HD4890 no longer supported by F@H?

Akagi · 21 Oct 2012 at 23:58

I just got hold of an HD4890 black edition.

I then swapped the 8800GTS (G80 320MB) in my folding rig for the HD4890 and the client 'could not get work'. Further research lead me to believe that this card is no longer supported. Is this the case? And if so why?! It makes no sense to me why the support would be dropped for a card which is still fairly powerful. Why do old Nvidia cards still work?

Is there any way I can get the 4890 to work with F@H? Or if not does anyone have a recommendation for another GPU folding client? I like F@H though... And OcUK team 10 and the points system...

I don't want to use SETI as I have no interest in searching for extraterrestrial intelligence. It is a waste of time and power in my opinion. I want to help people.

Biffa · 22 Oct 2012 at 17:50

ATI dropped support for CAL/Brook and transitioned to OpenCL so Stanford had to do the same. The HD5000 supports a more advanced version of OpenCL than the HD4000 thats why the 4890 isn't supported anymore.

That was announced around May 2011

That being said, the 4890 never was any good compared to the Nvidia cards for folding, in fact none of the AMD/ATI cards hold a candle to the Nvidia cards for folding even now, but then none of them can beat the points from a decent i5/i7 grade CPU either.

There are other things you can do, you don't say what your folding rigs specs are, but maybe you could fold on your CPU? The 4890 would have done something like 2.5-3K in the old days, but even something like a GTS250 or 9800GT would get you 6-7K and a modern i5 would probably get you around 20-30K depending on # of threads and memory availablilty.

Also there are many projects on BOINC of which SETI is just one. Not all, if any will use your CPU but there might be some still out there that will work with that card.

Good luck!

Akagi · 22 Oct 2012 at 18:03

Biffa said:
ATI dropped support for CAL/Brook and transitioned to OpenCL so Stanford had to do the same. The HD5000 supports a more advanced version of OpenCL than the HD4000 thats why the 4890 isn't supported anymore.

That was announced around May 2011

That being said, the 4890 never was any good compared to the Nvidia cards for folding, in fact none of the AMD/ATI cards hold a candle to the Nvidia cards for folding even now, but then none of them can beat the points from a decent i5/i7 grade CPU either.

There are other things you can do, you don't say what your folding rigs specs are, but maybe you could fold on your CPU? The 4890 would have done something like 2.5-3K in the old days, but even something like a GTS250 or 9800GT would get you 6-7K and a modern i5 would probably get you around 20-30K depending on # of threads and memory availablilty.

Also there are many projects on BOINC of which SETI is just one. Not all, if any will use your CPU but there might be some still out there that will work with that card.

Good luck!

Thanks for clearing that up for me Biffa

I am looking into swapping the HD4890 BE for an Nvidia card. I have been offered a GTX260 Golden Sample in exchange for it, so that may well be going in the folding PC.
How many points do you recon a GTX260 GS and an E8200 @ stock clocks would get? Thanks

Pilgrim57 · 24 Oct 2012 at 10:26

A 260 @ stock will get up to 8k ppd but could be as low as 5500.

Akagi · 24 Oct 2012 at 16:38

Pilgrim57 said:
A 260 @ stock will get up to 8k ppd but could be as low as 5500.

It will be a Golden Sample (factory overclocked) overclocked further to around 700MHz. And thanks

It is the E8200 which will be at stock, thanks to the lousy G41 chipset.

Pilgrim57 · 24 Oct 2012 at 16:54

acme15 said:
It will be a Golden Sample (factory overclocked) overclocked further to around 700MHz. And thanks
It is the E8200 which will be at stock, thanks to the lousy G41 chipset.

As for your o/c 260 add 1k maybe a bit more depends on WU's. You might get close to 10k with luck.
That chip is an old dual core so doubt it is worth folding on it TBH.
BOINC may be a better choice for work. SETI? Climate change is having many disk problems & no work @ present. I wouldn't recommend Rosetta as the credit will be low for the ppd. Maybe someone else can suggest a suitable project.

Akagi · 24 Oct 2012 at 17:15

Pilgrim57 said:
As for your o/c 260 add 1k maybe a bit more depends on WU's. You might get close to 10k with luck.
That chip is an old dual core so doubt it is worth folding on it TBH.
BOINC may be a better choice for work. SETI? Climate change is having many disk problems & no work @ present. I wouldn't recommend Rosetta as the credit will be low for the ppd. Maybe someone else can suggest a suitable project.

I will leave the CPU on rosetta and have the GPU on F@H like I have done in the past then. Any idea what PPD the CPU would get on F@H however?

It may be old, but it is still a solid chip for mainstream gaming and multi-tasking

HankScorpio · 24 Oct 2012 at 18:40

Biffa said:
a modern i5 would probably get you around 20-30K depending on # of threads and memory availablilty.

How do you do this then? My cp is clocked at 4.6Ghz and memory is 8GB 8-9-9-21 1T 2000Mhz

My ppd ranges from 8k to 18k on average. How do you utilize memory for folding as it only seems to take a few MBs.