GPUGrid and GTX-295

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jockmacmad2
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#1 GPUGrid and GTX-295

Post by jockmacmad2 »

Says I have 1 Cuda device. I have turned SLi off so I was presuming it would see 2 now as in 2 x 260.

Am I confuddled or doing something wrang?

Oh and I have HT turned on but it runs only 4 tasks, i.e. one per real CPU. Do I need to tweek something to get 8 running?

TA

EDIT: Seems the 295 is a well written about thing. Now I have to trot off and try all the weird stuff out.

EDIT 2: Seems to be an nVidia Vista / Windows 7 x64 problem. 32 bit Vista and 32/64 bit XP work fine.
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jockmacmad2
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#2 GTX-295 - nVidia drivers are SNAFU

Post by jockmacmad2 »

The lowdown on the GTX-295 is if you have Vista don't get them yet the nVidia drivers are SNAFU. According to a post on the GPUGRID forums eVGA are saying nVidia are aware of the situation but as to when a fix will be available well .....

Some say [inset Stig joke] that 32-bit Vista works but not for me even with 2 monitors connected. XP both 32 and 64 bit are supposed to be okay but I don't have a copy and I don't have one on Linux either so I cannot comment.

Edit: Now working 2 GPU's on 32-bit Vista with nVidia 181.22 drivers.
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rowpie
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#3

Post by rowpie »

sounds like a barrel load of laughs mate. hope they sort out the bugs soon enough.
jockmacmad2
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#4

Post by jockmacmad2 »

Back in crap street down to 1 working again.

An excercise in futility.

Duly replaced with a ATI 4870 for now.
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jockmacmad2
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#5

Post by jockmacmad2 »

I have just spent 60 hours fighting tooth and nail to get the latest machine built and I can tell you it put a hell of a fight up to the point when it was built and running, and I thought defeated, the Windows DVD (resting on the side as I had just removed it from the DVD Drive for the final reboot) slipped into the CPU Fan jammed it and when I took the DVD out the blades came off the fan.

I can also tell you this. Never, ever, ever try a DFI Lan Party X58 T3eH6 with Quad-SLI i.e. 2 x eVGA GTX-295's. IT DOESN'T WORK and it will sap your will to live getting it to work as it's simply so arcane.

Both cards work on their own in the machine. Both work on my Asus P6T-Deluxe. Both work on my Asus in SLI but not on the DFI.

Linux's (CentOS 5.2 x64 and Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop x64) kernel panic on booting from CD or USB stick to install. Windows 7 reboots soon as the white 'Loading Windows' bar gets to the end. Vista 64 or 32 just hang. Yet with one card, either one, all is sweetness and light.

So the nVidia are on the Asus P6T and my ATI cards are now on the DFI. Yup X58 T3eH6 + 2x HD4870 and a HD4850 on Windows 7 with Catalyst and all are working just fine. I wish I had tried that Saturday morning not Sunday afternoon lol.

The GTX-260 is where the HD4850 was. Mission goals achieved get all 6 GPU cards crunching instead of 3. Well I have to go make more Dummy VGA adapters but hopefully I'll not screw that up.
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Megacruncher
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#6

Post by Megacruncher »

So how do you mak a dummy VGA adapter. I've had to resort to connecting up a 2nd CUDA card to a free port on my KVM switch. A simpler solution would be mighty welcome!
Willie the Megacruncher
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jockmacmad2
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#7

Post by jockmacmad2 »

This is the nicest one. i.e. all the others just stick resistors into adapters as they are. Ewww nasty if it's £400+ card.

Bits from Maplin at a cost of about £5 each. Just plug it into a DVI to VGA adapter that came with your card.

Dummy Vga

Otherwise the cheapo version is just to stick the 75 Ohm resistors into the DVI to VGA adapter. Cost 45p. (15p each for the resistors here).

Oh and if you do this and need to shorten the legs on the resistors I can say without a doubt Nail Clippers are the best lol.

Ahh found a nasty version just using the DVI to VGA. Look at post #10 (on the right of each post).

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=86507
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jockmacmad2
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#8 The 4th GPU has entered the building. YAY.

Post by jockmacmad2 »

Okay the 4th GPU (in my case) has entered the building.

After I taught myself CUDA I wrote my own program to enumerate the CUDA drivers present and was seeing 3 even though the nVidia control panel and the MMC device panel was showing 4. So it's not BOINC Manager.

I deinstalled all the nVidia drivers, rebooted and checked in the registry at

Hkey_Local_Machine\Hardware\DeviceMap\Video

to see what I had. There were 3 devices Video0, Video1 and Video2 present which were all standard VGA drivers. I then installed Forceware 185.68 and rebooted.

I now had 10 devices in the registry. I navigated down to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\

and looked to see what was present. Here we see a list of registry keys like

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\(GPU ID)\0000

where there is a key for each GPU. I searched the list and for each GPU e.g.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{D82C4D9A-396A-4292-A538-A8F8F22FFEB5}\0000\Settings field (where {D82C4D9A-396A-4292-A538-A8F8F22FFEB5} is a GPU id)

and looked for the words NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295.

I presumed (luckily correctly) that the 1st GPUID with those words i nthe Settings field had the monitor on it. To the following 3 GPU's I added the following registry keys:-

DisplayLessPolicy DWORD 1
LimitVideoPresentSources DWORD 1

at the

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\(GPU ID)\0000

level in the registry tree and rebooted.

Now I only have 2 monitors showing in the nVidia control panel as having my desktop on them but my own CUDA program shows 4 GPUS. I fired up BOINC Manager which still displays that it found only 3 (due to the string length being exceeded I expect) but I have 4 running GPUS.
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rowpie
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#9

Post by rowpie »

hats off to the determination good sir.

things will be a slot simpler once boinc, nvidea and ati all get round the table and discuss openCL...
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