F@H GPU Client Issues

[Pokey]

After having a problem with a GPU setup I looked through the FAH forums (funny seeing Sid there??.. ) and after a lot of reading posts have discovered that a lot of people doing the GPU WUs have a problem at one time or another and they mostly get the common

"Run: exception thrown in GuardedRun -- Gromacs cannot continue further"????????????.
??????..UNSTABLE_MACHINE

log message. Which is what I have been dealing with.

I then stumbled onto a message with a link to a blog from Vijay Pande:

http://folding.typepad.com/new...-certain-hardware.html

this helped me get a ?big picture? idea of all the forces at play and how the project software and video drivers can actually cause hardware problems to surface.

Others may already know this but it was a revelation to me, and I hope this is helpful to those just starting on this Beta stuff??????. It isn't always your fault.

Pokey (always learning something new, even when it is against my will)

 

[petrusbroder]

Thanks for an interesting read!

 

[Assimilator1]

Interesting, & posted just a day before my birthday .

What graphics card & PSU have you got Pokey?

 

[TAandy]

Originally posted by: Assimilator1
Interesting, & posted just a day before my birthday .

What graphics card & PSU have you got Pokey?

happy birthday

 

[Pokey]

Assimilator1:
The card is a PNY GeForce 8500GT which I put in an existing computer with a 250W power supply. The card manufacturer lists minimum requirement as 300W for the PSU.
So I am swapping out the power supply, and will report back if the UNSTABLE_MACHINE issue stops. I delayed doing this because the machine completed a WU successfully, and I gave it "one more chance"................... Silly me.

 

[PCTC2]

Yeah. Luckily I never had this problem. I have a 500W PSU and I keep a Kill-A-Watt handy at all times. At full CPU/GPU load, my computer draws 340W from a Q6600 and an 8800GTS G92. However, it used to have a 400W PSU and I was worried so I moved that one to my server and retired the 350W.

 

[VirtualLarry]

What about temps? With two 9600GSOs, I'm getting temps of 80C and 70C, for the top and bottom GPUs respectively.

Is there any way to control fan speeds on these things?

 

[Assimilator1]

Originally posted by: Pokey
Assimilator1:
The card is a PNY GeForce 8500GT which I put in an existing computer with a 250W power supply. The card manufacturer lists minimum requirement as 300W for the PSU.
So I am swapping out the power supply, and will report back if the UNSTABLE_MACHINE issue stops. I delayed doing this because the machine completed a WU successfully, and I gave it "one more chance"................... Silly me.

One 1 way to be sure before buying a PSU is to test the voltages under load with a digital multi meter.

Andy
Thanks mate .

PCTC2
Yea a 400w was cutting it a bit close for you .
I've got a Q6600 @3.35GHz with a X1950 Pro that draws ~270w from the mains when both are loaded, my TPII 430 is quite happy with that. Is your 340w draw with both GPU & CPU loaded?
Of course your 8800GTS is quite a bit more pokey than my card.

 

[PCTC2]

Yeah. Running 2 SMP clients and a GPU client for 7000k PPD, I got around 334-344W on my kill-a-watt. It used to be a 700W PSU back in the day BUT it fried during a powersurge and killed itself with my RAID array. Since then, it is now on the 500W PSU with only 2 HDDs.