Thanks for the GPU list, Mikey! Really helpful, not just for me, but for other readers as well!

Just be aware that with the Nvidia cards the newer the model the slower the DP crunching it can do, since Asteroids IS Double Precision you MUST be careful to understand that newer does NOT always mean faster crunchers.

Yepp, good point. I was hoping fro much much better performance from GPUs. I think I'll stick to CPUs. Maybe one day the Radeon GPU support will bring considerably better performance, though...

Thanks for the GPU list, Mikey! Really helpful, not just for me, but for other readers as well!

Just be aware that with the Nvidia cards the newer the model the slower the DP crunching it can do, since Asteroids IS Double Precision you MUST be careful to understand that newer does NOT always mean faster crunchers.

Except for the Titan ;)

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Team AnandTech - SETI@H, Muon1 DPAD, Folding@H, MilkyWay@H, Asteroids@H, LHC@H, POGS, Rosetta@H, Einstein@H,DHPE & CPDN

Main rig - Ryzen 3600, 32GB DDR4 3200, RX 580 8GB, Win10
2nd rig - i7 4930k @4.1 GHz, 16GB DDR3 1866, HD 7870 XT 3GB(DS), Win7

Thanks for the GPU list, Mikey! Really helpful, not just for me, but for other readers as well!

Just be aware that with the Nvidia cards the newer the model the slower the DP crunching it can do, since Asteroids IS Double Precision you MUST be careful to understand that newer does NOT always mean faster crunchers.

Except for the Titan ;)

YES you are correct. BUT the cheapest Titan on Newegg, I could quickly find, is priced at $1,399.99. That is ALOT to pay for lots of DP performance for crunching, IMHO! I could buy FIVE 760's for that amount of money and make 5 pc's happy instead of just one, Newegg has several dual fan 760's for $250 right now.

Oh yea it's silly money! ;)

If you were only looking at DP performance then you'd be better off buying a bunch of HD 6970s, or maybe 7970s.

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Team AnandTech - SETI@H, Muon1 DPAD, Folding@H, MilkyWay@H, Asteroids@H, LHC@H, POGS, Rosetta@H, Einstein@H,DHPE & CPDN

Main rig - Ryzen 3600, 32GB DDR4 3200, RX 580 8GB, Win10
2nd rig - i7 4930k @4.1 GHz, 16GB DDR3 1866, HD 7870 XT 3GB(DS), Win7

Oh yea it's silly money! ;)

If you were only looking at DP performance then you'd be better off buying a bunch of HD 6970s, or maybe 7970s.

Yes HOWEVER I have three 7970's and they have a rac like this: 178,127.02, 202,246.97 and 168,094.04.

While I also have three Nvidia 760's which have a rac of: 374,459.81, 358,417.10 and 236,528.01.

That is here at PG, so sometimes the Nvidia ones ARE better even at single precision then the AMD gpu's. The differences in my case are due to what else is
in the pc, as in ram, cpu, hard drive etc. All of mine are running 64bit Win7.

One other thing to think about is the new R series AMD gpu's do NOT have CAL built in, you have to add the APP stuff to make it work. That seems to be a problem at some projects, although PG does seem to have it solved.

374K RAC from one NVidia 760? That's a hell lot of RAC...

On a slightly different topic (but still related to video card support):
I've noticed that RockChip has released it's newest ARM SoC RK3288, which is the first ARM chipset to contain a video card that supports OpenCL 1.1. Might be worth taking a look at it. I expect that in a few months millions of such chips will be sold in Android TV sticks, smart phones, tablets, etc.

RK3288: http://www.rk3288.com/

As Andras posted, there are more and more arm devices coming with openCL 1.1 support. This could shorten the way to make a app for both arm and AMD gpu.

BTW, the current arm app, does it support NEON?
Yesterday I tried 2 asteroid wu's on my Odroid, the ran ~24hrs. That's pretty long!

Alexander

I run A@H 24/7 on an Android TV stick with RK3188 chipset, which is (as far as I know) at least as good a chipset as the one in the ODROID. This TV stick processes 4 work units in 42 hours. what is NEON? :)

I run A@H 24/7 on an Android TV stick with RK3188 chipset, which is (as far as I know) at least as good a chipset as the one in the ODROID. This TV stick processes 4 work units in 42 hours. what is NEON? :)

Does that mean one wu in 10.5 hrs?
NEON is is in some way comparabel to SSE on Intel/AMD cpu's.
http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/neon.php

10.5 hours/wu in average, but in fact each wu takes about 42 hours, it's just running 4 in parallel.

374K RAC from one NVidia 760? That's a hell lot of RAC...

Good lord I have NO IDEA what the heck I was thinking!!! I was putting in numbers from my PrimeGrid account NOT my Asteroids account!!! I am sorry just disregard my post as obviously I was thinking one thing and typing something else!!

In the next week or so I will bring a 760 here and run it for a bit to see what it can do here for real. I am almost to my current goal at PG.

Lol, I was going to say, I was talking about DP performance (which MW@H & A@H use) not SP, but you've spotted your mistake anyway ;).

And yea let us know your 760s score.

..... seems like their should be a benchmark thread ;).

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Team AnandTech - SETI@H, Muon1 DPAD, Folding@H, MilkyWay@H, Asteroids@H, LHC@H, POGS, Rosetta@H, Einstein@H,DHPE & CPDN

Main rig - Ryzen 3600, 32GB DDR4 3200, RX 580 8GB, Win10
2nd rig - i7 4930k @4.1 GHz, 16GB DDR3 1866, HD 7870 XT 3GB(DS), Win7

OK, I've done the measurements. My strong PC, which can process about 100 A@H tasks in 42 hours, consumes about 170-175W when running BOINC at full load and 95-100W when not doing anything, just running idle. On the other hand the ARM cluster, which completes 24 tasks in 42 hours, consumes 30-35W. Assuming I would have 4 such ARM clusters, processing 96 tasks in 42 hours (let's consider taht equal to the 100 tasks of the strong PC), the total ARM power consumption would be 120-140W, so it's actually more energy efficient compared to the strong PC! Also less noisy, cheaper (assuming you catch some really good deals from China, like I did) and more fascinating :)

An interesting side calculation is that it costs about 75 Watts to run BOINC on the strong PC. According to the estimations of the measuring device, that's a difference of 10-12 Euros per month :) But given that I only run it for 8 hours per day, it's max 4 Euros per month. I consider this an investment into the future of mankind, so I don't mind :)

This sounds interesting. How much does it cost to buy from China and from which store?

I found these:

http://www.geekbuying.com/item/EU-Plug-CX-919-Android-4-1-1-Mni-PC-TV-Box-RK3188-Quad-Core-1-6Ghz-2G-8G-BT-HDMI-Black-314978.html

http://www.geekbuying.com/item/Tronsmart-MK908II-RK3188-Cortex-A9-Quad-Core-1-6GHz-Google-Android-4-2-Mini-TV-BOX-2G-8G-BT-External-Wifi-Antenna-Black-318432.html

Four 1.6 GHz cores for $59.90 sounds cheap.



Also this one, if you like x86 for Windows:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856501006

http://www.ecs.com.tw/LIVA/spec.html


Mobil geeks claims it's a 2 core N2807, but maybe it's a 4 core?

http://www.mobilegeeks.com/ecs-liva-worlds-smallest-mini-pc-kit-hands-video/

http://ark.intel.com/products/81072/Intel-Celeron-Processor-N2807-1M-Cache-up-to-2_16-GHz

Well, I've recently bought 6 pieces of Android TV stick with quad core RK3188 chips on eBay auctions for around 30$ each. But it turned out that despite their positive feedback, the sellers were scammers and they've never actually sent me anything, they just stole my money. Yeah, it was a bit of a cold shower... luckily eBay buyer protection exists and they've refunded all my lost money, so I suffered no loss, except that I still don't have the TV stick I wanted :)

Anyway, you can still buy these from eBay from sellers who are legitimate, but they will cost around 50-60$ each, unless you find a really lucky auction (unlikely). I recommend the MK908 or MK908II model, because it's easy to cool it with a small fan, without cutting its case or damaging it in any way. Yes, BOINC running on these TV sticks 24/7 does get them hot!

Can't you lower the CPU time to maybe 80% so that they don't overheat? Also, do you need to reboot them after a few weeks.

I've never had Android before so I'm not familiar with this OS and microcomputers in general, but I'm willing to explore any possibility that can increase the flop/Watt.

CPU usage can be lowered to 80% or whatever via BOINC settings, but I don't really want to and some models heat up even at 50% constant usage. But then again x86 CPUs do that too ;)

No need for any reboot. They work forever.

If I go for this I'll probably take your overheating experience into account and try one of these instead:

http://www.gearbest.com/tv-box/pp_23175.html

http://www.gearbest.com/tv-box/pp_24448.html

It cost a few dollars more and the power adapter radiates a few watts, but it probably wont overheat. I'll buy one of these and if it works well I'll buy more, maybe 5 more, and ask for a discount.


Android is not suitable for all projects. For instance, CEP2 is so I/O intensive that even an i7 computer has to sweat. I recently found out that some of the people over there use RAM discs to mitigate the problem; they think a SSD is to slow. Android is probably good enough for A@H.

I can add another device for crunching:
http://www.hardkernel.com

My Odroid crunches for Simap and Pogs, is in both projects within the top 10.000 hosts sorted by total credit.
I did some wu's here, https://asteroidsathome.net/boinc//results.php?hostid=90555
Device is overclocked to 2GHz, is online 7/24 and uses ~6Watt of electrical power. For this operation mode the device needs some additional cooling.

I highly doubt that the gearbest thing won't overheat. Any CPU that is fast (like the one in the RK3188) will generate quite some heat when under full load. Or at least that's my opinion.

Yes, the A@H Android app works great. The other project better recognize that we're at the dawn of the ARM era ;)

I don't have an ODROID because it costs a ton of money, especially if you want it shipped to Europe and have to pay import taxes. The shipping costs are also ridiculous. But from what I've read, its performance should be quite similar to RK3188 based devices.