• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

VM+GPU vs native linux?

T

twoodcc

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 25, 2009
Messages
265
ok so i'm running my i7 machine at 3.8 ghz running bigadv units in a VM and i have a gtx260 folding away. according to hfm.net, i'm getting around 27.5k ppd with this. it chances rapidly, sometimes over 30k ppd.

i'm around 36 min tpf on the bigadv units usually. i know native linux would be better than this. i also gave the VM 5200 MB of RAM.

this machine also has a RAID 0 setup as well.

should i stay with what i have going? or try native linux?
 
That is 27.5K total for both CPU and GPU, correct?

For comparison, I currently have an I7 @ 3.33 and a GTX 260 216 @ stock speed (whatever that is, it is not an OC model I don't think) running Ubuntu 9.04. I am seeing 20.5K to 20.9K from the CPU and right at 7K from the GPU. So, I am running almost identical ppd as you are with a significantly lower clock speed on my CPU.

It actually sounds like your video card is not doing as well as it should. I'm turning a little over 37 minute per frame with my CPU, so you should be getting 22K ppd or so based on you times. Is your card only turning about 5.5K?
 
since you have the same TPF and his OC is higher, I'm assuming the GPU is robbing some big time cycles from the CPU. I'm at 3.8 with 33-34 TPF in a VM with no GPU client
 
Vaulter98c said:
since you have the same TPF and his OC is higher, I'm assuming the GPU is robbing some big time cycles from the CPU. I'm at 3.8 with 33-34 TPF in a VM with no GPU client
Click to expand...

With no GPU on another I7 @ 3.33, I am getting 34-35 min frames. I'd love to get one of mine up to 3.8 with you guys for an apples to apples comparison, but I unfortunately can't right now. I also have one at 3.1 turning 38 min frames. So if this scales, I'd have 3.566 @ 32 minutes/frame and 3.8 @ 29 minutes. I doubt it scales like this, but 3.8 should turn 30-31 minute frames under native Linux I would think based on the 4 GHz number someone posted a little while ago. I'm not sure what that equates to in ppd since I don't have anything running that fast, but it should be 27K-28K ppd.

I am all over the place on how badly a GPU affects this. The one I7 @ 3.33 that still is running a GPU shows about a 2-3 minute time per frame drop with the GPU. The other without a GPU was seeing a 6 minute time per frame drop with a GPU, and over 10 minute TPF drop with two GPUs on anything but the P59xx GPU units. I have not figured out why i am seeing this huge discrepancy yet.

 
I'll switch my i7 over to the EVGA Linux native distro in the morning if it times right with finishing my current big unit
I'm not quite sure if the native Client will support my NIC onboard, but I guess I'll find out if I get a WU
Posted via [H] Mobile Device
 
I see about a 60-90 second increase in my Bigadv TPF when my GTX260 is also folding. With two 260s I was seeing about 3 minutes more per frame. This actually led to me ditching my SLI setup as I was losing about ~4-5kPPD on the Bigadv unit.

i7 920 @ 3.9GHz
12GB DDR3 @ 800MHz
EVGA Bigadv linux in VMWare Player 3 in SMP 8 mode with 8GB RAM
Windows 7 Pro 64-bit
 
Last edited:
What are your setting for the VM and the GPU's ??

With my i7's @3.9 Ghz and overclocked 9800's, I run mine ...........
VM can run on all 8 cores at low piority.
GPU's are locked to the last cpu core at normal piority.
My VM looses points but my gpu's put out ~6-10x that points loss.
~27.5k without any GPU's, ~24.5-25k with 2-3xGPU's + ~12or18k for the GPU's.

Luck .......... :D
 
Well at first I had the VM at smp 8, but this last unit I had it at smp 7. With smp 8 my times were anywhere from 34:30 to 37:30. With smp 7 they are a little more consistant around 36:00 or so.

I haven't messed with priorities or anything. I think my gpu is underperforming though. It averages anywhere from 4500 to 6500 ppd. All stock. Even with smp 7. Should I mess with the priority?
 
Well I just finished a bigadv unit, so with just the gpu going it's getting 4983 ppd on a 548 pointer
 
twoodcc said:
Well I just finished a bigadv unit, so with just the gpu going it's getting 4983 ppd on a 548 pointer
Click to expand...

Right now, mine is getting 8485 on a P6606 550 pointer. It usually runs aroun 7000 - 7500. Assuming you have a 216 core, you should be doing a lot better with the GPU. Possibly drivers? I am under Linux, so I can't give you the drivers I am using for comparison.
 
well under properties it says i have 8.16.11.9120 version. from 11.10.2009. should i try to update these drivers, or just leave it?

also, how hard is it to get GPU folding in linux? are there any nice tutorials around? last time i checked it seemed pretty hard to get it going
 
hmmm, it appears that I sent in my bigadv but it's not showing on my score sheet...
 
I'm now getting right around 35:00 per frame thru 3 frames, and it says just over 30k ppd now
 
twoodcc said:
how hard is it to get GPU folding in linux? are there any nice tutorials around? last time i checked it seemed pretty hard to get it going
Click to expand...

"Hard" is relative, but I would say if if I can do it, anyone can do it...:D

I have some good resource saved at home, which i will add them once I can get to them. It is really rather easy though:

1. Download drivers
2. Download Cuda toolkit
3. Install drivers
4. Install toolkit
5. Download, install, and configure Wine
6. Do some "majik" to get the linkage set up (I read through a lot of discussion on this, and I still have no idea what they actually did to get this to work, but it is simple to set up)
7. Download the FAH GPU client
8. If you don't have a GUI, do more "majik" to fake a GUI session (again, very simple to set up)
9. Start the GPU client

It sounds like a lot, but if you get the right drivers and toolkit, it doesn't take long. I probably set my last one up in 10 minutes, most of which was download time.
 
thanks. i might give it a try this weekend if my numbers don't get any better.

right now my total ppd is 30,496. 24.5k of that is from bigadv, and 5980 is from my GPU on a 353 pointer. which still should be higher.

i'm now running my i7 at 3.85 ghz.

is there anything else i should change on the priorities? i set fah_11 to normal.

and what about my driver?
 
thanks for the links. i will try and take a look this weekend. what distro do you use?
 
well i'm still running windows 7 and am still having problems. i have my cpu at 3.896 ghz now, and am still not seeing any increase in performance. i'm running smp -7 instead of 8 still, and i have the GPU folding as well.

i'm still seeing around 36:00 TPF on bigadv units. is there some setting i'm missing here? also, my cpu is usually showing around 92% or so, instead of 100% b/c of the smp 7, correct?
 
7 cores should be around 88.5%, plus the GPU usage, so I would say your usage is correct based on you settings. Try smp 8 and see if your bigadv frame times drop and if it affects your GPU ppd. I have had no luck with bigadv + GPU, which is why I am in the process of stopping GPU folding completely.

 
when you say "no luck", do you mean you can't get it to work (under linux i'm guessing) or the ppd is so low that it's now worth it?

also, i have 2 x 500 GB hard drives in a RAID 0. would this have any affect?
 
I mean that the ppd from the CPU drops enough that the net ppd increase adding a 260 or 275 is not high enough to justify the power usage of the card in my mind. This is in Linux. Again, this is my opinion, so make your own choice. I am not using the cards for anything but folding, so ppd is the only thing I am looking at. I am also pushing for higher efficiency as I am trying to push over 100K ppd, since electricity for this kind of production gets expensive quickly.

Your HDD configuration shouldn't affect anything.

 
oh ok, i gotcha. so for some reason either my VM isn't configured correctly, or my priorities are wrong, or something b/c my performance is very low considering my clock speed. i just finished a WU, so my next one i'll go back to smp 8 i guess.

i just used task manager to set the priority of my gpu to "normal". should i mess with anything else?
 
well i'm at about 16% complete now running smp 8 instead of smp 7, and i'm seeing around 34:45 or so TMP average. a little better than 36:00 or so with smp 7. also, i'm seeing around 30.5K PPD with both bigadv and gpu (gtx 260 216) - that's without the upload time though i believe.
 
musky said:
With no GPU on another I7 @ 3.33, I am getting 34-35 min frames. I'd love to get one of mine up to 3.8 with you guys for an apples to apples comparison, but I unfortunately can't right now. I also have one at 3.1 turning 38 min frames. So if this scales, I'd have 3.566 @ 32 minutes/frame and 3.8 @ 29 minutes. I doubt it scales like this, but 3.8 should turn 30-31 minute frames under native Linux I would think based on the 4 GHz number someone posted a little while ago. I'm not sure what that equates to in ppd since I don't have anything running that fast, but it should be 27K-28K ppd.

Click to expand...

on my 920 @ 4G running a VM i get around 31m TPF which gets me ~28k ppd according to HFM

and FWIW on my other rig, my GTX260 216 which is OC'd usually has TPF's in the 35s range and is usually good for somewhere between 8-9000 ppd ;)
 
sdy284 said:
on my 920 @ 4G running a VM i get around 31m TPF which gets me ~28k ppd according to HFM

and FWIW on my other rig, my GTX260 216 which is OC'd usually has TPF's in the 35s range and is usually good for somewhere between 8-9000 ppd ;)
Click to expand...

You have the best of both worlds going though - a fast bigadv machine without a GPU client and basically a video card only rig. I do realize you are running a cpu client on your opty, but it doesn't produce enough to really matter how much the video card drains from it. If you had your 260 card in your I7 rig, you would see what we are talking about with your bigadv frame time decrease.



 
well i just stopped my GPU client to see if my times get better. hopefully they will, but i can't imagine they'll be that much better
 
twoodcc said:
well i just stopped my GPU client to see if my times get better. hopefully they will, but i can't imagine they'll be that much better
Click to expand...
It depends on the WU. The 353s for example, take a lot of CPU cycles away from the SMP client. Contingent on how many GPU clients you run, that can translate to several minutes added to your SMP TPF, which in turn can affect your overall PPD from a bit to a lot depending what your typical TPF is like.
 
well it seems my TPF only got better by about 15-30 secs. so it's not really worth it. might as well run the GPU client i guess.
 
twoodcc said:
well it seems my TPF only got better by about 15-30 secs. so it's not really worth it. might as well run the GPU client i guess.
Click to expand...
Definitely. Half a minute isn't really significant unless you're in the teens, TPF-wise. ;)
 
yeah i know. i was hoping my times would be better. i'm still not sure what's hurting my system so much.
 
twoodcc said:
yeah i know. i was hoping my times would be better. i'm still not sure what's hurting my system so much.
Click to expand...
Open up Task Manager, or better yet, DL a good process manager that displays in detail what is taking up how many CPU cycles. Something may be using more of your CPU than you bargained for.
 
wow your TPF is 37mins and thats with no GPU folding? I'd definitely say that something is askew. your i7 is @ 3.8Ghz correct? there's no way that should be your TPF
 
is that your TPF WHILE you're using your PC or while it's just sitting there. I've found that my TPF when i'm not using my PC is actually around 30m30s but when browsing the internet/streaming music, it goes up to 34m-38m range depending on what i'm doing & while playing games it goes up to like 45m TPF
 
it's over 37:00 while running the GPU client. that's with smp 8. it was around 34:45 without the GPU client and smp 8. and i'm running at 3.896 ghz.
 
twoodcc said:
it's over 37:00 while running the GPU client. that's with smp 8. it was around 34:45 without the GPU client and smp 8. and i'm running at 3.896 ghz.
Click to expand...

well the 34:45 TPF isn't bad, as thats roughly what I get if i'm using my PC while it's crunching. (and i'm @ 4 Ghz)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top