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 » Mon Mar 22, 2010 5:09 am

Since you are seeking greater PPD/watt this may be of interest to you: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hyp ... 84-10.html

dereksbelanger
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Post by dereksbelanger » Mon Mar 22, 2010 9:51 am

HFM 0.4.10 - Revision 156 is up

http://code.google.com/p/hfm-net/

cordis
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thanks!

Post by cordis » Mon Mar 22, 2010 10:38 pm

Thanks for the tip, I'm all up to date now.

dereksbelanger
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Post by dereksbelanger » Wed Mar 24, 2010 5:44 am

Ok - big question - how do you setup FAH stats sig?

My profile \ signature settings show HTML off with aparently no way to turn it on - so I tried BBC code and that dosent work either...as you can see...

Please help! :)

aristide1
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Post by aristide1 » Fri Mar 26, 2010 2:04 pm

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/ ... html#sect0

Check out the GT240 on the last couple of graphs. That's pretty impressive. Under load it's slightly less than half the power usage of a 9800GT, and it's 96 shaders versus 112, so about 80% of the GPU capability for less than half the power. That's actually pretty impressive.

cordis
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great!

Post by cordis » Fri Mar 26, 2010 4:01 pm

Thanks Aristide, that's some good info there. It looks like the 240 idles at 6.3W? That's great, I've been thinking about halting gpu folding on a couple machines, and in that case I could save 20W or so by swapping this card in. Not sure if it's worth it, but it's good to know. I also saw this fah-addict review on it:

http://en.fah-addict.net/articles/artic ... -gt240.php

I think this article is somewhat old, but they've updated the power consumption figures. They don't have idle in there, but they cover folding power use pretty well.

cordis
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480 folding data!

Post by cordis » Fri Mar 26, 2010 5:39 pm

Hey, Anandtech did a 480 review with folding data! Although I'll admit that this isn't exactly easy to figure out in terms of units, the relative performance is pretty staggering, if it's correct:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3783&p=6

the graph is down on the lower part of the page, scroll on down. I measures something called 'nodes per day', and it also says it's using a new fermi-compatible FAH version, so I have no idea what that does to the numbers. But to try translating into ppd, my 285 running at stock speed did around 8500ppd, so if you take this 838.8/228.8 ratio and multiply, you get 31,161.7ppd!! My gtx 295 gets around 15kppd on a good day, for roughly the same power consumption. Pretty good for the 480, if the numbers hold up. I hope fahaddict can get it's hands on one and give a really detailed review on it. Other reviews do mention that it's pretty loud, though. Some other reviews show it's a pretty straightforward single chip board though, so there should be an aftermarket cooler market. But it won't be in stores until Apr. 12th or so.

Piet
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Post by Piet » Sat Mar 27, 2010 4:23 am

Here's another review on the 480 that covers folding and has (slightly) more data than the one from anandtech.
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1258/14/

aristide1
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Post by aristide1 » Sat Mar 27, 2010 8:49 am


cordis
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bummer

Post by cordis » Sat Mar 27, 2010 2:51 pm

With that review, and some stuff I've seen on foldingforum, it looks like the 480 may only get up to the 13-15k ppd range. Have to wait and see, I guess, but still, that isn't really worth an immediate upgrade, especially with that power draw. Eh, have to wait for some real reviews, or some results from people really folding on it.

aristide1
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Post by aristide1 » Sat Mar 27, 2010 5:34 pm

How do you justify $150 extra for just 32 stream processors?

GTX 470 versus 480.

Added - outrageous! Electricity in my hometown now exceeds 20 cents per KW.

Added - from Anandtech's page it appears the GTX470 has 93% of the shaders of the 480 (448 vs. 480) while using 86% of the power.

The sad fact - Comparing the GTX480 to the GTX295 (same # of shaders) showing almost zero watts saved. In other words, don't bother trashing your 295 just yet.

However - Note the power consumption of the 285 versus the 295. Twice the power, but not twice the power consumption. Why? I suspect it has something to do with all the voltage regulators and associated parts. One or 2 GPUs did not make a lot of difference. So? I think the real power savings will happen when some (NVidia or maybe Asus) roll out a 480 * 2.

Meanwhile the 470 will make a nice replacement from a 260. 232 additional shaders for 66 more watts.

aristide1
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Post by aristide1 » Mon Mar 29, 2010 6:19 pm

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/03/ ... i_review/7

50 watts more for the 480 over the 470.

cordis
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fah-addict news

Post by cordis » Mon Mar 29, 2010 9:05 pm

Yeah, fah-addict is reporting that they think it will only get from 13k-16kppd:

http://en.fah-addict.net/news/news-0-19 ... ounced.php

So, if it doesn't even get much more than my 295, eh, I'll hold off. Phooey. :(

aristide1
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Post by aristide1 » Tue Mar 30, 2010 7:28 pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpZXhR1ibj8

Will NVidia create a new buzz phrase - EPIC mediocrity?

If you can understand 3/4 of what he's saying then this is hysterical.

Cordis - And who is going to OC a card that's already running at 90+C?

colm
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Post by colm » Tue Mar 30, 2010 8:10 pm

I am eyeing the i7... but not enthused.

I would swear the prescott with hyper thread meant alot more, to the same definition.

Given it is never exactly truth a consumer gets. My guess is.. the i7 is matching threads to the hyper threading..1 at a time, becuse of the sheer amount of cores, software is still baffled by a simple mutlitask, even though hardware is ready, and has been for 5 years or more.....and where AMD never ever caught up to it..this coincides with avoiding a definition of not using it anymore...just altering words to p*** peole like me off :roll:

I would do it of course, as vista and 7 IMHO, are doing something smarter with it, even on the older intel HT.

I cannot rule out the am3, at least dual core. It is the first I have ever actually looked at AMD in a decade, only for pin grid array as of today, but will learn more facts as time goes along.

dereksbelanger
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Post by dereksbelanger » Wed Mar 31, 2010 10:55 am

I made it into the top 100

http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/ ... =&u=493918

Hooray!

Looks like I'll be able to climb as high as #11 - but at 7000ppd that'll be as far as I can go....and even that will take a a year and a half!

frenchie
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Post by frenchie » Wed Mar 31, 2010 11:17 am

GREAT JOB !!

cordis
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very nice!

Post by cordis » Wed Mar 31, 2010 11:21 am

Hey, that's great Derek, it's always good not having to page though and see where you are!

KansaKilla
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Post by KansaKilla » Wed Mar 31, 2010 6:44 pm

Congrats, Derek!

KansaKilla
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Post by KansaKilla » Wed Mar 31, 2010 6:47 pm

Haven't posted in a while. I am saddened.

But, I just made partner. I am very happy.

So if any of you were looking to increase your PPD right now, electricity not being counted, what would be the best $ spent? A core i7 system, a 470, or other?

aristide1
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Post by aristide1 » Wed Mar 31, 2010 8:05 pm

Watch the YouTube video, posted link in prior message.

cordis
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congrats!

Post by cordis » Wed Mar 31, 2010 10:09 pm

Hey, congrats on making partner, always nice to hear about someone moving up. So you're looking to buy new hardware? I've been on a little binge buying i7s, getting some great results there. There's the new nvidia cards, of course, they seem pretty loud but they may work out well. You may want to just wait a month and see how things go. Or you could order an i7 980x, use an old video card, pre-order a 470 or 480. I love my i7 980x, that plus a 295 is giving me 43-45k ppd in a single box. With the i7s, to run bigadv jobs and get the big points, you'll need to be running linux or running a virtual machine in windows, so there's that. But more and more choices now, depends on what you're feeling up to.

aristide1
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Post by aristide1 » Thu Apr 01, 2010 1:58 pm

I guess I am just warped, but I thought that YouTube video about NVidia to be hysterical.

Perhaps I just spend too much time at Fudzilla (2 minutes a month?)

Congratulations KK.

KansaKilla
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Post by KansaKilla » Thu Apr 08, 2010 7:39 am

Hey, aris and any others here who might have set up dual gpu folding, how did you get your dual-nvidia gpu rig up and running? I bought a new mobo from microcenter that supports sli with a quad core intel processor, but I couldn't get the second one running last night. Is there a guide that you used? The two cards are the low-power 9800gt's. I'm running windows xp and I don't have a second monitor available.

Thanks.

cordis
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dual gpus

Post by cordis » Thu Apr 08, 2010 10:20 am

First off, don't use SLI, it doesn't work with that. Next, be sure to use the -forcegpu flag on both jobs, or at least the 2nd one, so that it knows that they're both nvidia_g80. In windows xp, it shouldn't require both of the cards hooked up to monitors, but I'm not entirely sure about that. Since they're both the same card, this should be relatively smooth to set up. Oh, and you may want to update your drivers and stuff, usually recommended.

KansaKilla
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Post by KansaKilla » Thu Apr 08, 2010 12:01 pm

thanks for the speedy answer, cordis. i'm confused, though, about the driver install. after going through it last night and this morning, i've removed the second card and started over from scratch. currently, the first card is folding on the machine with current drivers. do i now install the second card and then install the nvidia drivers again? is it okay to use the systray client?

cordis
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drivers

Post by cordis » Thu Apr 08, 2010 12:58 pm

Nah, the same drivers should be used for the 2nd card, no need to reinstall the drivers. As far as the systray client goes, I'm not sure, I always run from the console. I'm not sure if you can run 2 systray clients, I suppose it could be possible. Might want to check the docs on the stanford folding site.

aristide1
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Post by aristide1 » Thu Apr 08, 2010 8:24 pm

KK Pretty much as Cordis stated SLI and stuff like that should be off, but you need to extend the desktop in Windows.

One driver runs both cards, but on my quad 1 GPU runs good and the other fails with wrong drivers. Go figure. And the drivers are new and the video cards are identical. DUH!

KansaKilla
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Post by KansaKilla » Thu Apr 08, 2010 9:28 pm

Yeah, that was the problem I had last night. Reinstalling now. I'll update when I see how this round goes.

cordis
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4xx blues

Post by cordis » Mon Apr 12, 2010 2:10 pm

It looks like folders have gotten their hands on the 470 and 480, but there's a bug in the gpu cores that's preventing it from working:

http://en.fah-addict.net/news/news-0-20 ... olding.php

So I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry to pick one of these things up. Hopefully an update will get gpu folding working on these cards and we'll finally see some actual results. At that point, you can also start thinking about how to make the loudest card ever quiet. ;)

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