Any NVidia GPU2 Users yet?

[Pudge]

to each their own, personally i can't justify leaving my entire machine under load just for a little friendly competition

First, the friendly competition is only a small part of folding.  There is also the aspect of helping a very respected research project that has the possiblitly of greatly helping mankind.  There really isn't any other way they could be doing this kind of research without distributed computing.  When I first started folding, it took days, even weeks to do work units that were much simpler than the work units possible today.  Now with stream folding on GPUs, Stanford can get complex works units back in literally hours.  This is a great advancement for their research.

Second, I totally agree with "to each their own".  I fully respect your decision not to fold, but one has to ask why you would even bother entering the folding section if you aren't interested in it?  Much less posting.  Unless you are trying to troll.  

Pudge

[Factor X]

Pudge - I'm looking for you to show up VERY quickly on the top 20 producers' list - you'll definitely be in the top four.  Are you folding for 10688?  I don't see you there yet.

This new paradigm just makes CPU folding obsolete, for the cost.  Keep in mind, the GPU needs a serious CPU to feed it.  I found that the running the text-only console on one of my two cores slowed down my GPU folding considerably.  So, I'm all GPU.  Let me know if you learn anything from it.

I have an AMD X2 5000 Black Edition clocked at 3.1 GHz.  And an 8800GT - I have slots for two more, so I wonder in a year, if another GPU or two would be wild.  By then I could upgrade to a Quad core, and hopefully feed the GPU's.  What might that bring?  I'm 4000 ppd now, could I get to 12000 ppd?  I think it took me a year to get my first 10,000 points on a Celeron 1100 in 2002!

I want to see GPU2's to beat up on the PS3 folders.

FX

[Factor X]

Just look at those stats:

http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=osstats

8,000 GPU folders have quadruple the output of 200,000 CPU folders.  They should discontinue CPU folding altogether as a waste of energy.

GPU's are like 2.7% of the active folding processors.  But they're yielding 37% of the TFLOPS!

It's like Folding@Home just re-booted and totally started over.  Good for them.

My theory is that if the GPU thing takes off, then the folding processing could out-pace Stanford's ability to analyze it all and make useful conclusions out of it.

Personally, this GPU thing made it as exciting again as it was for me in 2002.

FX

[Pudge]

Pudge - I'm looking for you to show up VERY quickly on the top 20 producers' list - you'll definitely be in the top four.  Are you folding for 10688?  I don't see you there yet.

When I started folding, I folded for the Sudhian Media team.  In late February 2006 I left the Sudhian site completely and started folding for the Arch Linux team.  Even after over a two year hiatus, I'm in 21st place on Sudhian Media.  A couple of months ago I started lurking around here to see who was still around and what was going on.

Pudge

[Factor X]

Looks like Sudhian and Arch Linux are about equal producers, but Arch is much lower.

We'd love to have you back Pudge!  It would make a huge boost here!  It's fun to watch a pretty still team accelerate!

FX

[Babar]

Be great to see you back on Team 10688 Pudge.

We used to be at the top of the rankings but have gone down a little bit over the years as folders have left.

Im doing my part to pump out the workunits on behalf of curing disease along with our dedicated team here at 10688! Won't you join us?

[cngn]

You gonna come back or what ?

[Pudge]

Thanks for the offer guys.  I really do appreciate the fact that I would be welcomed back so warmly.  I am not saying I won't ever come back, but for right now I am quite comfortable with my new home.  I am kind of sorry I left though.  Combine the points I have at Arch with my Sudhian points, and I would be in first place here!  First place at Sudhian, that would be something.  I never thought anyone would be able to overtake NewfieDesertDog.  He was Top Dog all the time I was here.

I do have to agree with Factor X, the new GPU2 client is something else.  I may just have to get another after I save up some more lunch money.  Geez, do I want to be skinny with another new Vid card, or fat without a new vid card?  Thank GOD that gas for the car doesn't come out of my lunch money.  I'd never get any more computer equipment.  

Pudge

[Factor X]

Fate.

That reply from Pudge was #688.  As in 10688.  Time to move back home.

Be mid-pack at Arch, or be a star at Sudhian?

I thought about moving to a star-team, but it's like giving up my 6-year history.  I'll fold here forever.  It all goes into the same trust, but I get to keep building a story.

When the 8800GT's go to $88, I'll grab another.  It's true, GPU2 makes CPU folding a waste of sorts.

FX

[spc_75]

Just started GPU Folding Last week using a new username. Rocketed past old folders, now 144/715 users with 30k+ points (not quite 3Million i know :-P) and 7th on the production stakes - Hot on your heals FX (production wise anyway) I hope to install F@H on all the pc's in one of the labs i control, just haven't had a chance yet, that and the hardware in there is ancient.

Am still unsure what combination gives me the best return in PPD. ATM i'm doing GPU using my 8800GTS 512MB and one core of my CPU. Tomorrow i'll try GPU only again.

[Shadowtester]

spc_75

Assuming the rig your folding on is the one in your signature you could run 1 smp client and one gpu2 client for maximum point while only using the machine for some light web browsing and email your production while gaming would be drastically reduced but with your processor and its speed you should make the time limits for the smp client easy and the gpu2 projects are real short so I doubt you would have any problems making them as well. I would think running an smp client with your machine would give you an additional 1.5-2k per day on top of the gpu2 output assuming your running vista XP is a problem as it seems to use a complete core for feeding the gpu2 client even though it only utilizing about 15-20% of the core the rest of the cpu cycles are being wasted.

[spc_75]

Thanks ST, I am using XP on that rig and I did notice that 1 core was at full throttle which is why i have only one CPU core folding instead of SMP. I'll be going down south in a week or two and was going to pick up some cheap 640WD HD's for raid-0 array and trial Server 2008 or use a Linux Distro.

I was thinking, in the GPU client i have CPU set to 100% as i assumed this really meant the GPU. Does anyone know if it is otherwise? ie. CPU is really CPU, it would partially explain the overhead. Will play around a little when a new WU is starting.

[Shadowtester]

The gpu taking up one core is a bug in XP as far I know no one has came up with a fix except using a different OS either vista or Linux and running the gpu2 client with the wine windows emulator.

[spc_75]

K finally got SMP installed after a little hassle, by itself it is giving about 1920 PPD with about 23hrs per a 250000step WU (@4ghz cpu)- a huge improvement on what i was getting for standard client. Now i shall try running in tandem with GPU2 which had about 5700+ PPD by itself after OC'ing the GFX card on stock cooler.

-edit-

right, now i'm getting about 6000 PPD, 4082 from gpu2 and 1930 from smp. I'll leave it running for 24hrs and see what happens but if it is only 300-400PPD extra from SMP than i reckon i may as well do GPU only and not run my CPU into the ground. According to the graph at extremeoc i got 7k points in one day once, no idea how i did that.

P.S. GPU (FahCore_11) is using only 10-20% CPU now. (Still XP Pro)

[Shadowtester]

One thing there are a lot of new gpu2 projects which have caused the output of the Nvidia cards to drop about 25 to 30% so you might want to take that into account if you were getting 5700ppd with previous projects you will only be getting around 4000 to 4300 points now which looks pretty close to what your numbers so the smp client is giving you 1900+ ppd extra the gpu client does cause the smp client to drop in output but not that much and the gpu2 client is normally set to a higher priority than the smp client so it really does not change output if you run a smp client or not.

[spc_75]

Righto, now we're cooking with gas. Had to turn PC off for most of the day for unrelated reasons and then buggered up the client when restarting due to not running smp flags  :shut:  But now with no need to shutdown for a while i should soon be doing about 7 - 7.6k ppd. Thanks for your help ST, GPU2 and SMP now working smoothly on my rig so i can stop hijacking this thread. As an aside, Ashtefere will be selling his 9800gx2 in the not to distant future and i may buy it if the price is right and then i can contribute more to the folding effort :-)

[Factor X]

So, do you guys think I should run SMP alongside GPU2 with my AMD X2 5400 Black Edition?  I'm running it at 3.1 GHz right now.  I've seen one core pegged pretty high assuming it was supporting the GPU.

XP Pro, also.  Would love any advice.

FX

[spc_75]

From my recent experience i'd say go for it. I also have that a similar CPU in my htpc. Would be interesting to see how smp goes on it. As for the high coreusage from gpu2, when i run the SMP client the gpu drops right back down in CPU% and the SMP uses the difference, haven't seen it affect the GPU2 yield however, which is now only using between 4 - 15%. In fact i reckon if you don't do it your wasting an entire CPU core, if it is always at 95-100% may as well be folding eh? lol

*note: Don't know if you know this but i had problems with current client until i found this solution. Only way to shutdown SMP is ctrl+c and afterwards will run in standard loops unless -forceasm is applied.

PS. I lost a day and a half worth of SMP work units (about 3000pts) + lost GPU folding time due to an "explosion" at my local power substation. :-(

[Factor X]

Thanks, SPC.  You might be 'Rookie of the Year'!  Is 75 your birth date?  I do appreciate the knowledge.  I might be tweakin my PC this weekend.  Your experience will help, and the folding charts will tell.

FX

[Factor X]

spc_75 - I was hoping you'd pass me in 1.2 years.  Now, if I can get the SMP going, you might have to wait longer!  I've been an older-folder since 2001 with my Celeron 1100...

FX

[spc_75]

lol @ RoY. 75 is for the 75th squadron that is based in the biggest RAAF base in Australia, also the town i grew up in and am only 21. Was in the Air Training Core when the whole Internet revolution took place and the name stuck. Have been playing around with computers since i was a little tacker but parents weren't keen on buying me newfangled PCs so always had hand me downs from Dad's office. So only when i started earning serious money could i really play. Been around for ages though, lotsa research.

I did think, gee, i'm helping this fella beat me in the production tally lol, but in the end it's for a fair dinkum cause so it doesn't matter. Besides, in terms of WU you'll always be ahead.

Down more too now as my SMP keeps aborting around 17% and at 15-18 minutes per % is kinda gay. Bloody power cuts. Reinstalled client completely but same machine ID, if it still plays up i'll change that too.

Summing up, GPU2 + SMP = awesome but SMP client is buggy.

[Shadowtester]

Well I have my first GPU2 client going on my Shuttle now still running Kubuntu 8.04 64 bit using wine so far it working well