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wierd issue

T

Toconator

[H]ard DCOTM January 2026
Joined
Jul 8, 2005
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878
After upgrading myself to an i7 I repurposed my 1090T as my Home Server. The mobo is an MSI 890FXA-GD70 and has 5 PCI-E slots and I'm running WHS 2011. Plan was to continue folding smp on it and add GPU's to make it into a folding beast that wouldn't be interrupted by gaming as its mostly used for streaming to the LAN. Problem is any 2nd GPU I add only runs at 45-50% capacity. Theres a GTS250 which runs at 99% but anything else just runs at half ? I've tried plugging in a GTX550Ti then a GTX650Ti and the results are the same. Switching PCI-E slots has no effect. Plug either GPU into a Win 7 machine and they run 100% so its not the GPU's. Power is set to high performance and screen saver is none, power mgmt mode in the NVidia CP is set to prefer max performance in 3D global AND the specific folding exe. I've got the latest 314.22 driver and did a clean re-install just to be safe. What gives? Is there some throttling setting built-in to WHS ? Lots of potential going to waste here and I'm currently losing at least 10K ppd. Any help appreciated
 
do you have your cpu set to smp:6? if so, try it at smp:5 and see if that helps.

although, i will have to say i had this same problem when trying to pair a gtx 650 with a gts450. good luck!
 
bigted said:
do you have your cpu set to smp:6? if so, try it at smp:5 and see if that helps.

although, i will have to say i had this same problem when trying to pair a gtx 650 with a gts450. good luck!
Click to expand...

What OS Ted? I have a GT240 and 560Ti running at 100% each on my i7 rig running Win7 Pro no problemo. I'm thinking it has to do with WHS2011 as some graphics features are not available (e.g. acceleration slider in troubleshooting, etc.) so something is being treated differently? Also I ran -smp 6 and 2 GPU's on this before I switched it to WHS and didn't have a problem then either.
 
I was running win 7 ultimate on a Xeon w3520, but no longer have that setup. I might fold the 2 GTs450s when I get the one back from rma, but mixing Kepler and Fermi made the Kepler run like ass.
 
bigted said:
I was running win 7 ultimate on a Xeon w3520, but no longer have that setup. I might fold the 2 GTs450s when I get the one back from rma, but mixing Kepler and Fermi made the Kepler run like ass.
Click to expand...

Well the 550Ti is a fermi and the result was the same. I'm currently running v6 of F@H as v7.3.6 took so very long to start the clients and the 550Ti or 650Ti would fail to start with an error. The 650Ti kepler is running with a force fermi flag so I believe for all intents and purposes it looks like a fermi to the program anyways. If I get time tomorrow I'll plug the 650Ti into my main rig alongside my 560Ti to see if I get results like yours. I'm thinking it still has something to do with WHS rendering tho. I 'm guessing MS didn't intend or forsee running multiple GPU's on that OS. Maybe a registry hack, uh - "fix" can be applied ...
 
FWIW, 7.3.6 reportedly works better with mixed generation and mixed vendor configurations. Have you made sure that you have SLI off and prefer maximum performance on in the nvidia config?

More importantly, core_17 will be coming out of beta "soon" and it will give your kepler a shedload more PPD. It will only be supported in v7, so now is the time to get it sorted.
 
rhavern said:
FWIW, 7.3.6 reportedly works better with mixed generation and mixed vendor configurations. Have you made sure that you have SLI off and prefer maximum performance on in the nvidia config?

More importantly, core_17 will be coming out of beta "soon" and it will give your kepler a shedload more PPD. It will only be supported in v7, so now is the time to get it sorted.
Click to expand...

Yep and yep. The fact that core 17 is going to get me more ppd on kepler is interesting and will be worth taking another look at. I tried v7.3.6 and it took a short while for smp to start up and GPU folding would repeatedly surge and stop, surge and stop until finally the GTS250 would go and the 550Ti or 650Ti - whichever I was trying at the time during troubleshooting - would halt with an error. Switched everything back to v6 and they all run right away. After several days the 650Ti is now running at 70% load instead of 45%. Don't have a clue why this would be, it doesn't make sense to me as I made no changes, just let it run. I've got a brand new 650W PSU in this thing so it's not a power delivery issue. Freaky ...
 
update: added a GT240, so now have GTX650Ti / GTS250 / GT240 installed. GTS250 and GT240 run at 99% but 650Ti (or 550Ti if i switch) will only run 72%. Stranger still, if I try to bump up the core speed on the 650Ti a small bit to ~990-1000 (stock is 928) the usage drops to 67%. Power settings at High Perf in Windows and Prefer Max Perf in NV control panel. Experience no such issues with Win 7 on other machines nor on this mobo when it wasn't running WHS. The 650Ti is installed on the only slot which stays at PCIE_x16 when 3 GPU's are installed so its nothing to do with lanes. Must be a driver implementation issue as there's no dedicated Server driver, just Win7 version to use? I'm wearing a path in my hair from scratching my head ...
 
I believe the issue is because you are mixing generations of Kepler with pre-Fermi.
 
DooKey said:
I believe the issue is because you are mixing generations of Kepler with pre-Fermi.
Click to expand...

Ah no. I stated earlier that the same happens with a 550Ti which is a fermi. The kepler is running with a fermi flag (req'd to run kepler on v6 client). Sometimes it slows to 45% but usually runs 72%. Having PCI-E slots failure on my main mobo and have contacted ASUS for an RMA. Once its back I'll shift the 650Ti over to it. I've tried many work arounds to try to identify the cause but I'm losing too many ppd with it on the Server. Gonna also be down another 55-60k ppd while I wait :mad:
 
update: with only the 650Ti folding it still only runs 45-72%. There is definitely some sort of limiting going on with these cards and WHS2011. Folders beware ...

edit: confirmed. switched into a Win XP machine, running 99% ~18K ppd.
 
Last edited:
Toconator said:
update: with only the 650Ti folding it still only runs 45-72%. There is definitely some sort of limiting going on with these cards and WHS2011. Folders beware ...

edit: confirmed. switched into a Win XP machine, running 99% ~18K ppd.
Click to expand...

With that, I'd post your findings on FF.org if you haven't already and get a bug ticket opened.
 
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