Folding@Home

[P5-133XL]

QRB has been re-instituted for client-type beta. A new GPU core_17 that works much better for AMD cards than Nvidia.

 

[ddrueding]

P5: I'm afraid I don't know enough to understand your post?

 

[P5-133XL]

There is a new beta GPU project P7661. It is using a brand new core (The part of folding that actually does the work) called Core_17. With this new project, Stanford is again giving quick return bonus (QRB) points in addition to the base points. Remember the p8057's that gave such good PPD that they discontinued: this is the same thing.

Unfortunately, the new core runs on AMD GPU's much better than Nvidia GPU's. AMD's get more points, and run at basicly 0% CPU while Nvidia's get less points and use an entire CPU core.

http://proteneer.com/blog/?p=1767
http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=23845

This core_17 is what I was testing that was giving 0 points dropping my team PPD so low. And now that they have been released I'm getting points and the PPD's are really sucking. I'm getting 13.5K/11.5K PPD on my GTX 460@825 with the QRB bonus and I'm used to about 17K PPD w/o the QRB bonus. People with AMD cards are reporting much higher PPD's.

Does that explain it better?

 

[ddrueding]

That is awesome. Thanks. Would it benefit to run the new core on my GTX690s? Or is it roughly the same as standard for nVidia GPUs?

 

[P5-133XL]

All I can say is to try it and compare. I don't know of any tester had a 690. You know what you normally get so you would be the best judge.

All you should need is an expert client option added

Name: client-type
Value: beta

 

[ddrueding]

Ah, still have that value from before. No 7661s yet, but I will keep my eye out.

Thanks!

 

[Handruin]

As a few noticed I've tagged back in to try and help support the team for folding @ home. I'm running the folding @ home client v7.3.6 with two slots. My first slot is running on my GTX 560 448 core GPU that I have slightly OCed to 830MHz. It appears to be quite stable for several days in a row running around 72 degrees C. I'm also running my SMP for CPU on the second slot with it configured to use a value of 6. This may be the wrong way to configure but it was producing what I felt like better PPD that when I set it to a value of 3. It's letting some of the hyper-threaded cores to do some work and leaving one physical and one logical to manage the GPU. If that logic is unsound, please let me know your thoughts.

I hope once I can figure out what to do about the noise levels of my Intel server sporting dual socket Xeons I'd like to run that with F@H and pop in my older 8800GT GPU for some hopefully added PPD. That's all I have to offer for now. Once it gets too warm I may need to shut down the GPU but I won't know until the temperature changes. I considered getting a second GPU of the same make/model but the price has gone up a bunch since I originally bought mine that I don't think it's worth getting the same card any more. If I happen to see a deal on another one I'll pick one up to increase my PPD output.

 

[CougTek]

Is your dual-socket server a rackmount one? If not, there's no reason it shouldn't be quiet too. What model is it (motherboard if it's not an OEM box)?

I see no problem with your setup if it's stable and doesn't slow down your machine too much. Like you might have read, the current batch of GPU beta units are a lot more rewarding on AMD's graphic cards. There's little reason to rush getting another Nvidia card right now. Save your money and wait at least until they release official units with bonus for Nvidia-made GPUs again.

 

[Handruin]

Is your dual-socket server a rackmount one? If not, there's no reason it shouldn't be quiet too. What model is it (motherboard if it's not an OEM box)?

I see no problem with your setup if it's stable and doesn't slow down your machine too much. Like you might have read, the current batch of GPU beta units are a lot more rewarding on AMD's graphic cards. There's little reason to rush getting another Nvidia card right now. Save your money and wait at least until they release official units with bonus for Nvidia-made GPUs again.

Yes, it's a 2U rack-mount Godzilla-sounding jerk. The host is:

Intel SR2500 (S5000PAL motherboard)
16GB RAM DDR2 PC2 5300 ECC (8x 2GB)
2x Intel Xeon E5345 (2.33 GHz 4 cores, 8MB cache)
6 x 136GB 3.5" Seagate 15KRPM SAS in RAID 50 (configurable)
2 x 750W power supplies (redundant)
2x 1Gb NICs

There were some suggestions in the Something Random thread to replace the 10K RPM fans and do a heatsink + fan actually on the chips rather than rely on forced air cooling through the chassis. I've been too busy to bother researching ways to do this properly. I'll get around to it eventually. I don't even know if those Xeons are worth folding on. They're a couple generations older but still very usable for other purposes.

 

[CougTek]

I personnally wouldn't invest too much in a four-years-old computer, server or not. That machine, while still quite capable, won't produce more than 10K points per day, I believe. That's about as much as a Sandy/Ivy Bridge Core i5. The server will consume significantly more electrical power and while you can reduce the noise of the CPU/board cooling, the PSU fans and SAS drives will still produce a significant amount of noise. I would use it for other purposes than running the FAH client or sell it and replace it with something less disturbing in a house environment if not needed otherwise.

One idea would be to install it on a wall with the front downward so it pushes hot air bottom-to-top, much like DDrueding did with his coffin. You could put noise-insulating panels around it and only leave a bottom and top openings for the air to circulate.

On a different subject, Mark passed the 70 million points milestone, an unmatched amount in our team.

 

[P5-133XL]

Slow and steady wins the race.

 

[Stereodude]

I'm pretty sure fast and steady wins the race.

 

[CougTek]

Not in this case. Except for the short two-months burst Mark had last Fall, his production never truly exploded in the past three years (I don't remember before that, except that he's been leading the team in points for at least the last five or six years at least). The closest I've been to Mark was in May 2011 at 1.7 milion points behind. After that, my production became eratic while his remained constant. In fact, he produced more points than I did from October 2011 up to last January. He took 11 million on me last year, which is about what separates us today.

Here's a graph of Mark's production for the last 4 years :

And here's mine :

He's had much less variance than I did and that's why he's still in front.

Graphs are from FreeDC's website. Thanks a lot to them.

 

[P5-133XL]

For the first 4-5 years, I was 8th-9th in production on the team. There has been many times that I've been massively out produced by individuals. I've never invested significant amounts of money but what was purchased I did optimize for folding at the time. Matter of fact I just made the most expensive folding purchase I've ever made (a used GTX 580 off Ebay for $200 to replace a GTX 460 that died) I'm pretty sure that most everyone here has better HW currently considering the only CPU's I have are a Q9450, a Q6600 and a 3.2GHz P4 which are currently horrible for folding so I bought inexpensive GTX 460's and never paid more than $100 for them. People pause and people quit, I didn't. That is really the only secret.

 

[P5-133XL]

Oh, and last January my production dropped because I allocated aprox. 1/2 of my total capability to testing a new folding core that gave no points (at least until a couple of weeks ago). That's now done and so I'm back to getting my normal points.

 

[Handruin]

I personnally wouldn't invest too much in a four-years-old computer, server or not. That machine, while still quite capable, won't produce more than 10K points per day, I believe. That's about as much as a Sandy/Ivy Bridge Core i5. The server will consume significantly more electrical power and while you can reduce the noise of the CPU/board cooling, the PSU fans and SAS drives will still produce a significant amount of noise. I would use it for other purposes than running the FAH client or sell it and replace it with something less disturbing in a house environment if not needed otherwise.

One idea would be to install it on a wall with the front downward so it pushes hot air bottom-to-top, much like DDrueding did with his coffin. You could put noise-insulating panels around it and only leave a bottom and top openings for the air to circulate.

On a different subject, Mark passed the 70 million points milestone, an unmatched amount in our team.

Thanks for the feedback on the server I mentioned. My originally plan was to play with the machine as an ESXi box for experimental reasons but I thought if it could help with folding I would. I'll see if there is a way I can reduce the noise and then stick it in the basement where it's naturally cooler anyway. I don't really wanted it mounted on the wall like David does.

Congrats to Mark for passing the 70mil mark. I'm definitely not consistent with my F@H production like you are.

 

[ddrueding]

Mine are no longer mounted on the wall. There is now a 4-post 19" server rack in the living room that is all water-cooled with the radiator in the garage. You know you want a piece of that action

 

[CougTek]

There's another Bozo in Team Picard. He started folding a few months before our Bozo did and he has roughly the same amount of points (~5.8 million versus ~6.3 for our own clown). Odd.

 

[P5-133XL]

Since I have not given my folding specs for quite a while I thought I'd mention what I currently am folding with.


My current folding HW:

Currently:

1. Ga-X48-DS4 with a Q9450@stock, 4GB RAM, 2x GTX 580@825MHz running Windows Server 2008 SP1
2. Ga-X48-DS4 with a Q6600@stock, 3GB RAM, 2x GTX 460@825MHz running Windows 8
3. Dell Dimension 8400 P4@3.2GHz, 1GB Ram, 1x GTX 460@825MHz running Windows 7 SP1
4. Dell Dimension 8400 P4@3.2GHz, 1GB Ram, 1x GTX 460@825MHz running Windows 7 SP1

Unless testing something specific with the CPU, I am only GPU folding.

 

[Clocker]

Have there been any significant breakthroughs, attributable to F@H , that have led to something of useful to society to warrent the expense you guys have incurring over the years? Or is it just for "fun" ?

 

[P5-133XL]

Is this the type of stuff you are asking about?

Wikipedia article on F@H
Awards
Papers

 

[Clocker]

I can see ton's have papers have been written and a foundation for a breakthrough is being built. I was just wondering if something like 'because of the work of F@H, a cure for X-disease was able to be developed'.

I certainly don't intend to take anything away from the project. I was just wondering if anything specific that benefits the 'average joe' who needs some kind of cure for something has come from this work yet.

 

[P5-133XL]

At this point it is still all pure research with no cures or even treatments developed though it is directed at understanding how folding affects specific diseases.

 

[Bozo]

Have there been any significant breakthroughs, attributable to F@H , that have led to something of useful to society to warrent the expense you guys have incurring over the years? Or is it just for "fun" ?

If you remember, right after 9-11, someone was mailing out Anthrax powder. The Anthrax was an odd strain with no known cure. The F@H organization switched to finding a cure. We did!! It was even announced on the evening news.

 

[Bozo]

I have had too many family members and friends die from cancer. A family member is going through Chemo and radiation treatments right now. If just one person is cured of this bastard disease because of F@H, then it's worth it.

 

[CougTek]

Congratulations to Bozo for overtaking Fushigi.

And Mark has decided to give me trouble rejoining him at the top of the team. I have less GPU than he does, but my CPU should still give me the edge.

My setup :

1x Core i7 3770 [Linux - Lubuntu 12.10]
1x Core i7 2600K [Windows 8 Pro]
1x Core i7 960 with a GeForce GTX 570 (originally had 2, but one died) [Windows 8 Pro]
1x Xeon 5570 (almost like an i7 940) with a GeForce GTX 580 [Windows 7 Pro]
1x GeForce GTX 580 in a box with an Athlon II X3 435. Only GPU folding on this one. [Windows 7 Pro]

Yes, I spent more than Mark on my FAH farm. None are overclocked, even if I should do it on the 2600K.

 

[CougTek]

I've had to pause the contribution of my most productive system last night. After a BIOS flash, it no longer boot in Windows. I'm running tests on it now. I hope it'll be back online before the end of the day. Sorry in advance for the dismal numbers I'll post today.

 

[P5-133XL]

My computer room is getting too hot during the days. As such, I'm going to shut down some computers, till it is more comfortable in there. So my PPD may drop some. Opportunity for someone to do some catching-up.

Specifically I shut down my two Dell P4's and their two GTX 460's.

 

[Handruin]

Congratulations to Bozo for overtaking Fushigi.

And Mark has decided to give me trouble rejoining him at the top of the team. I have less GPU than he does, but my CPU should still give me the edge.

My setup :

1x Core i7 3770 [Linux - Lubuntu 12.10]
1x Core i7 2600K [Windows 8 Pro]
1x Core i7 960 with a GeForce GTX 570 (originally had 2, but one died) [Windows 8 Pro]
1x Xeon 5570 (almost like an i7 940) with a GeForce GTX 580 [Windows 7 Pro]
1x GeForce GTX 580 in a box with an Athlon II X3 435. Only GPU folding on this one. [Windows 7 Pro]

Yes, I spent more than Mark on my FAH farm. None are overclocked, even if I should do it on the 2600K.

That's a good setup. Mine is rather plain in comparison:

1x Core i7 860 [Windows 7 Ult]
1x GTX 560 448 cores

 

[CougTek]

I think I've found a way to restart my contribution on the Xeon X5570 system. It still isn't working ok, but as long as I don't need to restart it, it is stable enough to run the client. I hope it will help me to keep the pace with Mark and maybe eat some of his lead too.

Handruin, are the GTX 560 Ti and the i& 860 on the same machine?

 

[P5-133XL]

PG has more plans to increase PPD for GPU's.

 

[CougTek]

I see no good news in there for us as we all have Nvidia GPUs and the new FAHcore 17 won't help us at all. it looks like we won't see the bonus we had last Fall when GPU folding. I guess 60K ppd per GPU was too good to last.

BTW, is projet 7645 that huge or is my X5570 simply aweful? I get 1h10 minutes per frame and a 4.87days projected completion time. I don't think it's normal. The GTX 580 in that system is running normally though (~30K ppd).

 

[P5-133XL]

There's something wrong. I looked at others, and am seeing much smaller TPF's on weaker CPU's. Try adjusting the number of cores to 6. It shouldn't do much harm and it may do great good. What you are losing would be two virtual cores that do not have FP units and are not very productive for folding. What you gain is an allowance for those cores to do non-SMP folding work. SMP folding is highly synchronized and if some other process is using a core that is folding that core will be suspended because everything else has a higher priority and all the other non-suspended SMP folding cores will just wait for the suspended core to come back. I speculate that you are running your GTX 580 on the beta core_17 which uses a full CPU core and that will kill your SMP productivity.

I say SMP:6 rather than SMP:7 because some WU's really dislike SMP:7 and will just outright fail.

P.S. my GTX 580's are each getting 43K PPD on Core_17

You didn't read that post about GPU's very closely. Sometime within a month, PG intends to release a new core that will significantly increase PPD for both Nvidia and AMD. Further, they are planning a Pure CUDA core just for Nvidia.

 

[CougTek]

Try adjusting the number of cores to 6.

How do I do that on the new client 7.3.6? I knew how to modify this on the console client, but I've not been following much the options on the GUI interface. I suppose i have to modify the CPU slot, but with what line? "client-type" "SMP:6"?

 

[P5-133XL]

How do I do that on the new client 7.3.6? I knew how to modify this on the console client, but I've not been following much the options on the GUI interface. I suppose i have to modify the CPU slot, but with what line? "client-type" "SMP:6"?

Use the systray folding-icon to load the Advanced-Control (used to be called FAHControl). From there, click configure and go to the slots tab. double-click on the CPU slot and adjust the number of threads/cores from -1 (auto) to 6 and save.

 

[P5-133XL]

More detail about 2x speedup with core_17

 

[Handruin]

I think I've found a way to restart my contribution on the Xeon X5570 system. It still isn't working ok, but as long as I don't need to restart it, it is stable enough to run the client. I hope it will help me to keep the pace with Mark and maybe eat some of his lead too.

Handruin, are the GTX 560 Ti and the i& 860 on the same machine?

Yes they are both on the same machine.

 

[CougTek]

Use the systray folding-icon to load the Advanced-Control (used to be called FAHControl). From there, click configure and go to the slots tab. double-click on the CPU slot and adjust the number of threads/cores from -1 (auto) to 6 and save.

I did that, but it didn't change much. The TPF was already down to ~50 minutes. The unit should take approximately 3 days to complete. I know something is probably wrong, but I'll let it go like this anyway. That system is flaky since I first updated the BIOS (and I re-updated it afterward without improvement). Now that I've finally been able to boot it and run the folding client, I'd rather have it contribute subpar than not contribute at all.

Thanks for the help.

 

[P5-133XL]

Do you have HT disabled in the BIOS?

 

[CougTek]

No, it's enabled. The only way I'll fix this entirely will be by burning a BIOS that won't end up being corrupted like the last two times I did it on that system. I'll work on this later.