PPD avg. goes from 6100 to 3800 when going from <400 point workloads to 511 point WUs. Any advice on accelerating the larger loads?

I've not found anything you can do about it. I've used 3 different 9800-series cards and will be trying another today and my findings have been the same on every card:

PCI-express bus speed: No difference
System ram speed: No difference
CPU speed: No difference
GPU Core speed: As long as it's higher than 500, it has VERY little difference
GPU Memory speed: Does matter, but easy to cause EUE's going overboard
GPU Shader speed: About a 9:10 ratio. For every 10% increase in shader speed, 9% increase in PPD

I've found nothing unique to the 511's to increase their speed more. Running a 9800GT at 700 core, 1836 shader, 1900 memory, I'm seeing 3670ppd. I'll see what my new GTX+ does in a little while, but I'm not expecting it to be much faster either.

The other question is will the ATI cards also slow down with the 511 pointers or will they start running faster?

That's been an issue since the beginning. Remember when all SMP units were 1760 points and flew by? And then the 1920 ones came out, and they take twice as long. Don't even ask about the 2500 point ones.

How long does it take for a SMP on your machines, aristade? I'm running 2x GMPs on my quad right now, but am thinking about going back to the SMPs.

My Core 2 Duo can take anywhere from 19 to 28 minutes per checkpoint on SMP, depends on the WU, 1440 minutes = 1 day.

My X2 dual cores can take 25-35 minutes for the same work.

Why are you running either/or? I have 1 PC with Vista and 1 with XP. The Vista has 1 GPU and SMP, the XP machine has 2 GPU and 1 SMP. With the latest drivers the GPU barely uses the CPU.

I have seen people with quad cpus that have one entire CPU core devoted to the GPUs, and frankly it is not neccessary. I run it all just fine.

Once I setup SMP to run 85% CPU usage, and the SMP came to crawl, so I never did that again.

I also run Bill2 Process Manager, downloaded from www.majorgeeks.com. I raise the GPU priority 1 increment, and lower the SMP 1 increment, and it all runs fine. Bill2 PM starts automatically.

I use Riva Tuner to speed up the GPU fan - 70% constant, and then increase the shader speed, but leave the other settings stock.

I'd like to hear about this one.

Amazing how time consuming these WUs are. The other day I had a 3 hour period with zero points and 3 GPUs folding according to http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/

Oh yeah, I never did check back in with this particular thread. Anyway, my GTX+ was achieving something like 4100 when running as the sole video card on those WU's with just a 52mhz overclock of the shaders to 1890mhz from the stock 1836. Memory and core speed left stock, never failed on a single WU so far at these settings. Since shader clocks go in increments of 52mhz, I've tried 1944mhz too, but it's not stable at that speed, even with the core underclocked.

How about power consumption?

Intel E6400 OC 8*333 2.67GHZ DDR2-667
EVGA 8800GS 384MB OC shaders only 1800

[02:11:34] Project: 5766 (Run 11, Clone 330, Gen 105) 353 Points
[02:11:41] Starting GUI Server
[04:07:47] Completed 100%
1:56:06 appx 4382PPD

[04:08:02] Project: 5766 (Run 11, Clone 330, Gen 105) 353 Points
[04:08:19] Starting GUI Server
[06:04:55] Completed 100%
1:56:36 appx 4359PPD

[08:00:57] Project: 5750 (Run 3, Clone 231, Gen 67) 511Points
[08:01:06] Starting GUI Server
[12:12:41] Completed 100%
4:11:35 appx 2924PPD

[12:13:09] Project: 5768 (Run 4, Clone 94, Gen 88 ) 353 Points
[12:13:16] Starting GUI Server
[14:08:49] Completed 100%
1:55:44 appx 4391PPD

[14:09:15] Project: 5749 (Run 7, Clone 258, Gen 56) 511 Points
[14:09:24] Starting GUI Server
[18:20:50] Completed 100%
4:11:26 appx 2925PPD

[18:21:18] Project: 5768 (Run 12, Clone 23, Gen 75) 353 Points
[18:21:26] Starting GUI Server
[20:16:48] Completed 100%
1:55:22 appx 4404PPD

[20:17:21] Project: 5769 (Run 13, Clone 347, Gen 43) 353 Points
[20:17:29] Starting GUI Server
[22:12:31] Completed 100%
1:55:02 appx 4420PPD

[22:12:57] Project: 5758 (Run 9, Clone 123, Gen 223) 384 Points
[22:13:05] Starting GUI Server
[00:38:11] Completed 100%
2:25:06 appx 3811PPD

[00:38:36] Project: 5753 (Run 8, Clone 150, Gen 56) 511 Points
[00:38:45] Starting GUI Server
[04:50:01] Completed 100%
4:11:16 appx 2928PPD

[04:50:28] Project: 5749 (Run 1, Clone 212, Gen 67) 511 Points
[04:50:38] Starting GUI Server
[09:02:05] Completed 100%
4:11:27 appx 2926PPD

[09:02:31] Project: 5750 (Run 14, Clone 136, Gen 54) 511 Points
[09:02:40] Starting GUI Server
[13:14:06] Completed 100%
4:11:26 appc 2927PPD

[13:14:38] Project: 5770 (Run 8, Clone 39, Gen 141) 353 Points
[13:14:45] Starting GUI Server
[15:10:06] Completed 100%
1:55:21appx 4404PPD

[15:10:30] Project: 5772 (Run 2, Clone 229, Gen 115) 353 Points
[15:10:37] Starting GUI Server
[17:06:01] Completed 100%
1:55:24 appx 4404PPD

[17:06:26] Project: 5766 (Run 1, Clone 134, Gen 110) 353 Points
[17:06:33] Starting GUI Server
[19:02:15] Completed 100%
1:55:42 appx 4400PPD

[19:02:41] Project: 5770 (Run 13, Clone 253, Gen 101) 353 Points
[19:02:48] Starting GUI Server
[20:58:11] Completed 100%
1:55:23 appx 4404PPD

[20:58:37] Project: 5765 (Run 1, Clone 71, Gen 107) 353 Points
[20:58:44] Starting GUI Server
[22:54:05] Completed 100%
1:55:21 appx 4404PPD

[22:54:45] Project: 5763 (Run 6, Clone 23, Gen 220) 384 Points
[22:54:53] Starting GUI Server
[01:19:25] Completed 100%
2:24:32 appx 3826PPD

So from under 3000PPD to over 4400PPD, that's some spread.

Yeah, my GTX does from 6300-8100. Same deal with the 511s.

Unfortunately it look like another week and a half before I'll be able to dummy-plug my 8800GTS 512 online. I can't wait 'til I get that beastie folding alongside the GTX; that'll be fun

Well there's where it's a little weird - I've had 3 9800GT's and they seemed to fall in to two power profiles; a high and low consumption group. The GTX+ draws about 5-10 watts more than the lower power consumption 9800GT's, which means it performs about the same or maybe slightly better in points per watt than the 9800GT. nVidia cards are power hungry though, there's just no two ways about it.