Folding@Home News - 5th November - 12 November 2010

[Speed]

Asus M4N82 Deluxe. The cards will all be so close that I can't imagine temps being acceptable.

That is what I thought with my GTX295/GTX260s but the stock coolers work well at venting the hot air out the back. Tri-SLi has of course been well tested.

Like ReaVerUK says making sure the case has good airflow is key. When I came to use Tri-SLI on my UD5s it became clear that I needed a case with 8 PCI slots. So I decided to go with the Silverstone RV02 cases, these are excellent and use the inverted design which works perfectly with nVidia reference coolers. The three large fans at the base of the case draw cooler air into case, the graphics card coolers take this and simply vent it right out of the top.

 

[SiriusB]

My main rig is in an RV02. Bloody amazing case. All the airflow goes from bottom to top, meaning very nice temps! It's also the size of a barn so very easy to make it very tidy inside to reduce obstructions and the like.

 

[Speed]

My main rig is in an RV02. Bloody amazing case. All the airflow goes from bottom to top, meaning very nice temps! It's also the size of a barn so very easy to make it very tidy inside to reduce obstructions and the like.

Yup, very pleased with both of mine.

 

[Luke]

Sadly out of my price range.
The Thermaltkae Tsunami is too small though and needs to be replaced.

 

[loudbob]

I'm Stuck!!!!!

Pesky ISP's messed up my connection.

Can't access OcUK, Seti, FAH...........from home.

Can't get any new work units on anything (same goes for uploading).

All my rigs have been 'not on' for nearly two days with no resolution in sight.

Can access most web pages - but not the important stuff - ISP ain't got a clue what the issue is.

 

[Luke]

Can you swap your DNS setting to use openDNS to see if that helps?

 

[adwol48]

just out of interest the guys using the gtx460's what kind of overclock are you using for folding thats stable, i've seen reviews of the msi gtx460 i bought hitting 900Mhz on the core with a little more voltage.

 

[Biffa]

The answer is in this very thread

I've got mine on 900 core, but its water cooled, voltage just over 1.0V they others have air cooled ones on around 850-875

But many people are finding the new 6811 work units show up any instability in your overclock on the cards, something is being worked VERY hard on the 460's it could be the shaders but it runs real hot and if the WU doesn't crash the machine often will esp with air cooled ones. Dropping back the overclock and upping the voltage seems to fix it.

 

[ToxicTBag]

Seems to be working ok so far at this end not gotten any of those 6811 wu's yet but hey ho.
Well blow the sr2 does fit in a haf x case, which is fine on air cooling with those 200mm fans but it'll be murder putting watercooling in there. Why did this haf x have to be so damned ugly i might have been tempted if it didn't. Well it was a thought but there's no way i would fit the radiators needed in there which means come summer next year i would be back to the same nightmare with temps.....so many choices wot is one to do

 

[SiriusB]

Can you swap your DNS setting to use openDNS to see if that helps?

I prefer Google's DNS servers. They are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 Much easier to remember too

 

[Biffa]

Yeah but its Google ffs.. ugh. And OpenDNS lets you do so much more.

 

[Luke]

For info, the guys on the ECGA folding team are complaining a lot about the 6800/6811 WU's.
http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?&m=676283&print=true&mpage=1

If what they say is true then this lowering of PPD's could now be the norm

 

[datalol-jack]

Yeah but its Google ffs.. ugh. And OpenDNS lets you do so much more.

Free lists and rule based internet filtering

If what they say is true then this lowering of PPD's could now be the norm

I believe there was much work done on the project load balancing side of things where 'stronger' hardware would get more computationally intensive tasks more often; which from FAH point of view is a good use of resources. Lower PPD is a downside of this, but you do get higher basic credit per unit.

 

[Luke]

What I'm wondering now is whether I'd have been better with a single 470 rather than 2 450's. Had I known this was coming I'd have waited a week or so.

 

[SiriusB]

I believe there was much work done on the project load balancing side of things where 'stronger' hardware would get more computationally intensive tasks more often; which from FAH point of view is a good use of resources. Lower PPD is a downside of this, but you do get higher basic credit per unit.

It is slightly unfair to those people whose GPUs are roasting away at what, 15C higher in some cases, for less PPD?

In the very least they could keep a similar PPD. From what I have been reading, if the 6800 type units will be the norm, it's almost worth sticking with a GTX2xx and GPU2 client!

 

[Biffa]

It will all filter down eventually. It happened with GPU2 as well where the G80/90/92 cards started to suffer. Eventually they will want to fold bigger proteins and WU's accordingly, this is part of the ATi argument, that NV have had artificially higher output while the "testing" of small WU's has been ongoing. Should be interesting few months with the release of bigger WU's and the new OpenCL client

 

[datalol-jack]

In the very least they could keep a similar PPD.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but PPD formula baseline system might have changed as well, to reflect a shift in hardware trends. I know what they are running in terms of AMD/ATI kit, but not really sure what is in their NVIDIA reference system, at the moment.

But yes, ultimately, you end up with what you get from a project controller, although with enough community pressure changes can and will probably be made in the long terms, depending on the usefulness of actual results. For the time being, I am increasing airflow in my case, just to stay on the safe side.

From what I have been reading, if the 6800 type units will be the norm, it's almost worth sticking with a GTX2xx and GPU2 client!

Or you could just force older WUs on to your Fermi kit! Either way, GTS450/GTX460 should be able to beat a GTX2xxx card on a shader clock per ppd basis. :O

new OpenCL client

I can't wait for that myself, although I am having interesting issues with OpenCL so far, mostly in terms of hardware detection. Here is an example: xeon rig + 2 GPUs = 3 OpenCL devices listed and properly enumerated for the system; yet remove the second GPU and only 1 GPU that is left is seen as an OpenCL device; furthermore, a pure i7, is not picked up as an OpenCL device in either scenario. I fear the worst :C Let's hope they fix it come release date.

 

[SiriusB]

My new toy

Also, a question for dekez. On EOC, is the Change 7 Days column the change in TEAM Rank, or is it overall PROJECT rank? Or is it the same... I am thinking it is quite possible to stomp 1 person in your team, but at the same time stomp dozens project-wide. Hence why I want to know which EOC is measuring!

It is not a huge issue, but if it is just Team Rank, I can probably simplify part of my script.

 

[PhillyDee]

Potential extra PPD?

 

[shadowscotland]

I got a 'present' today as well - but the bigNG came in a much smaller box