Graphics cards and Folding@Home

[The Borg]

Hi Guys,

Just brought my 1950PRO home and installed it. Had a quick go at FarCry. Quite an improvement.

Will be sorting out the ins and outs of Folding this weekend. See how this baby runs.

Damn it is a big card. Fan sticks our quick a bit and the card almost as long as the board. But it fits!!!

 

[The Borg]

OK, so how do I know that the GPU is running?

I downloaded a small zip file: "FAH5.91beta6-GPU-GUI" which gave me nice graphics, but did not install anything.

Also downloaded: "FAH5.91beta6-GPU-GUI". This installs to a folder and runs as a command line.

I have 2 BOINC programs running - about 35% each and mpiexec.exe - about 8% and csrss.exe about 20%.

fah.exe = 0%

Any comments please???

 

[waffleironhead]

Personally I prefer the console version as it uses less cpu power ime. The console version is currently version 6.00beta iirc.

When I have it running alongside dpad I go into the task amnager and set the priority of
FAHcore10.exe to belownormal and then set dpad to low, that way the gpu/cpu fah uses whatever it needs and then dpad uses whats left over. Seems to work pretty well for me.

 

[GLeeM]

Originally posted by: The Borg
I have 2 BOINC programs running - about 35% each and mpiexec.exe - about 8% and csrss.exe about 20%.

fah.exe = 0%

Any comments please???

fah.exe is the client, it doesn't do much work.

The core does all the science and will use up CPU time.

It needs some CPU time to feed or poll the GPU. F@H WUs are time sensitive, there is a deadline, if the results don't get sent back before the deadline no points will be issued. So make sure that you give it enough CPU resources to finish before the deadline.

 

[The Borg]

How do I know how well the GPU is doing? I see there have been lots of posts of current WU per time etc. How is this done?

The only impact on my system that I can see is the performance in Task Manager.

Please explain...

 

[Assimilator1]

I'm using the GUI client & in the task manager I'm currently seeing 'FaHCore_10.exe' using 49%(now down to 20-30%) CPU & ~164MB RAM (its currently stalled one DPAD!).
winFAH-GPU-GUI.exe is using 0% CPU & 11.5MB RAM.
So you should see those listed.

Also assuming you're using the GUi client you should see a red gearwheel type icon in the sys tray.
I just remembered I had problems when I 1st installed it ,it wasn't running, I can't remember how I fixed it now
Possibly a driver issue? is their a log file you can read?

waffleironhead
I thought the GUI client is virtually as fast as the console version when its minimised?
(Btw what's happened to your DIMES output?)

 

[GLeeM]

Having never run the GPU client I can't say for sure but the regular clients have a log file named "FAHlog.txt".

In that file you can see when the WU was downloaded and the name of the Project the WU is for and how long it takes to finish each percent.

You can find the deadline and how many points the WU is worth at the Currently Running Projects page.

 

[JeffCos]

Is there any benefit to a card that has a PCI-e interface as opposed to an AGP interface? As I've said before, I'm not building a new system for about another year. My current mobo does not have a PCI-e slot and i'm sure the new one will as all current mobos do. If I buy a an X1900 AGP now will i will I be missing out on something important that I could get if I wait till i perform the full build and get the PCI-e card?

 

[Assimilator1]

PCIe has more bandwidth but also higher latency ,performance wise their is no real benefit to PCIe over AGP on the cards available to AGP.

That would change if Nvidia ever released the 8800s on AGP ,which I doubt they ever will.
Only other benefit of PCIe is SLI & crossfire.

Btw you can get the X1950XT on AGP but IMO its not worth the extra cost over a X1950 Pro (about £25).

As ever with building PCs if you wait 3-6-12mths you will nearly always get the same product cheaper or a better product for about the same amount.

Is it worth you buying a decent AGP card now? that's down to you & how much you're likely to use it ,if you plan to fold &/or game a lot on it & you value that a lot then yes ,don't forget you could always sell it on seperatley when the time comes.
So I guess it depends how much you value the folding output of a 1950Pro.