New Members Folding with Nvidia/Ati Gpu 2 Client/ Some Tips

[Dashock]

Welcome Teammates and new members wanting to join Team 54196!!!!

Hello all recent new members to the fine addition of our Folding Team. Some names frontier204, At1, Lemonlime etc. Also noticed a lot of old names back up and running again which is great.


I thought id share some tips with yea'll and hopefully the admins will sticky this.

If you are using the GPU2 Client you might want to do this.

1 For Overclocking your Videocard ( Programs )


1. Evga Precision Tool( Simple and User-Friendly excellent tool )
2. Ati Tool
3. Rivatuner

All three are exxelent but with all the recent driver changes from Nvidia i feel that the Evga Precision Tool might be the best as it has smoothly overclocked my card from all Drivers/Beta drivers.

2 Setting up Your Videocard

Only Overclock your Shaders on Your Video Card

To get higher PPD only overclock your Shaders as that is the only one that determines your PPD score when it comes to your Videocard Setup.


3 Setting up Your Cpu

I have done a lot of testing to find out if the cpu had a factor on the ppd. Having an Intel E3110 @ 3.0 i tested the cpu in different cpu underclocks. The reason for underclock was to save energy and to see if there was a hit on PPD.

Most Motherboards have Energy saving software these days, I myself have the Asus P5q-E motherboard which comes with the Six Engine Software. It lets me do a variety of things but i find the ease of overclocking/underclocking as well as seeing current cpu power use excellent. Some might argue on the accuracy of the cpu power reading but the ease of switching mhz is more the jewel of this software.

Therefore you can underclock your cpu as far down as 1.6mhz-1.7mhz i have not gone any lower as i used these lower overclocks with my daily tasks there was a slight hit on the ppd but that could be a factor of things as load of my different daily taks. All in all you do not need to run your cpu @ factory setting if you want to save energy underclock it.

4 Monitoring software for Folding to show PPD

1. Fahmon
2. Fah Spy

3. Please anyone mention any other names as i have only used Fahmon and found it works well for me and my needs.

5 Operating Systems does it matter?


As of recently no Nvidia has produced the 180.60 drivers which finally lets you have the perks of folding with Vista. You see before Xp would use 100 percent of one cpu core dedicated interely to the gpu2 client. Where as in Vista there would be an avg of 5-7% cpu usage so one could see the benefits of folding with Vista.

But now with the new Drivers you get the same benefits with Xp as all the folding is now done on the gpu and there is no need of the cpu. P.S These drivers are still a little buggy but this is still good news for the Xp folders.


6 You want to do more you say ??


Well the cool thing about using the GPU2 client is you can fold with your Gpu as well as your CPU. I find that Quadcores and the new I7 will probably benefit in this area more as they are more able to crunch the projects then Dual Core cpu's. Please correct me if im wrong but i feel the Quadcore/I7 can do more crunching per watt then the Dual Cores can.



So Finally Welcome to the team and we are as of this date ranked 160 and slowly falling down ( Which is a good thing )

I will add a more detailed intructional use of Fahmon its been awhile since i set it up myself so i someone would be so kind as to tell me the steps on Xp that would be greaaat!


Anyways have fun and remember we need more for the fight! And Thankyou for your continued support.

p.s Want to give a special shout-out to LCB001 for his continued support and motivation for the entire team even through rough times and his help when things get messy!


7 Folding with Crossfire on Ati Cards


With 3870x2 ATI cards you need to disable the crossfire and extend your desktop to second monitor before you can get folding on both cores.

Added by Shredder.

8 Folding with 2 Nvidia Cards on a Crossfire Board or Vice Versa.

You can have more than one GPU folding in a rig, and that it's SLI/Crossfire independant ie: You can Fold with two Nvidia cards on a crossfire board...

Added by LCB001

9 Folding both your Gpu & Cpu on the same rig?

If your going to run both GPU and CPU clients, make sure the GPU client has a higher priority..

Added by LCB001

You can set this up by going into your TaskManger->Process->Fahcore.exe-> Set Priority to High.

[Inik]

Interesting! I'll try the EVga precision tool when my gtx 280 is back from RMA :P

[Dashock]

Its really a cool simple tool i stopped using Rivatuner all together after i found it its like overclocking for dummies really lol. And i feel no shame to use it. I find RivaTuner has wayyyy too many settings. But as i am Watercooling the whole fan speed in Rivatuner is useless for me so the Evga tool is more to my needs.

[Inik]

the evga tool can now control fans for the 180.xx forcewares :P

[Dashock]

Yes sir odd thing is i just upgraded to the new version i think it was the GTX 200 that were having problems with the older revision of the tool either ways i upgraded my tool and its still working so yipee kayee.

[Shredder]

ATI latest drivers include a link to F@H, Sweet.

I thought I would add that with 3870x2 ATI cards you need to disable the crossfire and extend your desktop to second monitor before you can get folding on both cores.
I am on my first run with the pair hummin and a modest overclock on the CPU.
Total PPD for the vid card is 2704 so far.

[LCB001]

Good job with the tip sheet, make sure you keep it going.

You might want to add that you can have more than one GPU folding in a rig, and that it's SLI/Crossfire independant ie: you can Fold with two Nvidia cards on a crossfire board...
Another tip, if your going to run both GPU and CPU clients, make sure the GPU client has a higher priority...

[Dashock]

Done thanx for the tips its been added and will do LCBO001, figured we might get some new people folding for the team.

[geokilla]

Originally Posted by LCB001

Good job with the tip sheet, make sure you keep it going.

You might want to add that you can have more than one GPU folding in a rig, and that it's SLI/Crossfire independant ie: you can Fold with two Nvidia cards on a crossfire board...
Another tip, if your going to run both GPU and CPU clients, make sure the GPU client has a higher priority...

You could also change the environment variable for GPU folding on NVIDIA GPUs. Folding forum should have a tutorial on this. I'd love to link it, but I can't seem to access the forum without the use of proxy.

Also, the new Forceware 180.48 and after drop the CPU usage down to around 5% when you're folding on the GPU. This lets you run GPU and SMP on a dual core CPU.

[LCB001]

Originally Posted by geokilla

You could also change the environment variable for GPU folding on NVIDIA GPUs. Folding forum should have a tutorial on this. I'd love to link it, but I can't seem to access the forum without the use of proxy.

Also, the new Forceware 180.48 and after drop the CPU usage down to around 5% when you're folding on the GPU. This lets you run GPU and SMP on a dual core CPU.

This mainly applies to those using XP as Vista has always had 5% or less CPU usage. Using the 180 series drivers for Folding typically results in a ~100-200 GPU ppd drop depending on the system. They will increase the CPU ppd under XP however...