Shaving time between checkpoints - My AMD X2 4000+

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

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djkest
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Post by djkest » Sun Jan 06, 2008 9:54 pm

Sweet! I just reformatted my hard drive and dumped Vista for XP Pro once again. The only programs I have on here right now are Firefox, dual core optimizer and various drivers, and the SMP client!

As you may recall, I couldn't get the SMP client to install in Vista. Well, it's up and running on this guy. Time to see what the Brisbane can really do! (that is, until next week when I start folding with Intel).

With the text-client I was doing 26 min checkpoints, 100 checkpoints/ 500 points... if this works well I'll have to install SMP client on my HTPC as well.

New goal: make it on to the 2nd page (top 200) all time SPCR folders.

aristide1
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Post by aristide1 » Tue Jan 08, 2008 5:55 pm

I want to finish up OCing my 4000+ so I can switch it over to Ubuntu. From my research I learned to regret not buying DDR2-1066 memory. And my quad may get DDR3 memory, despite it's currently exorbitant price.

djkest
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Post by djkest » Tue Jan 08, 2008 9:37 pm

Sweet. SMP workunit just got me 1706 points for about 36 hours of folding. With graphical client I was averaging about 500 ppd with 5 cores folding :/

aristide1
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Post by aristide1 » Mon Jan 14, 2008 1:49 pm

What a pity, I Googled "folding phenom" and somebody posted some results. 14 minutes per checkpoint, and the thing won't OC for anything. That means it won't earn any more points that a $200 dual core Intel that's been speeded up a bit.

I wish I could get more info on that NorthBridge business with the Intel Quad cores and having to run dual SMP.
I'd like to know how much of an issue it would be if I could crank up the FSB for 466MHz.
On one of the threads addressing that was that FAH specifies a 3 day window to complete a WU, but they
really want it back in 24 hours. They are going to revamp how they give out points, so don't be surprised if
you get more points for the same WU if you finish it in less than 24 hours. It sounds like they are leaning in
that direction.

That would bother me because no matter how fast I make my AMD dualies they will never complete a WU
in under 24 hours.

They did not mention when such changes would take effect. And then there's that monster 2500 point job,
can a quad finish that thing in under 24 hours?

I'm revising my "budget" folder to such

$30 Antec EA430, when rebate available
$75 Biostar 7050-M2
$99 AMD 5000+ Black Edition
$11 Artic Cooling heat sink
$15 USB stick high speed

Add $20 for a Silverstone ST40EF
Add $25 for a hard drive

djkest
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Post by djkest » Mon Jan 14, 2008 3:43 pm

Actually, they have a black edition phenom, that costs the same as the normal one, which they were able to get to run at 2.9GHz up from 2.3GHz on air cooling.

The real hotness is going to be the 45nm quads coming out in 3 months though.

aristide1
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Post by aristide1 » Mon Jan 14, 2008 4:07 pm

djkest wrote:Actually, they have a black edition phenom, that costs the same as the normal one, which they were able to get to run at 2.9GHz up from 2.3GHz on air cooling.
Yes, they do. It seems a little desperate to me, to release an unlocked version so soon. It pulls the plug essentially on selling faster/more expensive models. I think the ones that aren't OCing well are an earlier stepping.
djkest wrote:The real hotness is going to be the 45nm quads coming out in 3 months though.
Do you mean Intel here or AMD? Intel's should be out by next month, barring any more intentional delays.

My budget model doesn't use a quad because there are no AMD quad boards with interated video, and if there are they aren't known to OC. One or the other.

djkest
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Post by djkest » Mon Jan 14, 2008 4:37 pm

No actually, AMDs don't do well with overclocked FSB, but this problem is amplified in the quad core phenom. The black edition is almost necessary to overclock at all. AMD just runs more smoothly at 200mhz core clock...

The Intel 45nm chips is what I was talking about, and it will be at least march before we see any(in my opinion). Dual cores were supposed to be out in January according to intel, and they have a ship date right now of January 31st....I'm thinking they will be in short supply, and there will be price gouging.

aristide1
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Post by aristide1 » Mon Jan 14, 2008 4:47 pm

djkest wrote:No actually, AMDs don't do well with overclocked FSB, but this problem is amplified in the quad core phenom. The black edition is almost necessary to overclock at all. AMD just runs more smoothly at 200mhz core clock....
I'll let you know when I am done experimenting.
djkest wrote:I'm thinking they will be in short supply, and there will be price gouging.
Another reason I don't want to even consider building a quad folder yet. The trouble is I want to keep earning more points. :?

I read a post where someone said the X2 3800 was taking 38 minutes per checkpoint on a P2653. I've never had a 1760 point that ran that slow on either one of my 4000s even before I OC'd them. That's barely withing the 3 day window (2.64 days).

LAThierry
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Post by LAThierry » Tue Jan 15, 2008 1:33 am

Do you then recommend selecting an AMD dual-core processor whose clock speed is a whole multiple of 400 Mhz? (2.0, 2.4, 2.8...)?

Or does setting the CPU multiplier manually completely invalidates that idea, assuming the motherboard can?

aristide1
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Post by aristide1 » Tue Jan 15, 2008 5:01 am

LAThierry wrote:Do you then recommend selecting an AMD dual-core processor whose clock speed is a whole multiple of 400 Mhz? (2.0, 2.4, 2.8...)?

Or does setting the CPU multiplier manually completely invalidates that idea, assuming the motherboard can?
The latter with the Biostar 7050-M2. Or the Black Edition.

Good question. You certainly don't want to dismiss all the Brisbanes because of that silly .5 multiplier. And welcome.

adam_mccullough
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Post by adam_mccullough » Tue Jan 15, 2008 6:14 pm

Are f@h messing about with the points values of lots of projects, or has my computer gone nuts?

My main box (a single core s754 A64 @ 2500, running XP x64 and windows command-line client) was consistently doing about 130ppd or so when I started running f@h back in the spring. But for the last few weeks it's been doing 300 to 550 ppd on a whole series of units that finish in a day or less.

So I checked it just now, and it's doing 1052ppd (!) on a 310 point unit, project 3907. I think it's had a few of these, since I've been wondering how come all these little units were appearing on my stats so fast.

Anybody know what's going on? Have they rewritten the core to take advantage of the extra cpu registers in windows x64? I doubt it... Perhaps they're bumping the points for the non-smp units so the single-core folders don't all switch off?

aristide1
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Post by aristide1 » Wed Jan 16, 2008 8:31 pm

adam_mccullough wrote:Are f@h messing about with the points values of lots of projects, or has my computer gone nuts?
You're complaining about getting more points for no obvious reason, what's wrong with this picture? :wink:

OK, I have a 4000+ I can't OC much because the motherboard has a Safety Mode I can't bypass in Ubuntu. :?

So I'm removing the 4000+ running at 2.4GHz and dropping in a Black Edition which will hopefully run at 3.2GHz. I expect power usage to climb from 95 to about 110 watts total. I plan on speeding up the memory a little as well. I won't how much my checkpoint times will drop??? 8)

I should have no problem running it up fast on a Biostar TForce 6100 board and an Antec EA500, currently $50 after rebate at the 'Egg. :D

Meanwhile the other one running at 280 MHz FSB 2.94GHz, is going to try to run at 290 FSB, 3.045GHz.

Redzo
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Post by Redzo » Thu Jan 17, 2008 12:10 am

I apologize for hijacking this thread but i can't get SMP to work with my trusty [email protected] read FAQs but to no avail :o :( I know that SMP is working best with quads but it should work for duals as well, or ?

aristide1
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Post by aristide1 » Thu Jan 17, 2008 1:02 am

Redzo wrote:I apologize for hijacking this thread but i can't get SMP to work with my trusty [email protected] read FAQs but to no avail :o :( I know that SMP is working best with quads but it should work for duals as well, or ?
Works fine on duals. Can you be more specific about your problem?

Redzo
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Post by Redzo » Thu Jan 17, 2008 1:22 am

aristide1 wrote:
Redzo wrote:I apologize for hijacking this thread but i can't get SMP to work with my trusty [email protected] read FAQs but to no avail :o :( I know that SMP is working best with quads but it should work for duals as well, or ?
Works fine on duals. Can you be more specific about your problem?
I can't get 100 % CPU use on both cores. Picture below shows that both cores are pegged at 50 to 52% but never more then that. There is nothing running in the background except for the usual XP stuff/services.

Image

aristide1
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Post by aristide1 » Thu Jan 17, 2008 6:46 am

Redzo, did you install FAH as a program you start, or did you install it as a background service?

VanWaGuy
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You need an SMP client

Post by VanWaGuy » Thu Jan 17, 2008 6:51 am

You need an SMP client to take advantage of more than 1 core. I did not see a graphical SMP client at the folding site, so I am guessing from the picture you included you still have a non-SMP client.

NeilBlanchard
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Post by NeilBlanchard » Thu Jan 17, 2008 10:47 am

...and you need to put Team number 31574 in there! :twisted:

VanWaGuy
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Post by VanWaGuy » Thu Jan 17, 2008 11:40 am

Good catch Neil!

spookmineer
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Re: You need an SMP client

Post by spookmineer » Thu Jan 17, 2008 3:42 pm

VanWaGuy wrote:You need an SMP client to take advantage of more than 1 core. I did not see a graphical SMP client at the folding site, so I am guessing from the picture you included you still have a non-SMP client.
I recognize the picture from a few months ago, it is the graphical client (with low PPD as a result).

Redzo, for the SMP client select Windows 2000/XP/Vista SMP client console version 5.91 beta.

Located in the "Windows: High performance clients (GPU, SMP)" section, the last of three (the other two above it are GPU versions using an ATI video card).
You need to have a Windows password enabled (not a "blank" password) for the SMP client to work.

aristide1
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Post by aristide1 » Thu Jan 17, 2008 4:09 pm

After you download the SMP version I believe it will ask you to run setup. You should probably right click and select "Run as Administrator". If I'm wrong it won't hurt anything. If I'm right it will save you grief.

Closely follow the explicit instructions on the FAQ page.

adam_mccullough
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Post by adam_mccullough » Thu Jan 17, 2008 6:18 pm

aristide1 wrote:You're complaining about getting more points for no obvious reason, what's wrong with this picture? :wink:
Ok, I shouldn't have said anything - I've jinxed it now. Project 3405, 206 points. 96ppd.

More than an order of magnitude difference in ppd depending on the project!

Redzo
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Post by Redzo » Thu Jan 17, 2008 9:50 pm

Thank you for all of advices, i have been at work for 12 hours now and will try it all when i get home and i get some sleep. Right now i look like something out of horror movies :)
Will of course let you all know how it works out.

aristide1
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Re: You need an SMP client

Post by aristide1 » Fri Jan 18, 2008 6:30 am

VanWaGuy wrote:You need an SMP client to take advantage of more than 1 core. I did not see a graphical SMP client at the folding site, so I am guessing from the picture you included you still have a non-SMP client.
If that's true then how to explain that his folding is using 2 processors at 50%?? :shock:

bkh
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Post by bkh » Fri Jan 18, 2008 5:49 pm

>If that's true then how to explain that his folding is using 2 processors at 50%??

50%+50%=100%. The uniprocessor client has enough work to keep one core fully busy, but it doesn't stay on one core, it gets preempted by other processes and when it is resecheduled it is random which core it runs on.

aristide1
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Post by aristide1 » Sun Jan 20, 2008 12:57 pm

bkh wrote:>If that's true then how to explain that his folding is using 2 processors at 50%??

50%+50%=100%. The uniprocessor client has enough work to keep one core fully busy, but it doesn't stay on one core, it gets preempted by other processes and when it is resecheduled it is random which core it runs on.
That's not what his CPU activity display is showing in Task Manager.

VanWaGuy
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Post by VanWaGuy » Sun Jan 20, 2008 3:26 pm

Yeah it is. It does not show exactly 50, so there are some other tasks that used up another 2%. He rounded off the math, but that is what is happening.

Even look at the two lines, one is almost like the other one upside down. Where one is a little higher than 50%, the other side is a little lower. There are other things besides folding happening, so the lines are not exact mirrors of each other, but extremely close.

aristide1
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Post by aristide1 » Sun Jan 20, 2008 8:21 pm

VanWaGuy wrote:Yeah it is. It does not show exactly 50, so there are some other tasks that used up another 2%. He rounded off the math, but that is what is happening.

Even look at the two lines, one is almost like the other one upside down. Where one is a little higher than 50%, the other side is a little lower. There are other things besides folding happening, so the lines are not exact mirrors of each other, but extremely close.
My question is why doesn't it show one processor 100% busy?

djkest
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Post by djkest » Sun Jan 20, 2008 8:29 pm

Because of load balancing, it loads 2 cores instead of just 1. Ideally, 50/50, but it usually goes all over the place.

Redzo
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Post by Redzo » Sun Jan 20, 2008 11:35 pm

Well to be short I could not make it work, whatever you guys sugested I always ended up with 2 cores pegged @50% so I installed 2 ordinary, non graphical clients to separate directories and forced client nr 1 to work on core 0, client nr 2 works on core 1.
Now it looks like this ;-)

Image

Thats more like it...thanks for your suggestions.
BTW: Here's my score so far
http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main ... &teamnum=0

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