Folding@home catchall

bommel · January 24, 2012, 12:10:31 AM

Thanks for sharing this. Looks like a new folding@home server will be as expensive as a car

`Eylan Ayfalulukanä · January 24, 2012, 02:58:28 PM

How does one go about setting up F@H on an existing BOINC client? I have room for another project on this machine now.

bommel · January 24, 2012, 04:06:33 PM

Quote from: `Eylan Ayfalulukanä on January 24, 2012, 02:58:28 PM
How does one go about setting up F@H on an existing BOINC client? I have room for another project on this machine now.

You're welcome! However, F@h doesn't use BOINC. Just download a client from this site and install it. This site might also provide some useful information. We really need to write some official guides on how to set up the different f@h clients (uniprocessor, SMP, GPU)...

bommel · January 28, 2012, 04:25:08 AM

I'm using the GPU 6.41 console client with a non-Fermi GPU (GTX 260) and was tired of the lagging of my PC when folding on that card. After experimenting with different client version and command line settings I noticed sth interesting: When using the flag -forcegpu nvidia_g80 it doesn't lag that much anymore! This flag enforces a certain client version that is especially designed for non-Fermi GPUs. And I gain the same amount of points (although I feel it folds a bit faster now - just a couple of seconds). If you experience similar issues maybe you should give that flag a try too!

Ikxeru · January 29, 2012, 05:41:43 PM

Ma smuk,
I just found out that starting to fold on my GPU was not that bad idea...
I closed the last week with one of the highest scores ever.
So I guess I can bring in 100k points per week since starting to fold SMP and GPU.

Is there any chance to fold sth like "bigadv" WU on the GPU to collect some bonus points? Or is my GT-230 to wimpy?

Swoka Ikran · January 29, 2012, 06:06:03 PM

Quote from: Ikxeru on January 29, 2012, 05:41:43 PM
Is there any chance to fold sth like "bigadv" WU on the GPU to collect some bonus points? Or is my GT-230 to wimpy?

AFAIK, there are no "bigadv GPU units". Also, a 230 certainly isn't the fastest thing around.

How much are the units coming from the GPU worth?

okrìsti · January 29, 2012, 06:52:29 PM

Just figured out how to run GPU on Linux (80°C and growing, 1%/40s), that means I am back.

Btw. I am so tempted to try that on those devices we are able to use for homework (2x Xeon E5649, 48GB Ram, 5*GTX590*).

* but still

Code Select

nvidia-smi -a | grep Product
    Product Name                : GeForce GT 440
    Product Name                : GeForce GTX 590
    Product Name                : GeForce GTX 590
    Product Name                : GeForce GTX 590
    Product Name                : GeForce GTX 590

Swoka Ikran · January 29, 2012, 09:08:08 PM

Quote from: okrìsti on January 29, 2012, 06:52:29 PM
Code Select Expand
nvidia-smi -a | grep Product Product Name : GeForce GT 440 Product Name : GeForce GTX 590 Product Name : GeForce GTX 590 Product Name : GeForce GTX 590 Product Name : GeForce GTX 590

WOW

Google suggests that 590s can be good for ~13k ppd per core, or 26k per 590. That's 100k/day even if you ignore the 440.

bommel · January 30, 2012, 05:01:26 PM

Quote from: Swoka Ikran on January 29, 2012, 06:06:03 PM
AFAIK, there are no "bigadv GPU units". Also, a 230 certainly isn't the fastest thing around.

This is correct. GPU WUs don't get bonus points if you finish them earlier than the deadline. So if the deadline is two weeks you could pause a week and continue and still get the same amount of points. Don't do that with an SMP WU (they have way shorter deadlines anyway...).

Quote from: okrìsti on January 29, 2012, 06:52:29 PM
Just figured out how to run GPU on Linux (80°C and growing, 1%/40s), that means I am back.

How do you run GPU on Linux? Are you using the v7 Beta? Cause AFAIK it's not possible to use the stable 6.x GPU client on Linux without a VM

By the way, I'm currently thinking about getting a GTX580. Damn expensive piece of hardware (the model I have in mind is around 450€)!

okrìsti · January 30, 2012, 07:27:28 PM

Quote from: bommel on January 30, 2012, 05:01:26 PMHow do you run GPU on Linux? Are you using the v7 Beta? Cause AFAIK it's not possible to use the stable 6.x GPU client on Linux without a VM

By the way, I'm currently thinking about getting a GTX580. Damn expensive piece of hardware (the model I have in mind is around 450€)!

Pretty much followed the instructions on linuxfah.info. It is a 6.02 and basically goes through wine, without much problems. Requires an older cuda version (or maybe not*), but 32-bit for sure.

Put the cuda 3.0 toolkit to a custom location so I can keep my cuda 4.1 and adapted the ldconfig .conf-files to point there (too), instead the default location, because the wrappers were only for that version.
(*But I just found out there are apparently wrappers for newer version. Might try tomorrow.)

Other than that nothing off from those instructions, afair.

bommel · January 31, 2012, 12:12:24 AM

Okay, I missed that. I thought it could run natively now. I hope it will with the v7 client...

bommel · February 14, 2012, 01:57:17 AM

Quote from: bommel on January 30, 2012, 05:01:26 PM
By the way, I'm currently thinking about getting a GTX580. Damn expensive piece of hardware (the model I have in mind is around 450€)!

I did it! My GTX 580 should arrive today. I'm pretty excited about its folding@home performance

Tsmuktengan · February 14, 2012, 07:53:45 AM

Lucky you, I am still with 8800GTX. And because of the high prices, I might just buy myself a 560.

Palulukanä Tarontu · February 14, 2012, 08:24:07 AM

We are more users now that are producing a lot of points. Could we reach the 300's soon?

Swoka Ikran · February 14, 2012, 04:52:29 PM

Ugh. Just discovered some unpleasant entries in my GTS450 + quad-core PC:

Spoiler

(They go back to January 3rd and all up the way to yesterday.)

Ever since Sunday, it's been randomly lagging, programs (especially the MySQL server in my Xampp install) keep crashing, and it has the occasional BSOD for a paging error. The disk errors explain that...

I've got a spare 750GB SATA HDD laying on the shelf and plenty of space on my server I can use for data backups, but reinstalling everything won't be any fun when it finally quits.

bommel · February 14, 2012, 05:07:54 PM

This doesn't look very well at all. You should make a backup and reinstall on the new disk as soon as possible before you lose any data. If Windows fails to write the data to the HDD it won't try again - at least that's what happened to me under Windows XP.

Swoka Ikran · February 14, 2012, 07:38:58 PM

Everything important was backed up a few weeks ago (when I planned to upgrade to Win7 then decided not to).

I backed up the only new things I've worked on yesterday, and the rest is mostly disposable: 180GB worth of VM hard disks (WinXP software test VMs, Win8 Dev Preview, and a MacOSX86 10.6 install), unpacked WinXP ISOs, and multiple copies of xampp

This weekend I might put the 2nd drive in, use Ghost to do a disk to disk copy of the OS and Apps partitions (which are apparently OK according to a surface scan), then recreate the failing work partition from the usable parts of the old disk's copy and from backups.

Tsmuktengan · February 15, 2012, 08:40:41 AM

I'd be interested to know what S.M.A.R.T. thinks of the seemingly faulty hard drive. $:-\$

Swoka Ikran · February 15, 2012, 07:15:07 PM

Quote from: Tsmuktengan on February 15, 2012, 08:40:41 AM
I'd be interested to know what S.M.A.R.T. thinks of the seemingly faulty hard drive. $:-\$

Says it's healthy. Go figure. Also, according to the drive firmware, it has 505d 17h of run time logged, and has 0 bad blocks reallocated (a bit surprising...).

Interestingly, the errors seem to only occur when I access stuff kept on one partition. The BSODs and MySQL issue can be connected since MySQL is installed there and the pagefile is kept there. The freezing and lag are apparently because of the disk retrying reads several times before giving up and failing.

I'm wondering if I could just move the non-corrupt data off the partition and run a full format to map out the bad sectors.

EDIT: I just discovered that the HDD is still in warranty until December 2012

If it quits, I get a free one.

Tsmuktengan · February 15, 2012, 07:32:08 PM

Doesn't S.M.A.R.T. displays 'read errors' counts or some other disk failures such as when it starts rotating or such? It should, I would see no other reason because of the errors you get. Obviously if there aren't bad sectors it should be an other issue, such as the lens starting to show signs of fatigue or the disk not rotating properly... or something else.

You should move data on another disk and send this disk to your manufacturer. You can do tests on it before to make sure he does not find issues, but it does seem there is something wrong with it.

What is the hard drive's model by the way? Hopefully Western Digital or Seagate...