A call to folding

Looks like we are falling a bit.
Any chance of admin banner for a day?

 

Yeah, I was working on why I couldn't take a screen shot of an elevated app. Rebooted my computer, was thinking I needed to turn off folding, and forgot to turn it back on for over a day, so, my daily dropped.

 

Sheesh man, noob mistake right there! If my computer stops folding I notice because it heats up my room during these freezing winter months :-D

 

Chugging away every fall thru spring with my old gaming tower until it dies. It's a Xeon X3220 Quad @ 3.5Ghz, Gtx 560ti 448 core @ 920/2056, all on an old Asus P5Q3 Deluxe. It might be an old combo, but it can still clear 40k-45k PPD which I'm happy with for now. Until I build a new gaming tower again and relegate my current one to folding as well

 

Nice Nico_Palm!

In 2 months of folding, it will be mccalls, me, and DOA, though, I think, I may be at 3rd place. No problem on my part.

 

And current predictions:

135 days DOA #2
264 days DOA #1
I'm still sitting at #3

 

I just hope more join in.
Testing a nice pair of 290x right now, these may break 500,000 for the day. The quad 290x's are wrapped up until Christmas or I would have hit that mark already.

 

GRR, had the 290x's at 15% OC and stable but my daily points went down. They work fine in games, wonder why F@H did not like them.
Random low credit tasks?

 

I went well over my 2M target.
I may fold again, may not. Folding points do not seem to scale with GPU speed over the short haul which is what I need for building systems. Although useless in the grand scheme of things benchmark programs are better for testing speed and stability.

 

I've read that OC'ing the cards don't really help with F@H. Having more cards do help.

 

Back in the day when I had my 8800GT, I was able to squeeze a few hundred more PPD out of my card by giving it a slight overclock...although it's changed a lot since then, they've normalized the points as to not give such a huge advantage to the cards, or at least that's what I've heard.

I'm hoping to find a good used GPU to start folding on my Linux box but I read on the Linux Install Guide that AMD driver support is currently pretty lacking so I'm trying to get a couple of good used 400 or 500 series cards.

 

Hey, thanks for playing! :-D

 

Where did the points go? Running an AMD 6990 that had bad heat sink compound. Pretty low points for that much power. Not getting any errors.

 

Got my 3rd card working. Had to change my card layout on my p9x79 ws motherboard. So, I have two 970 ssc cards, and one 970 ftw. SLI works, though, folding does not care about that. It will take a few WU before it gets going again.

Hope my PSU can handle it, 1KW, and my UPS.

 

Welcome back.
It took me a week for my points to stabilize, and any gaming that takes them offline really trashes my score.

 

I just got two Radeon HD 6450s, I still have to test out if they will actually bridge-less crossfire, I'm planning on pushing these cards to the max overclocking-wise and seeing how many points I can squeeze out of each of them. However, I'm still looking for an 1156 i7 to complete my folding rig if anyone has one

 

Well, a couple of weeks ago my machine started experiencing NVidia driver crashes during folding, it could not make it past 25% of a WU without a crash. So I stopped folding and started troubleshooting the issue. The card was passing tests such as 3dmark11, EVGA OC Scanner, and heaven benchmarks, and also some heavy sessions of Formula 1 2014. I could not get the card to crash in anything but F@H for some reason.

I then backed the OC back down to stock speeds and voltage even though it has been stable at that speed for 3+ years, and the driver was still crashing during F@H runs. I was also now experiencing lots of artifacts while playing F1 2014. :confused

for about a week I thought I had a dying card, then I decided to try switching 12v rails on a brainwave, and putting the card onto a different rail. That fixed the artifacts, and I'm Currently 60% through a proj. 13001 WU. I should know by morning if the problem is solved with 100% certainty.

I'm already shopping for a new PSU with at least bronze efficiency and 750-850 watts. The dying PSU is a NZXT Hale82 850w that is still under 5-year warranty. I will probably sell the replacement as my current one is not even 2 years old yet and it's already dying from the stress caused by folding. So much for 5 year warranties lol :-D

 

My folding friend, my trusty GTX-570 who has served me well for many years, has officially been declared dead. The card over-heated itself into oblivion, and actually partially melted some of the sealant/surface of the back PCB in the process. Scary thought what it could have done to other components if I hadn't removed it in time.

For now, while waiting for my birthday and hopefully a new GPU to arrive, I have reinstalled the even older GTX-260 that the 570 replaced. the folding client recognizes it, but I have forgotten how to set it up to fold on the GPU. Highly embarrassing. Um... help?

GPU shows status "downloading" and tell me it is waiting for idle time. It was sitting idle for an hour or so before I started typing this, so I'm not entirely sure how to interpret that message.

 

I'm not sure if you have already done this or not, but you will probably need to delete your old GPU slot for the 570 in your F@H client, and create a completely new slot for the 260 since it's non-Fermi. Or even doing a re-install of the client and allowing it to auto-detect the 260 couldn't hurt either.

 

There aren't actually any folding work units left for >Fermi GPUs. You'll have to have a 400-series Nvidia card or newer or an HD 5000 series ATI card or newer to fold on it.

 

Thank you both.

Speculant, that was going to be my next question. In that case I will keep folding on just the CPU until I get a new card, and not worry about it.

 

Wow, the core 15 WU's are dead. I used to fold on a BFG Maxcore 55nm gtx 260 ages ago but its been so long since I've used it I had no idea they discontinued the core 15's.

Also, my GPU is stable again, handed in a core 17 and a core 18 WU today without any more issues. I'm not liking these core 18 WU's at all however. My GPU drops from 50k ppd to 35k ppd going from core 17's to core 18's.

 

I used to fold wayy back in the day. Many years ago. I'm not on Major Geeks often, but I do have 3 pcs running 24/7 360 a year. I got one set up, I'll work on the other two tomorrow. For the fight and Team Geeks!

 

Thanks 8Ball, we can use the help to get to 150 ranking.
I may have to stop folding again if I get work far from home.

 

Should I expect any problems leaving F@H to do its own thing? My two other computers I want to put it on I rarely use (HTPC my roommates use more then me) should I expect any problems?

Mine seems to be fine, so far. Its just been so long I barley remember how it all works, when I was folding they didn't have a webpage interface...

 

Nah. Once you have it set up and configured, it pretty much urns itself.

Unless you're like me and torch your GPU, of course.

Um... I really hope that wasn't F@H doing that... eek

 

I find that running your GPU at 100% for 24/7 is a good test to see if your system can handle it. Oh, and I'm back online. For a short time.

 

WB theefool, we need the points.
Hopefully you can run more than a week so all the "dependability" point benefits kick in.

 

Great, I have 4 running it now- none of which are anything special lol. Keep up the good work guys! Lets get back out there.

 

Yea, as Mimsy said, you should keep an eye on your GPU and CPU temperatures until you are confident they won't be an issue. I monitor mine regularly because you never know when a fan might fail, or a dust bunny might find it's way into your GPU or CPU cooler and block some of it's thermal dissipation ability.

Some GPU's run very got, especially if they are of reference design. I have the 3-slot Asus cooler on my card, and my GPU never exceeds 67 degrees C at 1.18v on a GF110. However I've seen/read about people running some AMD cards over 100 degrees C while folding and they didn't seem to have any issues with that, but in my opinion that is WAY too hot for 24/7 usage.

Research the thermal limit of your specific video card and try to keep it 20 degrees below it's thermal limit or better and you will be fine. Adjusting the fan-curve of your video card can really help improve the temperatures as well if needed. Most cards have a very conservative fan curve.

And welcome to the team :cool

 

I have one running at 80C, 2nd at 82C, 3rd at 75C. I do need to see what I can pull after a week, instead of stopping when I go to work.

 

Well, I just left it running, and so far so good. My house did not burn down, so that is nice.

Anyway, I'm pulling about 355,504 points, FAHControl states that I should pull 627,818 PPD, as long as I keep getting 0x17. Not bad.

I did change my overall cpu slot to 2 cores, instead of 6. I gain less ppd there, but I can now use my computer like nothing is going on.

 

I may just hit that mark, perhaps.... @454,693

 

Lol I dont have any video cards that are new enough to fold on... All CPU. Im not even close. Oh well. I've been thinking about getting a new card for my main computer, but its just a Dell with a weak power supply that is hooked up to the tv in the living room... Works great for Youtube, netflix and xbmc but I haven't used it as my personal computer for almost two years. I'll keep doing just because it minds me no concern really, plus its for a good cause.

 

Here are quite possibly the two best bangs for your buck when it comes to video cards that don't require an external power connection (i.e. perfect for older Dells): AMD or NVIDIA

 

5 days to go to hit 150.

http://i.imgur.com/7MsXCOj.png

 

Waiting for your Tri-SLI to pass my OC 290x in PPD.

 

I may have to stop gaming for a day or two to keep up.

 

AMD cards so far are quite better at this folding stuff. Just took 3 to compete with your 2. Buy a third, and overpower me. heh.

I'm wondering about the 390x and wonder about the price of the titan-x.

Everything I've read is that amd is working on high wattage machines, while nvidia is doing efficient cards. Hence why I can run 3, instead of 2.

If I can replace my 3 cards for better ppd with two cards at about $1k, I'd do it. If they can drive 4k and play games at the same time.

 

I game at 4K and mine cannot fold and play at the same time. I have started games at max folding and forgot to pause folding and the driver crashes. On medium gameplay is poor.
I think you will find your three beat my two. Too bad I cannot talk my son's friend out of his quad 290x for a couple of weeks.

 

I know I can fold at 100% playing at 1600p with three cards. When I do decide to get a 4k monitor, will have to see if it can keep up.

What is your cpu settings for folding? With 3 cards I had to change the settings for cpu down to two. In order to do what I want.

Ignore the memory usage, since all my VMs are turned off at the moment. If they were running my computer would crawl if I was folding at 100%.

 

I either fold or play, 100% to one or the other.
I have done no settings as any folding at all hurts gameplay.
Gratzz on getting over 500!

 

I have a dumb question. I downloaded FAH, and was running it on my laptop. But near as I can tell there is no setting wherein it will allow my laptop to hibernate when I close the lid. Pausing does not help. So I ended up getting rid of it, and I just run it in Chrome if I know I'm going to be online for an hour or more. Did I miss something? Not letting my laptop ever sleep is not an option.

 

There is an option you can set to stop the FAH client when a laptop is on battery power (in Advanced Control -> Configure -> Advanced -> Scroll down a bit), but I don't think there is one to make the laptop hibernate.

That's not the client though, that's the laptop itself. It hibernates when nothing is going on that keeps the CPU busy, and FAH will always keep the CPU busy. Manually kill FAH before closing the lid, maybe? I used to run it on a laptop, but the temps went too high and I stopped, and I don't remember how I solved the hibernate issue.

 

Well, shoot. I tried pausing, stopping, and everything else, and the only way I could get my laptop to ever stop running was to delete the FAH client entirely. Heat is my issue as well...it runs hot just from normal use (I don't game), to the point where I have to have an active fan cooling pad running the entire time I'm using it or it overheats. I don't want to leave the cooling pad on 24/7, and I regularly walk away from the laptop for 12-48 hours at a stretch so I don't want to leave it running, either.

So be it, I guess. Running in the browser is better than nothing. Thank you!

 

My Home Media Center laptop used to get hot until I cleaned it and elevated it off the shelf an inch with some blocks I glued on. Now it runs 24/7 or sleeps and never gets hot.
I am not saying glue blocks to yours, just when you set it down have a way to get good air flow.

 

Like I said, if it's on, it's got an active fan cooling pad running underneath. The battery is also shaped to leave a gap between the bottom of the laptop and whatever surface it's on. Airflow isn't the problem, really.

I just want to be able to hibernate my laptop when I'm away rather than leaving it to run constantly, and the FAH client doesn't seem able to let that happen. Even pausing it leaves the CPU in use, so even if I close the lid it won't sleep.

 

Similar issue as you, I believe, still going through the thread:

https://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?nomobile=1&f=88&t=24737

 

A thought, based on that thread via a picture. This is a test only.

 

I'm planning on stop folding for a time once I hit #2. I will be back though. About 6 million points and less than two weeks to go.