SPCR Folds Team Blog

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

Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee

frenchie
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by frenchie » Sat Dec 18, 2010 6:09 am

querido wrote:Well, all I have presently is in my sig (2Ghz Celeron), now working its heart out for the SPCR team.
First time folding. 8)
Welcome to the team querido !

cordis
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by cordis » Sat Dec 18, 2010 11:45 pm

Yeah, glad to have you on the team! And Frenchie, glad to hear you're getting the kinks worked out. Always good to have new equipment up and running. I recently got some new parts, they're currently running on my windows xp backup machine, so not quite full speed, but I'm hoping to get some case issue worked out over the next couple weeks.

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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by NeilBlanchard » Sun Dec 19, 2010 4:45 am

Welcome! :)

dereksbelanger
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by dereksbelanger » Wed Dec 22, 2010 11:24 am

First....welcome querido ! :)

Second....I lost a system to age. I had an AGP HD3800 that was very reliably producing 1400ppd *sigh* she has passed on....frankensteinian resurection may be possible.

Third....I keep fooling arround with a 6core AMD I put together - trying to get it to produce an average of 10kppd but cant seem to find a configuration that will do it. The hunt continues. Any tips?

cordis
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by cordis » Fri Dec 24, 2010 4:03 pm

Yeah, old hardware can die. It was a sad day when my gtx 295 became unreliable. But every time something dies, it's an upgrade opportunity, consider a nice 460! Not much you can do with a cpu if it isn't giving you what you want, except overclocking. And even then, there's always some low point WU coming along to ruin your day. My newest i7 980x overclocked to 4ghz is now chewing through a 6702 at 21.7k ppd, while at best it can do close to 50k ppd on a good bigadv job. If you're going to overclock, hit google hard to find some good guides, and get a decent monitoring program to check the temps. Not sure how easy an AMD overclock will be, but probably worth a shot.

dereksbelanger
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by dereksbelanger » Wed Dec 29, 2010 5:57 am

Whelp - I got the 3800 folding again. Not sure it will last - but we'll see!

The problem I'm having OCing the AMD 1090T is that FAH reports "core communication error" even if the system passes every stability test I throw at it. Boogers! Fortunately I built this system with a MB that can fit three video cards. When the time is right I'll add the first :)

cordis
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by cordis » Sun Jan 02, 2011 11:43 pm

Gah, now I've been having my own system troubles. I got a new motherboard a little over a month ago, and it was running fine for a while, and then I got a bunch of core communication failures on my smp client. I wrestled with that for a while, and then it started restarting after running for an hour or two. Since it was one of my htpc systems, I really need it stay running, so I had to do a motherboard swap. Still running tests on the old board, think I've decided it's not the memory. Which is vaguely worrying, means it's the motherboard or the cpu. Really hope it isn't the cpu, if I have to replace an i7 980x, that's going to suck. Ah well, sorry if I haven't been hitting the board as much lately, try to get back into the congrats mode.

frenchie
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by frenchie » Mon Jan 03, 2011 4:56 am

Sorry to hear that Cordis :( Good luck with the troubleshooting !
I found a deal I just couldn't resist for a 460, so I'll be working on that in the comming week : keeping the same noise level but swapping a 9800gtx+ for a 460. And that will be then end of the upgrades for a while.

cordis
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by cordis » Tue Jan 04, 2011 3:49 pm

Well, things are looking up a little, the system I moved the bad motherboard into is now running fine, but it's a much cooler system (my windows xp backup system) and I'm not doing any gpu folding on it. So it may just be a matter of keeping the thing cool, and the new case I'm building should be cool enough. Have to wait until I get that all put together and see. In the meantime, it's running normal smp jobs just fine (knock on wood.)

frenchie
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by frenchie » Fri Jan 07, 2011 8:43 am

Little upadate : I replaced my 9800GTX+ with an eVGA GTX460 Super Clocked :)
I have overclocked to 800/1600/3800 (Core/Shader/memory). So far, it's stable and the best part is : only one ot two °C change in temps (69°C @21°C ambiant, instead of 67°C), and no change in noise (35% fan speed) !
I have the 460 at the bottom of the case, and the 450 on top. That setup gave me a 5°C drop on the 460 (then I reduced the fan speed to make it quieter and the temps went back up those 5°C, but now the card is dcently quiet), and the temperature only rose about 3°C on the 450.
I'll post pics in the gallery sometimes.

PPD :
GTX460 : 11,059 (project 6805)
GTS450 : 9,064 (project 6805)
Q9550 : 6,091 (project 6040)

cordis
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by cordis » Mon Jan 10, 2011 11:56 am

Nice, looks like your average is up! I am getting a little worried though, it looks like there's more than a few people who have dropped pretty low over the past few days. Is there something going on? Anyone having strange troubles? Could be something screwy at Stanford....

frenchie
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by frenchie » Mon Jan 10, 2011 12:32 pm

I haven't noticed anything here...

aspd
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by aspd » Mon Jan 10, 2011 12:57 pm

Me neither, no strange troubles luckily. Folding on two graphic cards again (460 gtx's), which is nice.

cordis; with your i7-980x - are you folding on all 12 cores or using -smp 11 ?

cordis
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by cordis » Mon Jan 10, 2011 2:41 pm

I'm folding on all 12, if you use smp -11 you can get a strange semi-random error. They explain it at foldingforum.org that it doesn't like a prime number argument, but -7 works fine for 8 cores. Anyway, to get it reliable you need to drop it down to -10, and that's usually too much, even on my machine with dual gpus folding and tv shows getting recorded on it.

frenchie
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by frenchie » Sun Jan 16, 2011 8:28 am

Well, both my gpu clients are down... they both report the same failure :

[16:00:29] CoreStatus = 63 (99)
[16:00:29] + Error starting Folding@home core.


and so on until it hits 5 failures and quits for 24 hours... I don t see my GPUs overheating... I tried deleting the WUs and rebooting but it is still stuck for now.
In the meatime my SMP client is still running.
Anyone has any idea what is going on ?

EDIT: I figured it out : http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=6442
Remote desktop is not compatible with the GPU client because it resets the GPU driver to a generic one every time another user logs in ...

cordis
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by cordis » Sun Jan 16, 2011 1:18 pm

That's interesting. I use vnc on a couple of my systems, haven't tried remote desktop. Good catch!

PaleMelanesian
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by PaleMelanesian » Wed Jan 26, 2011 8:43 am

Woohoo! I just passed 500,000 points. :D

cordis
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by cordis » Sat Jan 29, 2011 1:41 am

Hey, so I finally posted pics of my new homemade case, it's another cube system but it's made of wood instead of brass: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=61400
I really need to start OCing it to see what I can get it up to. I have a system with similar parts with the 980x at 3.9GHz doing 46k ppd on a 6900 bigadv job and around 10k ppd each on the gtx 460s, and the cpu seems to be running cooler in this case than in the other one (an FT02). So I'm hopeful, but OCing is usually a pretty slow process, could take a while. Anyway, hope you like the wood box!

aristide1
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by aristide1 » Sat Jan 29, 2011 6:08 pm

Hey there, yeah it's been a while. Still not folding. I past the 1 year mark for unemployment, which is no fun. Anyway my budgetary cutbacks aren't just folding, I went to a cheaper cell phone plan (Virgin $25/month) and I plan on dropping my collision insurance on my car (its worth next to nothing and I do less than 1/2 the driving I used to do). My next goal (should have been my first) is to leave Chase Bank and go to a local credit union.

But I didn't come here to whine, I was wondering if anybody has noticed the new Nvidia 570 and 570i. They may be the lastest high efficiency champs out there.

cordis
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by cordis » Mon Jan 31, 2011 5:46 pm

Hey Aristide, thanks for stopping by. Sorry you're still at liberty, don't worry about folding, you have more important stuff to worry about. Hope it all works out soon.

I've definitely noticed the 570s, and I keep waiting for somebody on foldingforum.org to post some numbers for the 560 too, that's just hitting the streets. It's annoying to me, I upgraded a bunch of cards to 460s about a month before the 500 cards started hitting. I've optimized my systems so that my two always on systems are now the biggest ppd producers I have, so they both have dual 460s in them. But I'm thinking of keeping a lower powered system on to do system backups, and since the 460s have fairly low idle compared to the 260 I have in that box now, I may upgrade one of them and stick a 460 in the system backup box. But I'm currently OCing one of the big boxes (see the link to the wood box thread for more info), so no big upgrades this week, I think. Might change my mind if Fry's has a sale, though. ;)

aristide1
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by aristide1 » Mon Jan 31, 2011 6:16 pm

Nothing has changed in regards to your 460's, the 570s are just the new kid on the block. I have a 260, but back in the day I kept all my 9600 GSOs busy as well. I plan on selling them off, they are still good cards but I have like 6 of them, and need no more than 2. I've never had plans on running 2 monitors, let alone 3 or 4.

I will try to sell them here cheap.

It's about time Intel made some 32nm quads mainstream, but I have no plans on upgrading anything.

cordis
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by cordis » Tue Feb 01, 2011 1:24 pm

Yeah, I'm a little tempted by the 2600K, but now that the motherboard issue has popped up, I'm a lot cooler on them. The next socket down the line, the 2011 socket, is supposed to be the one that support 6 and 8 core processors, so I'll probably make due with my i7 980xs until the 2011 chips come out. Unless something breaks, of course.

Actually, I was just reading over on http://en.fah-addict.net/news/news.php, nvidia has announced a gtx 590, which is supposed to contain two gtx 580 chips. That should be a monster, although if it's anything like the gtx 295, it'll be noisy as hell.

aristide1
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by aristide1 » Tue Feb 01, 2011 8:06 pm

Don't these GPUs need more CPU cycles as well?

Your 460 does what 10-11K PPD?

I have to shake my head at some published folding costs, who can find electricity for 12 cents/KW anymore? I'm hovering around 20.

cordis
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by cordis » Tue Feb 01, 2011 11:17 pm

Yeah, the fermi gpus do use some cpu. I've actually been experimenting with using the -smp option to have it run on fewer cores. So far it's been going pretty well, actually seeing the smp ppd going up, and the temps have dropped a skosh. The gpus are getting around 11k ppd each, although I've had to OC a couple of them to get them to that level. What I'm really going for is to have two high producing smp systems as a base, and then I should be able to shut off and restart the gpus depending on whether the smp WUs are high or low point producing. I have the ppd/watt on both systems around 93-95 at the moment, have to wait for somebody to post some ppd/watt measurements for 570s and 560s and see if an upgrade would help. But in the winter it's not so bad having a little extra heat, probably scale back in the summer.

dereksbelanger
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by dereksbelanger » Mon Feb 07, 2011 12:55 pm

The power supply in my 6 core AMD system just went out for RMA. Awww, just when I was starting to get the thing consistently folding well! Hopefully the replacement part will get here quickly :)

and for your reviewing pleasure....the power supply is an Antec TruePower Quattro TPQ-1000 1000W

Pros: modular, quiet, 1k watts, lots of connectors, front-to-back cooling is great for bottom mounted PS, 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified

Cons: cables could be longer, apparently the technical problem I am having is not uncommon (high pitched noise after a month or so)

cordis
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by cordis » Mon Feb 07, 2011 5:34 pm

That's too bad, glad you figured out where the noise was coming from, that's usually the hardest part of fixing that stuff. Usually Antec has a little higher quality, wonder what the deal is with that part.

dereksbelanger
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by dereksbelanger » Fri Feb 25, 2011 10:46 am

Replacement PSU is finally here! Time to get folding :)

cordis
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by cordis » Mon Feb 28, 2011 11:04 pm

There you go, back in biz!!

In other news, I've finally hit a new milestone! Guess what it is.... ;)

frenchie
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by frenchie » Tue Mar 01, 2011 3:46 am

If you'r talking about points, 45 million doesn't count for you !!! We're going to celebrate a milestone every other day if we celebrate all your 5,000,000 points ;) :lol:
Congrats Cordis !!

PaleMelanesian
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by PaleMelanesian » Tue Mar 01, 2011 6:28 am

Top 200 in all of F@H? Congratulations on that even if it's not new!

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