Crossfire Folding

[switch33]

I'm not sure if this has been posted anywhere else here but its similar to Nvidia SLI folding on both GPUs. I Came across this info on another forum about folding on 5870's in crossfire and I can confirm it works on my 4770s in crossfire on Windows 7 with 9.11 drivers.

Use these switches for each GPU when running the console client...

-forcegpu ati_r700 -gpu 0
-forcegpu ati_r700 -gpu 1

[BrainEater]

So what kinda ppd does that generate ?

[switch33]

I'll have to let you know tomorrow since I've just set it up. It looks like each GPU client is using ~14% CPU where a single client was not using any CPU previously.

[Zero82z]

Originally Posted by BrainEater

So what kinda ppd does that generate ?

I'd estimate 4-5k at most for both cards combined.

[switch33]

Looks like each card is running around ~3100 PPD with crossfire enabled and single monitor in Win7.

[Zero82z]

What do you have those 4770s clocked at?

[switch33]

Both are at 875 core and 975 memory currently.

[MonsterSound]

FahMon was initially reporting that I was going to get ~3000ppd when I first started folding on my 5850, but that number never materialized for me.
The ppd #'s on the 5850 kept on dropping to the point where they were less than 1K/day.
Stopping the ATI GPU2 allowed my notFred clients to fold faster than what the GPU added (less power used that way too).
My result may have no bearing on what you will get.
I'd just thought I'd pass that along in case you see your GPU2 numbers going down.
2c

[switch33]

I'll keep a watch out for that, I have noticed that using a single client on GPU0 uses 0% CPU with environmental variables set but running a client on GPU1 causes both GPU clients to use ~15% CPU each which is going to lower my CPU client PPD.

[10e]

You might want to use WinAFC to check the priority of the GPU2 and NotFred VMware clients.

The ATI client uses more CPU than nVidia, but there are some switches listed on foldingforum.org that can lower the ATI CPU usage to around 5%. These switches are actually environment variables that can be entered into the Startup section of the "System" applet. I believe they need to be set with upper case environment variables only.

I have been able to get 4000 PPD on my slightly OC'd 5870 @ 900 and still use an instance of NotFred for 4 core SMP without reduction to either, though that is on an i7 with 4 physical plus 4 "thread" cores. Haven't tried it on a C2Q or C2D though, but the affinity/priority management from WinAFC should help there.

I'll see if I can dig up specifically what you can do to fix this issue.

Originally Posted by MonsterSound

FahMon was initially reporting that I was going to get ~3000ppd when I first started folding on my 5850, but that number never materialized for me.
The ppd #'s on the 5850 kept on dropping to the point where they were less than 1K/day.
Stopping the ATI GPU2 allowed my notFred clients to fold faster than what the GPU added (less power used that way too).
My result may have no bearing on what you will get.
I'd just thought I'd pass that along in case you see your GPU2 numbers going down.
2c