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Questions from a Folding n00b

S

SpeedyVV

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Sep 14, 2007
Messages
4,210
Hello [H]orders

I just started folding a week ago with the hardware in my sig.

Basically my main folding rig is my HTPC with an AMD Athlon II X2 245 + GTS 250.

But sometimes I will fire up my gaming rig to help out which is a Q6600 + HD5870.

I have used my lappy's i5-M430 but it just gets too hot, so I will not be using it often.

After a couple of week of folding blind I ended up with a few questions, so help me out if you can.

1) Points and Work Units. Are they always the same? ie, 1 WU = x points? Or are different WU worth different points?

2) GPU2 Folding

My HTPC GPU2 screenshot:
Fold250.jpg


My Gamer GPU2 screenshot:
Fold5870.jpg


2a) The "Performance" units are different. NVIDIA is ns/day and ATI is iter/sec. So is there a way compare them?

2b) The "Progess" is also of different sizes. One is 15000000, the other 10000000? What does that mean?

2c) The 250 is a slower card, but seems to be faster at folding than the 5870? Is that so? Why? Or am I comparing apples to oranges?

2d) If I am going to pick a card to fold, would I be better off with the GTS250 or HD 5870?

2e) Do the values on the screenshots look about right? (250 is factory underclocked SFF card)

3) SMP Folding

My HTPC SMP screenshot:
FoldsmpAMD245.jpg


My Gamer SMP screenshot:
FoldsmpQ6600.jpg


3a) Can I expect the Intel Q6600 to be twice as fast as the X2 245 because of the doubling of cores?

3b) Running smp client on the Q6600 takes about 6 minutes per %. If i start the GPU2 client then it takes more than 1 HOUR per %. I checked the processes, and the GPU process only takes 25% of the processor capacity. The same seems to happen in the AMD smp client. What gives?

3c) Based on the above, should I stop the GPU2 client or the SMP client on the Gamer Q6600 rig? What about the AMD HTPC?

4d) Based on gut feeling I should be running the Q6600 SMP client on the Gamer, and the GTS250 on the HTPC. Am I right?

4e) The SMP client's progress seems to be measured in Steps? How does this compare to the progress on the GPU2 Clients?

5) Stats
FoldStats.jpg


5a) What am I looking for? Score? WU? PPD? or are they all important?

5b) Last but not least, why the hell is this so addictive?

Sorry for all these questions, but I really would like to get a better hang of this. :cool:
Thanks
 
SpeedyVV said:
Hello [H]orders

help me out if you can.

1) Points and Work Units. Are they always the same? ie, 1 WU = x points? Or are different WU worth different points?

yes and no, 1 wu does equal x points, but the faster you finish a work unit, you get a bonus factor, i believe this only applies to SMP, not GPU clients

2) GPU2 Folding

2a) The "Performance" units are different. NVIDIA is ns/day and ATI is iter/sec. So is there a way compare them?

not sure

2b) The "Progess" is also of different sizes. One is 15000000, the other 10000000? What does that mean?

two different WUs

2c) The 250 is a slower card, but seems to be faster at folding than the 5870? Is that so? Why? Or am I comparing apples to oranges?

nvidia has the upper hand in folding, ATi has horrible support to the point its not worth folding considering the power draw

2d) If I am going to pick a card to fold, would I be better off with the GTS250 or HD 5870?

nvidia with cuda

2e) Do the values on the screenshots look about right? (250 is factory underclocked SFF card)

I believe the 250 is a rebranded 8800GT, so around 5,000PPD is average(I believe)

3) SMP Folding

3a) Can I expect the Intel Q6600 to be twice as fast as the X2 245 because of the doubling of cores?

more or less

3b) Running smp client on the Q6600 takes about 6 minutes per %. If i start the GPU2 client then it takes more than 1 HOUR per %. I checked the processes, and the GPU process only takes 25% of the processor capacity. The same seems to happen in the AMD smp client. What gives?

the 5870 gpu client starved the CPU for cycles(another drawback of ATi)

the x2 might not be powerful enough to run smp and a GPU client at the same time

3c) Based on the above, should I stop the GPU2 client or the SMP client on the Gamer Q6600 rig? What about the AMD HTPC?

SMP on the Q6600, gpu on the GTS250

4d) Based on gut feeling I should be running the Q6600 SMP client on the Gamer, and the GTS250 on the HTPC. Am I right?

yes

4e) The SMP client's progress seems to be measured in Steps? How does this compare to the progress on the GPU2 Clients?

slightly different, use hfm.net to give better info and overview

http://www.overclock.net/folding-home-guides-tutorials/698405-windows-7-complete-hfm-guide.html

5) Stats
FoldStats.jpg


5a) What am I looking for? Score? WU? PPD? or are they all important?

getting as much PPD as possible :) smp -bigadv gives the most PPD but gets expensive to run,

5b) Last but not least, why the hell is this so addictive?

I dont know but I dont want the cure :D

Sorry for all these questions, but I really would like to get a better hang of this. :cool:
Thanks
Click to expand...

see bolded.

I see you've folded for evga before D=
http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_summary.php?s=&u=524522

anyway welcome to the [H]orde and feel free to ask any other questions
 
SpeedyVV said:
Hello [H]orders

I just started folding a week ago with the hardware in my sig.

Basically my main folding rig is my HTPC with an AMD Athlon II X2 245 + GTS 250.

But sometimes I will fire up my gaming rig to help out which is a Q6600 + HD5870.

I have used my lappy's i5-M430 but it just gets too hot, so I will not be using it often.

After a couple of week of folding blind I ended up with a few questions, so help me out if you can.

1) Points and Work Units. Are they always the same? ie, 1 WU = x points? Or are different WU worth different points?

There are several types of WU and they are worth different amounts of points.

2) GPU2 Folding

My HTPC GPU2 screenshot:
Fold250.jpg


My Gamer GPU2 screenshot:
Fold5870.jpg


2a) The "Performance" units are different. NVIDIA is ns/day and ATI is iter/sec. So is there a way compare them?

No, they are formatted differently for the different GPU architectures.


2b) The "Progess" is also of different sizes. One is 15000000, the other 10000000? What does that mean?

It means the WU are different sizes/contain more data.

2c) The 250 is a slower card, but seems to be faster at folding than the 5870? Is that so? Why? Or am I comparing apples to oranges?

The ati card isn't as fast due to the folding algorithm used. With that said you should get 4k PPD from your 5870 and 5k PPD from the 250.

2d) If I am going to pick a card to fold, would I be better off with the GTS250 or HD 5870?

Use both.

2e) Do the values on the screenshots look about right? (250 is factory underclocked SFF card)

3) SMP Folding

My HTPC SMP screenshot:
FoldsmpAMD245.jpg


My Gamer SMP screenshot:
FoldsmpQ6600.jpg


3a) Can I expect the Intel Q6600 to be twice as fast as the X2 245 because of the doubling of cores?

At least, also mhz matters and Intel is faster per mhz than AMD.

3b) Running smp client on the Q6600 takes about 6 minutes per %. If i start the GPU2 client then it takes more than 1 HOUR per %. I checked the processes, and the GPU process only takes 25% of the processor capacity. The same seems to happen in the AMD smp client. What gives?

If this is happening with the ATI client it's because you need to run environment variables to cut down how much cpu cycles it uses. I'll post a link to this in another reply.

3c) Based on the above, should I stop the GPU2 client or the SMP client on the Gamer Q6600 rig? What about the AMD HTPC?

You can run the gpu client in both systems. Just be sure to run the environment variables for the ATI gpu system. You shouldn't be having many problems with the GTX 250 if you are running the latest vid card drivers.

4d) Based on gut feeling I should be running the Q6600 SMP client on the Gamer, and the GTS250 on the HTPC. Am I right?

I'd run the smp client on the Q6600 for sure. And run the gpu client on both gpu's. Be sure to get a passkey and put in in the config for your smp client.

4e) The SMP client's progress seems to be measured in Steps? How does this compare to the progress on the GPU2 Clients?

It's basically the same in principle. It is a measure of how many calculations you have done on the wu.

5) Stats
FoldStats.jpg


5a) What am I looking for? Score? WU? PPD? or are they all important?

You want all three. Score and PPD are the same. WU is how much science you are accomplishing.

5b) Last but not least, why the hell is this so addictive?

We love to do the science and the competition is nice too!

Sorry for all these questions, but I really would like to get a better hang of this. :cool:
Thanks
Click to expand...

Check the red text above.
 
You're going to get a ton of answers, but let me dive in too.

1) Different WU are worth different points.

2) Short answer: don't use the graphical clients at all, and use a tool like HFM.NET to monitor your F@H clients.

Folding@home is much more optimized for NVIDIA cards, to the point where most people say it's not worth it to fold on ATI cards, especially if you're running a CPU client on the same machine. Use the GTS250 to fold.

3) Differences between the Intel and AMD architectures usually mean Intel chips are faster given equal clock speeds. See above for why you shouldn't run the ATI GPU and Q6600 at the same time. NVIDIA cards generally get along well with SMP clients running at the same time, especially if you're only running one GPU client. However, you may decide it's not worth the power usage to run SMP on the HTPC.

4d) "Based on gut feeling I should be running the Q6600 SMP client on the Gamer, and the GTS250 on the HTPC. Am I right?" - Yes

4e) Compare based on PPD using HFM.NET. This is the best way to get an apples-to-apples comparison.

5a) "What am I looking for?" Well, ultimately we're looking for some good scientific results to come from all this crunching. As far as friendly competition, we tend to look at PPD (see the Top 20 PPD thread) and total points.

5b) I don't know why it's addictive, but it definitely is. Welcome! :D
 
Since nobody has specifically said this, never use the viewer to check your performance. Having it open will significantly reduce the performance of the F@H client, and none of the information it gives you is useful as far as figuring out how your clients are doing. To check your clients locally, use HFM.NET as has already been suggested, and to check your stats online, instead of using Stanford's site, I recommend you check the Extreme Overclocking stats page instead. You can find your stats here: http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_summary.php?s=&u=524522
 
Wow... that is awesome help guys!!! This will definately help me be a more efficient folder for the [H]orde ;)

Yes I did 6 WUs for EVGA... I dont know what I was thinking LOL. To be honest, I got this email with all sorts of goodies for folding with EVGA, but once I got into it, well goodies is not the point of this, and besides, I have gotten so much out the [H] community, figured I would have a lot more fun folding here.

Also those stats links are great.

Shame about the ATI GPUs and folding. Something to consider going forward. Makes me want to sell the 5870 and get a pair of 460s ;)
 
Glad to see ya getting things set up!

As Zero82z said, the viewer is evil.
 
86 5.0L said:
see bolded.

getting as much PPD as possible smp -bigadv gives the most PPD but gets expensive to run,
Click to expand...

What is this -bigadv flag? And what do you mean it gets expensive?

Right now my flags are: -smp -verbosity 9

What should I change it to? -smp -verbosity 9 -bigadv ?
 
Welcome! you need a i7 overclocked to at least 3.4 to run bigadv. soo no bigadv on the Q6600
 
SpeedyVV said:
What is this -bigadv flag? And what do you mean it gets expensive?

Right now my flags are: -smp -verbosity 9

What should I change it to? -smp -verbosity 9 -bigadv ?
Click to expand...

You can only run -bigadv if you have an i7 or better cpu.
 
Now you got me curious.

i7 980x @ 4.0 GHz = xxxx PPD?

GTX 480 x 2 = xxxx PPD?

Ballpark.

Just wondering how much $1000.00 of computing will get you.
 
SpeedyVV said:
Now you got me curious.

i7 980x @ 4.0 GHz = 60k PPD?

GTX 480 x 2 = 30k PPD?

Ballpark.

Just wondering how much $1000.00 of computing will get you.
Click to expand...

I just guesstimated above figures haha

1000 bucks? about 35-40k PPD i would say
 
The 480's will get ya 15k each (about)
The i7 will get ya 40k-55k+ depending on OC, but take less power than the GPUs, not much of an issue in winter, BIG issue in summer.
 
Last edited:
SpeedyVV said:
Now you got me curious.

i7 980x @ 4.0 GHz = xxxx PPD?

GTX 480 x 2 = xxxx PPD?

Ballpark.

Just wondering how much $1000.00 of computing will get you.
Click to expand...

My 970 @ 4.26 does close to 65K ppd. 480s I believe do 15K ppd each. The thing that will get you is the $100+ on your monthly electric bill. I have a thread around here somewhere sort of on topic. I'll link it in a moment.

Welcome to the team!
 
That's the link! The number are pretty accurate, although my Gulftown ppd number is a little low.
 
A few people have hinted at it already, but at some point you will start seeing PPD/Watt as an important measurement. That point usually comes about 5 seconds after you get your first power bill after a full month of folding. :)
 
This is how you know you have a problem:

power.png


Then I started paying attention to PPD/W and stopped folding on my laptop, etc. :eek:
 
HOLY MAC SazanEyes!!!

I was already thinking kWhrs even before I started... The other thing is where I live, Toronto, Canada, the cost of power depends on the time of day and day of the week.

I will watch it carefully.

So for now, it is going to be mainly the GTS 250, and then the Q6600 during off peak hours.

I'll see how high I will get my ppd.
 
Welcome to the [H]orde.:)

Your 250 will get about 6k PPD on average, it all depends on the WU you are given. Part time folding on your quad will net you about 2-3k PPD
 
From what I understand folding is a marathon kind of thing... long term consistant contribution... which is what I am hoping to do.

But I just cant stand having less than 100K points. I dont know why...it justs seems so little :mad:

So I decided that on weekends, since the power costs are halfed, I will run as many machines at home that are worth running.

WeekendFolding.jpg


This is so exciting I just had to share :D

Damn it, I am getting this urge to substitute my HTPCs Athlon II X2 245 for an Phenom II X6 1055t. A nice $209.97 drop in :)
 
Last edited:
Awesome man, just be careful.. it can be very addicting and easy to burn out. I know I've had to take two separate breaks since I started folding in 2008.
 
Thanks for the wise words... promise once I get to 100K which seems reasonable, I will back off and just use my HTPC to fold.

But dont you think a X6 would give me many more Points/Watt?
 
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