Folding Chit-Chat

[nibbler]

Got my shaders stable at around 1950mhz Big boost to the ppd.

[Tattysnuc]

Think I may have fouynd the cause of my low scores on Fermi...

http://www.maximumpc.com/forums/view...?f=32&t=110164

Going to leave it running as is for now, and have a look around at the weekend. I've got to do some re-plumbing etc so going to make the most of the down time (if I ever get any) to weasel out the problem. So until then, its SLI GTX 480's running at 2/3rds capacity due to a problem with the driver!

Yay!

I've tried re-installing as suggested, but no change. 3d marks vantage shows my system running at 100% when that's running so I guess that it's not a driver problem. Might try re-doing the folding client as the problem appears to be isolated to that...

[Tattysnuc]

I've tried re-installing as suggested, but no change. 3d marks vantage shows my system running at 100% when that's running so I guess that it's not a driver problem. Might try re-doing the folding client as the problem appears to be isolated to that...

until I've re-built by server, and nailed this performance issue, I'm going to leave my main 980x rig offline as it's just not running right. The Vantage benchmarks and everything else that uses the GTX 480's works fine, just not folding. It's got to be one of three things:

My software
My overclock.
My Hardware.

I think I can eliminate it jkust being my hardware as the cards were both tested in a different rig prior to watercooling, and, although the scores were higher, they were not 15k, but 11k - about the same as my GTX 295 gets. Since the new work units came through (OPENMM) the rate has dropped, and I've had to back off the speed to stock just to get them to complete. This is where I first noticed the 66% core utilisation.

While I benchmark the cards I get 100% utilisation, and scores indicative of the kit that I have. Now, I know I'm folding on the CPU AND both GTX 480's which should theoretically starve them of processor time, but that has a negligible effect. In fact, I've run the machine WITHOUT the processor job running, and it makes no difference the the points production rate.

Power saving options in Windows are all set so that the system never sleeps - it's watercooled, so that makes no difference to the temperatures as it sits there quite hapilly at 60-70C happily chugging through the units, without any NAN's/UNSTABLE MACHINEs being reported.

I'm going to be moving the processor from this machine onto a new board which will be a dedicated folding machine/file server so I'm going to see if rebuilding from the ground up resolves my issues, before I start using it again in ernest, unless someone comes up with something, which'll mean I'm going to be producing considerably fewer points over the next couple of weeks.

[1stRaven]

until I've re-built by server, and nailed this performance issue, I'm going to leave my main 980x rig offline as it's just not running right. The Vantage benchmarks and everything else that uses the GTX 480's works fine, just not folding. It's got to be one of three things:

My software
My overclock.
My Hardware.

I think I can eliminate it jkust being my hardware as the cards were both tested in a different rig prior to watercooling, and, although the scores were higher, they were not 15k, but 11k - about the same as my GTX 295 gets. Since the new work units came through (OPENMM) the rate has dropped, and I've had to back off the speed to stock just to get them to complete. This is where I first noticed the 66% core utilisation.

While I benchmark the cards I get 100% utilisation, and scores indicative of the kit that I have. Now, I know I'm folding on the CPU AND both GTX 480's which should theoretically starve them of processor time, but that has a negligible effect. In fact, I've run the machine WITHOUT the processor job running, and it makes no difference the the points production rate.

Power saving options in Windows are all set so that the system never sleeps - it's watercooled, so that makes no difference to the temperatures as it sits there quite hapilly at 60-70C happily chugging through the units, without any NAN's/UNSTABLE MACHINEs being reported.

I'm going to be moving the processor from this machine onto a new board which will be a dedicated folding machine/file server so I'm going to see if rebuilding from the ground up resolves my issues, before I start using it again in ernest, unless someone comes up with something, which'll mean I'm going to be producing considerably fewer points over the next couple of weeks.

I've just ordered up my two 6870's card for a crossfire setup so might try getting my home rig working. Just a pain that AMD/ATI are not that good for folding.

[Tattysnuc]

Nice setup. Any particular games in mind?

Seems very slow round here lately espcially the last few weeks....

I've had no response on the folder of the year thing, apart from yours (1stRaven) and Niblers post that followed. I know that there's 27 active folders here, but you'd never know it judging from the responses.

I'm thinking of heading back over to Bit-Tech in the new year - at least you get your name in the magazine each month.

Can't even get the Folding PPD on a card review from Hexus despite numerous requests...

And what's happened to Nick's videos? Thought he was dead cheesy at first, but he has definitely grown on me. Last article I remember seeing was about exams...

[Terbinator]

What is the issue with AMD cards and folding? Is it the client at fault or the architecture of the cards as they seem pretty good in other GPGPU scenarios.

[Tattysnuc]

To quote the F@H pages

"The second generation GPU core, aka GPU2, for ATI hardware (April 2008)

After running the original GPU core for quite some time and analyzing its results, we have learned a lot about running GPGPU software. For example, it has become clear that a GPGPU approach via DirectX (DX) is not sufficiently reliable for what we need to do. Also, we've learned a great deal about GPU algorithms and improvements. One of the really exciting aspects about GPU's is that not only can they accelerate existing algorithms significantly, they get really interesting in that they can open doors to new algorithms that we would never think to do on CPUs at all (due to their very slow speed on CPUs, not but GPU's).

After much effort, we have taken all we've learned about GPUs from the first generation client and produced a second generation client. This new client appears to be faster, more reliable, and has more scientific functionality. The preliminary results so far from it look very exciting, and we're excited to now open up the client for FAH donors to run.

The second generation GPU core for NVIDIA (June 2008)

In collaboration with NVIDIA, we have released a GPU2 core for NVIDIA hardware. "



It looks like NVIDIA are just working with these guys. The fact they have CUDA as an interface rather than using an openGL (I think that's right) interface means that they can address and program specifically.

[Tattysnuc]

It'd be great if AMD did do some work on these. I was so close to buying 2 of the 5970's when the GTX 480 was launched because of the power supply requirements. It was folding that held me back, so the sooner that AMD realise that there is a market out there and they launch some high end kit (ie Dual processor overclocking boards, multiple PCI lanes etc) suitable for folding as opposed to hosting multiple NVidia boards, and using a low power athlon processor.

Surely there's got to be a market out there for it if eVGA and Asus can charge £300 per high end board!

[Terbinator]

Don't bit-tech use and Athlon II X2 and 890FX motherboard for their folding rig of the month?

[nibbler]

Don't go to bit-tech! You'll be letting us (the few here who do care) down and hexus folding will die completely. Bit-tech don't need yur help anyway, and I'd be ashamed to have my name in customPC
And essentially, you are a big name in a team that's improving here, at bit-tech you'd be anonymous even if you managed consistent 80kppd.

[Englander]

I think we really need more awareness at Hexus; we're just a tny little sub forum tucked away, frankly, in quite a well hidden place. To compare that to bit-tech forums, there's a direct linb=k to the forum at the very top of the page (the Hexus equivalent being the links to "Trust" and "Community" etc.)

Now that it's nice and cold in the winter, and the recession is over (and its relevancy to higher electricity bills), more people may be willing to start. The last couple of times I've seen a push for new folders in Hexus.Hardware, for example, those are the two main excuses that people come up with.

Maybe get a story posted on the Hexus front page saying how we set a monthly record - something just to make people notice that there is an ever more active folding community.

[Tattysnuc]

Don't bit-tech use and Athlon II X2 and 890FX motherboard for their folding rig of the month?

That's what they recommend if you are going to get into folding. Not quite sure how they came to that decision as you can build a much more powerful folding rig by using an Intel platform, and it could be used also for other purposes. That rig would ONLY be able to fold, and then you'd be limited by the number of slots, which in turn any upgrade due to newer technology would result in multiple mediocre cards being ebayed/binned off. It'd be more realistic to gte a Phenom 2 6 core or i7 9xx series and overclock with a single GFX card and a high spec PSU. At least that way you can upgrade later when those cards become less "bleedin' edge" and go SLI/multiple card. No redundant kit that way...

I'm waiting for the 6 core 970 to come down in price before I equip my other machines with them. If a decent AMD processor was to come out I'd be tempted with that, but I'm making my new years resolution not to buy any more computer kit, and to work on the projects that I've got outstanding.

1. W/C Media centre build (iTX) into Shuttle case. (Q6600/4gb/GTX8800)
2. Server refresh (980X + 295 Gtx + GTX 285+ 4tb Raid 5 file server @4.17 Ghz). Maybe with 2 GTX 295's if I can "repair" my spare.
3. Gaming System rebuild (incorporating homebrew version of the Boreas once all the bits land) into modded Obsidian 700D (GTX 480 SLI + Core i7 920/950 depends what overclocks best)

That leaves me with a spare UD5 Gigabyte motherboard and whichever is the lowest overclocking of my 2 920's and a 950 ES to go on ebay, and a spare 6gb ram which I MAY stick back in my server to help with BIGADV units.

Got loads to be getting on with, but no bloomin' time to do it.

What's the link with folding? All these will be working for Hexus when done... Be nice to get some sort of coverage on the main Hexus site rather than just in the forums.

Any suggestions how we might be able to achieve that?
Might start taking some pictures and build up a project log

[Terbinator]

Email/PM one of the Hexus guys? Get pics up of all the Folding rigs

[1stRaven]

Nice setup. Any particular games in mind?

No set games but gaming across 3 22" monitors requires some power.

[1stRaven]

Email/PM one of the Hexus guys? Get pics up of all the Folding rigs

I'll drop the news team a line.

[Terbinator]

Just applied some MX2 on my card to get the temps down when Folding (assuming its better than the stuff it replaced, current temps suggest its the same), hoping to be back up 'n running this weekend once my uni works out the way for christmas.