OFFICIAL: SlickDeals.net Folding@Home Team Getting Started, Discussion, Bragging, and Community Support Thread

Affinity Changer
http://distributed.org.ua/forum/i...topic=1149

Quote from dempa : Affinity Changer http://distributed.org.ua/forum/i...topic=1149

Quote from PhucilliJerry : It should use both cores but not 100% unless you use the affinity changer, anyone have a link to that? I don't do SMP in windows anymore. Linux is much more efficient and stable

folding kings amongst men! ty.

Quote from dempa : Ok, I'm sure it has been asked before, but what it the best investment re gfx card and cpu for most ppd/$?

Quote from dempa : Ok, I added a small contribution to the team: +1 9600gso. Although, a XFX 768MB DDR2 version which I suspect might be slower than 384MB DDR3 standard. Overclocking it with Rivatuner - any advice on optimal settings?

Dempa, your PPD is sick, 61st out of ALL folders.
Very cool seeing a 'Slickdeals' member listed in the top 100.

Quote from In_Like_Tim : Dempa, your PPD is sick, 61st out of ALL folders. Very cool seeing a 'Slickdeals' member listed in the top 100.

i would like to know as well. i started using riva tuner and i hear that the higher the shader setting the better for F@H?

also what program does everyone use to benchmark the stability of an GPU OC? before i was using ati tool but i cant have both ati tool and rivatuner running. and ati tool doesnt allow unlinked OCing of the core and shader.
and any recommendations on a gpu monitor that can sit within my tray that is not ati tool?

i currently have two OC-ed profile speeds and i wonder which would be best for f@H?:
1) 680 core/ 1960 shader/ 800 (1600) ram
2) 820 core/ 1640 shader/ 855 (1710) ram

although again i need to bench it to make sure its stable.

Quote from dempa : Affinity Changer http://distributed.org.ua/forum/i...topic=1149

bleh, sorry again, but i dled the affinity changer and installed it. at first i thought it worked and i left my computer but now looking at it , both cores are not being pushed.

heck one core is not even maxed all the way. perhaps 90% all the time.

any other ideas? i would like to run the SMP version at full force.

any information i am omitting ?


EDIT UPDATE: i was able to resolve it. i just needed to restart it for it to verify the flags. sorry about the numerous questions. a bit green to this. but i am happy that now i am folding with full force.


p/s.: still wondering about the optimal settings for gpu though

I just setup F@H on one of my PCs (with Machine ID = 1) and then on my PS3... I changed the user id and team to match my account here, but it never asked which Machine ID I wanted on the PS3--and its nowhere in the settings. Am I screwing myself over on points here? Do I need to change my PC machine id to 2?

Quote from MOkoFOko : I just setup F@H on one of my PCs (with Machine ID = 1) and then on my PS3... I changed the user id and team to match my account here, but it never asked which Machine ID I wanted on the PS3--and its nowhere in the settings. Am I screwing myself over on points here? Do I need to change my PC machine id to 2?

Don't worry, you're fine. MachineID is only computer specific to be able to distinguish between multiple clients on the very same machine.

Quote from dempa : Don't worry, you're fine. MachineID is only computer specific to be able to distinguish between multiple clients on the very same machine.

Thanks, was going to edit my post--found this explanation on the first page which I somehow missed...

Got both GPU and SMP running, and made sure to set the other id to 16

Quote from zealousalien : i would like to know as well. i started using riva tuner and i hear that the higher the shader setting the better for F@H? also what program does everyone use to benchmark the stability of an GPU OC? before i was using ati tool but i cant have both ati tool and rivatuner running. and ati tool doesnt allow unlinked OCing of the core and shader. and any recommendations on a gpu monitor that can sit within my tray that is not ati tool? i currently have two OC-ed profile speeds and i wonder which would be best for f@H?: 1) 680 core/ 1960 shader/ 800 (1600) ram 2) 820 core/ 1640 shader/ 855 (1710) ram although again i need to bench it to make sure its stable.

Hi,

My experience from OC'ing GPU's is that it is quite individual what you will be able to use on your particular setup. E.g. the same 9600gso card works at very high OC settings in computer A running Intel q6600 and Dell 350W PSU. The very same card can not run with same settings in computer B running AMD X2 6000+ and cheap 500W PSU. I needed to run with considerable lower OC not to have constant EUE = "Early unit end" in F@H.

I've noticed the same for other cards/systems. Since I don't have time for any gaming or such, I let F@H be the benchmark for how high clocks the gpu can take. As long as F@H doesn't produce EUE's, I'm good.

Using Rivatuner, for folding generally I'd recommend to not touch core and memory clock and concentrate at cranking up the shader speed as much as possible. This makes by far the biggest difference in PPD. However, in systems with single GPU setup, after doing the shader I'd start with trying with the core clock as well. Can give a tad additional boost. Memory clock is the most sensitive to EUE's and also gives least effect on PPD.

When running single 9800gx2, two gpu's in one card I was running up to around core 700, shader 1836. Additionally I noticed you can not always run same speed on both gpu's on the same card. In multi-9800gx2 setup, I leave core at default 600 and shader maybe at 1730-1782. The biggest challenge with multi-GPU is heat. I've had 9800gx2 running stable at 90C+ for days.

Real shader clock speed used by NVidia go in 54MHz steps, e.g.:
[...]
1404
1458
1512
1566
1620
1674
1728
1782
1836
1890
1944
1998
2052
2106
2160
[...]

Setting to 1900 will mean 1890 etc.

Another question here---I'm trying to grab a WU for Windows SMP 5.91 beta client (for MPICH), and based on this server status list [stanford.edu] my 171.64.65.65 is currently in standby mode. Is there any way to switch the server I'm linked with? I'm seeing people complaining elsewhere that sometimes they end up waiting more than a day at a time while these servers are down.

If anyone knows how to change which server my SMP client is associated with, it would be much obliged

***EDIT*** The server went back up--but I'd still like to know if its possible to manually switch your server if necessary! I can see that being a problem (especially for uploading WUs in the future) if a server is down for a prolonged period of time.

Quote from dempa : Using Rivatuner, for folding generally I'd recommend to not touch core and memory clock and concentrate at cranking up the shader speed as much as possible. This makes by far the biggest difference in PPD. However, in systems with single GPU setup, after doing the shader I'd start with trying with the core clock as well. Can give a tad additional boost. Memory clock is the most sensitive to EUE's and also gives least effect on PPD.

Good info Dempa. On the EUEs, do you get any with your setups? I started getting EUEs constantly with some of the newer work units, so my quad 8800gso setup will sometimes go a day without an EUE, and other days I will have all 4 GPUs down with too many EUEs in a day. Currently, I am not overclocking anything since I thought that may have been the problem - but I still get the EUEs and their frequency doesn't seem to have gone down with the reduced shader clocks. It's frustrating having to babysit the machine and restart clients all the time.

My PSU should be good - 750w PCP&C with 60amps on the 12v rail Maybe I should try reducing the memory clocks, since that won't effect ppd. It seems in reading around the forums, a lot of people are having trouble with EUEs, so I don't think it's necessarily hardware.

Quote from dempa : Hi, ...Using Rivatuner, for folding generally I'd recommend to not touch core and memory clock and concentrate at cranking up the shader speed as much as possible. ...

ty you once again, dempa. ive seem to have hit 1900 for the shader and 820mhz for core. i have lowered the ram to default as per your advice. i produced an EUE at 1970 and perhaps i can find a sweet spot around 1950's or so but it is a bit too time consuming to keep watch of it and to produce another EUE imo.

i hope these couple of OC mhz's will help in folding. i think ive noticed half an hour taken off? of course this varies a lot. i want to say an hour with some WU's but perhaps that is too much. my 8600gt default is 680/1440/800 (now 820/1900/800).


p/s.: there is no actual way to watch for EUE's other than checking the times and see if it actually ended early, huh. it doesnt seem like the EUE's produce any points at alll even though i thought it would.

Quote from zealousalien : ty you once again, dempa. ive seem to have hit 1900 for the shader and 820mhz for core. i have lowered the ram to default as per your advice. i produced an EUE at 1970 and perhaps i can find a sweet spot around 1950's or so but it is a bit too time consuming to keep watch of it and to produce another EUE imo. i hope these couple of OC mhz's will help in folding. i think ive noticed half an hour taken off? of course this varies a lot. i want to say an hour with some WU's but perhaps that is too much. my 8600gt default is 680/1440/800 (now 820/1900/800). p/s.: there is no actual way to watch for EUE's other than checking the times and see if it actually ended early, huh. it doesnt seem like the EUE's produce any points at alll even though i thought it would.

My EUEs usually only occur right when the WU is starting, so I don't worry about losing points because unit crashed, but I get really mad when the client stops because I've exceeded the EUEs allowed and it pauses for 24 hours.

I check for EUEs by watching FAHmon and reading the log file.

So, I decided to try the system tray client v.6.23 on my netbook. Unfortunately, this stable edition appears to be buggier than the Betas! As soon as I configure and restart the F@H.exe, the process ends up dying within 10 seconds! Restarts do squat, and the only way to get it working again is to nuke all of the folder files, repair, and try again from scratch.

Is anyone else dealing with this? The group even admits in the faq that the viewer doesn't work either. Best to avoid the sys tray version entirely, even on my core solo machines?