GPU2 folding?

edited November 2008 in Folding@Home
Any of you guys tried out the new GPU2 folding app with an GeForce 8800 or better vid card yet? The guys over on the OCForums team have been seeing some really good ppd numbers out of them. I've seen numbers posted in excess of 5,000 ppd with 8800GT vid cards so far.

If you are running an AMD system and have a GeForce 8800 or better, that would probably be the way to go with it as the vid card will absolutely smoke the ppd of the SMP client on an AMD rig. The only drawback with it is that the new GPU2 client only runs in Windows.

EDIT: Here's a link to their benches thread on the Nvidia GPU2 folding for you to check out.
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Comments

  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited June 2008
    Almost enough to make me think about a high end video card! Mudd, what about running one of the 8800s simultaneously with a CPU SMP client on a quad core Intel?
  • mas0nmas0n howdy Icrontian
    edited June 2008
    I would think you could run the GPU2 client alongside a single SMP client on an Intel Quad. I'll give it a try in the next few days.
  • edited June 2008
    Yeah, I think there are a few over there doing this also, with pretty decent results. IIRC, they are getting more points doing that than even running 2 smp clients in VM's running Linux. And they have 1 guy running the gpu client in the thread I linked running it on one of those new $650 Nvidia 280 cards and is getting over 7500 ppd out of it, but it's not economical since you can get a 9800gtx class card for around $200 or so that will do 5000-6000 ppd.

    I'm not real sure on concrete numbers since I don't fold any more (they got too labor intensive for my job being away for 2 weeks at a time to run the smp clients). But you should be able to hunt up some concrete numbers on simultaneous smp/gpu2 folding in their folding forum.

    EDIT: For now, it looks like the Nvidia cards rule in GPU2; their drivers are better optimized than the ATI drivers right now. But with ATI coming out with the 4850 series forcing Nvidia to drop the price of the 9800GTX cards down to the $200 range, it's looking pretty good for you folding guys.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited June 2008
    Thanks, Mudd. I really had no interest in high end video cards...until now. I knew that there had been significant progress made on GPU processing and Folding code, but had no idea it had developed to this point. I may just have to start looking for a good card. (darn, I've already sold off most of my spare parts from the bin that will actually make money! :) )
  • QeldromaQeldroma Arid ZoneAh Member
    edited June 2008
    Leonardo wrote:
    I really had no interest in high end video cards...until now...

    Yeah, and this would be the ONLY reason I would dual GPU in Crossfire (sorry, I have ATI) or in SLI. GPU folding has had good numbers- just not to this extent. I've avoided this because of power, cooling and inconsistent driver support issues.

    I would presume that the ATIs would probably hold their own here as well- they've been able to fold for a while longer than nVidia.
  • edited June 2008
    Qeldroma, from the little I've read, the GPU2 points are benchmarked on an ATI 3850 card and are set at 1500 ppd for it. And the faster ATI cards to get better ppd than 1500. But it looks like Nvidia's drivers are much more efficient than ATI's. Be aware that you can only fold with the newer cards, such as the Nvidia 8 class and higher and the ATI 3 class and higher. I don't know if even the ATI 2900 cards can fold. I kind of doubt that if you are running an Intel quad processor system with the smp client and you try running an ATI vid card on GPU2 you would see a point improvement but it looks like you will with an 8800GT in an Intel quad system.
  • QeldromaQeldroma Arid ZoneAh Member
    edited June 2008
    My understanding is that only and any nVidia board that supports CUDA can run this client. And maybe that is why nVidia tops the ATIs- and if that's the case, I'm kind of surprised GPU2 works with ATIs. You see, questions as to whether the next ATI driver release would run Folding has not gone down well with me and this would not have been unlikely.

    It's speculation on my part if ATI needs to have a similar programming standard streamlined for its GPUs to match nVidia production- and it kind of misses the point here. Yet I also find it inconsistent that equivalent performing GPUs should have such a discrepancy in Folding point output and there has to be a reason.

    Still, the die are cast with me- I have ATIs. Sorry for the distraction- it sounds like there is more incentive to buy nVidia for Folding purposes now. Can only hope at this point that ATI catches on.
  • everyguyeveryguy El Cajon, California
    edited June 2008
    I've been running the new GPU client on two AMD Phenom X4 machines, one with an 8800GT and the other with a 9800GTX. I'm getting 4985 ppd on the 9800, and would be getting about 4600 ppd on the other card, except that its on a Vista machine, and the nVidia drivers and Vista don't seem to play well together. That card has to be monitored pretty constantly, because after running a few successful units, it will suddenly not run any more until the client is stopped and restarted. Also that machine is my son's gaming rig, and his gaming slows things down a bit. Still I'm getting about 2000 ppd from it.

    There are SMP clients on both machines, and they have only slowed down a little due to the GPU client (less that 5%).

    I was also running the GPU client on an 8500GT card, and was getting about 700 ppd from that card until I replaced it with the 9800.
  • mertesnmertesn I am Bobby Miller Yukon, OK Icrontian
    edited June 2008
    As you can see in my sig, I've got an 8800GT SLI rig with a Q6600... I'm going to try two GPU2 clients and one SMP client... Can't wait to see the results! I'll post some results in a couple days.
  • mas0nmas0n howdy Icrontian
    edited June 2008
    Tried to get it running this morning, looks like I'll need a modded .inf file to run GPU2 on nVidia under 64-bit Windows. Will get that going later when I have some more time.

    EDIT: Got the .inf installed, GPU2 is running. Looks like ~1 minute 15 seconds per frame on Project 5205. I'll let you know PPD after FAHMon has enough time to have an accurate average. Right now I've still got 2 SMP clients running on this rig and it doesn't look like they are slowing down much (they may be slowing the GPU2 client down however)

    Crazy.
  • everyguyeveryguy El Cajon, California
    edited June 2008
    mas0n wrote:
    They may be slowing the GPU2 client down however.

    To keep this from happening, set the priority in the GPU2 client configuration to "slightly higher." Keep the SMP client at the default.
  • mas0nmas0n howdy Icrontian
    edited June 2008
    everyguy wrote:
    To keep this from happening, set the priority in the GPU2 client configuration to "slightly higher." Keep the SMP client at the default.

    Yeah I did that the first time I started the GPU2 client.

    I did some thinking and reading and have now uninstalled Affinity Changer and have moved to a single SMP to run alongside the GPU2 client. The SMP clients were definitely suffering. The GPU2 client (FahCore_11.exe) gets all of one CPU core. The 3 remaining CPU cores were being fought over by 8 folding cores (FahCore_a1.exe) resulting in 1 SMP client running on 2 CPU cores and 1 SMP client running on a single CPU core. Bad.

    This setup of a single SMP client + GPU2 client looks to be the way to go, at least until I move to an Oct-Core CPU. ;)
  • everyguyeveryguy El Cajon, California
    edited June 2008
    mas0n wrote:
    This setup of a single SMP client + GPU2 client looks to be the way to go, at least until I move to an Oct-Core CPU. ;)

    That's how I have it set up, and the SMP client hardly loses anything.
  • mas0nmas0n howdy Icrontian
    edited June 2008
    Sweeet.

    GPU2+SMP.jpg
  • DanGDanG I AM CANADIAN Icrontian
    edited June 2008
    I keep getting an error saying that nvidia could not find any drivers that are compatible with my current hardware. This is when installing the 177.35 drivers from the nvidia site.

    I'm getting it on both systems that have nvidia cards, one is a BFG 8800GTX on Windows XP Pro and the other is a G92 8800GTS on Vista ultimate 64 bit.

    Any ideas? Google didn't come back with anything recent...
  • mas0nmas0n howdy Icrontian
    edited June 2008
    DanG wrote:
    I keep getting an error saying that nvidia could not find any drivers that are compatible with my current hardware. This is when installing the 177.35 drivers from the nvidia site.

    I'm getting it on both systems that have nvidia cards, one is a BFG 8800GTX on Windows XP Pro and the other is a G92 8800GTS on Vista ultimate 64 bit.

    Any ideas? Google didn't come back with anything recent...

    Are you using the modded .inf file? Look here

    To get it working under x64 start the first half of the install but cancel when it is done extracting to c:\NVIDIA\blah and close the installer before it moves on to the next step. Then copy the modded .inf file to the directory it just extracted to and replace the existing .inf file. Run the setup.exe within said folder; this time going through the entire install. Reboot and start GPU2.
  • DanGDanG I AM CANADIAN Icrontian
    edited June 2008
    I got it going on the 8800GTS with Vista 64. On the XP Pro system, I get an error about the hardware not being compatible or needing a newer driver, and this is with the 177.35 drivers installed. It's a BFG 8800GTX that nVidia lists on their page as being Cuda compatible :confused:
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited June 2008
    Check me if I'm wrong, so far here's where Folding@Home stands with Nvidia GPUs:

    - 8800GTX is a go
    - 9800 series are a go
    - maximum points configuration for quad Intel processor is 1 X GPU client Folding simultaneously with 1 X CPU Win SMP client, Affinity Changer not installed

    Correct?

    Also, what is the power draw for 9800, at stock core frequency with F@H engaged? The reason why I ask is it's simply a matter of household economics. I've already got 5 overclocked Q6600s each churning at 100% utilization. I consider my power bill increase for Folding@Home to be a part of my charitable giving (but not for tax purposes). I don't mind at all, but I have to draw the line somewhere with the power bill. Maybe it would be worth my while to part out one of my rigs and use the proceeds for a couple high end video cards for two of the remaining computers?
  • _k_k P-Town, Texas Icrontian
    edited June 2008
    I got this working on my sig rig, took some loading current drivers and cuda drivers in a this order doing an overlay load. Looks like I am actually going to stick with this since vid is a lot cheaper now than my proc and its very interesting how this cycles across all the cores. Its really fast too.
  • everyguyeveryguy El Cajon, California
    edited June 2008
    Leonardo wrote:
    Check me if I'm wrong, so far here's where Folding@Home stands with Nvidia GPUs:

    - 8800GTX is a go
    - 9800 series are a go
    - maximum points configuration for quad Intel processor is 1 X GPU client Folding simultaneously with 1 X CPU Win SMP client, Affinity Changer not installed
    Correct?
    Actually all the 8800 cards are a go. The consensus seems to be that the 8800GT offers the best bang for the buck. Also you need to update your nVidia drivers to version 144.55 or 177.35. To upgrade to the 177.35, you need a modded .inf file.

    The client also works on other nVidia cards. Basically, anything from 8* and up should work.

    You can get a lot more info on the folding forum site, right here: http://foldingforum.org/viewforum.php?f=43

    If you need links to the nVidia drivers, including the mod for 177.35, I can post them.

    Leonardo wrote:
    Also, what is the power draw for 9800, at stock core frequency with F@H engaged?

    Power consumption for a 9800GTX at full load is about 235 watts. For that it produces almost 5000 ppd. I think it would make economic sense to eliminate a machine running the SMP client and put the cards in the other machines. You have to have good power supplies in those machines, at least 500 watts, with a PCI-E connector.

    I just bought my 9800GTX card at Fry's for $227 with a $50 rebate.

    Since I started with the GPU clients and two cards, my weekly average has risen from about 22000 points to almost 40000. Today I had over 10000 points from my machines, even though the 8800GT card is not running all the time, because the machine is being used a lot for gaming. Before I was averaging a little over 3000 a day with four machines running SMP.
  • mas0nmas0n howdy Icrontian
    edited June 2008
    The 9800GTX is a waste of money if all you are going to do is fold. GPU core and memory clocks are insignificant and the 9800GTX consumes more power than 8800GT. 8800GT + RivaTuner + GPU2 = WIN.
  • _k_k P-Town, Texas Icrontian
    edited June 2008
    Ah I wondered how you raised your numbers everyguy...i can't catch you now.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited June 2008
    PSUs are no problem, just look in my signature. I just might be able to get enough $ from parting one of these systems for a couple cards. Anyone want a Q6600 system with good RAM, a high performance motherboard, good drives, and a TRUE heatsink (lapped)? :D Oh yeah, it would come with a retail WinXP Pro installation with CD. Case is on you - too expensive to ship from Alaska.

    Really, I am seriously thinking about retiring a system for a F@H GPUs. I went to the OCForums link Mudd posted. We're talking serious production from the video cards!
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited June 2008
    GPU core and memory clocks are insignificant and the 9800GTX consumes more power than 8800GT
    For Folding, what is the relationship between video RAM quantity and production rate? Is 512MB superior than 256? If so, how much? The 8800GT 256MB cards are actually very reasonably priced, especially after rebates.
  • mas0nmas0n howdy Icrontian
    edited June 2008
    Leonardo wrote:
    For Folding, what is the relationship between video RAM quantity and production rate? Is 512MB superior than 256? If so, how much? The 8800GT 256MB cards are actually very reasonably priced, especially after rebates.

    I was wondering the same thing and found this post. Looks like it doesn't make a difference. :cool2:
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited June 2008
    That's good news. The 256MB models are definitely less expensive.
  • everyguyeveryguy El Cajon, California
    edited June 2008
    mas0n wrote:
    The 9800GTX is a waste of money if all you are going to do is fold. GPU core and memory clocks are insignificant and the 9800GTX consumes more power than 8800GT. 8800GT + RivaTuner + GPU2 = WIN.

    I use the 9800GTX, but it was the same price as an 8800GT at the time I bought it, because it was on sale. It gets about 10% better ppd than my 8800GT. In reality, it's a lot better because I've had some stability problems with the 8800GT + Vista (evil Vista) + nVidia drivers + GPU2 combo. I'm not overclocking any of them. I haven't had problems with the 9800, but maybe that's because I'm running it on an XP box.
  • everyguyeveryguy El Cajon, California
    edited June 2008
    _k_ wrote:
    Ah I wondered how you raised your numbers everyguy...i can't catch you now.
    Awww... That takes all the fun out of it! I was enjoying the race.
  • mas0nmas0n howdy Icrontian
    edited June 2008
    everyguy wrote:
    I use the 9800GTX, but it was the same price as an 8800GT at the time I bought it, because it was on sale. It gets about 10% better ppd than my 8800GT. In reality, it's a lot better because I've had some stability problems with the 8800GT + Vista (evil Vista) + nVidia drivers + GPU2 combo. I'm not overclocking any of them. I haven't had problems with the 9800, but maybe that's because I'm running it on an XP box.

    If you were to overclock the Shaders on the 8800GT to match those of the 9800GTX you would close that 10% gap almost entirely. The remainder could be attributed to Vista being crappy. What is interesting is that the extra 16 SP that the 9800GTX and 8800GTS have over the 8800GT don't look to be making a single shred of difference, at least not yet.
  • DanGDanG I AM CANADIAN Icrontian
    edited June 2008
    My 8800GTS under Vista 64 bit is running like a champ, averaging about 4950ppd, and I've given up on my 8800GTX. I've posted on the folding forum, messed with so many different versions of drivers and had nothing but headaches. I finally got it working, it made it through 10% of the first WU then crashed. I restarted the computer and got the same message I'd been struggling with before, my GPU is not compatible.
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