So just got a used Zotac AMP 980 on Ebay. Installed it this afternoon and has been running for a few hours. Wow! it gets hot. Like 72C hot. The backplate is almost too hot to touch. I backed the TDP from 80% down to 70%. The GPU clock went from 1292 to 1227. Temp is now 64C.

Do the 980s always get this hot? Is that common?
Should I remove the back plate? Won't that help cool the card? My 660ti didn't have a back plate.

I also noticed that the GPU load was at 80%. I cut back on 2 WCG WUs so my i7 won't hyperthread and the GPU load went up to 84%. I never thought my rig wouldn't be able to feed this beast. I have an i7 at 4Ghz with 2100 RAM. Wow.

Are there any other tweaks I should be doing to up the GPU load?

Thanks as always.

So just got a used Zotac AMP 980 on Ebay. Installed it this afternoon and has been running for a few hours. Wow! it gets hot. Like 72C hot. The backplate is almost too hot to touch. I backed the TDP from 80% down to 70%. The GPU clock went from 1292 to 1227. Temp is now 64C.

Do the 980s always get this hot?

Is that common?

Should I remove the back plate?

Won't that help cool the card?

My 660ti didn't have a back plate.

I also noticed that the GPU load was at 80%. I cut back on 2 WCG WUs so my i7 won't hyperthread and the GPU load went up to 84%. I never thought my rig wouldn't be able to feed this beast. I have an i7 at 4Ghz with 2100 RAM. Wow.

Are there any other tweaks I should be doing to up the GPU load?

Thanks as always.

Thank you for the quick reply. This is the first time I have had a card better than a 660ti or $250 type card. I think I will save for another 980. Then I can run two 980s and the 750. Max this board out.

Hi!

variable name: swan_sync ->
variable value: 1 ->

Hi!

variable name: swan_sync ->
variable value: 1 ->

Shouldn't it be value=0 ?

You could try to set the swan_sync environmental variable to make the GPUGrid client use a full CPU core.
Start button ->
type systempropertiesadvanced to the search box ->
press enter, or click on the result ->
click on the "environmental variables" button near the bottom ->
click on the "new" button near the bottom (system variables section) ->
variable name: swan_sync ->
variable value: 1 ->
click OK 3 times ->
exit BOINC manager with stopping all scientific applications ->
restart BOINC manager

Anyway, I tried the above method on my Gtx 970. It seems that I go from ~70% GPU usage (with 10~15% CPU) to ~75% GPU usage (with 30~33% CPU usage). With 2 tasks running at a time, I go from 80% to 90%.

Is this how much it was supposed to be, or should it be going higher?

Also, can you tell me a place where I can read what's actually going on?

I like learning how things work, and this swan method seems rather intriguing...

Good info, Retvari!

Also, reporting CPU Usage in numbers like "10~15% CPU" and "30~33% CPU" is... too vague. Look at Task Manager or Process Explorer, look at the Process details for a column called CPU. You can use this to figure out how many logical processors are utilized by the acemd process.

For example, on my 4-core hyperthreaded machine, I have 8 logical CPUs. If a process is using a full virtual core, it'd show "12.5" in the CPU column of Process Explorer.

For me...
- A GPUGrid task (acemd) without Swan_Sync uses about 0.8-1.5 in that CPU column ... meaning about 0.064 to 0.12 CPU (all I did was divide by 12.5)
- A GPUGrid task (acemd) with Swan_Sync uses 12.5 in that CPU column ... meaning about 1.0 CPU.

Details matter. And also, that should help you to understand Swan_Sync. I run without it, because I have several CPU tasks that I don't want to steal CPU from.

More great points skgiven!

I used to think that it was best to keep the CPUs fully saturated, but I have changed my stance on that, for a couple reasons. First reason is that GPU usage does indeed suffer, and I'd prefer to keep the GPU tasks processing as fast as possible while still doing some CPU work. Second reason deals with system responsiveness. I've found that user interaction is more responsive, if the CPU is not fully saturated.

So, nowadays, I typically use app_config configuration to specify the CPU usage of all my GPU tasks. I routinely run GPUGrid tasks 6-at-a-time (since I have 3 GPUs), and I set it to budget 0.4 CPU usage per task, so that the 6 acemd processes can bounce around the (0.4 * 6 = 2.4, rounded down by BOINC's scheduler = 2) budgeted CPUs. Additionally, I set BOINC to use 88% of my 8 virtual CPUs, so a virtual core is always available to be completely responsive to my actual work, even when the system would be CPU-saturated if no GPU task was currently being worked.

That's as optimal as I could make it, and it's worked really well for me.