New Members Welcome & Advice Thread

[catawalks]

Vista absolutely has to have the 2nd monitor or a dummy plug with the desktop extended to it. For some reason X24870s are tougher to get 2 clients running on but people at F@H are doing it. I've seen ppd reported as high as 8K

Now, is that 8k for the card or for the single gpu? If its the latter thats great! If its the former, my GTX260 gets a little over 7k, so thats sad.

[Marvin_The_Martian]

Two gpu's

[jcool]

Did you measure the 300w power draw? Just curious, seems people tend to use the max draw from the manufacturer of max draw while gaming which are not the same as power draw when using fah on it. About the dummy plug, afaik you can use an old tvout cable to initiate the other display as well ( atleast I know for sure on Nvidia this works, not so sure about Ati ).

You're not alone though with the complaint about Ati's powerdraw while folding compared to Nvidia so I guess it's not even a matter of having the numbers exactly right but more about it being so much less efficient

300W is gaming draw, folding draw is quite a bit lower. Still, I don't feel inclined to fold on the GPU if I don't get credited accordingly. A 4870X2 should do something in the 11-12k range, and here I am, slouching along at below 3k (according to FAHmon) on GPU

The 8800 Ultra made close to 6k. A little 3d comparison? Vantage GPU score is 6800 for the Ultra, 15k for the X2 (both at stock clocks). Go figure

[road-runner]

Hmm, I got my 4870x2 to folding with 2 clients on xp, could not get it to work on both in vista and was only getting 2500 ppd each client 5000 ppd total one card. That is why they are in the drawer and I have 8800s making over 5000 ppd each...

[catawalks]

Hmm, I got my 4870x2 to folding with 2 clients on xp, could not get it to work on both in vista and was only getting 2500 ppd each client 5000 ppd total one card. That is why they are in the drawer and I have 8800s making over 5000 ppd each...

Seriously, this is the only place where people have $500 graphics cards just laying around in drawers....insanity.

[sniperbob]

@catawalks, receive your present yet??

[road-runner]

Seriously, this is the only place where people have $500 graphics cards just laying around in drawers....insanity.

Hell I got 2 of them and 2 3870x2 along with 2 2900s in the drawer, all bought new when they came out. I figured I would use them for folding also, that did not last long nvidia came out with a folding client...

[Sparky]

Hell I got 2 of them and 2 3870x2 along with 2 2900s in the drawer, all bought new when they came out. I figured I would use them for folding also, that did not last long nvidia came out with a folding client...

Maybe you should sell them to recoup some of the money

[Marvin_The_Martian]

Yeah RR they might not fold well relatively speaking, but they game well. Get some of your money back. never hurts to have money in the pocket instead of unused hw in a drawer ( xcept.. you'll hit yourself if the Ati client in a month get's a special surprise 100% speed boost or something )

[catawalks]

@catawalks, receive your present yet??

I did indeed. Just got it yesterday. Haven't hooked it up yet but I think that'll have to wait until early next week. I'm barely gonna be home until monday or tuesday night.

Hell I got 2 of them and 2 3870x2 along with 2 2900s in the drawer, all bought new when they came out. I figured I would use them for folding also, that did not last long nvidia came out with a folding client...

Amazing, I think I'm either insanely in love with your drawers or insanely jealous of you. I wish I had parts like that laying around. Instead I have ISA sound/network cards and old P/2/3 machines just chilling.

If you were to get rid of some of those cards, what kinda prices would you be looking to get for them? Although I did just buy 2 3870's from WFO, who knows, maybe I should get a couple 3870x2's? Or maybe 4870x2's? lol....I gotta stop spending money.....nah.

[road-runner]

Yeah RR they might not fold well relatively speaking, but they game well. Get some of your money back. never hurts to have money in the pocket instead of unused hw in a drawer ( xcept.. you'll hit yourself if the Ati client in a month get's a special surprise 100% speed boost or something )

I have the 1950xt left laying in there from the GPU1 folding episode I will hang onto them, I use them in forum wars and have been running 2 rigs each time, and like you say they may get the client working better someday...

[catawalks]

What are forum wars if you don't mind me asking?

[road-runner]

What are forum wars if you don't mind me asking?

Forum Wars is an overclocking competition between forums who choose to take part. Each forum has it's own players competing against the other forums players in a series of Benchmarks or PC tests. These tests determine a point value for your systems performance level. To try and make this a balanced contest, competing systems are divided into classes / teams.

Link I played for OCC a couple times and the TRP this last time. I dont know why XS does not participate...

[Marvin_The_Martian]

I have the 1950xt left laying in there from the GPU1 folding episode I will hang onto them, I use them in forum wars and have been running 2 rigs each time, and like you say they may get the client working better someday...

x1xxx will never fold again afaik?

[road-runner]

x1xxx will never fold again afaik?

No I doubt it will, I just never have really got rid of anything. I have all kinds of old hardware. I read about people getting taken all the time buying and selling, I dont have that problem...

[Marvin_The_Martian]

No I doubt it will, I just never have really got rid of anything. I have all kinds of old hardware. I read about people getting taken all the time buying and selling, I dont have that problem...

Lol it's a rather subjective matter, most of those people I think actually need to sell things before then buy the new one's

For them ( us.. if I still had things of worth laying around unused ) it's not the time going into it which matters, but the money we get back by doing so which is the most important. It's simple math, the time it costs to sell them and get their worth back, even when spend at labour would usually net us less then the money we earn with the reselling.

Consider yourself a lucky man idk how your lovelife looks like though so luck is also subjective..

[jcool]

x1xxx will never fold again afaik?

No, they are all burned up and dead anyways, like my X1900XTX

[Marvin_The_Martian]

I know enough people still gaming on those cards though, good cards still

Though I keep telling them a 4850 would improve their experience so much for so litle money in comparison to what they paid for those 1900xtx's or xt's.

And nope they're not a member here, or atleast not of the kind that likes to burn hardware hehe. Can't afford that myself now *eyes 9600gt... keep living you hear.. no more memory corruption when I come downstairs ok

It's actually a good thing they don't fold anymore, don't think their performance/watt would be all that great

[OldChap]

Thinking of running 2 instances of smp but haven't used it since GPU on nVidia happened. Can I do this with 3*gpu running on one core? can I just copy the first instance into another folder and re-config? Can someone remind me how to set the cores this would run on?

[p2501]

Vista absolutely has to have the 2nd monitor or a dummy plug with the desktop extended to it. For some reason X24870s are tougher to get 2 clients running on but people at F@H are doing it. I've seen ppd reported as high as 8K

Uhm... linkage? That'd be a very interesting read to see these PPD on an ATI card. Additionally I only heard about trouble with setting up two instances on an X2, never saw someone actually do this.

Thinking of running 2 instances of smp but haven't used it since GPU on nVidia happened. Can I do this with 3*gpu running on one core? can I just copy the first instance into another folder and re-config? Can someone remind me how to set the cores this would run on?

For assigning cores and setting affinities you should go have a read over in this thread. I think it would be possible to set this up, even though I can only speak for two GPU and SMP's. I would setup one, then two, then three and let each configuration run a day or a bit more to see what gets you the most ppd. Keep us updated.

Edit: Oh, and I forgot, copying over for SMP installs doesn't work, you need to install each of them, in your user directory. And you need to run the MPI install steps on each of them, just check what coo-coo-clocker linked one post down. The only thing you can copy over are the cfg's, just set them up accordingly.

[coo-coo-clocker]

Thinking of running 2 instances of smp but haven't used it since GPU on nVidia happened. Can I do this with 3*gpu running on one core? can I just copy the first instance into another folder and re-config? Can someone remind me how to set the cores this would run on?

For XP-based systems, the GPU client will need a lot of CPU (and my experience is that with these lastest GPU cores that Stanford has been sending, this is getting worse)... so unless you're running vista you won't really be able to run dual-SMP and multiple GPU clients effectively.

Assuming you are running vista, and you have quad-core (or better! new i7's are available at retail starting tomorrow ), you can do dual-SMP and still have enough horsepower for GPU clients.

Best way to do this is
1) consult Scoop's most excellent SMP setup guide,
2) consult PG's multi-GPU setup guide,
3) run WinAFC to keep the PIDs from stepping all over each other,
4) and of course come here and ask for help (and/or give some to others in need )

[OldChap]

Left the GPU's running, and put SMP on q6600 stock clocks. GPU's are on core 3, other processes on 0,1,2. output with SMP roaming free 1360ppd.

Moved SMP to cores 0,1 and other processes to core 2 output dropped to 1199

added second instance of SMP useing method in my first post on this and set it to cores 2,3. output about 733ppd

Not so impressive but better than nothing I have run this overclocked to get 1920 ppd on 1 SMP but the ram I use now is different so I don't have the time to get a stable overclock. I already have set affinity 2 on my machine not the best for this but it is working.

Can anyone tell me what output they get for running a single instance of gromacs (the non smp version of 6.23)

[WFO]

Uhm... linkage? That'd be a very interesting read to see these PPD on an ATI card. Additionally I only heard about trouble with setting up two instances on an X2, never saw someone actually do this.

I haven't really followed the threads over in the ATI section since I pulled the 3870s. Now you have to go to about page 3 to find people talking about it. Some still claim they have their cards working yet I have yet to see mhouston say the cards are full supported for 2 instances. My bet is that RR couldn't get his cards working satisfactorily, those that claim they do are blowing smoke.

[MikeB12]

those that claim they do are blowing smoke.

[OldChap]

Do you mean this comment?

mhouston wrote:
The 3870 X2 should work if you disable crossfire in the control panel. It's the 4870X2 we are having issues with in Vista. In XP it works just fine, but the CPU utilization doesn't drop as drastically as it does in Vista.