SPCR Folds Team Blog

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

Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee

cordis
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by cordis » Tue Mar 01, 2011 11:19 am

And PaleMelanesian gets it! Yeah, I'm up to 197 now! It took me forever to get from 300 to 200, I don't know if I'll ever get into the top 100, but I'll take 100 to 200 for now! :D

cordis
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by cordis » Sun Mar 06, 2011 8:43 pm

Hey, here's an update, picked up another video card, this one to be precise:

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

It's an interesting card, I have it in my big brass box (viewtopic.php?f=14&t=59803) so it gets plenty of airflow, and under normal folding it got up to 65C and put out around 4k ppd. It's normally at 700MHz shader clocks, I've OCed it up to 800MHz, and now it's doing 4500 ppd, at 67C. So all in all, I'm liking this card, it's completely quiet, but it can produce. I picked it up just as a low power card, I'm going to try to convert the brass box system to a lower power file server, and I wanted lower idle power than I used to have. It does do that, but I'm surprised by the folding power. Probably shut it off soon, but if you're looking for a truly silent folding gpu, I recommend it.

NeilBlanchard
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by NeilBlanchard » Mon Mar 07, 2011 6:48 am

Thanks for posting -- I also noticed a passively cooled card with 2X the stream processors and the higher clockspeed you mentioned:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814187129

Is running these in SLi mode of any benefit?

cordis
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by cordis » Mon Mar 07, 2011 2:51 pm

Aw, hadn't seen that one before. Ah well, looks like it has the heat pipes that wouldn't work so well on rotated motherboards. But anyway, yeah, using one with another gpu would be fine, you specifically don't want to use SLI, but you can run one gpu client per card, and the points just add up. If you do get a couple of these for a system, post some pics, I'd love to see how these thing space out in a case. :D

frenchie
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by frenchie » Mon Mar 07, 2011 4:52 pm

I LOVE my GTS450. I'm actually going to get another one eventually. It rocks !
It gets about 7000-7500ppd, it is really cool (temp is 54°C right now while folding), it very quiet (can't hear it over 2 nexus fans @9V), and uses only one extra 6 pins power connector.
I'm very surprised more people don't get this card.
I hope that soon I'll have 2 folding in my main rig (GTX460 will go in file/folding server) with the q9550, that should put out good numbers.
I just got a kill-a-watt today, I'll post numbers tomorrow.

NeilBlanchard
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by NeilBlanchard » Tue Mar 08, 2011 4:44 am

Heatpipes work in any orientation -- the cooled liquid "wicks" back up the pipe. The fins look relatively widely spaced, for good "passive" air flow.

I don't think I'll be building a PC anytime soon -- I'm barely employed at the moment, and I'm running Mac these days. Is there a F@H GPU client for Macs, yet?

frenchie
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by frenchie » Tue Mar 08, 2011 6:25 am

Kill-a-watt results are in !! :D

Current folding setup (good for ~23,000 PPD) :
Intel Q9550 @3.4GHz (1.25V)
eVGA GTX460 SC (@830/1660/4000)
Gigabyte GTS450 OC (@900/1900/3800)

Power numbers:
Off : 4.1 Watts (Switch at back of PSU in ON position, 0W in OFF position)
Idle : 102 Watts
Folding : 330 Watts

=> ~70 PPD/Watt

Not too bad :)

dereksbelanger
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by dereksbelanger » Tue Mar 08, 2011 1:50 pm

Nice setup frenchie. 70ppd/watt beats me! :)

AMD 1090T
Asrock 880G Extreeme 3
OCZ AMD Black Edition 4GB (2x2GB)
Mushkin Callisto Deluxe 60GB SSD
Antec TruePower Quattro 1000W
Antec 300

Off: 0/0.8
Idle: 92 watts
Folding: 170 watts

9,000 PPD
53 PPD / Watt

KansaKilla
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by KansaKilla » Fri Mar 11, 2011 12:06 pm

Yeah, great job!

cordis
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by cordis » Fri Mar 11, 2011 2:12 pm

Yes, great work! One of these days I'll have to update that thread with my systems on it, way out of date now.

But anyway, sad news, the team has dropped another notch, now we're #55. :(

dereksbelanger
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by dereksbelanger » Wed Mar 23, 2011 7:31 am

Does anyone have experience with GTX560s? I'm kinda interested in this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814125369

aspd
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by aspd » Wed Mar 23, 2011 10:38 am

That's a sweet card! I have the Gigabyte GTX 460 SOC-version clocked at 900 Mhz @ 1.025 V - 100% stable 24/7
Avg. Time / Frame : 1mn 24s - 13165.71 ppd on project 6805

See http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/ha ... ew-17.html

I'm sure clocking the GTX 560 SOC to 1 Ghz or close to it on a very small voltage up is possible.

Go-go-go!

frenchie
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by frenchie » Thu Mar 24, 2011 2:47 pm

I haven't been here in a few days ! Back with a little update :)
I picked up another GTS450 (gigabyte dual fan, OC version). It replaces the GTX460 in my main rig until my Backup/folding rig comes alive (in a few weeks hopefully...).
Since the first GTS450 had been running at @900/1900/3800 without a problem, I clocked this one straight to @900/1900/3800 as well, and it's been running like a champ for almost a week :)
Both cards run at 64°C MAX (usually around 58-59°C, see rant at end of post).
Needless to say I'm quite happy :mrgreen:
And my ppd is not down at all :) I'm guessing the CPU got a few cycles back, and the increase in clock speed helped compensate the 460 a bit.
I'll post power numbers this week end (arg... reminds me I need a new PSU...).

[rant] thanks gigabyte for that stupid "dust reduction" fan mode joke : fans run together for 10 minutes and then each takes turns to spin for 30 seconds. Not only does it not reduce dust (not visibly anyways, maybe at a microscopic level...) it heats up the card 5°C when the fans do their thing and I fail to see the point of that. Temps go back down to their normal levels in a couple of minutes.[/rant]

EDIT : this is what I mean :
Image
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Last edited by frenchie on Thu Mar 24, 2011 4:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

cordis
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by cordis » Thu Mar 24, 2011 4:23 pm

That sounds annoying. I had some problems with my 430 when I switched the box it was in over to Ubuntu, so I swapped it back out with a 260. Oh well. But the linux box is now running native bigadv, and getting about 10% more ppd than it did when running under windows 7. So that's nice. But I may shut it down if the weather gets too warm. ;)

KansaKilla
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by KansaKilla » Mon Mar 28, 2011 8:20 am

dereksbelanger wrote:Does anyone have experience with GTX560s? I'm kinda interested in this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814125369
Yeah, I have two of these in a box with an i7 860 and they are getting from 1200-1500 ppd each, depending on the work unit. They run quietly, can't hear them over the native fans in the Three Hundred. I got the MSI dual fan models, though. Roughly similar to the Gigabyte.

frenchie
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by frenchie » Mon Mar 28, 2011 1:33 pm

KansaKilla wrote:
dereksbelanger wrote:Does anyone have experience with GTX560s? I'm kinda interested in this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814125369
Yeah, I have two of these in a box with an i7 860 and they are getting from 1200-1500 ppd each, depending on the work unit. They run quietly, can't hear them over the native fans in the Three Hundred. I got the MSI dual fan models, though. Roughly similar to the Gigabyte.
I think you forgot a 0, right ?

KansaKilla
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by KansaKilla » Fri Apr 01, 2011 12:16 pm

yeah, i'm off by an order of magnitude.

cordis
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by cordis » Sun Apr 03, 2011 11:15 am

Hey, here's some news, there's an open beta of version 7 of the client software out now. I've tried it on my linux box, it seems to work ok. You can read more about it here http://foldingforum.org/viewforum.php?f=67 and on the normal folding site, although it's a little harder to find on the normal folding site, you have to look around a little bit more. It's interesting, it gives you a little interface. It makes it a little harder to figure out how to set some options, took me a while how to figure out how to set up bigadv, but it's alright. I don't think that any of the monitoring tools have been updated yet, so I'll probably stick with the command line tools until that happens. If you're running a single system, it would probably be worth it to try running it. But anyway, just wanted to give you all the heads up!

KansaKilla
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by KansaKilla » Thu Apr 07, 2011 5:34 pm

thanks!

dereksbelanger
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by dereksbelanger » Fri Apr 08, 2011 9:43 am

Way to ramp things up, Michael_qrt! http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/ ... s=&u=34869

(weekly chart shows a really nice trend)

frenchie
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by frenchie » Wed Apr 13, 2011 3:58 pm

New power numbers are in for a [email protected], 2 x GTS450 @900/1900/3800 :

PPD : 23,000 (average over a few weeks)
watts : 297 W (average over one week)
PPD/Watt = 77 :)

Not bad !!

Michael_qrt
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by Michael_qrt » Tue Apr 19, 2011 2:59 am

dereksbelanger wrote:Way to ramp things up, Michael_qrt! http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/ ... s=&u=34869

(weekly chart shows a really nice trend)
Thanks, it's been getting gradually cooler in the southern hemisphere so I can stand running my main machine 24/7 and I recently overclocked the cpu. I pushed my Q9450 up to 3.45GHz, which gives quite a boost to the points output since you get units finished faster and more bonus points for finishing quickly. I shudder to think of the output from the latest high end cpus when pushed to the max.

Unfortunately it's going to be hard to maintain the trend as I don't think I have anything more to push at the moment.

cordis
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by cordis » Wed May 04, 2011 10:46 am

Hey, speaking of production spikes, let me just say dayum! to jhimanka! You keep this up, you may overtake me in production! Great work! :D

NeilBlanchard
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by NeilBlanchard » Wed May 04, 2011 7:03 pm

Right now, my iMac is chewing on a Project 6040 -- this thing is massive! It is taking well over FOUR days and I am still getting the same PPD as normal...
Last edited by NeilBlanchard on Thu May 05, 2011 3:49 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: corrected time

jhimanka
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by jhimanka » Wed May 04, 2011 11:23 pm

cordis wrote:Hey, speaking of production spikes, let me just say dayum! to jhimanka! You keep this up, you may overtake me in production! Great work! :D
Thanks. Not likely that I would get ahead of you...I'm just harvesting some night time cycles from two linux Xeon servers. Those bigadv jobs produce a surprising amount of points.

dereksbelanger
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by dereksbelanger » Fri May 06, 2011 11:37 am

I'm not making points like jhimanka, but I finally have the 1090T running well and finished the first uninterrupted month on it. Exceeded my 300k/mo goal by just a bit too!

I wonder what’s going to happen when the AMD APU hardware starts showing up? Sorta blurs the line between the FAH GPU and CPU clients.

cordis
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by cordis » Fri May 06, 2011 4:30 pm

Yes, that's an interesting point. It turns out that this new v7 client allows for newer AMD gpus to contribute, so that was timely. I wonder how they'll bin those out, I know they were looking at having some full 8 core chips, so those would be great for bigadv jobs. But will the chips with more cores have smaller APUs and vice versa? Could make for some interesting trade offs. Either way, having the gpu and cpu on the same die makes it a lot easier to keep your system cool quietly. When those sandybridge z68 motherboards come out, I'm going to get one, so I can have a gpu-less system for my main file server. I'm curious to see how much I can drop the power on that and still run bigadv jobs.

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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by dereksbelanger » Wed May 18, 2011 4:41 am

w00t! Finally made it into the SPCR top 20

cordis
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by cordis » Wed May 18, 2011 10:44 pm

Way to go! :D

Jim G
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Re: SPCR Folds Team Blog

Post by Jim G » Wed May 18, 2011 11:40 pm

Well, I've just started... At this rate I doubt I'll be anywhere near the top ever but every bit should help, right? ;)

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