Beginning my folding journey...

A

Acejam

Weaksauce
Joined
Nov 4, 2009
Messages
65
Hey guys,

I'm looking to join the H folding team. I've read a couple of guides on here, but I've gotten some mixed reviews.

I'm running Win 7 x64 on my new D0 i7 920 rig. Right now I'm at stock speeds, but I'm looking to overclock in the next few months. In the mean time, I'd like to try out folding and help a good cause.

Which is the best client to use? Denio or mpichd? Am I better off running nofred in a VM instead? (I have VMware workstatioin 7)

At stock settings, my temps are pretty good with Prime95 (max I hit 60c with all 8 threads stressed). I will probably start out around 75-80% CPU usage.

Thoughts?

Thanks,
Ace
 
A Virtual Machine set to 8 cores will net you about 7500ppd on stock settings. On my i7 920 set to 3.6 inside win 7 x64, I can average 8500ppd.

By the way, welcome to the [H]orde!

edit - P.S. What vid card are you using?
 
Definitely run a VM. My PPD doubled from going to the windows client to the notfred VM.

Welcome to the [H]orde!
 
I'll third the vote for VM's. They aren't too difficult to set up, and running the console SMP client under them will produce a good amount of WU's. Much better than using the Windows SMP's.
 
+1 for VMs

Its actually easier to setup than the windows client IMO, and will net you better results

BTW Welcome to the Fold!
 
As everyone else has said, VM's the way to go.
Welcome to the [H]orde.



 
Welcome!

Nice to have you folding with us!
 
Wow, talk about a friendly bunch of people! (no l33t hating on the n00b! :D)

I have followed the instructions in this post: http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1033985823&postcount=19

I have only set up 1 VM so far. However, it doesn't seem to be "doing" anything. I am monitoring using FahMon, but it stays on 0% progress. Some data from the "message window":
[18/11/09 - 18:47:05.114] X Error while reading \\fold-DCA7\C\etc\folding\1\unitinfo.txt!
[18/11/09 - 18:47:43.996] X Error while reading \\fold-DCA7\C\etc\folding\1\unitinfo.txt!
[18/11/09 - 18:47:51.916] X Error while reading \\fold-DCA7\C\etc\folding\1\unitinfo.txt!
[18/11/09 - 18:50:32.047] X Error while reading \\fold-DCA7\C\etc\folding\1\unitinfo.txt!
[18/11/09 - 18:55:32.042] X Error while reading \\fold-DCA7\C\etc\folding\1\unitinfo.txt!
Click to expand...

Also, my affinity settings file is using the current profile. How can I change this for a Core i7? (I read the post, but it's not clear if I include all of the CPU0,CPU1, etc strings into the first line or not)

Code: 
*\vmware-vmx.exe := PAIR0+PAIR1 [assign=2,priority=Idle]

*\FahCore_11.exe := PAIR0+PAIR1 [priority=High]

*\FahCore_14.exe := PAIR0+PAIR1 [priority=High]

As for my video card, I have a 1GB BFG GTX285. I'm not sure if I want to run any GPU folding though. I want to stick to CPU only for now if possible. In order to make this happen, can I simply remove the two last lines of my profile? (remove FahCore lines?)

Also, for a Core i7, it sounds like I'd need to run 4 VM's to fully utilize my processing power. Does this sound correct? Will the VM's always be folding, or only when my machine is idle? (I'm basically confused as to what WinAFC does)
 
just curious, but is there a reason to avoid the GPU? If you dont mind me asking, youll double your number if you use both
 
That guide is slightly outdated with the 2 cores/VM. You should be able to leverage all 8 threads with a single VM which performs better and uses less resources than 4 VMs with 2 cores each. If you are not GPU folding then there is no reason to set affinities and Win AFC is not necessary. I also recommend folding on the GPU because it will produce more than the CPU if you don't overclock either one.
 
Vaulter98c said:
just curious, but is there a reason to avoid the GPU? If you dont mind me asking, youll double your number if you use both
Click to expand...

No particular reason, just wanted to start out small at first.

flogge said:
That guide is slightly outdated with the 2 cores/VM. You should be able to leverage all 8 threads with a single VM which performs better and uses less resources than 4 VMs with 2 cores each. If you are not GPU folding then there is no reason to set affinities and Win AFC is not necessary. I also recommend folding on the GPU because it will produce more than the CPU if you don't overclock either one.
Click to expand...

How can I change the VM to utilize all 8 cores? On my current status page, "SMP instance per 4 CPUs" is currently displayed. Should I change this to per 1 cpu?
 
Acejam said:
No particular reason, just wanted to start out small at first.


How can I change the VM to utilize all 8 cores? On my current status page, "SMP instance per 4 CPUs" is currently displayed. Should I change this to per 1 cpu?
Click to expand...

Don't worry, the folding bug will bite soon enough. Welcome to the addiction :D

If you are running VM player 3.0 (beta version) you can edit (wordpad) the vkm file and switch number of CPUs to 8
 
Kendrak said:
Don't worry, the folding bug will bite soon enough. Welcome to the addiction :D

If you are running VM player 3.0 (beta version) you can edit (wordpad) the vkm file and switch number of CPUs to 8
Click to expand...

I tried setting numvcpus = "8" but VMware workstation 7 gives me an errror saying it only supports up to 4 CPUs...
 
Acejam said:
Ah, downloading it now!

How can one tell if CPU folding is working properly? Even with 4 cores, my CPU usage shows around 50%, but FahMon stays at 0%.
Click to expand...

SMP WU take a long time to finish. I'll let some of the i7 owners tell you how fast each 1% goes, but on my Q6600 (OC-ed just a bit ;)) it takes 6 min to get 1% done.
 
also in FAHmon you have to check a box telling it that its a VM
 
In a notfred VM you want to set it to 1 instance per 8 cores. You will also have to get the correct VMPlayer 3.0 program and modify it's .vmk or whatever file to 8 cores.
 
Turns out VMware Player 3 final was automatically installed when I initially installed Workstation 7 a week ago. Duh!

I started with a new clean VM file (from the download) and I have the VM up and running now with 8 cores being utilized at pretty much 100% load.

Progress still remains at 0%, but I will give it a few hours. It's certainly doing something...
 
Acejam said:
Turns out VMware Player 3 final was automatically installed when I initially installed Workstation 7 a week ago. Duh!

I started with a new clean VM file (from the download) and I have the VM up and running now with 8 cores being utilized at pretty much 100% load.

Progress still remains at 0%, but I will give it a few hours. It's certainly doing something...
Click to expand...

If you look at the log file you should see progress in 10 min or so.
 
flogge said:
In a notfred VM you want to set it to 1 instance per 8 cores. You will also have to get the correct VMPlayer 3.0 program and modify it's .vmk or whatever file to 8 cores.
Click to expand...

Awesome, this is exactly what I was looking for. I will change it now to 1 SMP instance per 8 CPUs.
 
The above is correct. You want 1 instance per 8 cores. Doing that should have each frame done in 3-4? minutes. I'm not sure exactly how fast it will be but my Q6600 takes 5:30-6:00 minutes a frame depending on what I'm doing on my computer.
 
Well, it's finally working now. All it took was some time...

I'm currently generating 6556.84 PPD with an i7 920 on stock settings. (no GPU folding, yet!)

What is the best way to shut down the VM? I'd hate to loose all my progress....(want to game in a bit)
 
Acejam said:
Well, it's finally working now. All it took was some time...

I'm currently generating 6556.84 PPD with an i7 920 on stock settings. (no GPU folding, yet!)

What is the best way to shut down the VM? I'd hate to loose all my progress....(want to game in a bit)
Click to expand...

If the VM is set to idle priority, no need, just let it run and it will give up whatever the game needs.
 
Acejam said:
What is the best way to shut down the VM? I'd hate to loose all my progress....(want to game in a bit)
Click to expand...
Like Kendrak said, you shouldn't see any major hit in performance with your priority set correctly, but if you do need to stop it, you can just pause the VM or you can simply stop the VM, since F@H will automatically save its progress. Pausing is probably more reliable, but it takes a while longer since VMWare has to save the VM's RAM contents to disk and I'm too lazy so I usually just kill it off :D. Nowadays I actually fold within a full Linux distro that I set up myself within a VM, so I can exit Folding@Home within the VM without having to kill anything and that will give up all the CPU power I need. When I want to start it back up again, I just do so.
 
Welcome to the [H]ardest subforum on the interwebs. :) And thanks for contributing to the cause!
 
What is the best way to shut down the VM? I'd hate to loose all my progress....(want to game in a bit)
Click to expand...
If you want to actually shut it down, Suspend and Exit from the VM menu of the instance is good. It takes a while to restore, but after that it takes off as if it had never been suspended. But as Kendrak said, since it's on lowest priority it will just scale back for any other applications that need CPU cycles.

Nowadays I actually fold within a full Linux distro that I set up myself within a VM, so I can exit Folding@Home within the VM without having to kill anything and that will give up all the CPU power I need. When I want to start it back up again, I just do so.
Click to expand...
What distro do you use? I use Xubuntu, and that gives a big hit on performance as compared with Notfred's.
 
Bump to this!

I've been folding off and on now. I can't remember where I found it, but I'm currently using a Linux FAH image that I found somewhere on the net. Honestly, I'm not sure if it's the Notfred one or not though. (the disk file name is Linux64_FAH.vmdk)

Anyways, with just the SMP running 8 cores under VMware Player Beta, I'm hitting 11,600 PPD. I just installed the Windows GPU2 client a few minutes ago, and now according to FAHMon I'm generating 20,843 PPD (with both SMP and GPU2 combined). Is this considered good?

I've also overclocked my i7 920, and I've been running stable for about 2 weeks @ 4ghz.

My setup:

Asus P6T Mobo
Intel i7 920 @ 4ghz (21x191)
6GB 1600mhz Corsair Dominator
BFG nVidia GTX285
Antec 1200 case w/ stock fans
CoolerMaster V8 HSF (1366)


Current temps: (under full "folding" load)
CPU: 79-77-78-78c
GPU: 79c

Thoughts?
 
You should really follow this guide to get -bigadv going. It's super simple and very similar to Notfreds VM image. Just scroll to the part about installing a VM. You should be able to hit 28K ppd just from the CPU. It is also very hard on the CPU so don't be surprised if 4GHz is not stable and you need to go down to 3.8Ghz
 
Zink said:
You should really follow this guide to get -bigadv going. It's super simple and very similar to Notfreds VM image. Just scroll to the part about installing a VM. You should be able to hit 28K ppd just from the CPU. It is also very hard on the CPU so don't be surprised if 4GHz is not stable and you need to go down to 3.8Ghz
Click to expand...

I am already running bigadv. :) (at least, I'm 99% sure that I am - it takes almost 2 full days to complete 100% for a WU)

What makes you so sure that I should be able to hit 28k PPD from just the CPU? I don't think I've receive any bonuses yet....do these factor into the PPD, or are they just given?
 
Last edited:
Acejam said:
Anyways, with just the SMP running 8 cores under VMware Player Beta, I'm hitting 11,600 PPD. I just installed the Windows GPU2 client a few minutes ago, and now according to FAHMon I'm generating 20,843 PPD (with both SMP and GPU2 combined). Is this considered good?
Click to expand...

If I remember correctly, FAHMon doesn't calculate bonuses. The ppd number you're seeing from the bigadv client is probably less than what it's really getting. Try HFM.net or Fahspy...they both calculate bonuses.
 
Agent_N said:
Actually, from what I have read, VMware 3.0 allowed 8 cores (need 8 cores/threads for -bigadv), but anything newer than 3.0 only allowed 4 cores, so if you can get the 3.0 beta version, do it for -bigadv WU's!!!!
Click to expand...

1. When i posted that 7 months ago 3.01 was not released.:rolleyes:

2. The beta isnt even available anymore

3. If you use the link i posted, it takes you to the download of 3.0.......the one you want for 8 cores.
 
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