Info OK, its done, my video card family is almost all replaced ! 15 million ppd out of 12 cards

[Markfw]

So in the last 2 weeks, I have sold 14 video cards. 2 1070's, 2 1080s' and 10 1080TI's for a total of $7,200(before fees and shipping). used. I am replacing it (so far) with 3 2060's and 5 2080TI's. for $6,650. Not sure the ppd difference, but the electric bill should be WAY lower. I still have 2 1080TI's and 2 1070TI's, It will be later this week before the new cards come in and are installed, and I have 2 computers off, so 64 threads lost for WCG (I hope the sprint is over) I don't have any video cards for them. I have one I tried, but it won't even post.

 

[Markfw]

BTW, there are 26, 6 or 8 pin power plugs on the cards that I sold, and 13 of the same in the new setup. That should be 1/2 the power usage. But I bet the ppd will suffer. I was at 18 million ppd, no way can I do that now. Of course even at 12 million ppd my power bill was $600 a month (hence the reason I did this). Tomorrow most of the new cards show up, and I mastered (I hope) the linux driver install on the first 2080TI, and it runs 1.6-1.9 million ppd. If I add that to my current 6 million ppd, I should be at 13 million ppd. I can live with that.

 

[Markfw]

I really hate UPS. Its 4:30 in the afternoon, its getting dark, and still no packages(they are out for delivery since 8:20 am today PST). It will be a late night trying to get these installed today, if I actually have time to do that.

Edit:6:30 at night... NO UPS yet. Also, I have 2 of my buyers with problems (even though all the cards were perfect when they left here) One says there was poor packaging and a part got bent (the little tabs at the bottom and the back what are outside the motherboard) and the other says 2 of the 3 fans are not working. I used about 7 layers of bubble wrap on every card ! And with no box damage, I fail to see how its possible that part got bent !! And the fans ???? Well, I have had fans that after working for a year without being turned off, when they were turned off, they did not want to restart. But these are EVGA !

I should NEVER do ebay, and just suck it up, no matter what it costs, this is ridiculous.

Edit 2: Its almost 7 pm, no cards... UPS is a no show.

 

[lane42]

Mark, can you get the guy 2 replacement fans from egva ?
And the other guy will just have to file a claim with UPS. Don't trust anyone.
How do you know he didn't drop it or something, Sometimes you just
have to be tough.

 

[Markfw]

OK, they came in about 7:15. First problem. Linux mint 18.3 does not know about the drivers, so I am re-installing from scratch mint 19 on computer number 1 (of 4)

As for the guy with the fans, somehow he got them working. The other guy I just said "bend it back". Have not heard from him since.

 

[Markfw]

OK, confused. Yje new $999 card on driver 418 is getting 2 million ppd, and its supposed to be slower than the XC one I have that is doing 1.5 million (different units)

I had to install driver 418 after the scratch install, then

sudo apt install ocl-icd-opencl-dev

Then finally it worked.

Anyway, after a long night, the other 3 get done tomorrow.

 

[TennesseeTony]

As for the guy with the fans, somehow he got them working.

The newer cards don't run all fans unless needed. Could that have been the case here? Guy installs card, fires it up, and sees only one fan spinning on a cold card?

One says there was poor packaging ... I used about 7 layers of bubble wrap on every card ! ... no box damage...

This guy has, uhm....testicular fortitude...to try and scam you for a partial refund.

 

[Howdy]

The newer cards don't run all fans unless needed. Could that have been the case here? Guy installs card, fires it up, and sees only one fan spinning on a cold card?

Or possibly trying to use Afterburner which does not work on EVGA GPUs with fans that can be independently controlled. (Which is why they are not so good for Linux)You HAVE to use EVGA Precision software for them to be controllable or they run at the default settings (certain temps) before coming on.

 

[lane42]

On my evga 2080ti Black, I can control each fan on the card by themselves in x server.
Theres a slider for each fan, it's pretty cool.

 

[Markfw]

OK, I have not finished the last 2060 yet, but I can say this, BOY what an experience. All linix boxes. Almost every one a different case to update. Some could use the driver manager, and go straight to 418 version, one had to be imaged from scratch, and a couple worked OK, all 18.3 or 19 Linux mint. I also had one that was running as low as 900k, and the max was 1.2 million ppd. After installing various drivers and packages for 415, then going BACK to 418, I am still at 1.3 million ppd, but I saw 1.7 at one point. Anyway, just 800k to go, and it looks like I will be at 15 million ppd when its all done. The big question is, what will be the power bill ? I should have almost halved the 1080TI power, so 5 1080ti cards off the power bill ? I will update when the last one is done with a picture of the farm.

 

[Markfw]

Help ! The one with low PPD, firsyt I thought it was running too hot (last water cooled enermax), so I replaced that, but the same thing happens. Powers off, and before I can get into bios, shuts off. PSU ?

 

[Markfw]

BTW, I saw 2.9 million ppd out of oe of my 2080TI's, its only running 2.5 million now...

 

[Markfw]

BTW, it was the PSU, trying to RMA the AX-1200i Corsair now, but the screen is messed up

Edit: I just checked my orders. Its probably a $99 refurb from 2016. The last new one was 2010 ! Either way, long time.

So its probably out of warranty anyway. Boy time flies when you are an old fart like me.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, I did PM you a PSU on ebay that was New, Corsair Platinum, and 1200W, for like $80. Maybe that will be helpful after all? It sounded like a mining shop vendor, clearing out some of their mining gear that they sold.

I was contemplating getting one or two myself, and then consolidating my RX 570 cards into one box with four GPUs.

Rosewill Rise Glow case was ~$70 recently on Newegg, that has 8 expansion slots, room for dual PSUs, and comes with three front 120mm LED fans, and takes EATX mobos.

Was thinking of digging out and re-purposing my MSI K9A2 Platinum AM2+ board, with a Phenom II X6 1045T 95W CPU and 4x2GB DDR2. It was one of the first affordable boards with four PCI-E x16 physical (PCI-E 2.0 x8 electrical) boards.

Used that one back in the day for crunching and F@H a few years worth of races. A little outdated, but still a workhorse board.

If anyone wants to make me a decent offer, I'd be open to hooking someone on the TeAm up with it too. Modern boards with evenly-spaced PCI-E x16 (physical) slots, seem to be a bit few and far between, unless you're shopping $350 boards.

 

[Markfw]

Well, I did PM you a PSU on ebay that was New, Corsair Platinum, and 1200W, for like $80. Maybe that will be helpful after all? It sounded like a mining shop vendor, clearing out some of their mining gear that they sold.

I was contemplating getting one or two myself, and then consolidating my RX 570 cards into one box with four GPUs.

Rosewill Rise Glow case was ~$70 recently on Newegg, that has 8 expansion slots, room for dual PSUs, and comes with three front 120mm LED fans, and takes EATX mobos.

Was thinking of digging out and re-purposing my MSI K9A2 Platinum AM2+ board, with a Phenom II X6 1045T 95W CPU and 4x2GB DDR2. It was one of the first affordable boards with four PCI-E x16 physical (PCI-E 2.0 x8 electrical) boards.

Used that one back in the day for crunching and F@H a few years worth of races. A little outdated, but still a workhorse board.

If anyone wants to make me a decent offer, I'd be open to hooking someone on the TeAm up with it too. Modern boards with evenly-spaced PCI-E x16 (physical) slots, seem to be a bit few and far between, unless you're shopping $350 boards.

Thanks for the reminder Larry. That EVGA I mentioned replaced the AX-1200. I know they are good, as I just just been reminded after looking back, that my other 4 AX-1200's are at least 9 years old, so I ordered this one. BTW, did you see the 28.50 shipping ? Its still worth $108. I have to have at least one spare, especially after this.

On a positive note, now that all the cards are settled in, the lowest ppd is 1.72m and the highest id 2.1m and averaging like 1.9million ! (5 2080TI's). The 2060's are 9.5m, 9m, and the bad one is 500k. I may have to look into that one. The 1070ti's are both about 700k, and the 1080TI's are about one million each. So I hope the electric bill works out. I will reply back when it comes in.

 

[ericlp]

I heard the newer RTX cards, folks were having heat issues (amazon reviews). Will be interesting to see how they pan out for you, hopefully they fixed those problems. Hopefully, they will run more efficiently and in turn, lower power bills. Keep us informed, one day I may be buying newer cards for the same purpose.

Just, who knows when that will be.

 

[Markfw]

I heard the newer RTX cards, folks were having heat issues (amazon reviews). Will be interesting to see how they pan out for you, hopefully they fixed those problems. Hopefully, they will run more efficiently and in turn, lower power bills. Keep us informed, one day I may be buying newer cards for the same purpose.

Just, who knows when that will be.

Well, EVGA are the best built, IMO, and my 1080TI's put out quite the heat, but one year later, they looked great.

 

[IEC]

For F@H my 2080 Ti (eVGA Black) seems to have very little boost clock loss down to 80% TDP or so. So reducing the power limit may be an option to min/max your PPD/W and reduce your cooling needs as summer approaches. Bonus: Quieter.

 

[Markfw]

I still have not figured out how to control fans on linux. I have had advice, and I could not get it to work. I get 40% more ppd on linux, and they run harder. Since they are all 3 year warranty, and I replace my cards every year or two, I just let them go.

As far as power usage, well, I will see in a few weeks, but not really for a month after that. (when its had a full month of the new config)

 

[Markfw]

BTW, I think I may have nailed the power usage. Its 55 degrees here, and I have all the windows and the screen door open, and its actually a little chilly in the house. And thats at 15 million ppd ! Loosing the heat and power of 6 1080TI's makes quite a difference. After the Christmas race, I had 3 of them shut down, as the house could not take the heat.

 

[lane42]

First thing to start with is to run the coolbits tweak to allow setting of the card fan controls.

sudo nvidia-xconfig --thermal-configuration-check --cool-bits=28 --enable-all-gpus



Just run this in Terminal and reboot. This will write a new xorg.conf file that set the the coolbits for each gpu. Then if you pull up the nvidia-xserver settings app, (you should just dock this to the Launcher permanently for easy access) you pull up the Thermal Setting for each card, select the checkbox for fan control and slide the fans speed slider to what you desire. You can also use the Power Miser settings to apply the overclock you want for core and memory transport speeds. You will be running in P2 state for each card as Nvidia's driver automatically hamstring the card when they detect a compute load being run. By overclocking the card in P2 state, you can get back some of the clocks the card would be running in P0 state if Nvidia didn't downclock them. Just be cautious and sensible with the overclock.

 

[StefanR5R]

If I remember correctly, some EVGA cards had own fan control that didn't work with the fan control bits of Nvidia's X.org driver. I don't know if this is true for any Turing based EVGA cards though.

 

[Markfw]

First thing to start with is to run the coolbits tweak to allow setting of the card fan controls.

sudo nvidia-xconfig --thermal-configuration-check --cool-bits=28 --enable-all-gpus



Just run this in Terminal and reboot. This will write a new xorg.conf file that set the the coolbits for each gpu. Then if you pull up the nvidia-xserver settings app, (you should just dock this to the Launcher permanently for easy access) you pull up the Thermal Setting for each card, select the checkbox for fan control and slide the fans speed slider to what you desire. You can also use the Power Miser settings to apply the overclock you want for core and memory transport speeds. You will be running in P2 state for each card as Nvidia's driver automatically hamstring the card when they detect a compute load being run. By overclocking the card in P2 state, you can get back some of the clocks the card would be running in P0 state if Nvidia didn't downclock them. Just be cautious and sensible with the overclock.

OK, I got this error when I ran the first time, then as you can see I ran it again:

mark@mark-TR5-linux:~$ sudo nvidia-xconfig --thermal-configuration-check --cool-bits=28 --enable-all-gpus
[sudo] password for mark:

Using X configuration file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf".

VALIDATION ERROR: Data incomplete in file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.
At least one Device section is required.

Package xorg-server was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `xorg-server.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
No package 'xorg-server' found
Option "ThermalConfigurationCheck" "True" added to Screen "Screen0".
Backed up file '/etc/X11/xorg.conf' as '/etc/X11/xorg.conf.nvidia-xconfig-original'
Backed up file '/etc/X11/xorg.conf' as '/etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup'
New X configuration file written to '/etc/X11/xorg.conf'

mark@mark-TR5-linux:~$ sudo nvidia-xconfig --thermal-configuration-check --cool-bits=28 --enable-all-gpus

Using X configuration file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf".
Option "ThermalConfigurationCheck" "True" added to Screen "Screen0".
Backed up file '/etc/X11/xorg.conf' as '/etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup'
New X configuration file written to '/etc/X11/xorg.conf'


How do I run the "nvidia-xserver settings app" ??

 

[Markfw]

OK, I got the app to run, but there is no checkbox under thermal settings.

 

[lane42]

Try to run it again. Just copy and paste this in Terminal
sudo nvidia-xconfig --thermal-configuration-check --cool-bits=28 --enable-all-gpus

then enter, password, enter, close Terminal and reboot. Go into x-server,thermal
settings. It works with RTX cards using on my evga black.