98000gtx+ 2-3000 PPD TOPS?

[eddyg519]

hey guys i have a smoking hot 85-90C Q8200 that needs a new heatsink this weekend and a XFX 9800gtx+ that i run F@H on. now ive benched both CPU and GPU just using sisoftware and they are both stock and perform on par with stock scores while using the software.

ive installed the latest Nvidia drivers as well as 177.92 (recommend?) and i just cant get over 3200ppd from this card. Even when i OC it slightly i cant seem to get it anywhere near the 5-6000 PPD that I want :bang head

i have set affinity working so that the core project gets access to all 4 cores on the CPU and i dont have anything else running? plus the software usually only says there is a 15-20% load on the CPU while folding? (im assuming the CPU drives the GPU a bit...)

does anyone know any other ways to give this card more power for folding? better drivers (using XP pro X64bit)? tips?

best regards,
eddy

[WonderingSoul]

I have a 9800GT on my GF's rig. She can get anywhere from 3.5-5.5K ppd with it. Standtard drivers pulled from nVidia's webpage.

Some WUs will give different PPD.

[Is_907]

Yeah, my 9800GT is down to 3.5-4k ppd right now because I keep getting those 511pt WUs.

The 384pt ones give me 4.5-5.25k ppd ;)

[cw823]

You need to use rivatuner to monitor temps and overclock shader clock speed, as well. If you can get clocks around 2000 that will get you anywhere from 3500 - 6000 PPD depending on WU

[Is_907]

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that my 9800GT is at ~1800MHz shader clock thanks to RivaTuner ;)

[WonderingSoul]

My 9800GT stinks. Can't get above 1860 on my shaders. It is an eVGA with an Akasa Vortex Neo, by the way.

[eddyg519]

i do have my shader above 2000 using the EVGA tool but i will uninstall and install riva tuner which i use on my AMD rig. Hopefully that can tweak the card correctly

[eddyg519]

ok so i tweaked the card with riva tuner and reset my GPU2 config to low and run at 100% as well as set up cores in windows task manager and i seem to be getting 4400PPD on this card now :) :) :) lets hope it stays around there

[ChasR]

ive installed the latest Nvidia drivers as well as 177.92 (recommend?)

The latest official CUDA drivers are 180.60. You don't want to be using any driver less than 178.08 (probably the best driver for gpu only folding ppd wise). The latest WHQL driver is 181.22 and it appears to have the same folding functionality as the 180.60 (about 3% slower than 178.08). Where the heck did you find a driver that old?
The latest drivers allow the card to fold using very little cpu resources. The 3% hit is more than made up by increased performance from the SMP client running on the same machine.

As a point of reference a 9800GTX running shaders @ 2052 makes approximately the following ppd:

511 pointers: 4400 ppd
384 pointers: 5900 ppd
353 pointers: 6700 ppd

[eddyg519]

Thanks for the pointers! My ppd went back to 1500 or so after a wu that I as gettng 7100 ppd.... Yeah I seem to be getting a massive hit or miss with this card. I'm going to try vista x64 tonight and hope for a more stable number

[ChasR]

Be sure you have the priority of the GPU client set to low (console) or slightly higher (systray) and the CPU/SMP clients set to idle or lowest. If you don't do this, it doesn't matter what OS you use. Also, using GPU drivers lower than 180.60, you should avoid having the GPU and CPU or SMP clients folding on the same core.

[eddyg519]

yeah somethings wrong i left the machine going for about 1.5 days and now FAHMON is saying im getting about 450ppd from this card... on a 300 or so (cant remember the exact number) "pointer".

as of right now im just running GPU and i set it up under LOW and put 100% usage. Then i make sure all 4 cores are dedicated to it as well as setting the priority as high under the core11 system process.

[eddyg519]

oh my A64 rig with a stock 3850 under FAHMON i see..

project 5471 credit 384 points and im bringing in a tad over 2000ppd

????????????? lol

[ChasR]

Let the GPU run on core 3 (default) rather than spreading it across all cores. Setting process priority in Task Manager won't make any difference because it is overridden by the thread priority setting in FAH config. Did you upgrade the drivers? What did you use to set affinity of the GPU processes?

[eddyg519]

not sure what drivers are on it anymore but im going to put 178.08 on it.

what i meant was when i first start FAH and go into advance options i change the process to LOW instead of IDLE and put the % upto 100. I also had a third part software that dedicated all 4 CPU cores to it which ill just place the GPU folding client on core 3 :)

ill be bacccck and thanks for your help ChasR!

[ChasR]

Do away with the third party affinity manager. It may well be the cause of your problem. The nVidia GPU client allows you to select the affinity with the environment variable NV_FAH_CPU_AFFINITY. A value of 8 sets affinity to core 3, which is the default. For the environment variable to work, you have to remove the affinity lock in advanced configuration. A value of 10 sets affinity to 1,3. If you're only going to run the GPU client, don't mess with the affinity at all. The default was found to be the best setting in testing. If you are going to run the SMP client + GPU, you should upgrade to 180.60 or higher and then the affinity of the FAH SMP processes wont matter.

[SuperMotarded]

I've been running 2xVM-SMP clients and the GPU client. VM1 is 0/1 and VM2 is 2/3. Doesn't seem to starve the GPU client at all. Pushing 10k+ppd from one rig. Wouldn't unchecking core 3 on the VM's affinities adversely effect production?

TS - My 9800GT @ a modest 1800 pulls 3.5k on the 511s and 6k on the smaller ones. It varies alot.

[ChasR]

SM, you must be using driver version 180.60 or higher then. On my Dual VM/Dual GPU rigs, I set the VM affinity as you describe, but I've been setting the affinity on the GPU clients to 1,3 so that each VM has only one GPU client to contend with.

[SuperMotarded]

SM, you must be using driver version 180.60 or higher then. On my Dual VM/Dual GPU rigs, I set the VM affinity as you describe, but I've been setting the affinity on the GPU clients to 1,3 so that each VM has only one GPU client to contend with.
Good to know, I'll be setting that up on friday when FedEx brings me my GTX260 :santa:

[ChasR]

You won't be able to run the 260 and 9800 in the same machine without one card running a lot slower than it should. Mismatched Card Syndrome (MCS) is what I call it.

[SuperMotarded]

You won't be able to run the 260 and 9800 in the same machine without one card running a lot slower than it should. Mismatched Card Syndrome (MCS) is what I call it.
Ah, bummer. I guess I could throw it in the e7300 rig. What causes that? First I've heard of that.

[eddyg519]

ok im back because i really want to max this machines PPD out and the SMP process isnt getting more then 200ppd when ran with the GPU client.

Heres what i have in my GPU config:
[settings]
username=eddyg519
team=32
passkey=
asknet=no
machineid=2

[http]
active=no
host=localhost
port=8080
usereg=no

[core]
priority=0
cpuusage=100
nocpulock=1
addr=

Now i just installed the SMP client and heres the config for that.:
[settings]
username=eddyg519
team=32
passkey=
asknet=no
machineid=1
bigpackets=small

[http]
active=no
host=localhost
port=8080
usereg=no

any clues? The 9800GTX+ is nailing 6600+ PPD on a 353 pointer so im happy with that but even if i can sqeeze another 1000ppd out of the CPU id be happy.

[eddyg519]

ok so when i changed the lock on the GPU THEN ran the SMP which is on FAHCORE_81 im getting a bit more usage out of the CPU (peaks to 33%) but its usually at 25.

[ChasR]

You're running without the -smp flag and getting unicpu WUs.

[eddyg519]

ok im installing the SMP client but after i still deino using install.bat i cant get access? i put my user name and password in for windows (eddy/pass) and it says access is denied.

[cw823]

ok im installing the SMP client but after i still deino using install.bat i cant get access? i put my user name and password in for windows (eddy/pass) and it says access is denied.

It can't be a blank password, and are you running with an admin account?

[eddyg519]

yes like i have a user called eddy with my password of choice and it doesnt work. Eddy is the administrator but im not logged in under "Administrator"

when i installed windows the first user i picked was myself and ive been using that ever since.