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Slinwagh

Slinwagh

Slinwagh

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I have just fired up 4 clients on a Q6600 I have, I am going to add in two more on a e6600 and a Xeon 3065.

I am struggling with understanding which GPU client I need as I have 2 4850's and a 9600GT waiting to go.

Can anyone help with the GPU side of things please?
 
Slinwagh said:
I am struggling with understanding which GPU client I need as I have 2 4850's and a 9600GT waiting to go.

Can anyone help with the GPU side of things please?
Click to expand...

Hi, and welcome!

You need to go to

http://folding.stanford.edu/English/DownloadWinOther

and download the 'Windows XP/2003/Vista GPU System tray client (installer msi) v6.20'

(it's the top one!)

That'll do nicely for the 9600GT

As for the rest, someone else will be able to tell you more...

:D
 
They really do need to work on a magical musical installer that detects what you have, asks you what you want to put to work, and just installs the correct client(s).
 
Have to agree, I've buggered about with so many different client configurations that I'm showing as 11 active processors :o
 
Hey Slinwagh, welcome back :D

First, the quad... the Windows SMP client is a little more difficult to set up than the standard client, but it will give you lots more points (probably 2500-3000ppd for the SMP, compared to about 800-1000 for the standard.)

You can download the SMP client from here. A good place to start is probably the Stanford SMP guide here, which should explain everything you need to know. That guide's a bit long-winded, though, so I'd say the main points are:
  • Uninstall your current clients/services before you start. Wait until the end of the WUs if you feel conscientious.
  • Run the installer to extract the client. If you're on Vista, make sure to save the files outside of the Program Files folder, as Vista UAC prevents applications from writing to Program Files, which screws Folding up.
  • You need to have a password set on your Windows account to run the SMP client. If you don't want a password, you can set a password but ask Windows not to prompt you for it - this satisfies the SMP client. To do that, set a password through Control Panel > User Accounts. Then from a Run prompt type in control userpasswords2 and deselect the box 'users must enter a username and password to use this computer'.
  • Once your password's set up OK, you need to install the service required to run SMP (the installer doesn't do this for you yet.) To do this, go to the folder where you installed the SMP client and run install.bat. It will ask you for your Windows username and password. After that, if it prints the message If you see this twice, MPI is working, then you're good to go.
  • Now you need to make a shortcut to the SMP client (fah6.exe) which includes the flag -smp, or the client will just work in standard mode. Make a normal shortcut and edit the path.
  • This will run the client inside a command prompt window. This does take up space on your taskbar, so some people prefer to run the client as a service. This is a little bit more tricky than with the standard client, but can easily be sorted out - post back if you're interested and I'll go through it.
As for the GPUs - how are the cards arranged? Do you have the two 4850s in one rig and the 9600 in a different one?

Hope this helps! I agree that it's far, far too complicated for people to get into - Stanford really need to sort this out.
 
I had this problem - i solved it (well, it worked!) by opening a command prompt as administrator (accessories - commend prompt, then right click and run as admin), and then navigating to the file manually and running install.bat. Give it a try and see if it works.
 
ChrissyT88 said:
I had this problem - i solved it (well, it worked!) by opening a command prompt as administrator (accessories - commend prompt, then right click and run as admin), and then navigating to the file manually and running install.bat. Give it a try and see if it works.
Click to expand...

It worked !!!
 
Mattus said:
......................
  • Now you need to make a shortcut to the SMP client (fah6.exe) which includes the flag -smp, or the client will just work in standard mode. Make a normal shortcut and edit the path.
  • This will run the client inside a command prompt window. This does take up space on your taskbar, so some people prefer to run the client as a service. This is a little bit more tricky than with the standard client, but can easily be sorted out - post back if you're interested and I'll go through it.
Click to expand...

Where is that file, fah6.exe, it it meant to be where I have installed the client too, d:\fahsmp ?

I do have this file in that directory: [email protected]
 
Yeah, make the shortcut to that file, and if you want to pick up the SMP units, you need to add the -smp flag. I think i have also added the -verbosity 9 flag after following a guide, although i have absolutely no idea what it does!

You may have done this already, but you may also want to make a config shortcut - just make a shortcut to the .exe above and add -configonly, which should giv you an easy setup of the client.

EDIT: Glad the workaround helped - its pretty stupid and have no idea why it doesnt work 'normally'. I cannot remember where i read the fix, but i have a feeling it was on the xtremesystems folding page, so credit to them. Theres usually quite a lot of interesting info on there, and it cant hurt to steal the enemy's secrets once in a while!
 
Last edited:
Slinwagh said:
Where is that file, fah6.exe, it it meant to be where I have installed the client too, d:\fahsmp ?

I do have this file in that directory: [email protected]
Click to expand...

Yeah, sorry, that's the one - forgot that I renamed mine! Everything Chrissy says is right. The -verbosity 9 will make your logs more detailed, useful if you have any problems.
 
Mattus said:
Hey Slinwagh, welcome back :D

First, the quad... the Windows SMP client is a little more difficult to set up than the standard client, but it will give you lots more points (probably 2500-3000ppd for the SMP, compared to about 800-1000 for the standard.)

You can download the SMP client from here. A good place to start is probably the Stanford SMP guide here, which should explain everything you need to know. That guide's a bit long-winded, though, so I'd say the main points are:
  • Uninstall your current clients/services before you start. Wait until the end of the WUs if you feel conscientious.
  • Run the installer to extract the client. If you're on Vista, make sure to save the files outside of the Program Files folder, as Vista UAC prevents applications from writing to Program Files, which screws Folding up.
  • You need to have a password set on your Windows account to run the SMP client. If you don't want a password, you can set a password but ask Windows not to prompt you for it - this satisfies the SMP client. To do that, set a password through Control Panel > User Accounts. Then from a Run prompt type in control userpasswords2 and deselect the box 'users must enter a username and password to use this computer'.
  • Once your password's set up OK, you need to install the service required to run SMP (the installer doesn't do this for you yet.) To do this, go to the folder where you installed the SMP client and run install.bat. It will ask you for your Windows username and password. After that, if it prints the message If you see this twice, MPI is working, then you're good to go.
  • Now you need to make a shortcut to the SMP client (fah6.exe) which includes the flag -smp, or the client will just work in standard mode. Make a normal shortcut and edit the path.
  • This will run the client inside a command prompt window. This does take up space on your taskbar, so some people prefer to run the client as a service. This is a little bit more tricky than with the standard client, but can easily be sorted out - post back if you're interested and I'll go through it.
As for the GPUs - how are the cards arranged? Do you have the two 4850s in one rig and the 9600 in a different one?

Hope this helps! I agree that it's far, far too complicated for people to get into - Stanford really need to sort this out.
Click to expand...


i think ive done it and running the smp client on along with my gpu client, im showing 100% usuge on all 4 cores on cpu usuge history, is that normal? also how do i set it up as a service as its on my taskbar instead atm!
 
It should atutomatically use all available cpu power, so 100% usage is to be expected. You can change this by going into the config - you need to make another shortcut in exactly the same way, but instead of adding the -smp flag, add -configonly. Then when you click the shortcut, you will be taken straight to the config options. Under advanced options you can change the cpu usage (mine is currently at 70% so uses 70% of each core). You can also enable it as a service here, although bear in mind i dont think stanford support running the SMP client as a service yet.

Rich has posted a guide to setting up the SMP client on the weekly news posts. The link he has given does show a way to remove the windows and prevent them showing up in the taskbar, although persoanlly i havent tried this. Hope this helps.
 
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