quick question about GPU2 on 2 cards or more?

didgemaster

didgemaster

didgemaster

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Forgive my ignorance but...

From what I can gather if you wish to have a second graphics card in your system and you want both run gpu2 clients then they can not be in SLI

That being the case then it would follow that you can by a motherboard with multiple PCI-e slots that doesn't necessarily support SLI, slot in other gfx cards and run a separate gpu2 client on each of them

Am I right or wrong?
 
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I believe with the latest version of the client on ATI cards, crossfire does not need to be disabled. I am unsure if this applies to nvidia sli yet, but multiple cards certainly works with sli disabled.

You can buy many motherboards which hold multiple graphics cards and dont offer sli. Any of the standard crossfire ones are like this, I have an Asus P5Q with two nvidia cards in working fine.

If using linux, be warned that a second card may confuse the hell out of xorg and drop you to a command line until you change xorg.conf manually
 
Thanks for the advice

I was considering my first foray into Linux - everyone raves about how good it is, it will increase my folding output and hey it'll look good on that CV, besides I virtualise XP on it should I need to
 
You are right, you cannot have SLI enabled (well, you can, but it will only fold on one card). I would think twice before switching to linux if you plan on GPU folding. Im sure you are aware there is no official gpu client, only a bodge using WINE. In my experience (using both cards from a GX2), it was a little flakey, mostly when stopping/starting the clients (obviously not a problem if you plan on 24/7 folding). Fan control and overclocking is also fairly limited on linux (it is there... sort of!), and i personally found that Windows gave more ppd. I think this is a limitation of the CUDA wrapper needed to get WINE to run F@H, but dont quote me on that!

Linux is great, dont get me wrong (i would consider a switch if an official GPU client were released), and for cpu folding its is much better than windows. I would consider using linux virtual machine first - they are not particularly convienient, but are very stable and reliable, and allow you to use windows for the gpu clients. Dont let me put you off at all, i certainly dont want to do that, and it was a 'fun' experiment, but for GPU folding i would personally say windows gives better performance and is easier to manage.
 
There's a couple of very good websites on gpu folding under linux, and its behaving itself perfectly for me (once I stopped editing the instructions).
http://www.overclock.net/overclock-net-folding-home-team/436453-how-gpu2-folding-linux.html

Fancontrol via lmsensors works excellently. This also provides temperature monitoring, which can be embedded in your desktop via conky if you wish.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=42737

It is difficult, if not impossible, to stability test under linux. So do the testing in windows :)
I recommend getting an ubuntu livecd. Boot from it and play around with the somewhat alien interface (runs somewhat slower from cd than from hard drive). If you choose to install, 'system, administration, partition editor' or typing sudo gparted will get you a very nice partition editor. Shrink the windows one by 8gb or so, then install ubuntu from the link on your desktop. When you boot you'll be asked if you want to load windows or ubuntu, the menu that comes up can be edited in /boot/grub/menu.lst

Any problems and I'll try to help, but if I fail the forum linked above is very good.
Cheers :)

edit; virtual XP is great if you don't try to do any 3D rendering in it, as I'm sure you've discovered
 
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