How many clients to run?

Th3 F4ll3n P1mp · Jun 4, 2008

I am on a Q6700. How many clients should I run? One per core? One total? As many as I want? :eh?:

Edit: How do I make FAHMON work with the smp client?

Jolly-Swagman · Jun 4, 2008

Run Two SMP in sep folders Fah1 / ID1 -Fah2 / ID2
Fahmon just point it to your Fah folder as you did with single client

drshivas · Jun 5, 2008

Run one instance of WinSMP. It will finish twice as fast as two instances running, and be of more benefit to science. See this recent post by ChasR:

http://www.ocforums.com/showpost.php?p=5655659&postcount=15

dwschoon · Jun 5, 2008

drshivas said:
Run one instance of WinSMP. It will finish twice as fast as two instances running, and be of more benefit to science. See this recent post by ChasR:

http://www.ocforums.com/showpost.php?p=5655659&postcount=15

Actually, read the rest of that thread.
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=564934

Running 2 instead of one only increases the TPF about 3 min on my rig, but gave me a 50% boost in ppd.

McTimson · Jun 5, 2008

If you're not running it 24/7, I would go with 1 instance of the SMP, just to make sure you don't get caught by deadlines. SMP work units have very short deadlines compared to the older cores. A Q6700 probably wouldn't have any problems with 2 clients even if it's not running 24/7, but to be safe, I would go with one client.

Mark620 · Jun 7, 2008

you need to run 70,000 computers...

Th3 F4ll3n P1mp · Jun 7, 2008

Well if you happen to have 69,998 computers laying around, I will gladly fold on them.

baditude_df · Jun 9, 2008

So hang on. I normally run 4 instances on my quad. It it actually going to increase my PPD to run only 2? Not that it really matters, I'm not going to be breaking any records in the near future. What I mean is, If I only fire up two of the four instances that I currently have shortcutted in my start menu, is it basically going to mean that two cores will be working on each instance instead of just one? And therefore finish them faster?

Thanks for the help guys.

allen1090 · Jun 9, 2008

Im guessing you are using the 5.04 client(single thread)
The suggestion here is to run 2 SMP clients

Ben333 · Jun 9, 2008

The best way is to run two SMP clients in VM ware boxes (2 core / box) <--- VERY high PPD.
Second best is running two SMP in windows
Third is running a single SMP
Worst is running four regular clients. <--- VERY low PPD.

baditude_df · Jun 9, 2008

Yes, thank you guys. I just did some research into SMP, I didn't really know what it was, believe it or not. Not the most knowledgeable or devoted folder I know.
Regardless I had it downloaded, installed and running in 30mins. I can see why you would only want two running.
Too bad no one suggested SMP clients to me when I first started, I was too tied up in learning to install, run and monitor the regular clients to do anymore research into others, not that I even knew they existed.

baditude_df · Jun 10, 2008

Th3 F4ll3n P1mp said:
I am on a Q6700. How many clients should I run? One per core? One total? As many as I want?

Edit: How do I make FAHMON work with the smp client?

I cannot get FAHMON to work with the SMP Clients either. I did the drag and drop of the fah.exe into the FAHMON window and named it. This is the path:
C:/Users/Pat/FAH2/fah.exe/
Is this not the correct way to do it? It worked with the regular client.

Edit. I should really dig a bit deeper b4 I post. You have to point at the client folder which contains the .exe and the logs, not the client .exe itself.

klear · Jun 10, 2008

baditude_df said:
C:/Users/Pat/FAH2/ *fixed*

harlam357 · Jun 10, 2008

allen1090 said:
Im guessing you are using the 5.04 client(single thread)
The suggestion here is to run 2 SMP clients

Also for baditude... if you've decided to run 2 SMP clients in Windows be aware that the clients will perform best when also running the SMP Affinity Changer.

Actually... I believe 2xWinSMP doesn't work too well without it. I personally don't know (never ran 2xWinSMP), but before the advent of the SMP Affinity Changer I don't remember people speaking of a 2xWinSMP client setup.

I like the 2xVMWare/Linux/SMP setup running on top of XP... much better ppd. VMWare doesn't come without some overhead though... I recommend only for dedicated/semi-dedicated Folding boxes *OR* have a carp load of RAM, 4G should be enough.

baditude_df · Jun 10, 2008

OK, thank you for the info. So simply running from separate folders and changing the machine ID in advanced settings isn't enough? Or this will help the process run smoother? I ask because things seem to be going pretty smooth right now.
And the last time I screwed around with linux, I couldn't even figure out how to load a graphics driver. Don't get me started. This is enough for now. lol

Again, thx.

harlam357 · Jun 10, 2008

No problem... ok, it doesn't surprise me that it'll run. It just might now be very advantageous, PPD wise, to run two WinSMP clients without the SMP Affinity Changer.

You may find that the increase in PPD vs. a single WinSMP client is not that great... but with the SMP Affinity Changer it gets a 2xWinSMP client setup close to what a 2xVMWare/Linux/SMP setup will produce (when all other factors are identical and the stars are aligned).

j/k about that star alignment... but I'm sure it can't hurt either.

How many clients to run?

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