Hi,

Yesterday I have downloaded a task for my gtx 960 to process and according to my BOINC client, it should've been done in 20 hours. Right now I'm at 25 hours and 4 minutes and have 1 hour and 8 minutes to go. It seems my remaining time went down slower than it should have because sometimes every two seconds I have seen it go down 1 second.

This is taking just as long as my old gtx 650ti BOOST was. According to the chart on gpugrid, I do see that the max sometimes is 38 hours, but average is 18.

Regardless what the stats are, is the remaining time issue natural or can it be fixed? Is it due to my gpu usage only being in the 50-60% area?

It depends on the work unit. I just completed a couple of GERARD_FXCXCL12RX on my GTX 960s running under Ubuntu 16.04, and they took 16 hours 8 minutes, and 16 hours 31 minutes.

On Windows 7 or 10, it would be somewhat longer; probably around 18 hours. Using the right driver would help:
http://www.gpugrid.net/forum_thread.php?id=4319

But otherwise, you may have just gotten a slow work unit. There are some rather experimental ones around this summer.

Yesterday I have downloaded a task for my gtx 960 to process and according to my BOINC client, it should've been done in 20 hours.

Right now I'm at 25 hours and 4 minutes and have 1 hour and 8 minutes to go. It seems my remaining time went down slower than it should have because sometimes every two seconds I have seen it go down 1 second.

This is taking just as long as my old gtx 650ti BOOST was. According to the chart on gpugrid, I do see that the max sometimes is 38 hours, but average is 18.

Regardless what the stats are, is the remaining time issue natural or can it be fixed? Is it due to my gpu usage only being in the 50-60% area?

I see that reading from the thread Zoltan has linked me, that windows xp doesn't have wddm which is better for the gpu to work faster, if I'm correct? (very plain remake of what I read)

And yes, Jim, I shall use the 359 driver from December of 2015.

To make things simple, shall I downgrade to windows XP? Will it make things easier? Seems like wddm has a lot of impact. I don't care for gaming on this computer like I used to. I have a spare hard drive I can just load xp on and save this SSD for my current windows 7 I have now.

Would I have to worry about anything after downgrading to windows xp and having the driver 359? Should I do the swan sync or is it not needed in XP?

I'm not very good on these things yet sadly. I appreciate you all helping me learn about more of how this stuff works and I've gotten general knowledge since joining this site and boinc in general. I wouldn't have it if it wasn't for bionc and you all! :)

And I also see that newer GPU's aren't supported by windows XP, however my gtx 960 is. I can just download the 359 driver and it'll work fine with boinc right? (assuming xp performs better)

I know I might be thinking very far ahead, but how would we be able to use brand new gpu's in the 10 series and later on in windows xp?

I've seen something on you can modify the "nv4_dispi.inf file", would this work with newer gpu's for when in the future I get a 10 series with XP? That has me a bit confused.

I see that reading from the thread Zoltan has linked me, that windows xp doesn't have wddm which is better for the gpu to work faster, if I'm correct? (very plain remake of what I read)

To make things simple, shall I downgrade to windows XP?

Will it make things easier?

Seems like wddm has a lot of impact.

I don't care for gaming on this computer like I used to. I have a spare hard drive I can just load xp on and save this SSD for my current windows 7 I have now.

Would I have to worry about anything after downgrading to windows xp and having the driver 359?

Should I do the swan sync or is it not needed in XP?

And I also see that newer GPU's aren't supported by windows XP, however my gtx 960 is. I can just download the 359 driver and it'll work fine with boinc right? (assuming xp performs better)

I know I might be thinking very far ahead, but how would we be able to use brand new gpu's in the 10 series and later on in windows xp?

I've seen something on you can modify the "nv4_dispi.inf file", would this work with newer gpu's for when in the future I get a 10 series with XP? That has me a bit confused.

Ah, things are a lot more clear now.

When the day comes, I'll have to look into the 10 series on XP a bit more.

What antivirus and browser do you use for XP, Zoltan?

I rather use xp because I've tried linux and it's a rough adjustment. Windows XP I've used for never a main PC, but I know the basics because my parents had it on their PC before.

Also, do you recommend I get the latest windows xp updates? I saw that new updates slow down the OS on one of the threads I was linked to.

About to install xp, I actually have a 2nd hard drive in my PC that I'll use. Will be back when it's done being installed and once everything gets settled, I'll start BOINC.

Luckily my bios has IDE mode so I'll make sure to enable that as well. Yes I got lucky with having the core i5 first gen cpu hehe.

What antivirus and browser do you use for XP, Zoltan?

Also, do you recommend I get the latest windows xp updates? I saw that new updates slow down the OS on one of the threads I was linked to.

Luckily my bios has IDE mode so I'll make sure to enable that as well. Yes I got lucky with having the core i5 first gen cpu hehe.

Lots of good advice here.

So far I've found Ubuntu 16.04 LTS easy to use, though I would say there are lots of updates. I've installed it on 3 systems so far and will probably end up only using Ubuntu somewhere down the line.

If you install SP3 then most AV packages will work and there are several free editions such as AVG Free and Avast Free that still work. Ditto for firewalls.

If you have 2 drives then multi-booting is a good option. Probably best to crunch on the HDD rather than the SSD.

What antivirus and browser do you use for XP, Zoltan?

I use an unmanaged (standalone) Symantec Endpoint Protection client, and Mozilla Firefox (or Google Chrome, which is stuck at 49.0.2623.112m).

Also, do you recommend I get the latest windows xp updates? I saw that new updates slow down the OS on one of the threads I was linked to.

You should get the updates. If you use the x86 version, you can make it to get new updates until 2019.

Luckily my bios has IDE mode so I'll make sure to enable that as well. Yes I got lucky with having the core i5 first gen cpu hehe.

You can install the AHCI drivers from an USB pendrive if you press F6 when the installer starts. You should download the driver beforehand from here.

I'm 12 hours and 10 minutes in the task and am at 26.5% complete..
I'm assuming this is just a longer task?

I'm 12 hours and 10 minutes in the task and am at 26.5% complete..
I'm assuming this is just a longer task?

No, you have a GERARD_FXCXCL12RX, it should be done on a GTX 960 in ~55000 sec (15h 16m 40s).
You should check with GPU-Z or MSI Afterburner (or any similar GPU monitoring tool) if your GPU is downclocked (running at ~700MHz). If it is, then you have to restart your system to restore its original clock speed, then reduce the GPU clocks (even if it's factory overclocked), or increase its voltage.
Because of the higher GPU usage in Windows XP the cards could tolerate lower clock frequency than under Windows Vista~10 (the overall performance will be higher tough).

That's weird.. just got back to my pc and after I turned my background off, the gpu MHz was around 400 and now it's back to 1328 MHz, it was bouncing for a few seconds.

My guess is the screensaver with the windows xp logo had something to do with it

Yep, put screensaver back on, and everything got very silent. I disabled the screensaver. Hope that fixed the problem...

Yep, put screensaver back on, and everything got very silent. I disabled the screensaver. Hope that fixed the problem...

Yep, put screensaver back on, and everything got very silent. I disabled the screensaver. Hope that fixed the problem...

It should.
There's a couple of "tweaks" I do, disabling the screensaver is one of which I do routinely, but I've long forgotten its reason.
The other is the power options. You should disable entering sleep mode. (It's not Windows XP specific.)

Ok I'm going to sleep now and the task still had quite a bit to go, so I just aborted it (sorry admins)

I am starting a fresh one as I leave the computer with the screensaver disabled this time, will report back later.

Success!

Finished a task in around 15 hours! Couldn't have done it without you all!

You're welcome!

PS:

I think the latest BOINC versions include a Task Property called "Progress Rate", which can help you get an idea of how fast the progress is progressing. I specifically worked with David to get this included, because I wanted to easily manually calculate completion time of GPUGrid tasks, without relying on BOINC estimation :)

So, it may be useful to you.

...the latest BOINC versions include a Task Property called "Progress Rate", which can help you get an idea of how fast the progress is progressing.

:) I know, math is still involved. Just wanted to point out "Progress Rate" is available, for completion estimations that aren't based on factors like estimated flops or DCF.

i have a gtx960 too, but long runs are done in less than 2 hours

i have a gtx960 too, but long runs are done in less than 2 hours