setting up folding@home on quad question

[cmdrdredd]

I've got it working and I understand all the flags. My question is simple.

Is it better to run 2 clients with the -smp flag, two clients with -smp 2, or one client with -smp 4?

Also should I do anything with CPU affinity lock? Should I remove that and let them use any available core?

 

[GLeeM]

You have me questioning myself, so someone correct me here if I am wrong - I think the WinSMP client can only and always uses four cores.

I think it is the Linux client that can use the "-smp #" flag (and it may be four or higher?)

If you can run VMWare Player 3.0, Linux is the most efficient client, ppd wise. There is an easy to set-up virtual machine, find link here: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=323860

 

[cmdrdredd]

so it's only 4 or more then? I must have misunderstood.

Also when running GPU Folding the video card squeals something fierce. That's normal from what I've read, but will it have any ill effects long term?

 

[GLeeM]

Yes, the WinSMP only and always does four.

Is the video card squeal from the fan?

Are you running one or two GPU clients? It didn't used to be that one client could use both GPUs, but things change fast.
For others that might be interested in a recent change, you can now run two cards with different number of shaders without one slowing down!

 

[Insidious]

The (Windows) SMP client will run properly (but slowly) on a dual core system, but you can't make it only use 2 cores if there are more available.

I didn't know they had fixed the mis-matched GPU Shader# thingy... Thanks GLeeM!

-Sid

PS: I don't think the squealing is damaging.... just annoying. (only some video cards do it)

 

[cmdrdredd]

The (Windows) SMP client will run properly (but slowly) on a dual core system, but you can't make it only use 2 cores if there are more available.

I didn't know they had fixed the mis-matched GPU Shader# thingy... Thanks GLeeM!

-Sid

PS: I don't think the squealing is damaging.... just annoying. (only some video cards do it)

Yeah I had read it on EVGA forums, xtremesystems.org, and a lot of others. The thing that I'm unsure of is if it's going to cause long term harm to the card. Of course, EVGA offers me a life time warranty...

I'm running two GPU clients. One on each GTX 295 core, I had tried running 3 with one running on a 9600GT but I do not have a dummy connector or another monitor plug to use.