Tech and Talk > Computing Clubs > Team Starfire > Newbie wanting help to get started

Newbie wanting help to get started

Check here to see if your ATI card can be used for GPU processing:
»boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/GPU_computing though it looks like SETI does not have an ATI/AMD application:

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Projects with ATI/AMD applications:

Collatz Conjecture (Windows, Windows 64bit, Linux 64bit)
DNETC@Home (Windows and Linux 32bit) Project retired
Einstein (Linux, Windows on Intel; Mac OS X under active development)
Milkyway@home (OpenCL support and Double precision GPU required, so a Radeon 48xx, 47xx, 58xx, 69xx, FirePro V87xx, FireStream 92xx) (Windows only)
Moo! (Driver v10.4 or later, ATI Runtime (not older AMD), Minimum device memory 250 MB - »moowrap.net/forum_thread.php?id=16)
PrimeGrid (Proth Prime Search (Sieve), Linux 32bit, Linux 64bit and Windows)

You're done! Soon you'll be racking up big credit numbers. Of course, you can attach to other projects too; BOINC will keep both your CPU and GPU busy.

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Thank you for the information. I installed the program called Boinc. I joined your team as well.

Okay here is a whole bunch of questions I have.

What are the credits that you earn used for(just for keeping score?)? I am guessing that you would only want to run one of these programs at a time, and one project at a time? Also am I right in thinking that this team only works on the seti@home project? Would adding more ram help? Right now I have only 8gigs of ram but it is the expensive high performance kind. However I could add another 8gigs if that would help. Any other hardware upgrades that would make a difference(yes I do have Boinc running on my ssd).

Thanks again

Stefan

Credits are pretty much for keeping score - we and the Berekely site have listings for credits and rankings...

Yes - I believe one project at a time but you can do more than one project by setting up projects to run xx% of the time. So if you wanted to do SETI and Einstein - then you could set each to be processed 50% of the time for each one.

We work on any of the projects - when you are in the forum - look to the very left of the forum screen and you will see other links including links to the other projects run.

I don't believe adding more ram helps tremendously - I believe the apps are mainly CPU limited. GPU will run the work FAR faster than going from a fast CPU. Running BOINC on a SSD will not increase the processing either.

Only other thing that will make processing faster is using an optimized app. Right now - there are no optimized apps for SETI till a licensing issue is resolved. If it does get resolved then an optimized app will generally double the speed of processing.
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Brian

"It drops into your stomach like a Abrams's tank.... driven by Rosanne Barr..." A. Bourdain

Well I've been running Boinc for a while now and I noticed that it is trying to download allot of stuff and really slowly. I usually get 26 to 30 mega bits with sftp. Boinc is only downloading at 5 to 7 kbs per file. There are some downloads that say retrying like they failed. Is this normal? Also I have a Imac thats just sitting around doing nothing will Boinc work on the Mac? If not would it run in my virtual machine well or would that slow it down too much?

Downloads have been slow for the last couple weeks (no idea why) and Tuesday they have maintenance which means the servers are taken off-line.

Seti runs on a very small budget with a mix of hardware - a lot of it donated.

Looks like OS x can run BIONC:
»boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/MacBuild

I don't know anything about Macs or running BOINC... It does look like it has to be built. Might want to do a search online for running BOINC on a Mac and see if there is a build to download and use - maybe one here: »boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php .
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Brian

"It drops into your stomach like a Abrams's tank.... driven by Rosanne Barr..." A. Bourdain