F@H n00bie with a Core i7 980X

[AdamK47]

With the help of Markfw900 and theAnimal I was able to setup the SMP version of F@H on my i7 980X. I also setup a GPU client on 1 of my 3 5870s. I tried getting all 3 GPUs running with CrossFire disabled. I believe I need some dummy adapters connected to the two cards not connected to the monitor. Every time I try to run in on the 2nd and 3rd GPU I get an error about the client not being able to connect to the core.

Anyway, preliminary results:

I started the GPU client with a -forcegpu ati_r700 switch. The CPU client was started with -smp 11 -advmethods -verbosity 9.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Run -bigadv in a VM after you activate the bonus. Run something small like DSL and allocate 4.8GB of RAM to it. It should use that all up quite handily, but performance shouldn't suffer. Then use the other 4 threads to run Windows SMP. It should be a bit hard on your RAM, but your production should increase by a lot. If you want to do this, it might be better to get another 3 sticks of DDR3. But the upside is that you should be pushing over 30k ppd.

 

[AdamK47]

Sheesh... sounds like a lot is involved. I simply wanted to see what PPD my system could do the way it is.

 

[theAnimal]

Are you also using the -gpu 0 (and 1 & 2) switch on the GPU clients?

 

[AdamK47]

I tried that with CrossFire disabled, but would also get the error on the 2nd and 3rd GPU. I enabled CrossFire and just ran in on one GPU.

I have an updated screenshot from the run over night with the GPU folding stopped.

 

[Cook1]

I could never get CPU folding + GPU folding to play nice if there was an ATI card involved, Nvidia + CPU folding no problem.

 

[theAnimal]

Looking at your estimated PPD, I would not bother folding on a single GPU.

 

[AdamK47]

Looking at your estimated PPD, I would not bother folding on a single GPU.

Is -smp 11 still a correct switch to set on the executable then?

 

[theAnimal]

Is -smp 11 still a correct switch to set on the executable then?

Yes. From what I've read at foldingforum this gives a significant PPD increase over -smp 12.

 

[AdamK47]

Really? That's odd since it not using 100% of the CPU.

 

[GLeeM]

Really? That's odd since it not using 100% of the CPU.

I agree it is odd.
And it does look like you would get more points (and use less electricity) only running CPU.

@Animal: Was the -smp 11 results better because of running GPU too?

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Really? That's odd since it not using 100% of the CPU.

Not really. A3 WUs are thread-based. If you're using your PC for something else, for example GPU folding, then one thread will run slower than the others. So aside from having to make all the threads run at that speed, extra resources need to be used to integrate these threads to make sure they stay in sync.

 

[AdamK47]

 

[theAnimal]

@Animal: Was the -smp 11 results better because of running GPU too?

No. From reading at foldingforum, I've noticed that systems with more than 8 cores sometimes get better results when there are less threads than cores.

 

[theAnimal]

Nice!

 

[Golgatha]

I could never get CPU folding + GPU folding to play nice if there was an ATI card involved, Nvidia + CPU folding no problem.

I was able to get them to play nice, but the setup involved for ATI is a PITA to get it all working correctly and the PPD is abysmal compared to nVidia. Due to heat issues, I could only run one GPU, be it ATI or nVidia anyway, so I just gave up on dealing with GPU folding on my main desktop. The other factor was that CPU + GPU made my computer very, very sluggish for my wife to use during the daytime, and she often would often close them both out. Never could train her to remember to bring them back up. I understand her frustration though, I close the GPU client on my laptop when I need to use it due to it killing the 2D graphics performance of my system. GPU folding@home just doesn't seem to release resources as well as the CPU clients in practice.

 

[Cook1]

Yeah, I threw in a 9600GT into my main rig for the Chimp Challenge. My 5850 Toxic is laying in it's box next to my desk...sad that the lil GT performs PPD wise slightly above my Toxic and can fold along with the SMP client.