*** F@H Tech Assistance Thread ***

[johnspack]

Nope, doesn't work for me. I can bring up as many windows as I want, and it's all still a slide show. Taskbar slow, start menu slow, everything slow. Under xp64 it does none of this. Weird.

 

[Beertintedgoggles]

I've got three folding boxes set up at a friends apt. since he only pays a set electricity bill regardless of usage; can someone recommend me a good vnc program and a link to setup instructions? I'm tired of checking their integrity by solely checking the points updates, it usually takes about twice as long that way to determine if something is up than if I could remotely connect to them.

 

[Chicken Patty]

Logmein? That's what I use for rigs that I don't have monitors hooked up, just log in through there. Works great for me.

 

[headshot119]

Now got 2 X Sapphire 5770s in the rig part time folding. Heat is causing a major issue and is shutting the PC off randomly. Any tips on cooling them down. (Temp solution was to open the case up and have a desk fan on high power cooling them )

Also is it normal for one to be a little quicker than the other? In fact one is at 39% and the other at 31% even though they started at the same time.

 

[Chicken Patty]

I would say the difference in speed is okay I guess, I've never really paid attention to mine. As far as heat, that is about as much as you can do. You can try to take apart the card and apply new thermal paste and clean up the fans and the heatsink on the card to make sure it's getting as much air through the heatsink as possible.

 

[headshot119]

I think a new case might help as well. The trouble is the PSU which is under a fair amount of load, and the Overclocked CPU are both exhausting into the back of the GPUS.

Next pay day I'm going to change the CPU to a corsair H50 and get a case with the PSU in the bottom rather than the top.

 

[thebluebumblebee]

(Temp solution was to open the case up and have a desk fan on high power cooling them )

Like this?
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1230480&postcount=10

Option 1: (which you've already discovered ) Open case and get a fan that runs on household voltage, that's at least 3 times bigger than a 120mm fan, blowing into the case.
Option 2: Get a better case.
Option 3: Go naked!
Option 4: Find a cold place to put system.

Check out other rigs in that thread I linked you to for more ideas.

 

[Chicken Patty]

@headshot.

The PSU you can't put it to vent up? Heat rises so mounted at the top would be better. Depends on PSU I guess, mine is at the bottom of the case by it intakes through the bottom and exhausts out of the back of the case so it's fine.

 

[xvi]

Halp!

As much as I'd like to be folding this much, either something is fishy or I have the most godlike 4850 ever.

My gpu client has been hanging recently (to the point that a workunit has expired despite having the client running 24/7), but it is working now (moved from 33% to 35% while I was writing).

 

[thebluebumblebee]

Seems like something's going around!
Seriously, just wait until the yellow box turns green and PPD will be back to normal.

 

[xvi]

Seems like something's going around!
Seriously, just wait until the yellow box turns green and PPD will be back to normal.

It's been open all night. The percentage updates correctly if I refresh it.

 

[thebluebumblebee]

Have you tried hfm.net?

 

[xvi]

hfm.net works. After folding for 3-4%, they show as green. 4,727 PPD for me.

Also, just to confirm, bonus points only come from big WUs and -advmethods? How much longer do these units take compared to normal units?

 

[thebluebumblebee]

Bonus points are only for SMP at this time. That includes SMP with -bigadv.

 

[headshot119]

What sort of PPD do you get off a nvidia 430?

 

[thebluebumblebee]

What sort of PPD do you get off a nvidia 430?

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2149805&postcount=12849

The general consensus around here is to get the GTS450 instead.

 

[headshot119]

Hmm strange one. Have done two work units today, both uploaded at the same time but only one is showing up on the stats.

Ideas anyone?

 

[thebluebumblebee]

???The cut-off time fell between the 2 uploads????

 

[mstenholm]

Hmm strange one. Have done two work units today, both uploaded at the same time but only one is showing up on the stats.

Ideas anyone?

Yes, avoid that. Tried it with 92 k units a couple of times. If you have the same machine ID (and you will if both GPU's sits in the same rig) it can happen, or that at least what I think.

Edit: Have a look in your log files. Was it the same unit? They often send out dublicates and some times it happens you get two identical WUs and thats when it f**ks up.

 

[headshot119]

Ok to get another rig folding 24/7 I have the following plan

AMD AM2 5600 + CPU
2 GB DDR2 RAM
OCZ 500 W PSU
Random hard drive from somewhere
Nvidia GTS 450

What sort off PPD can I expect of it, folding on the GPU, concerned with the CPU limiting it mainly.

 

[xvi]

Ok to get another rig folding 24/7 I have the following plan

AMD AM2 5600 + CPU
2 GB DDR2 RAM
OCZ 500 W PSU
Random hard drive from somewhere
Nvidia GTS 450

What sort off PPD can I expect of it, folding on the GPU, concerned with the CPU limiting it mainly.

CPU shouldn't limit it. I hear the nVidia client is rather processor friendly (or at least it was for me the short time I had a GTS 250). The ATI client can be processor friendly too if you tweak it.

 

[mstenholm]

CPU shouldn't limit it. I hear the nVidia client is rather processor friendly (or at least it was for me the short time I had a GTS 250). The ATI client can be processor friendly too if you tweak it.

+1 I have a e8400 that pulled a 450 + a 460 with less then 1 % CPU load.

Edit: the 450 is good for around 8-9 k PPD. CPU, no clue.

 

[Chicken Patty]

@xvi

When you talk about tweaking the ATI client, you mean the environmental values correct?

 

[xvi]

@xvi

When you talk about tweaking the ATI client, you mean the environmental values correct?

Correct.

While I'm thinking about it, is it true that the upcoming OpenCL client won't run on Radeon HD 4000 series cards?

AMD AM2 5600 + CPU
2 GB DDR2 RAM
OCZ 500 W PSU
Random hard drive from somewhere
Nvidia GTS 450

Try a local electronics recycler. I volunteered at one for about six months. You could probably pick up a decent 40GB for $5-10. You could try a poor man's SSD too (compact flash card + CF to IDE adapter).

CPU, no clue.

The number 400-600 ppd per core comes to mind, but it's a wild guess. I never found the CPU to be a very efficient cruncher. If I recall correctly, my lappy (Core Duo 1.6GHz) did 200-300-ish per core on Linux. (Edit: 96 PPD per core on Linux. I don't know where I got 300ppd from.)

Edit again: Sig rig is doing ~500 per core on the beta client.

 

[thebluebumblebee]

While I'm thinking about it, is it true that the upcoming OpenCL client won't run on Radeon HD 4000 series cards?

Correct. Link

The project team is currently working on improved support for AMD and ATI GPUs. Originally, the Brook programming language was used to program on GPUs, but AMD have decided to support just OpenCL and drop all support for Brook. This has meant that the core has had to be completely rewritten to use OpenCL instead of Brook. This was a huge challenge, but that project is now bearing fruit (see the OpenMM site for more information). Because of AMD's decision to abandon support for Brook in favour of OpenCL, future developments of the AMD/ATI core will be made for OpenCL only, and will only run on graphics cards that support OpenCL.

This means that some currently supported cards will drop out of the project, as follows:
HD2xxx and HD3xxx series do not support OpenCL and thus will not be supported once FAHcore 11 is mothballed.
HD4xxx series is able to execute OpenCL code but lacks some hardware features necessary to make the new code run at an efficient speed, and so will also not be supported by the new core.
HD5xxx and HD6xxx series support the full range of necessary OpenCL functions, and will be fully supported by the new core.

In the short term, both FAHcore 11 and FAHcore 16 will be used in parallel so as not to leave people in the lurch. Unfortunately this situation cannot last forever, and support for FAHcore 11 is scheduled to end on September 1st 2011. This date may be postponed, but there is no guarantee that will happen. Stopping support of a platform is obviously never a popular decision, but in this instance the project has been left with little choice due to AMD ending support for the older cards.

The good news is that AMD/ATI is heavily involved in supporting OpenCL and the Pande Group are very excited by the prospects of the new core. This core will be released publicly after the release of the v7 client, which is necessary to run the new core.

Source : Vijay's blog