GPU Folding ? Help !!!

Moonpie2 · 4 Sep 2007 at 09:37

Hi Dudes.

After only just realising that I have an ATI gfx card I was wondering if I can be folding on both my CPU cores and the GFX card at the same time ?

And is there any detailed help to enable me to do this ?
I had a look on Stanford's page and it seems to be a little out of date !!

Any help would be great for the greater glory of Team 10

Cheers

Biffa · 4 Sep 2007 at 10:16

What sort have you got? AFAIK the only thing worth folding on is the 19xx series of cards. e.g. 1900, 1950 etc. Plus it takes up 1 CPU as well.

FAQ is here

Moonpie2 · 4 Sep 2007 at 10:21

Ohh right.
Probably not worth it then.
I just got an x1650 and thought it might be nice to have it chugging away in the background

Although... would it be worth it ??
One of my cores can do a WU in about 26 hours.

rich99million · 4 Sep 2007 at 10:37

If you have any kind of decent CPU you'll be better off not using the x1650 - it will get about the same points and will just generate extra heat and use more power

Moonpie2 · 4 Sep 2007 at 10:44

I got an E2140 @ 3.ghz

Probably best to throw the GPU idea out of the window then

Biffa · 4 Sep 2007 at 10:59

What are you using at the moment? You could probably increase your output by using the WinSMP client if you are not using that yet.

Moonpie2 · 4 Sep 2007 at 11:19

Just using text console.

rich99million · 4 Sep 2007 at 14:43

Moonpie2 said:
I got an E2140 @ 3.ghz

Probably best to throw the GPU idea out of the window then

Yep definitely - on that machine you'd be much better off running the WinSMP client rather than two standard console clients or a mixture with the GPU

Mattus · 5 Sep 2007 at 17:12

Another vote for SMP - should easily quadruple your PPD.

Moonpie2 · 5 Sep 2007 at 17:14

I hear people around these parts having touble running an SMP client on Vista though

Biffa · 5 Sep 2007 at 21:07

Not me, works fine in vista, both as a client or a service

Mattus · 6 Sep 2007 at 00:24

I have Linux SMP running OK on Vista. For WinSMP I think it's just a matter of running it with the correct privileges.

Moonpie2 · 6 Sep 2007 at 09:17

Anywhere I can look into this WinSMP thing then as there's not too much about it on the sticky

rich99million · 6 Sep 2007 at 11:59

Here's the download - http://www.stanford.edu/~kasson/folding/Folding@Home Windows SMP Client.EXE
It includes some instructions with it too

I found the information in the FAQ was enough to get me going - mine is under XP though so you might need someone to point you out to a thread here detailing getting it working properly with Vista

Moonpie2 · 6 Sep 2007 at 16:54

Fank you !!!
I'll check it out.

Moonpie2 · 6 Sep 2007 at 17:23

Hmmm....
Problems ??

When I run the install.bat
I get this...

And I didn't get the...
If you see this twice, MPI is working
If you see this twice, MPI is working
..at the end.

I went through with the setup anyway and it SAID it was running but my cores showed no activity and FAHMON couldn't see anything when I pointed it at the right directory

Help !!!

rich99million · 6 Sep 2007 at 17:58

Sorry I'm a massive Vista n00b and I'm guessing that's the problem here

Have a read of this: http://fahwiki.net/index.php/How_do_I_install_the_SMP_Console_client_in_Windows_Vista?

Moonpie2 · 6 Sep 2007 at 18:18

HAHAHA !!!
Sorted !!

It seems right clicking and "Running as administrator" doesn't always have the same effect as turning UAC off. Something to remember there.

Right, now what should I do with other folding ?
Let both cores finish doing what they're doing and then delete them both or should I keep one core and run WinSMP on the other ?

BTW is WinSMP compatible with Fahmon ?
It doesn't seem to be detecting the WUs yet !?!?

rich99million · 6 Sep 2007 at 18:24

For now I would stop the old clients so you can see how the WinSMP does by itself - it should use all the available cores so there's no need to run anything else. The SMP WU's have short deadlines so it would be best to finish the new WU first and see how it goes - then maybe go back to the old WUs after to get them cleared off.

edit: FahMon should work fine with SMP - it will take a while to give you an ETA but you should be able to see the WU details already. Try Fahmon -> Download New Projects if it's not detecting the WU properly.

Moonpie2 · 6 Sep 2007 at 18:53

Yeah I got Fahmon to detect it

Well I stopped my 2 normal folding cores and just started WinSMP and both cores are running at 50% now.

Seems I may be able to keep one of them running in addition to WinSMP !!