Boost Your PPD with VMWare - Look inside for easy guides!

[geokilla]

Originally Posted by enaberif

Um your rig is more than capable of running a virtual machine.

Heck VirtualBox is free but you'll have to spend the time in setting up a hard disk for it.

My CPU doesn't support VT, which is essential for VMware. Well it's essential for VMware Server anyways.

[enaberif]

Originally Posted by geokilla

My CPU doesn't support VT, which is essential for VMware. Well it's essential for VMware Server anyways.

Its not essential you can run it perfectly fine with out it.

It might run a bit slower but you can still run it.

[chrisk]

On my Q6600 folding using vmware (used the Evga guide), currently getting 1562 PPD (1920 points, project 2665), and on the other instance of vmware, getting 2464 PPD (also 1920 points, but different project, 2675). 900 PPD difference, but both are configured the same as far as I can tell. Is this due to the project? (using FahSpy).

[3.0charlie]

Running the evga on the i7, still too early for ppd. Though a 1920 took 10 minutes even. Did the Priority change for the CPU to low, should I change the Priority on the GPU clients too?

Quicky question too: why is the i7 running at 50% with 2 instances? I did choose 4 cores in the Configuration.

[zlojack]

3.0charlie for the i7 you need 4 VMs at 2 cores each.

Does anyone know a way to permanently assign a priority? Whenever my stupid GPU clients switch between the FahCore_11 and the FahCore_14, the priority goes back to low and my PPD dives to 3k per GPU from over 6k!

I've searched around on Google but I can't find anything...

[3.0charlie]

How much Ram do you assign to each VM? I'm running 32bit on the i7 and using 3Gb only.

[LCB001]

Originally Posted by chriskwarren

On my Q6600 folding using vmware (used the Evga guide), currently getting 1562 PPD (1920 points, project 2665), and on the other instance of vmware, getting 2464 PPD (also 1920 points, but different project, 2675). 900 PPD difference, but both are configured the same as far as I can tell. Is this due to the project? (using FahSpy).

The difference is the core used. 2665 is a basic GRO-SMP WU and uses the A1 core and so will fold about the same as under windows. 2675 is a GRO-CVS SMP WU which uses the A2/Linux core and is much more efficient. Don't be surprised if you see widely differing PPD's as the linux client gets both A1 and A2 core WU's, which one you get is luck of the draw same as with the GPU and regular Win/SMP WU's.

The difference in PPD is why so many people want Stanford to hurry up and get the A2 core working on Windows, they keep saying it will happen...someday...

@ zlojack; Sounds like you need an Affinity Setting program, I think they mentioned one somewhere in the thread/guide from ExtremeCPU Forums or check the F@H forums.

@ 3.0charlie; IIRC in one of the threads someone mentioned needing ~640Mb ram for each VM to avoid getting the out of mem error, you might need to upgrade to 64bit...

[3.0charlie]

Yeah, Resource Monitor shows 666Mb and 640Mb respectively. Damn.

I really don't want to reinstall Vista another time (too many apps to re-install), only for FAH - anyway, I'd need 6Gb of ram for starters...! Though I do have a copy readily available. If I ever need to reformat, 64bit it will be.

How about the priority on the GPU clients? Does it need to be changed?

[zlojack]

Originally Posted by 3.0charlie

How much Ram do you assign to each VM? I'm running 32bit on the i7 and using 3Gb only.

I did the 1152 MEMSIZE recommended in the guide from Xcpu. But I'm running 6GB and 64-bit Vista. I bought 12GB of the cheap Crucial D9JNL RAM that can run at 1600 7-7-7-20-74-1T at ~1.71v so I'm happy with it so far (though I haven't tried the full 12GB at once). When I've got all four VMs going along with the two GPU clients, I get 5.8GB of memory usage in Task Manager!!! So I think I might have to throw in the other 6GB when I get my second GTX 295.

Originally Posted by LCB001

@ zlojack; Sounds like you need an Affinity Setting program, I think they mentioned one somewhere in the thread/guide from ExtremeCPU Forums or check the F@H forums.

Does that allow you to assign the priority? I'll have to look at it. The affinity isn't the problem so much as the process priority.

Originally Posted by 3.0charlie

Yeah, Resource Monitor shows 666Mb and 640Mb respectively. Damn.

I really don't want to reinstall Vista another time (too many apps to re-install), only for FAH - anyway, I'd need 6Gb of ram for starters...! Though I do have a copy readily available. If I ever need to reformat, 64bit it will be.

How about the priority on the GPU clients? Does it need to be changed?

I set my GPU clients to "Below Normal" and the VMs to "Low" and that gives me the best performance so far.

[3.0charlie]

Which process is the GPU client?