SPCR Folds Team Blog

A forum just for SPCR's folding team... by request.

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dereksbelanger
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Post by dereksbelanger » Wed Apr 21, 2010 11:08 am

Oh! I should also mention that I'm running a3 cores on some very slow hardware (3Ghz P4). Despite this - the jobs are still finished before the deadline and are being credited about 450ppd. So unless you have hardware that is even worse than mine - dont worry about it.

frenchie
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Post by frenchie » Wed Apr 21, 2010 12:18 pm

HOLY COW !!!!!!!!!!!
dereksbelanger and Cordis : Thank you thank you thank you thank you !

I'd never put much thought into my SMP client : just the -smp and the passkey were setup... not the -advmethods !!!!

Now it's done !! AND FOLDING AGAIN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

cordis
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great!

Post by cordis » Wed Apr 21, 2010 12:48 pm

Well, that's outstanding! Now if you have the passkey set up, you should start getting bonus points on the A3 runs after completing 10 jobs, or something like that. Here's a link:

http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f ... 4f8d547f98

And once you start getting bonuses, you'll should start seeing a nice point jump. Although it can be hit and miss, on slower hardware you may get lower points, but on faster machines you'll start getting nice extra points. :D

And if only A3 wus are available now, I guess it's mandatory, so crank your machines up and get some extra points, it's the law!

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Post by NeilBlanchard » Wed Apr 21, 2010 2:06 pm

I am wondering what the Passkey is about? Why is this needed? Is it just any 32 characters?

[Edit: I installed the latest Mac SMP 32/64 10.5+ client (6.29.3) and put the passkey, and the -smp -advmethods switches -- and it is Folding once again! How can I tell when/if I get bonus points?]
Last edited by NeilBlanchard on Wed Apr 21, 2010 2:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

cordis
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passkey

Post by cordis » Wed Apr 21, 2010 2:14 pm

No, it's not just any set of characters, here's the faq link:

http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-passkey

There's a link to a script about halfway down the page, click on that and it should give you one. It's basically supposed to be a unique identifier for you and your jobs, so you can configure all your jobs with the same passkey and it's a more secure way to identify jobs as yours.

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Post by aristide1 » Wed Apr 21, 2010 2:18 pm


NeilBlanchard
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Post by NeilBlanchard » Wed Apr 21, 2010 2:25 pm

Okay, I've got my official passkey!

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Post by aristide1 » Wed Apr 21, 2010 2:29 pm

Hey Cordis,

I can't believe you cheaped out and bought just one of those $1000 processors.

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/18117/37/

Why didn't you buy 2 and this board?

:mrgreen: Just kidding. Maybe.

I know Win 7 will recognize multi processors, but will it recognize and run with multiple chips. Win was limited to 1 chip.

cordis
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timely

Post by cordis » Wed Apr 21, 2010 9:45 pm

Hey, that's nice. I'm pretty sure windows can handle dual cpu boards, I used to have an old dual athlon board that ran windows xp. But speaking of dual xeons, I just saw this:

http://en.fah-addict.net/news/news-0-21 ... -intel.php

I hope with the new partnership they won't start ignoring AMD, but that chip plus that motherboard, you wind up with 24 cores! Now I'm not sure, but I've heard that even bigadv folding has trouble scaling above 16 cores, so I don't know if you get the full speed. But if it did work, toss on a couple of these:

http://www.acousticpc.com/noctua_nh-u12 ... tsink.html

and you'd probably wind up with a fairly quiet system, doing somewhere around 40k-50kppd! See why I've come around to smp folding! ;)

frenchie
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Re: timely

Post by frenchie » Thu Apr 22, 2010 12:50 am

cordis wrote:I hope with the new partnership they won't start ignoring AMD, but that chip plus that motherboard, you wind up with 24 cores! Now I'm not sure, but I've heard that even bigadv folding has trouble scaling above 16 cores, so I don't know if you get the full speed.
hahahahahaha 16 cores... 24 cores .... hahahahahahahahahaha

does that mean that a 10% overclock is really like a 160% (or 240%) overclok one one core ?

dereksbelanger
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Post by dereksbelanger » Thu Apr 22, 2010 4:45 am

If the OS and application can effectively use all the cores...yes!

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Post by NeilBlanchard » Thu Apr 22, 2010 9:00 am

Okay, using F@H WUget on my Mac's dashboard, I get a lot of information, like how many bonus points I'll be getting. The project is 6013 (R0, C162, G69) and it is only 380 points total, giving me a PPD of just 402.85 -- but the bonus points (if I complete 10 WUs on time) is 1,295.84.

Image

I'm wondering if the bonus is for this WU, and then there is another one for each of the 10 -- and we just have to wait until after the 10 get completed?

cordis
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yep

Post by cordis » Thu Apr 22, 2010 10:35 am

Yeah, you'll have to wait. But it looks like you'll be getting some, so that's good. Until you do, though, you'll probably be running lower than normal. Don't worry, that should pass soon. At least now, if they're really out of A1 and A2 wus, then you won't get those popping up and delaying you getting through 10.

colm
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Post by colm » Fri Apr 23, 2010 11:56 pm

dereksbelanger wrote:Oh! I should also mention that I'm running a3 cores on some very slow hardware (3Ghz P4). Despite this - the jobs are still finished before the deadline and are being credited about 450ppd. So unless you have hardware that is even worse than mine - dont worry about it.
Image
above is what mymachine does browsing around, I hardly ever let it sit. I have gone to over 800..and really don't make it a goal. The way it can linger in the background is as good as ever, so no big rush for me.
I am still with a 3400 p4.
I let the card do the folding.. I popped the 90w limit on the mosfets when running smp (it really can) and the vid card at same time. Smoke, fire, and done. :roll:

Now with ecc, 4gb, I leave the perfect cpu alone...let amd 3650 handle this.

And for as all the years folding has been out.. I am just entering a passkey. That is a good idea, bonus or not. idenities going on for this long need integrity. :wink:
Last edited by colm on Sat Apr 24, 2010 2:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

frenchie
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Post by frenchie » Sat Apr 24, 2010 12:40 am

Never mind... I really have to wake until I'm fully awake before I post things :lol:

NeilBlanchard
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Post by NeilBlanchard » Sat Apr 24, 2010 2:34 am

Well, my son Nic was doing something on my machine (with the Speech controller?) that "destabilized" F@H, so it is now in a self-imposed 24 hour waiting period. :-(

At least it is running SETI@Home in the meantime...

frenchie
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Post by frenchie » Sat Apr 24, 2010 8:08 am

Well, I'm about to attempt a major mod on my computer's GPU cooler (and a motherboard change). I might be not GPU folding for a while if things turn ugly - touch wood - but the new WU are going happily !!

I love modding :)

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Post by aristide1 » Sat Apr 24, 2010 4:51 pm

This is both a good time and a frustrating time to be folding.

Cordis's hex core is wonderfully efficient, but who wants to spend a grand on it?

Where are the other hex cores?

Where are the 32nm quad cores?

32nm chipsets next year and a new socket - AGAIN!

Why invest in socket 1156? Chance of burned out cpu sockets AND accelerated planned obsolecense? Lack of PCI lanes as well. This run-of-the-mill chipset is a little too run-of-the-mill.

No significant volume of products from NVidia until May and then we wonder when they will actually work properly.

Too bad - without AMD running right behind Intel they have no need to introduce any additional hex cores, they can just me milking the one for a K a pop. AMDs hex cores will be 6 cores running at what? Barely over 2GHz while making your hom power meter go nuts? Every time I see power consumption graphs with Phenom II X4's using the same or more power than an i7-920 I just wonder what are people thinking?

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

Look at how far down the list the first AMD processor is on this list. Then notice that it's an X6! A hex core that's behind a lot of Intel quad cores. Will this inspire Intel to release a lower end hex core? With superior benchmarks why would they both? Only of AMDs X6 ends up selling dirt cheap, which Intel is rather gifted at forcing them to do just that.

This is all a fancy way of saying all the waiting sucks.

A

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Post by NeilBlanchard » Sun Apr 25, 2010 1:01 pm

Okay, I had another off day, because my machine was deemed unstable -- and it was not my son's doing! The only thing I can think off, is that I had SETI@Home also running -- so, I've turned SETI@Home off completely, and we'll see if the a3 core can run.

It ran through 2 WUs no problem, and SETI@Home was running, too so, I'm a little miffed at this...

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Post by aristide1 » Sun Apr 25, 2010 3:06 pm

I got 1 SMP WU, and then nothing again. I need to clean out my PC of dust before I implement anything other changes.

I'm amazed what I find in there. :shock:

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Post by NeilBlanchard » Sun Apr 25, 2010 5:13 pm

Aaarrrrgg! I shut off SETI@Home, and now Folding@Home is still crashing multiple times! It got about 3% into the first WU, and then it has tried about 5 or 6 more in the last hour or two -- *what* is going on?

This iMac finished two WU in plenty of time -- 3X faster than it needs to be to meet the deadline. And now, it is an "unstable machine" and it can't finish more than a little bit of the WU! Is this a Folding@Home problem? I can't think that my iMac is suddenly not stable?

It has not crashed the machine, and I'm not doing anything with it. What's up wid' dat'?

cordis
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happens

Post by cordis » Sun Apr 25, 2010 6:16 pm

Yeah, I see something like that every once in a while. If you think it might be the computer, do a memory test, see what that shows. If one of my systems goes down for 24 hours, I usually just remove the 'work' folder, the 'unitinfo.txt' file and the 'queue.dat' file, and restart. Well, if I feel like it was just a random thing. Sometimes you'll get a bad WU that just won't go, and a cleanup and restart is the way to fix it. It's annoying that you're seeing this stuff when you're running A3 WUs, that matters in terms of you're getting to 10 and having an 80% completion rate. Hope it isn't anything to do with the cpu. Might want to check with foldingforum.org, see if this is just a problem with a specific WU.

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Post by NeilBlanchard » Sun Apr 25, 2010 6:32 pm

If it keeps happening, I could try running MemTest x86, though I have never tried that on a Mac?

The thing is, this machine has been Folding for over two years now, and it was fine on the first two a3 WUs. I'm crossing my fingers, so to speak.

cordis
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hmm

Post by cordis » Sun Apr 25, 2010 11:22 pm

Yeah, in that case I'd just wipe it out and see if the next one is better, probably just a bad WU.

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Post by SebRad » Mon Apr 26, 2010 2:00 am

Hi, well as my SMP not been folding for days it's prompted me to do some reconfiguring. With great results :D

Previously my SMP folding was 2000-25000ppd but I've now given it -bigadv and -advmethods switches. If FAHSpy is correct this is now, with the bonus points, folding in the 7000-8000ppd range :!: :D
(Q9400 @ 8x400 = 3.2GHz)

In combo with my GTX260 (with 216 shaders @ 1512MHz) managing 7000-9000ppd I should be able to hold on to a spot in the teams top ten :)

Regards, Seb

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Post by NeilBlanchard » Mon Apr 26, 2010 3:45 am

I think I found the problem -- the BOINC screen saver. I had enabled it just a few days ago, and apparently, it doesn't "play by the same rules" as the regular SETI@Home client.

My Folding@Home is now at 39% and humming along as usual! :)

[Edit: and now it is at 70%! Yay, I have a stable machine again!]

cordis
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great

Post by cordis » Mon Apr 26, 2010 1:22 pm

Glad people have been having good results, finally. In other news, looks like they're going to be updating the GPU client soon, so in the spirit of being prepared, here's an fahaddict post about it.

http://en.fah-addict.net/news/news-0-21 ... o-fold.php

I'd urge you all to get as caught up as you can. I'm a little worried about how easy it will be to update my linux machines, but let us all know if you have any problems, we may be able to help.

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Post by aristide1 » Mon Apr 26, 2010 7:48 pm

Check this bad boy out:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819117235

A 60 watt HEX CORE - you read that right - TEN WATTS PER CORE!
But it's a Xeon, meaning you may have to drop it in this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131648

So you spend $1400, big deal.

Oh another one, 8 cores $299

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819105266

there's a 12 core running at 1.9GHz for $799 but that speed is just silly so:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819105264

12 core at 2.1GHz for $1059 Wait 115 watts, HOLY MOLY
UNDER 10 WATTS PER CORE!

cordis
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heh

Post by cordis » Mon Apr 26, 2010 9:17 pm

Yep, but keep in mind that the Xeon has hyperthreading, so it looks like 12 cores. At 60W. No idea how many ppd you'd get out of that, it's slower than any other i7, and with the bonuses speed doesn't scale linearly, if it did it would get about 23k ppd, but it would probably be lower, like 15k-18k ppd. Assuming an actual system would burn about 100W or so on the low end, a system like that could get 180 ppd/watt, possibly. Eh, maybe someone will try and build one, have to keep an eye on the forums. Since it's a Xeon, though, you could conceivably put it in a motherboard like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

With another one. If scaling worked to 24 cores, then you'd get a very speedy bigadv system. That would be something. Bet someone on the foldingfourm has tried it, have to go check. ;)

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Post by SebRad » Mon Apr 26, 2010 10:03 pm

They seem somewhat pricy. New AMD Phenom II X6 is 6 cores from $199!
And you can use cheap AM3 motherboard.

Looking at Anandtech's review power consumption seems good, a chart put the 3.2GHz between the i7920 and i7 980 and lower than the Phenom II X4 3.4GHz under load.

Performance is typically around i7 750 / 860 range sometimes more sometimes less depending how threaded.
They managed to OC the thing to 3.8GHz up from 3.2GHz with no effort.

Guess it should make a decent folding box from $/ppd perspective but I suspect Intel better in w/ppd.

Regards, Seb

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