Boinc Nvidia GPU Drivers

I've long suspected that my 980Ti isn't cutting the mustard on Boinc stuff. There is nothing wrong with the card, it's gaming performance is just fine. But crunching is pants.

As an example in primegrid, a wingman with a 750Ti has taken half the time to do the same WU as me. I was only running the single GPU WU at a time, and no restriction on how much CPU thread it needed to support on a i7-5820.

I suspect it is a driver thing as previously I was doing OK with a GTX 970 on projects like Einstein, then something updated and my output plummeted. I'd put that down perhaps to different type of WUs, but now I'm thinking otherwise.

So are people running the current nvidia driver (368.39), or do they use something else?

I am on 365.10
Primegride is 9:57 to 10:15 on a 970

I'm running 358.50 on my 750Ti's and 352.86 on my 980, no particular reason that's just what they are at

The 980 does a Primegrid PPS-Sieve task 3.5 times faster than one of my 750Ti does so your 980Ti sounds like it is sick.

Have you looked to see what the clocks are whilst it is running, I have read in places that for some reason the clocks just get set really low and stay there. Think it might have been just one brand but I'd need to check which one, what make is your 980Ti ?

I'd be interested to know how fast a 1080 can do these tasks on air and water. I've not dipped my toes in water yet but if the improvement is even only 5% better I should probably consider it as over time that would be a considerable increase.

MSI afterburner says the clock is 1166Hz which is the factory setting for the Gigabyte GTX980Ti Waterforce. Use is at 100%. No idea though how to tell if the clock setting is actuated under load

Will try an earlier version 355.98 - there seems to have been a jump in WHQ nvidia drivers to 358 after that suggesting there may have been a change to something, and see what happens.

im using 361.75 and my titan x is doing them in 6.03
780 is on 361.91 and @ 9.07

MGP said:

MSI afterburner says the clock is 1166Hz which is the factory setting for the Gigabyte GTX980Ti Waterforce. Use is at 100%. No idea though how to tell if the clock setting is actuated under load

Click to expand...

I assume that is because you aren't on Windows and can't run the monitor, there is GLXOSD for linux, never used it though.

It's Windows 10. The sidebar monitoring thingy on afterburner was reporting 1066Hz as the clock (also shows temps, memory use etc). What I don't know is if that is just the speed the card is set to run at if the clock kicks in, or if infact it's running slower. So for example how would I tell if it's using it's 2D rather than 3D capability

I'm a numpty on any clocking stuff so hardware runs at whatever the default manufacturer settings are. So no idea how I would monitor what the actual clock being used is

I have overclocked a couple of cards but tend to leave them as they come as they run 24/7 for so long. I also use nVidia Inspector for monitoring but can you not just enable the Hardware Monitor (presumably in settings to adjust what you want to see) to watch what happens as it processes the task ?

My 750Ti's take 30 minutes so is your's taking an hour ?

An example of the results I was getting : http://www.primegrid.com/workunit.php?wuid=484570185 Doesn't seem right to me

I'm trying different driver combos and seeing if I get better overall results running 4 WUs at once. So it's a bit harder now to establish what is going on.

MGP said:

An example of the results I was getting : http://www.primegrid.com/workunit.php?wuid=484570185 Doesn't seem right to me

I'm trying different driver combos and seeing if I get better overall results running 4 WUs at once. So it's a bit harder now to establish what is going on.

Click to expand...

That's a 780Ti you're comparing against not a 750Ti !

My 780Ti does them a bit quicker than that at 7 mins 33 secs but I only run 1 at a time and is faster than my 980. Need to know what you do 1 at a time at to compare ?

I assume you are getting proper drivers from nVidia and not from Windows 10.

Yep they are nvidia drivers, not a windows version.

I know that was a 780Ti WU of the wingman. The 980Ti should perform faster than that, but mine is so much slower. At the time of that WU I was running one at a time, with the 368.99 driver.

I'll have to wait till this evening, when I get home, to change any settings again. But at the moment from results now being submitted it's taking around 1 hour 12 minutes to do 4 WUs running together. That's around 18 minutes per WU. It was taking just over 17 minutes for the "PPS (Sieve) v1.39 (cudaPPSsieve)". So something is very amiss if I'm doing one WU on my 980Ti for every 2.5 you chew through on the 780Ti.

I have a 970 and with the Lunatics optimization for SETI installed it completed Wu slower than normal whether I had 1 or 2 WU running at same time. Twice as long for 1 WU and 3x with 2. I tried several different drivers but to no effect.

Further investigation: It seems that the GPU is working at idle speeds, So not ramping up with the BOINC stuff. No idea how to force it to power up.

Apart from using DDU to completely clean out your old drivers before putting newest ones in the other thing I found was about the P2 states, see the 19th post down for a screen shot of nVidia Inspector...

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=400261

It says to "In the overclocking panel, select P2 Performance Level and adjust the mem clock to match the P0 State level."

If you download and run the program it will say 'Show Overclocking' where it says Hide and prompt for confirmation. You'll probably need to click on the top right panel to select the P2 option and then change the Memory Clock figure to match that of the P0 state. If unsure just have a look and see what it does say first.

Well I haven't a clue

Drivers were uninstalled using that DDU thing.

The Nvidia Inspector doesn't give a P2 profile, only P0 and P8. It appears P0 is the standard overclock / boost profile. P8 is idle. The moment Boinc loads the card switches to P8. Exit Boinc and it reverts to P0.

On my 980 it has P0, P2, P5 & P8 to choose from, I haven't changed it at all.

This is a link to someone who had it downclock whilst Folding... https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/550801-980-ti-going-into-power-save-mode-when-fh-is-folding/

Sadly, no answer to cure it

I'll keep looking but perhaps ask in another section to get others who probably know more involved...

Recently, Nvidia released driver 368.22 which fixes the serious error introduced with their 364.xx driver. Please upgrade to 368.22 or later, unless you are running Windows XP or Windows Vista.

If you are running the 364.xx or 365.xx drivers, it is imperative that you upgrade to 368.22 or later. The 364.xx and 365.xx drivers can produce incorrect calculation results.

However, if you are running Windows XP or Windows Vista, these versions of Windows are no longer supported by Nvidia's drivers as of 368.22. If you're running XP or Vista, you must revert to an earlier version of the driver (363.xx or earlier).
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Click to expand...

http://www.primegrid.com/forum_thread.php?id=6861#95705

I've tried all sorts of drivers now, no difference in dodgy performance. For the time being I'm back on the 368.39 version which is the latest available.

Swapped the 980Ti out with a 970 I keep meaning to sell off. Immediate difference as the 970 trundles off at normal speeds, no downclocking to idle, and Boinc returns on primegrid are swift. Indeed the 970 also shows 4 different P-state profiles through nvidia inspector.

Did you look to see what the clocks on the 980Ti were after a reboot ?

What about trying the other Bios on the card to see if that was different/better ?