2010, 02:26:10 pm ---Bah, again nothing on the details page. how are you supposed to tell them apart, aprt from the datestamp?! *mutter*
--- End quote ---
This shambles was largely due to the original Cuda DLLs being only 'weakly versioned'. Probably due to customer support situations growing, and in part from people swapping around DLLs arbitrarily prior to Cuda 3: nVidia have moved to a 'strongly versioned' model from 3.0 onwards, include the version in the name, and applications built with one Cuda SDK are meant to use particular library versions. That and some other growing pain issues seem to indicate that early in Cuda's development, the scale of the idea itself may have been underestimated.
As far as getting the memory requirements down in the applications goes, with Cuda 3.1 there's a few options I'm looking at to remove use of the hefty CUFFT library, and reduce the minimum footprint. Will be some time before that can be realised in working form though, so this investigation is valuable toward many users.
Jason
Miep:
Oh wow.
So, the 2.1 dll works (202M max, one more than 2.0) - and probably thanks to the new driver, so does the 2.2, with a memory max of 250MB. That's a memory usage of 230MB above baseline.
(max memiory usage by 2.0 dropped by 17 MB with 258.96 vs 195.62 driver)
I'll try higher ones, but with a margin of 6MB left, it's a very small chance they work - the 2.3 at least. Have the memory requirements of 3.0 and 3.1 been tested?
Richard Haselgrove:
--- Quote from: Miep on 26 Jul 2010, 05:01:12 pm ---Oh wow.
So, the 2.1 dll works (202M max, one more than 2.0) - and probably thanks to the new driver, so does the 2.2, with a memory max of 250MB. That's a memory usage of 230MB above baseline.
(max memiory usage by 2.0 dropped by 17 MB with 258.96 vs 195.62 driver)
I'll try higher ones, but with a margin of 6MB left, it's a very small chance they work - the 2.3 at least. Have the memory requirements of 3.0 and 3.1 been tested?
--- End quote ---
Not the memory requirements, no - I think most of the testers who have chimed in are running 512MB or higher.
There are special problems with running the 3.0 or 3.1 DLLs with the older v6.08, v6.09 or V12 applications, because of the 'strong versioning' introduced with 3.0, as Jason mentioned. The apps expect DLLs called 'cudart.dll' and 'cufft.dll', but the fft.dll has to have access to 'cudart32_30_14.dll' or 'cudart32_31_9.dll'. You end up having to have three CUDA DLLs, not two, with the 'rt' file copied and renamed (and listed under both names in both sections of app_info.xml.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version