I'm Back!

[catilley1092]

I was trying to get that tracking deal setup, had problems, it also looked like a paid program after 40 days.

So I started back with the GPU. Although the temps are the same (avg 63), the usage has shot up to 98%. Is this unsafe?

Also, can I install & run the regular CPU client w/the GPU running? The main thing is, I'm a bit concerned about the percentage of GPU usage.

Cat

 

[clifford_cooley]

I was trying to get that tracking deal setup, had problems, it also looked like a paid program after 40 days.

The Tracker is free software. If you are having troubles setting up the Tracker, Yodap or myself would be happy to assist.

the usage has shot up to 98%. Is this unsafe?

That is how people fold on their GPU's. However if you don't want it running so close to 100%, you can drop the usage level a bit.

 

[catilley1092]

The temps haven't gone up, that concerned me a bit, I suppose if it got too hot, or overloaded, there's a safety in place. It's still running around 63.

I'll pause after the job that started an hour ago, and try again. Mabye I downloaded the wrong app. I'll most likely need help with the configuration.

My last job completed in 10 hours, it finished in the nick of time for the 12:00 update by F@H. I'm also monitoring it on Extreme Overclocking.com, but their update takes more time.

If only I can get that CPU involved, I can gain even more.

I'm also considering another purchase, one of those fermi cards that Newegg has on sale. The local Hospice store has several used (some nearly new) PC's, at reasonable prices, all that I'd need to do is install that card in it, and then I'd smoke.

I just never understood the difference between CPU & GPU folding. Really, I haven't seen the potential of CPU folding yet.

We're going to climb that chart a little more now, I see ms_yodap is making progress too.

Cat

 

[yodap]

Cat, open setup and configure.

Under client settings tick "Use multi-core SMP client" and "Use all CPU cores". Then "Enable GPU folding" and click on auto-detect GPUs. Your card should show up in the GPU0 line

Under Tracker Settings, input your name, team number and your passkey.

That's it. Let me know how it's going.

 

[catilley1092]

Thanks yodap!

As soon as this job that I'm on now completes, I'll do it. It just looked a little confusing.

BTW, this notebook gets faster by the day. The last job completed in 10 hours, this one looks like it's going to be finished in 9, and that's even taking into account that I created & fully updated a VM (XP Media Center), and installed it's programs too, in the last 2 hours.

On this one, a the VM acts and runs like a real install, even better than the Dell when I first got it.

Cat

 

[yodap]

I've been playing with some of the options in the program and find them very useful for folding on a laptop.

It's easy to set it to not start another WU.

It's easy to set it to run with only using about half the cpu resources. Setting it to run on 1 core on the core i-5 doesn't work, I assume because the SMP-2 client is a multi-core client. So I set to run on 2 cores and that did it. It runs at about 50-60% cpu usage and about 7-10C cooler. In fact I can run without the laptop cooler safely in this mode.

It will take considerably longer to complete a WU and will decrease the eventual bonus, but adds much peace of mind.

 

[Kalario]

Oh man... just leave the screen up and have a couple of beers, twist one up and kick back and watch the light show! LOL!

Ooohps! Wrong person! LOL!

Hey Yodap...is that you listening to Radio Gnome Trilogy?

 

[yodap]

Hey Yodap...is that you listening to Radio Gnome Trilogy?

Dude, that's my grandpa getting down with Didier!

 

[Full_Taoer]

I just never understood the difference between CPU & GPU folding. Really, I haven't seen the potential of CPU folding yet.

GPU folding outpaces CPU for points per day in many cases. The really large units that require at least a quad-core CPU with HyperThreading, called bigadv, are an exception. I average 29K PPD on my machine just from the CPU client with the -bigadv flag. The single WU worth 69K that posted to your name a while back is an example of one of those.

 

[catilley1092]

After a day and a half, a bad driver update (which at first I didn't think was the problem), a reinstall, I'm back again.

What I done was applied the NVIDIA update that was recently released (a scan showed it was for my card), rebooted, and installed the tracking software at the same time. I thought it was the tracking software causing my problems, or the VM that I had created.

I should've only installed the update, and resumed what I was doing, I would've found out fast the problem. Instead, I made two changes, installing the driver & tracking software, I never thought about rolling back the driver, although I tried System Restore, all of my restore points were gone.

And even after the reinstall, updating & reinstalling everything, I once again applied the updated driver, I didn't have such problems with AMD's drivers. The GPU3 client still wouldn't work, at that point (a couple of hours ago) I realized the problem, rolled it back, that worked.

Now I'm going again. I was planning to be at 200,000 points by now, no big deal, I'll get there. I just hope that all of those failed jobs that F@H sent me don't cost me my bonus points.

Cat

 

[yodap]

I'm not understanding you.

If you just use the tracker program it has all the clients within the folder. It downloads all of them upon first running it. You won't need that stand alone GPU3 client.

I've never had any trouble with nvidia drivers.

 

[clifford_cooley]

I've never had any trouble with nvidia drivers.

I've been reading bad reports about folding with 270.61 nVidia Driver.
270.61 Drivers and folding

 

[catilley1092]

So I'm not the only one that's had trouble.

I tried running the tracker program, mabye it was the bad driver causing the problem. Anyway, with or without the tracker, the new driver is no good. At least for folding, that is.

Plus, and I may have missed something, I couldn't find a control for the CPU usage, although there was one for GPU usage. I don't want it to run at 100%, 24/7. Mabye 85%. While I want decent points, I don't want to cook the computer doing it. When I started the client, the CPU pegged at 100% & stayed there for 20 minutes, but the job numbers weren't moving at all.

Cat

 

[yodap]

I didn't know that driver package was out and I'm glad I haven't updated them. It ain't broke so I'll avoid them as long as possible.

On the first tab in configure cat, type in the #2 in the box after you select the radio button.

 

[catilley1092]

I did, but I could find no way to control the CPU's load, it was constantly running at 100%. Both cores were on. If I could find a way to reduce this to 85%, that would be good.

Cat

 

[yodap]

What are your temps for your cores?

 

[clifford_cooley]

If I could find a way to reduce this to 85%, that would be good.

I'm afraid that is one of the negative aspects of the Tracker. They haven't programmed a way to throttle back the Clients.

 

[yodap]

I don't know, maybe our Core i-5's are different. SpeedFan shows 4 cores but we know there are only 2 that support 4-way processing.

For me there is only this speed or full speed.

 

[clifford_cooley]

Core™ i5-480M has 2 Cores, 4 Threads

 

[catilley1092]

I never got the chance to monitor temps (CPU), as I was trying to figure out what was going on w/the client. At the time, I didn't know if it was the driver, had I did, I would've simply rolled it back in Device Manager.

yodap, that's the very same i5 that I have. 4 way processing. I need to work on this some tomorrow, mabye some playing around (getting my feet wet) will help. I've been messing with this notebook so much during the last day, I'm getting wore out. It'll finish this one in a few minutes (only took a little over 8 hours), let one run tonight, pause it in the morning, and see what I can do.

I would like to come save some extra cash though, instead of doing that network backup project, get one of those high performance video cards from Newegg, find a suitable used computer, add the card to it, and let it rip. An XP computer would be suitable for it, provided it had enough PSU for it to run, and adequate space for the card. GPU3 folding is a breeze.

Cat