F@H parps

One thing. I forgot to change the default memory usage of the VM from 3,600MB before I started it running and I couldn't change it while it was running so I bit the bullet just now and switched it off to change it to the recommended 5,000MB and restarted it. Seems to have caused no damage - thankfully. Will see if the extra memory makes any difference.

At least I know now that I can switch it off briefly if required :cool:
 
Well done. In your worse-for-wear state, did you remember the -smp 7 or -smp 8 flag as well as -bigadv when starting the Ubuntu client?

I lost one WU at around 40% by crashing out of the VM but it should be okay if you shut it down properly. My i7 obviously isn't as overclocked as yours and my bonus factor is 2.15.
 
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Snapshot said:
Well done. In your worse-for-wear state, did you remember the -smp 7 or -smp 8 flag as well as -bigadv when starting the Ubuntu client?

I lost one WU at around 40% by crashing out of the VM but it should be okay if you shut it down properly. My i7 obviously isn't as overclocked as yours and my bonus factor is about 2.1 (observation rather than the calculator).
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Lol. Yeah, I remembered the -smp 8 flag (using 8 cores as there's nothing else running on there). If the GPU3 client works well enough with ATI, I might knock it down to 7 cores and run two GPU3 clients - depends on CPU load with GPU3 and ATI.

Mine's a 920 running @ 3.8GHz at the moment. Once I get the watercooling in February, I'm hoping to get to 4.2GHz or more (I've had it at 4.2GHz but not stable).
 
I'm running the Linux64_FAH image on my 920 D0 i7 machine. I've given the VM 6GB of memory.

Stan, I had a similar problem when I tried setting up a -bigadv SMP client on Ubuntu - I already had an Ubuntu virtual machine in VirtualBox that I use fairly regularly for bits of work, so wanted to get it working in that but everytime I launched it the whole VM would freeze up, so I just ended up using the Linux64_FAH image.

I'm posting because after reading this thread I thought I'd try out some gaming with the -bigadv VM running and see how things did. I have 12GB of memory in this machine which really helps and the 920 is overclocked to 3.6Ghz (had it 24 hour Prime stable at 4.0GHz but the whole machine seemed to die after about 48 hours so had to relax it a little) . I tested out Team Fortress 2, Unreal Tournament 3 and Colin McRae: Dirt 2. Provided the virtual machine is set to low priority, I couldn't tell the difference between gaming with or without it running.

http://www.piggott.me.uk/blog/wp-content/gallery/i7-machine/heavy-load.png

The above linked screenshot is interesting. Ignoring the fairly knackered car (I don't play on it much - was a free copy), the VMware player's usage shows up as kernel time, so assuming the bulk of the utilisation caused by Dirt 2 does not, it appears that even when gaming the Folding client is getting a fair amount of work done.

To be sure of this I should probably play Dirt 2 for long enough that the client does a whole % and see how long it takes, but I don't really have the time right now/don't want to play Dirt 2 for that long.
 
Mr. Brightside said:
I'm running the Linux64_FAH image on my 920 D0 i7 machine. I've given the VM 6GB of memory.

Stan, I had a similar problem when I tried setting up a -bigadv SMP client on Ubuntu - I already had an Ubuntu virtual machine in VirtualBox that I use fairly regularly for bits of work, so wanted to get it working in that but everytime I launched it the whole VM would freeze up, so I just ended up using the Linux64_FAH image.

I'm posting because after reading this thread I thought I'd try out some gaming with the -bigadv VM running and see how things did. I have 12GB of memory in this machine which really helps and the 920 is overclocked to 3.6Ghz (had it 24 hour Prime stable at 4.0GHz but the whole machine seemed to die after about 48 hours so had to relax it a little) . I tested out Team Fortress 2, Unreal Tournament 3 and Colin McRae: Dirt 2. Provided the virtual machine is set to low priority, I couldn't tell the difference between gaming with or without it running.

http://www.piggott.me.uk/blog/wp-content/gallery/i7-machine/heavy-load.png

The above linked screenshot is interesting. Ignoring the fairly knackered car (I don't play on it much - was a free copy), the VMware player's usage shows up as kernel time, so assuming the bulk of the utilisation caused by Dirt 2 does not, it appears that even when gaming the Folding client is getting a fair amount of work done.

To be sure of this I should probably play Dirt 2 for long enough that the client does a whole % and see how long it takes, but I don't really have the time right now/don't want to play Dirt 2 for that long.
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Thanks for that. Might have to give it a try to see how it affects things. I only have 6GB RAM in the 920 rig but will give it a try anyway and see how it affects gaming and Folding. Not keen on adding more RAM as I've got Corsair Dominator GT RAM in there and it's not cheap :o
 
Just played a half hour of HL2 Ep1 with the VM still running and it was very stuttery - looks like I'll need more RAM if I want to play it with the VM still running. Either that or I'll have to stop it when I want to play. Having said that, I can play the likes of the above on the old rig so it's only high-end games I'll need to mess with the new rig with.

CPU temp also nipped up to 84-87C during play :p Folding performance dropped by about 7 mins per frame as well.
 
Lovely temps there Stan. Could almost brew up on that! :p

Man, I wish I had money to burn. Would love a dedicated i7 foldy rig. I am getting an i7 machine soon, but I fear gaming sessions [when i have the time] and my tendancy to experiment may put bigadv folding at risk. In the very least I would probably miss out on a big chunk of bonus points :(

Will see how it goes.

Oh and 12GB RAM is monstrous in a desktop! :o Gimme!
 
84°c - 87°c jesus :eek: mine hardly touches 74°c on all cores when under full folding load with a 1.388 vcore and is at about 68°c with one windows SMP.

I also need 12GB ram but prices now are a pain to look at i should have got some when i built this rig, now i am paying for it :(
 
First bigadv WU just sent - be interesting to see how many points it gives me.

Made a few changes on the farm and boosted my total ppd considerably.
I was running two SMP clients on my native Ubuntu rig in the bedroom and getting about 2,000 ppd each client. I happened to notice that, when one client had finished and was in the process of sending etc., the other client shot up to over 6,000 ppd. I shut down the second client and I am now getting 6,100 ppd from running a single client on that - that's an increase of 2,000 ppd by switching off a client.

The media machine in the living room was running two Windows SMP clients and performing fairly poorly - it was getting around 2,000 ppd per client on the 1760 pointers and around 1,650 per client on the 1920 pointers. I tried the same with that but it only went up to about 2,500 on a single client so I bunged a VM on there and it's now chucking out 5,400 ppd.

I also had a play with the clocks on the 8800GTX - boosted the GPU clock to 649MHz and the shader clock to 1600MHz and getting a few hundred more out of that.

All in all, the changes I've made have increased my total ppd by around 4000 - FahMon is currently estimating around 32,000-33,000 but, as long as I haven't cocked up the passkey thing, I should get bonus points totalling about 14,000 ppd - taking me up to around 47,000 :D

Labatyd seems to have stopped completely - shame really as he/she seemed to be plodding along nicely. Never mind, if you're around prepare to be stomped today :p

Next on the horizon after that is piggott (Mr. Brightside, I believe) - better hope your bigadv rig keeps you ahead a bit longer - the stomp is inevitable however so prepare to move over for the inexorable onslaught of Stan_Lite's stomping might.

To recap - current hardware and ppd:

Gaming rig - i7 920 @ 3.8GHz running one bigadv client on VM - ppd = approx 25,000.
Old gaming rig - Q6600 @ 3.4GHz + 8800GTX @ 649/1600/1000 running one GPU2 client and 1 SMP client on a VM - ppd = approx 10,000-11,000.
Media rig in living room - Q6600 @ 3.4GHz running one SMP client in a VM - ppd = approx 5,500.
Dedicated Ubuntu Folding rig in bedroom - running one SMP client - ppd = approx 6,100.

The above set up seems to be working fine so will remain as it is for the foreseeable future. I'm off to work tomorrow anyway and will be away for a month so I'm not in a position to tinker with it. Hopefully I'll have better luck than I used to and machines won't start falling over the minute I'm out the door.

One slight concern with running VMs. All my rigs are set to reboot after a power failure but the VMs all need to be manually restarted. If we have a power cut while I'm away, the only things which will come back on automatically will be the Ubuntu rig and the GPU client so ppd would be a paltry 10,000-12,000 :(
 
Stan_Lite said:
Next on the horizon after that is piggott (Mr. Brightside, I believe) - better hope your bigadv rig keeps you ahead a bit longer - the stomp is inevitable however so prepare to move over for the inexorable onslaught of Stan_Lite's stomping might.
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Correct, that's me. As of 2am this morning my bigadv rig is now running at 3.8, up from 3.6. Not enough to make up the difference but every little helps. As you say though the stomp is inevitable so I'll make sure I've cleared out my cell for you in good time.

Stan_Lite said:
Gaming rig - i7 920 @ 3.8GHz running one bigadv client on VM - ppd = approx 25,000.
Old gaming rig - Q6600 @ 3.4GHz + 8800GTX @ 649/1600/1000 running one GPU2 client and 1 SMP client on a VM - ppd = approx 10,000-11,000.
Media rig in living room - Q6600 @ 3.4GHz running one SMP client in a VM - ppd = approx 5,500.
Dedicated Ubuntu Folding rig in bedroom - running one SMP client - ppd = approx 6,100.
Click to expand...
My machines for comparison:
Desktop - i7 920 @ 3.8GHz running one bigadv client on VM
Laptop - Core 2 Duo T7500 @ 2.2GHz + 8600M GT running one standard SMP client on VM and one GPU2 client - seems to be on the thermal limit - CPUs run at around 95C and it oscillates between 2.2 and 1.6GHz

If only they could release the GPU3 client and I could get Folding on my 5850!
 
Snapshot said:
BTW Stan, I see you've now been credited with your first 58k WU. :cool:
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Got the credit on Stanford this morning but it just recently showed up on EOC - gave a nice boost to my 24hr average :cool:

Next one is due to finish on Tuesday night so should get another boost then.
 
shadowscotland said:
So that's why you've just topped my EOC threat list stan :eek::D:cool:
Here hoping your rigs stay online for your month at sea
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It'll only get worse too - fairly soon, I should be top of everybody's threat list :D
And, thanks - I'm hopeful things will be fine while I'm away. The only one I'm really worried about is this one - the old gaming rig. For no apparent reason, the VM client decided to shut itself down twice yesterday, claiming user requested it. I did nothing of the kind - I was in the other room at the time :confused: Been all right since but, if it happens while I'm away, it'll just have to stay not on.

That'll be Mr. Brightside stomped then. I'll do another thread of parps when I work out how things will pan out with my new improved output.
 
Stan, you just got restomped! Probably won't happen again though, so do enjoy your new cell - then again, you won't be in there long.

As a side note, anyone considering running the bigadv WUs in a VirtualBox guest, don't. After completing the WU that resulted in the above stomp, I decided to have a go at getting a bigadv setup going in a VirtualBox guest, using a fresh GUI-less, terminal only Debian testing install specifically for the job. It runs, but even when I set the VirtualBox process to low priority in Windows it's making my whole system horrifically slow to use even just for web browsing, even when giving it only 6 or 7 CPUs. I've yet to see how long it's taking per frame, but I suspect it will be a lot slower than VMware, which I'll be going back to (only for Folding) as soon as this WU has finished.
 
Nice restomp - and onto page one too :) Nice timing on that WU.

My next bigadv WU should be in tomorrow afternoon/evening so I should, hopefully, regain the stomp then.

Hopefully, you'll get things running properly. I hardly use the machine for anything else but when I have, I haven't noticed too much of a slowdown with VM (except for gaming - although I suspect that's more to do with RAM allocation than anything else). VM seems to work pretty well so I'll stick with that for now (not that I have much choice since I'm posting from my hotel room in Cairo and won't be home for a month anyway :p). I doff my cap in your direction for having the balls to try something different though :cool:
 
Well after a bit of a holiday slowdown, I'm back up to my regular 30K PPD again, and increases are in the works (finally)
 
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