I don't know if I posted about this already, probably didn't - been taking a bit of a break from my website for a while aside from a few post about this, about that, you know, stuff and things. Anyway, to break that content void (however this is no guarantee of regular content, just an update post, to the one person who reads my blog, also my aunt and cousins who love my blog for some reason).
Anyway!
I have acquired a GA102-powered graphics board, but not just any, actually, you already knew that from the title of this post. Yes, it's a GeForce RTX 3090, the most powerful single GPU for 4K + RT (but awesomely, not the single most powerful GPU full stop) on planet Earth. What a beast. It also is quite powerful for compute, you know, with nearly 40 TFLOPS (measured 36) in FP32 throughput and over 800 GB/s actual bandwidth (less than 930~ theoretical peak assuming no latency of course). Where was I, oh yeah, I was just about to say how my PC has gone from being "Oh, a humble system that does the job" to... uh.
The best gaming spec money can buy technically, or at least, one of them. That is, Ryzen 9 5950X and RTX 3090 with an X570 Motherboard, full Gen4 support, 2TB Gen4 NVME and all the bells and goddamn whistles. This is not a flex, it's more of a "WTF?" moment. How does Sash even afford all this stuff, you might ask? Well, the thing is called Interest Free Credit, and having an awesome friend who lets me pay monthly in small instalments from hardware I buy from him! He recently bought a Razer Blade 14" Laptop with Ryzen 9 5900HX (Cezanne) and RTX 3080 Laptop (MaxQ, GA104, full, i.e lower clocked desktop 3070 Ti without GDDR6X), but all in a fourteen freakin' inch laptop! Mental.
Anyway! (Again, lol).
So I have broken out the 4K TV and slapped it near my bed and have been playing 4K max in every game I have, including Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition. The cool thing about that, is, the fact that I am now able to achieve my "end-game" desire of PC gaming. That was basically my wish to place Metro Exodus (by extension the Enhanced Edition), at the absolute max settings (Extreme + Ultra RT) at 3840x2160 pixels, that is, 4K. And well, the 3090 lets me do that. Awesomely, it even just about manages it without DLSS but DLSS 2.0 is pretty decent in MEEE so I enable it for a more fluid frame rate; I have finally plateaued in my "desires for PC gaming" and no longer "look forward" to any new gaming-focused hardware releases. That's a refreshing thought honestly, as I am going to enjoy Metro Exodus just a little bit more, with my 27th playthrough, this time at glorious 4K.
Aside from gaming, I also started Folding At Home again, and it turns out GA102 is a pretty mental beast with the insane FP32 throughput.
Some of the faster WUs are going through so quickly on this chip's enormous compute engine and buckets of memory bandwidth that it can achieve upwards of ~8 million Points Per Day flat out, with lows of 3-4 and averages of 5-6 depending on the WUs assigned. Mental. 350W is a lot, but the output is also much higher than my RTX 2080 Ti at 2 GHz at 310W, which capped about 5M PPD in the best case and around 4M average. Numbers are definitely going to be crunched, for sure. Also the older TITAN Xp (GP102, full) card I bought off my friend (still paying back! <3) is crunching too, so even though I had to... uh..
Wait, I did tell you about that, right? The fact that I sold four of my 3900 series processors? Well, three, because the chap that bought the 3900XT couldn't get it working in his motherboard, but in his defence he was super chill about it and very polite. So even though I got it back and it works fine for me, I accepted his return (PCs can be sucky sometimes). Anyway, instead of selling the chip on, I kept it, and it's crunching for SCIENCE!
This post is turning out to be a bit of a mess, like usual.
Okay, wow, I didn't even type about my 2950X? Right, I gotta change the post title from just "RTX 3090" to "something about the old girl being sold on to make funds available to purchase aforementioned 3090". There, it's done.
So on that subject; I sold the Ryzen Threadripper 2950X 16-core chungus that I had become so fond of. I sold her because she's just not efficient enough, while having a good chunk of multi-threaded performance with the 16 Zen+ cores and 32 threads, quad channel memory, and tons of platform I/O; she just couldn't do it at a power level that I felt was acceptable. Uncore on TR is a power hog, yo. So I sold her, her board and cooler on to someone else who can likely get more, better use from her. I also sold the three 3900Xs in my WCG Farm, and one kit of memory (4x16 2666 C16). I made about £1300 total which went entirely towards my awesome friend, Borb, as a down payment on the fact that I now have his Ryzen 7 5800X, motherboard, RAM, PSU, cooler, case, TITAN Xp and... you guessed it, RTX 3090 graphics card.
Since then, my WCG output had... uh... gone down a little from my "goal" of 1000 results/day on an MCM/OPN/ARP/SCC diet, which made me a bit sad. But! So much more number-crunching throughput had taken its place with the 3090 and TITAN Xp doing Folding at Home! SCIENCE! Quite a lot of science, actually. Anyway, let's have a small subheading for this bit shall we?
Sash's WCG "SCIENCE!" Farm, as of 03/08/2021.
Okay, so even minus the 2950X and three 3900Xs, my compute setup is still fairly chonky, with:
Ryzen 7 5800X (95W) - full time + occasional transcode
Ryzen 7 5800X (eco) - full time + MC Server
Ryzen 9 3900XT (4.025 locked) - full time dedicated
Ryzen 9 5950X (200W PBO) - part-time
That's a total of 32 Zen3 cores and 12 Zen2 cores, still crunching those numbers! I adjusted the frequency and performance targets of the remaining Zen2-based processor to help "offset" the reduction in cores (translation: I overclocked it). So those 12 Zen2 cores are now locked at just over 4 GHz, which is pretty fast (vs 3.3 on the 3900Xs before). The Zen3 cores, with that architecture's insane V/F curve run at like, 4.2+ all the time anyway, even with their hefty per-clock gains, so guess what?
I actually managed to break 1000 results/day with this! I mean, sure, I was on like 1500-2000 results/day at the height of my output, but 1000 was always my target (and the 48x Zen2 cores managed it at 3.3 GHz on their own), but it's nice to know I am still at my target SCIENCE output, and having the insanity of an RTX 3090 to play with, to, (which I have to remind you, in terms of RAW SCIENCE PER SECOND, easily outperforms the Zen2s in FPU-heavy parallel workloads with CUDA, it's a GPU, after all).
So, technically, overall, more Science is being done now, than before. With the 4 CPUs above doing their bit, and the two GPUs (TITAN Xp and RTX 3090), a lot of science is being done in Sash's room. For projects like Cancer, Alzheimer's, HIV/AIDS, COVID-19 and many more. Because SCIENCE ALWAYS FUCKING WINS! That's right.
Anyway, I am going to play some games this morning I think.
Laters, meow.
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