Recovery plan!

[torin3]

For a while, I've been trying to come up with a low budget plant to up my folding game.

I've got 2 work computers (win 7) that have 2 280X cards each, plus I had the Hydra running 6 280x/7970 cards and a 4P system with 1 PCI-E slot running a 970.

But that was pretty much it for hardware. And to run the 970 to maximum effect, I needed to run Linux and since I'm not in the beta program, I can't run AMD on Linux.

And the Hydra went down, so I had to buy another motherboard/CPU to replace the current one.

But, a few weeks ago, I got some equipment back from a friend I'd built a few computers for. One of which was this:



Which is this 1156 based board: http://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/P7P55_WS_Supercomputer/

Now my friend has had quite a few problems with this board. It ran very slow for him. But I think a lot of that was due to his computing choices, the lack of good airflow for his case, and the fact I just blew enough dog hair out of the board to knit a new dog!

So, here is my plan. Make up a live USB stick of Ubuntu, then run memtest to make sure the memory is still good. If not, I've got new RAM I can replace it with. If that works, then I'm going to try to install the 970. If I can get better than 250K PPD out of the card, I'll call the system good.

Or is there a Linux way to test the reliability of the CPU?

Once I've got it up and running, I can add one or two more 970s to it, and then sell off the 4P system and the 280Xs to pay for expansion without having to take a major PPD hit.

Sound reasonable, or am I missing something? I realize this is all dependent on the board actually being functional.

 

[Silver_Pharaoh]

Wow what happened to the hydra????
So, switching to Nvidia eh?

<-- This guy right here needs some GPU's to fold on

I think it sounds like a good idea, it'll cut down the power consumption quite a bit.
I also can't see you loosing more than 15K PPD by using windows over Unix.

 

[torin3]

Wow what happened to the hydra????

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php/759240-The-Hydra-is-dead!-Repeat-The-Hydra-is-DEAD!

So, switching to Nvidia eh?

<-- This guy right here needs some GPU's to fold on

I think it sounds like a good idea, it'll cut down the power consumption quite a bit.
I also can't see you loosing more than 15K PPD by using windows over Unix.

The issue is two-fold.

1 people are getting close to 330K ppd off on 970s on Linux. If I remember right high 200s is about all you can get it windows.

2 Windows users with the 970 get a previous core WUs assigned occasionally, which results in PPD of 60-80K, not 250K+!

Between the two, for max PPD, you need Linux. Linux never had the older core work on it, so it never gets them assigned to a machine with that OS.

 

[caddi daddi]

I would never take my 970 back to folding under windows, the hit is much bigger than you think.
if you use ubuntu try kubuntu, the desktop of ubuntu was crashing on me all the time so I changed to zorin os 9, it's a super heavyweight, kubuntu has a light weight desktop that is very stable.

 

[Silver_Pharaoh]

Wow really?
This changes everything...

The whole point of a 970 was a nice GPU upgrade and mega PPD boost...
Since it'll be folding most of the day, this is a serious put off.....

I may look into some other Nvidia card for gaming and folding now... Or even a 280x.

Dang

 

[caddi daddi]

this is torins thread but here goes s_p.
all you do is dual boot the rig, you can do it on two partisions on the same drive or two drives.
I perfer two drives, it makes un-dualbooting easy.

 

[caddi daddi]

torin, you just need to convert to the 970's, I make 300,00 ppd on a single 970 under linux using less than 200 watts.
I was planning to copy your hydra but i found the spacing to allow the cards to breath was 2.5 inches and the space was going to be more than i can give it.
I was planning on a single psu and two motherboards fed with a 1600 watt psu and a piggyback motherboard connector, that way I would have had one side all ati under win7 and one side all nvidea and if anything other than the psu failed i would have been at 50%.

 

[Silver_Pharaoh]

this is torins thread but here goes s_p.
all you do is dual boot the rig, you can do it on two partisions on the same drive or two drives.
I perfer two drives, it makes un-dualbooting easy.

Yes, sorry torin...

@ caddi
Well dual booting defeats the purpose of this card. I don't want to dual boot just to fold...

 

[caddi daddi]

silver, read torins post #3, no ati folding under linux unless you're in the beta club.

 

[Silver_Pharaoh]

silver, read torins post #3, no ati folding under linux unless you're in the beta club.

Why?

You can get the drivers for Ubuntu x86 or x86 straight from AMD. Linux drivers are there too. Ubuntu package is in .deb form.

The wiki also has info on other distributions of Unix Here.
EDIT: Also latest driver version has OpenCL 2.0 support.

 

[caddi daddi]

from what I have read i think you have to be in the beta program to get work units with ati under linux.

 

[Silver_Pharaoh]

from what I have read i think you have to be in the beta program to get work units with ati under linux.

I'm not seeing that anywhere much...
I can certainly try sometime though.

Maybe I can rig something up this weekend for us to confirm.

 

[torin3]

this is torins thread but here goes s_p.
all you do is dual boot the rig, you can do it on two partisions on the same drive or two drives.
I perfer two drives, it makes un-dualbooting easy.

No worries, I'm always up for additional information in my threads. Also, dual booting with different hard drives makes that process a lot easier in my opinion.

torin, you just need to convert to the 970's, I make 300,00 ppd on a single 970 under linux using less than 200 watts.
I was planning to copy your hydra but i found the spacing to allow the cards to breath was 2.5 inches and the space was going to be more than i can give it.
I was planning on a single psu and two motherboards fed with a 1600 watt psu and a piggyback motherboard connector, that way I would have had one side all ati under win7 and one side all nvidea and if anything other than the psu failed i would have been at 50%.

For a Hydra type setup, you definitely need PCI-E risers to get the cards far enough apart. Since mining has become less popular, you should be able to find them fairly cheap. For folding you only need the 1X to 16X format. They don't need to be 16X to 16X

Why?

You can get the drivers for Ubuntu x86 or x86 straight from AMD. Linux drivers are there too. Ubuntu package is in .deb form.

The wiki also has info on other distributions of Unix Here.
EDIT: Also latest driver version has OpenCL 2.0 support.

I'm not seeing that anywhere much...
I can certainly try sometime though.

Maybe I can rig something up this weekend for us to confirm.

My understanding, and I think I read it on the folding forum, was that the client won't assign the WU to an AMD card under Linux. You can run the cards and run the client no problem, but you won't get assigned WUs unless you are in the Beta program. Give it a shot if you want and let us know how it worked out for you.

 

[Silver_Pharaoh]

No worries, I'm always up for additional information in my threads. Also, dual booting with different hard drives makes that process a lot easier in my opinion.



For a Hydra type setup, you definitely need PCI-E risers to get the cards far enough apart. Since mining has become less popular, you should be able to find them fairly cheap. For folding you only need the 1X to 16X format. They don't need to be 16X to 16X





My understanding, and I think I read it on the folding forum, was that the client won't assign the WU to an AMD card under Linux. You can run the cards and run the client no problem, but you won't get assigned WUs unless you are in the Beta program. Give it a shot if you want and let us know how it worked out for you.

I'll get the 3570K up and running. I really hope 2GB of RAM is enough to test some folding though... It's all I have

Good info on the risers, I've always wondered if folding needs the additional bandwidth of a 4x or 16x PCIe slot.

 

[Silver_Pharaoh]

I'll get the 3570K up and running. I really hope 2GB of RAM is enough to test some folding though... It's all I have

The rig is re-assembled and ready to go, but I've hit a snag... I somehow need to make my 32bit Ubuntu 12.04 ISO bootable from my USB as I have no cd's here....

Thats the only way I can get Linux on the 3570K

 

[Audioaficionado]

Well if you don't need to game, you can install VMWare player and create a Windows VM and run it in Linux. That way you can work with windows apps and the familiar desktop, but have native Linux running the GPU_FAH choice WU's in the background.

 

[Silver_Pharaoh]

Well if you don't need to game, you can install VMWare player and create a Windows VM and run it in Linux. That way you can work with windows apps and the familiar desktop, but have native Linux running the GPU_FAH choice WU's in the background.

But I do game. There in lies the issue of dual booting ans such.

 

[Audioaficionado]

Dual booting times on SSD is a non issue.

To game means to shut down FAH anyway.

You might as well be running Linux during your gaming down times for the extra PPD.

*Extra PPD that will compensate for the time spent gaming.

 

[chuckerants]

Why now use VMware to run Linux. No need for dual boot.

 

[Audioaficionado]

You need your GTX 970 cards to be running in Linux to get the best WU's. Windows will get much lower PPD WU's. Now SMP_FAH worked well in Linux VMs, but not GPU_FAH.