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Little GPU3 help please?

D

dwdawg

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - January 2013
Joined
Feb 25, 2001
Messages
810
First time I've tried dual gpu and it's not going as I'd like.

I have 1090t and two Palit GTS450.

The 1090t usually gets ~14K PPD
I have other GTS450 that produce ~9K PPD

Currently I'm getting
1090t - 8K PPD
GTS450 - 3.2K PPD
GTS450 - 3.2K PPD

1090t is set for -smp machine ID 1 passkey is ok
GTS450 is set for -gpu 0 machine ID 2 passkey is ok slightly hight priority
GTS450 is set for -gpu 1 machine ID 3 passkey is ok slightly higher priority

I've tried reinstalling drivers.

Something isn't right here, but I have no idea where to look now.
Anyone have any input?

Thanks
 
1. set the priority levels to low. they dont need to be that high.
2. the passkeys not needed on gpu3 but its fine if you use it.
3. check your clocks on the cards and make sure they are not in 2D clock mode since that PPD sounds like they are.
4. are you using the gpu tracker client or the standard GPU3 console/system tray client?
5. i had way to much to drink so thats all i can think of off the top of my head :p
 
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If I didn't know any better, I would appear both the GPU clients are running on the same card. Have you tried something like msi afterburner to look at the load for both cards?

Also do you have sli enabled?

Edit: A pissed Monkey troubleshooting lol
 
I killed one of the gpu clients. The other stayed at 3200 PPD. The smp client increased to 13K PPD.

No SLI. Will Afterburner work with Palit cards?

How do I get them to go to 3D mode (assuming that's the problem). How do I check?

Using systray client BTW. If all else fails, I'll try console versions tonight.
 
afterburner will work with any card, same goes with evga precision(nvidia only).

it should show in the graph what the clocks are on the card in afterburner, hell even gpu-z should show it as well.

when you setup the system tray client, did you make sure to create 2 folding@home-gpu folders in your username/appdata/roaming folder?

if you haven't seen this guide, it should help with setting it up.
http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1032943617&postcount=5
 
Yeah the SMP will increase when you turn the gpu clients off as they suck quite up quite a few cpu cycles. You may want to try leaving a cpu core free for the gpu's to use so that they don't interfere with the smp client as much.

Yeah, it will work with any Nvidia card. Also this will allow you to overclock these cards to around a 460ghx at stock speeds

The graph in afterburner of course! Modern card have a few power saving modes ranging from 50 or 400mhz in idle/2D mode, to full tilt in 3d Mode.
 
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I agree with the above. Start by installing MSI afterburner. From there, you will be able to see how much the cards are being utilized, as well as what clockspeed the cards are running.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
afterburner will work with any card, same goes with evga precision(nvidia only).

it should show in the graph what the clocks are on the card in afterburner, hell even gpu-z should show it as well.

when you setup the system tray client, did you make sure to create 2 folding@home-gpu folders in your username/appdata/roaming folder?

if you haven't seen this guide, it should help with setting it up.
http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1032943617&postcount=5
Click to expand...

Yep, two different folders. They are crunching two different units.
Sounds like I might have a 2D issue. I'll try Afterburner when I get home tonight.
Thanks for all the input guys.
If I can make this work, I should hit 150K PPD, with a bit more to come.
 
dwdawg said:
Yep, two different folders. They are crunching two different units.
Sounds like I might have a 2D issue. I'll try Afterburner when I get home tonight.
Thanks for all the input guys.
If I can make this work, I should hit 150K PPD, with a bit more to come.
Click to expand...
sweet. let us know how it goes. if you need more help you should be able to find me tonight on the [H] IRC channel
 
Wiseguy2001 said:
Yeah the SMP will increase when you turn the gpu clients off as they suck quite up quite a few cpu cycles. You may want to try leaving a cpu core free for the gpu's to use so that they don't interfere with the smp client as much.

Yeah, it will work with any Nvidia card. Also this will allow you to overclock these cards to around a 460ghx at stock speeds

The graph in afterburner of course! Modern card have a few power saving modes ranging from 50 or 400mhz in idle/2D mode, to full tilt in 3d Mode.
Click to expand...


wont help limiting it to smp 5 since its 6 physical cores, that only works on the hyperthreaded xeon's and i7's.
 
Ok, Afterburner helped. Took a while to ramp up on how to use it, but I discovered one card was slaved to the other. All that is left is to put the 1090t back to 3.8Ghz and tune the Palits.

HFM is already reporting > 150K PPD.

I have 3 more GPU's and one more smp rig to get running and then my little ramp is complete (for now).

I figure I should wind up ~190K PPD.

Thanks for all the help!
 
jebo_4jc said:
how do you figure?
Click to expand...

the reason it works with hyperthreaded processors is the way hyperthreading works by sharing resources between cores. so when both threads are fully loaded it splits the resources between the core based on the demand on that core. so if you limit it to smp 7 the 8th thread will basically sit idle which means the physical core thread will now have access to more resources which in return means more processing power since a physical core is more efficient then a logical core. so when you take that into consideration when it comes to the x6, yes you may gain a thousand PPD on the GPU client but you will lose 2-3k PPD on the smp client so theres no real benefit to doing it unless you have a hyperthreaded processor.

look at 10e's numbers on his 48 core beast when he was messing around the with the smp thread limit. thats a good example of the difference between a physical core and a physical+logical hyperthreaded core.
 
Got up this morning, made coffee, and went to check the vegetables on the farm.

They downclocked last night. Temps on the cards stay around 60 deg. Why are they downclocking?

Reboot, and they come right back to normal.

I may try a different pair in this box.
 
Check your power management settings. You want to set it to high performance and min power savings with only the monitor(s) powering off.
 
Also reinstalling your nvidia drivers might not hurt.
 
Yeah, I've reinstalled the driver 3 times already.
Power settings are all set to max performance. I even set the monitor to stay on.

Rapidly coming to the conclusion that maybe this pair doesn't play well together.

I'm going to try a different pair of cards and run these on my linux box to see if they have the same behavior.
 
Did you move from Ati to these? Even though I cleaned the drivers when I switched to a 460gtx, HL2 ran choppy as hell. Despite repeated attempts of cleaning and and reinstalling drivers, it took an OS reinstall to finally fix it.
 
Realize that some cards are overclocked from the factory. If they sense a problem, VERY high usage from folding perhaps, they will downclock. I had this on one of mine. I had to turn down the clock rate till I got to a speed that was stable 24/7. Every once in a while I get a WU that kills the card and I have to reboot and slow the clock speed slightly.

All this after taking the card apart, applying heatsinks to the VRM's and such. Even then she would downclock sometimes. So finally just backed of the clock till she no longer downclocks.

My temps rarely go over 57c now.
 
rick5127 said:
Realize that some cards are overclocked from the factory. If they sense a problem, VERY high usage from folding perhaps, they will downclock. I had this on one of mine. I had to turn down the clock rate till I got to a speed that was stable 24/7. Every once in a while I get a WU that kills the card and I have to reboot and slow the clock speed slightly.

All this after taking the card apart, applying heatsinks to the VRM's and such. Even then she would downclock sometimes. So finally just backed of the clock till she no longer downclocks.

My temps rarely go over 57c now.
Click to expand...

Yanno, sometimes you have to think out of the box. It never occurred to me to underclock the damn things to see if they stabilize. Seems sort of wrong, but I'll give it a try. Is there a [H]ard UCP page somewhere? :D
 
Ok, seem stable at 724. Only 5K PPD though. Maybe it is a temp issue....
All I have to do now is attach a window A/C unit to the side of the box.
Gonna be tough to keep the gpu's running this summer in Phoenix.

Maybe I should scrap the gpu idea and just get more headless units...
 
dwdawg said:
Ok, seem stable at 724. Only 5K PPD though. Maybe it is a temp issue....
All I have to do now is attach a window A/C unit to the side of the box.
Gonna be tough to keep the gpu's running this summer in Phoenix.

Maybe I should scrap the gpu idea and just get more headless units...
Click to expand...
something still isn't right. 5k sounds really low for a GTS450 to me. Even at stock/slightly below stock speeds.

Try running the smp client with "-smp 4" or "-smp 5" flags set in your shortcut. Just add the 4 or 5 to the "smp" that I assume is already in your shortcut.

This will prevent your CPU client from using all 6 CPU cores, leaving one to feed to the GPUs.

 
the gts 450's overclocked i think only do 6000-6800 PPD now. you could try setting the gpu priority level to low instead of idle and see what effect it has on the gpu and smp client. but i wouldn't limit cores go gain an extra 1000 PPD to lose 3k PPD on the smp client. but its your system do what you want.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
the gts 450's overclocked i think only do 6000-6800 PPD now.
Click to expand...
Mine is still doing a minimum of 9300PPD and that is on the slowest WUs. Highest PPD so far is 10.6K. It's currently working on a P6801 and TPF is exactly 2:00.

you could try setting the gpu priority level to low instead of idle and see what effect it has on the gpu and smp client. but i wouldn't limit cores go gain an extra 1000 PPD to lose 3k PPD on the smp client. but its your system do what you want.
Click to expand...
It depends on the architecture and frequency of the CPU. It takes a very high end CPU and/or large number of threads to render a modern GPU capable of 10K PPD or higher counterproductive overall. I'm not familiar with tthe OP's system to be certain but a little experimenting and he might find a viable performance compromise.
 
All my other 450's run 8-9K depending on WU.

This is the first time I've tried two in one box. Not sure it should be this difficult.

The cpu behind them is a 1090t at about 3.7 Ghz.

I'm up to 825 Mhz on the 450's and still only getting ~5.5K.

Temp's are in the mid 50's.

Most of my 450's are clocked at 850.

Maybe I'll sell these and save up for a single 570....
 
Just for drill, I pulled both 450's and put in a single 460.

The 460 now downclocks about thirty seconds after it starts folding.
Temps are only 40 deg C.

What could be causing these downclocks?
 
Fubared windows install?
Posted via Mobile Device
 
Well I am thinking either a PSU that is flakey or a Windows install problem. PSU is my first choice...
 
I'm up to 825 Mhz on the 450's and still only getting ~5.5K.
Click to expand...
Check to ensure that each GPU client has a unique machine ID, if you haven't already done so.

At 825MHz, a GTS 450 should be pulling around 8000-9000 PPD, depending on the work unit.
 
Hmm. Tried a couple different power supplies.

Windows install? Maybe. It's a new Win 7 install. Just upgraded my wife's box (heh) three weeks ago.

She so happy with the new rig she'd kill me if I tore it down and rebuilt it again.

Set the frequency to 700 and it's getting 9500 PPD. Seems stable.

I think I'll leave this one as is. A happy wife is worth more than a few points.
 
no just use the "but what if you get cancer, maybe the work i'm doing could help create a cure to help you" line.. may not work but its worth a shot :p
 
my favorite is...."this is going to keep you warm, honey"

it usually works
 
jebo_4jc said:
my favorite is...."this is going to keep you warm, honey"

it usually works
Click to expand...


In Phoenix, it's not much help. The office stays around 85deg in the winter.
Summer is the season of unstable boxen :)
 
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