Multiple GPU folding driving me mad!

I've run into similar problems...

I have a9800GTX+ folding correctly under Windows7. Since I had another cheap GFX card (Nvidia 8400 GS), I popped it into a spare PCI-E slot. It had a dummy plug. I setup as decribed above, but when I tried to fold on "-gpu 1" it gave the "UNSTABLE_MACHINE" error. When I plugged in a monitor and extended the desktop I was surprised to see that it was well corrupted. So I then played around with RivaTuner (new tool for me) and underclocked the 8400, but still no joy. Rebooted, ... same folding error, but no second screen corruption.

To prove that the card works I removed the 9800 card and made the 8400 the only GFX card and made a temporary installation of Win7. I was also going to use this for CPU overclocking experiements. I checked that the card had been recognised with the correct clock speeds and all seemed OK. The screen worked well considering it is a relatively old/cheap card. Folding runs OK, albeit like a snail as compared to the 9800.

So why the problems when the 8400 played second fiddle to the 9800?

The 8400 won't give many points, but if I can get it working the points are essentially free. BTW PSU is 650W, so no problem supporting a 2nd GFX card.

regards...

--Badsector

 

Have you tried using the FORCE_GPU_G80 (or similar) flag? I'm not sure if I've remembered it correctly, so you'd better check what the flag is really called. Sorry, a bit fuzzy headed tonight.

 

Yes, as CNL has said you need the extra flag so,

"Target path\target.exe" -gpu1 -forcegpu nvidia_g80

should force the 8400 to be accepted as valid for folding with the 9800.

 

I've just re-configured my machines. The "folding" machine now has both 9800GTX+ cards.

I coped the "gpu" folder (where the FAH logfile is stored) and made a gpu1 folder. I edited the config file to change the machine number (to avoid a clash). When I ran both GPU0 and GPU1, but I had a problem, *however* turns out it was becuase I hadn't changed the desktop GPU0 shortcut to add the "-gpu 0" parameter.

So I moved the gpu and gpu1 folders out of appdata/roaming (I'm new to Vista and I am baffled why appdata is hidden and what the roaming folder is...) into my users/<me>/FAH folder. I edited the desktop GPU0 and GPU1 shortcuts to add "-gpu 0" and "-gpu 1" and also edited the start folder to point into my users/<me>/FAH directory (to gpu or gpu1).

I can now start both GPU clients and using FAHmon I can see that they are both working.
The only head-scratcher is that one of the clients allows me to display the molecule, but the other just shows the default molecule.

Is this normal?

Could it be a result of moving the gpu folders?

--Badsector

 

I wouldn't bother displaying the molecule as this takes clocks away from doing work, just use HFM to monitor the FAHlog.txt file to prove they are working!