Installation Guide for GPU Client - Nvidia Version

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Since this is brand new, it needs a brand new guide :)

What you needInstalling and configuring the beta client

This is fairly straight forward, the default path of this install is C:\Program Files\Folding@home\Folding@home-gpu, but the application data (i.e. the WU data) is stored in either:

* C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Folding@home-gpu for Windows XP,
* C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Roaming\Folding@home-gpu\ for Windows Vista.

This will be useful for FaHMon later :)

Once the client starts (it auto starts on logon as well) the configure screen appears:

The two important parts to this are the username and the team. Choose your username (or someone else's if you're folding with them :)) and remember that we are TEAM 10! :D

The second tab provides you with proxy settings, along with allowing big work units. If you have a card that has 512Mb on you should be fine with this turned on :)

The last tab provides advanced settings for CPU prioritisation and usage, and also for checkpoints timings. Since the current GPU units are fairly small I would recommend setting this to the highest setting of 30 minutes.

Updating the drivers

The Pande Group strongly recommend that you install the latest drivers - which at this point is 177.35. However, these are only configured for the new GTX series (280 and 260). There is a way of using the modified INF file above and the following explanation by Mattus:

Run the driver file - it'll error but doesn't matter, you just need to get at the extracted files. Find the folder that the driver extracted into (usually C:\NVIDIA\177.35 or similar). Replace the nv4_disp.inf file in that folder with the modded one. Then the drivers should install normally if you click the setup.exe. Reboot and you're away.
Setting up FaHMon

Most of you use FaHMon anyway, there is an excellent guide in the main sticky thread, this explains how to setup just the GPU client.

This is very simple: Add a new client and set the path to be C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Folding@home-gpu\ .

Remember to set the path to this "Folding@home-gpu" folder and not the "work" folder. The log file it looks at is not in the work folder :)

Setting Process Priorities (for use with other folding clients)

This is quite important to do, since without the priorities being set correctly the GPU client may not get enough CPU. You should be able to use the task manager to set the priority to higher than the other folding clients, however the process explorer does give you more information if you require it :)

In order to guarentee enough CPU for the GPU client, set the process priority to "Low" and the CPU clients to "idle". This should allow you to get the most points out of your machine :)

Monitoring GPU Temps

There is a very good step-by-step guide for monitoring GPU temps using rivatuner here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=81852

Feel free to make further comments/suggestions to improving this guide - I can add pictures if it helps. Hopefully this will give you enough information to get the GPU client going on your machine :)
 
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Nice work, I've not tested it yet but it looks good enough. No doubt it will get changed a lot and added to over the next few weeks and months.

Stirred up quite a bit of interest this GPU2 client... all good for the Folding Wars. :D
 
Nice work Yeggstry, that was pretty quick!

Only one thing I can think of to add at the moment: if you're using Vista, the path to the work files is different. It's C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Roaming\Folding@home-gpu\. Vista seems to run it just as quickly as XP, judging by the figures I've seen.
 
Nice work Yeggstry, that was pretty quick!

Only one thing I can think of to add at the moment: if you're using Vista, the path to the work files is different. It's C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Roaming\Folding@home-gpu\. Vista seems to run it just as quickly as XP, judging by the figures I've seen.

Thanks for the info, added :)
 
Does anyone have the modded .inf for Vista x64. I can get past all that 'only type in symbols attatched to a cat' bullpoo. Seriously annoying. I tried 6 times, WHAT CAT? Stupidest thing i have ever seen.
 
Couldn't resist installing the modified drivers. Getting 2300ppd though - which is great but seems a little low compared to the others. :(

e6300 @ 2.5Ghz, 2GB 667 RAM, 512mb 8800GT.
 
Does anyone have the modded .inf for Vista x64. I can get past all that 'only type in symbols attatched to a cat' bullpoo. Seriously annoying. I tried 6 times, WHAT CAT? Stupidest thing i have ever seen.

Yeah I agree mate, I've update it with a better place to get the INF file. Hope this is better :)
 
Couldn't resist installing the modified drivers. Getting 2300ppd though - which is great but seems a little low compared to the others. :(

e6300 @ 2.5Ghz, 2GB 667 RAM, 512mb 8800GT.

If you're running an SMP client, make sure that the priority of the GPU client is higher. I restarted the GPU client and had the same problem - my PPD jumped 2000 points because of this! :)
 
Nope, no SMP client, although the two service installs of the standard client keep respawning on restart for some reason even though I re-ran each client with the -configonly flag and specifically said NO.

However, even when I kill them through task manager I'm still getting 2300ppd roughly. Hmm. *scratches head*
 
Very odd. Is it possible to check that you've downloaded the projects in FaHMon, and can you post some of your server log please.

Also, does anyone know how to set this up as a service? I'd like to keep myself logged off to save a few CPU cycles :)
 
Yeah I'll post some later after I've had another mess, on the laptop at the minute.

As for the service install - I'm sure someone will come up with something soon. Although the tray icon seems to behave just how I need it to on a borg so I'm well happy. Not bad for a first beta.
 
yea the tray icon is fine, and better for myself as its quick n easy to stop n start when needed, no probs rebooting, loads every time without fault, only probs so far have been through over OC'ing the card. at 6k ppd I'm chuffed
 
The beta actually seems to be really stable.

Yeggstry, we've both dumped precisely 6,852 points in the last 24 hours :D
 
Hmm, points have crept up to 2800ppd but still lagging. I don't understand it. Tried both sets of drivers. Currently using the "recommended" ones but I've tried the modded ones. Even with the recommended drivers I should be getting more than this surely. :confused:

In other news I've quickly knocked up a ps3 client page for SiriusB to upload to his site so if that all goes okay I'll make a page for the GPU2 one when this guide matures.
 
Found myself at a loose end, so I quickly knocked up a pictorial guide for running the GPU client under Vista. Yeggstry, maybe you could incorporate the images into your guide?

http://upload.mattus.co.uk/fahgpu/
Nice on Mattus. I caught one thing I forgot to do, which was the Big-WU selection for my Vista-32 install (still sint' working yet :mad: but I guess that's the reality of using Beta SW).

Question:

When you ran the driver update, did you run it as Admin? I'm having a problem with the drivers being accepted / loaded. When I reboot it goes back to Standard VGA graphics driver.

A second Item I ran across was, I heard / read that we only need the 177.35 driver set if we're using 64-Bit. Not sure of the validity on that yet, as I can't get my Vista machine to run without EUE or Unstable Hardware errors. My XP box is running without a hitch with 177.35 and Mod .inf
.
 
According to the Stanford/nVidia guys, the 177.35 drivers are for GTX cards only, and that GTS/GT cards should run the 177.55 drivers - regardless of any ini modification. Maybe this might explain my problem, but I've seen people posting 8800GT ppds that are far higher, so I don't know.
 
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