Hi all, my first post Having already been a folder of the month a while back in April, with a now very low average PPD of 14687 (yes, that's all it took a few months ago compared to now!) I thought it was about time I upped my game a little. I'm now the proud owner of 5 9800GX2's (thanks to eBay) on top of what I had before. This has almost made me bankrupt and I'm dreading the electricity bill once it's all setup, but hey, it's all for the love of it. OK, Rig #1 will comprise of 4 GX2's on a MSI K9A2 with a Phenom II x4 940 so I can run 1 SMP & 8 GPU clients (windows XP x64). Have seen people talking about running VMware to run 2 SMP's, but not sure its worth it, is it? Rig #2 will be my old DFI LanParty UT Ultra-D S939 with an old Athlon X2 4200+ and 2 9800GTX+'s, running just the 2 GPU clients as the Athlon is so slow on the SMP (windows XP x64) and finally, Rig #3 is my gaming rig, P5K Platinum with q6600 @3.4GHz with one 9800GX2 (replacing my HD4870 which is great for gaming but poo for folding) this will run 1 SMP & 2 GPU clients although when I'm gaming it wont be folding (vista x64). With all this I'm hoping to get an average PPD of around 50000ish which should see me in the mag again If anyone has any tips for setting up any of the rigs for maximum PPD, all up I'm all ears! Thanks.
I have a similar system. Yes, you can run VMware and Notfreds Linux SMP, which runs about twice as fast as Windows SMP, and so gets you about double the PPD. Whether you enjoy the experience is another matter. You can run two instances of the classic client without noticably affecting the GPU clients. They will take a few days, but its a few more 100 points. Why am I helping a 'competitor' for a top 20 place?
Thanks for the advice Chris, I think I'll just stick to windows at the moment, havn't had any experience with Linux yet. Maybe one day I'll look into it. We're not competitors, we're a team
Hi Vinny, Having run the windows SMP in the past I stopped due to the hassle it caused me, needing constant attention and fiddling. I was the same, a little reluctant to to even look at the NotFred Linux 'thing' but I have to say that I have had nothing like the 'agro' I had with the windows SMP. Only been about six weeks with it now but apart from some FAHMON issues and a small issue of typing in the console it has been fine and the PPD is great. This is of course only my personal opinion. What does everyone else think? Windows SMP vs NotFred SMP? +1 for the NotFred. Keith. P.S need your new set up, can't hide the bills...... Gonna sneak just 1 upgraded GPU in and see how it goes..
I run the 6.23 beta for Deino MPI (32-bit only) client under 32-bit Windows XP on four different machines and have never had any trouble. NotFred seemed to run OK at first, but then got temperamental. +1 for Windows
Linux knowledge is not that relevant for NotFred. It is an appliance, that is, a kind of clone of a system already set up. You just need one Linux command to configure it to your username and team. It was a bit fiddly at first, but it has been running for weeks now and I can't remember what I had to do to it. I think it was just let VMWare have more memory. Mine often fills its window with "attempt to seek beyond end of device" errors, but this does not mean it has crashed, it seems to make no difference at all. +1 for the NotFred. -- My PC wants you to know it finds the term Artificial Intelligence offensive. (grin)
Same ere, Phoenicis kindly told me about the memory issue and when I ramped it up to 728 it was fine. ?I think I am right in saying that the recent NotFred comes with a 1G memory plug, so that should be sorted.? Am I right? The 'faults' that you mention are here too and have made no difference here at all. It runs sweet.
It's about twice as many PPD. I think (but someone else may know better) that it can run WUs than the Windows client can not, perhaps called A2, but I don't know how the WUs are different.
hmmm, I'm liking the idea even more now, the more point's the better! So do you run just one Linux SMP on VMware and the normal windows one?
I was using a Q6600 quad-core CPU, no windows CPU client, but two GPU clients. People say you can get two VMs folding with this set-up, and I did have them both going for a while. That used 100% of CPU time. I think if you really wanted to run the Windows CPU client as well, then you would have to fiddle with the priorities and affinities to find the settings that gave you the results you liked. I've read that trying to use a two VM set up to do other, 'normal' tasks is fairly hopeless, the two VMs do use most of the available resources. I can't comment, I never got that far. Go ahead and experiment, it's the only way to find out ...
Have a look at THIS This is the guide that i followed, Saspro and others have linked this one once or twice 2. Respect. It works like a charm.. PS. Use THIS This will give you the Affinity you require. Respect Unicorn..
Yeah deffo use the NotFred's VM SMP client, I use it on all my CPU's same as Sas and it has doubled the PPD over the Windows SMP and its a doddle to set up! Nice work with the bulk buying of the GX2's by the way, what were you managing to get them for on fleebay?
Thanks for the links Keith, have now set up two instances of Notfreds on both my Q6600 and Phenom II Quad. The PPD is so much better and was easy to setup. Cheers
Just a quick update, have now got all my new hardware up and running Running 4 SMP's & 12 GPU's and still have one more PCIe slot to fill! I am now officially 'back in the game'
Welcone back Vinny, well done on the build and good luck with the comeback! I've posted in the GPU priority thread about prifinitty - unfortunately I haven't got my head around it yet but give me time and I'll hopefully find you a workaround
