Notes on the FaH GPU

[AMDave]

8 months ago I tried the Folding@Home GPU client on my X1650 card and it was difficult to get running, but once it did it ground my machine to a halt. I don't recall completing a single wu at the time due to the hassles.

I see a few people running it these days, so I gave it another spin.
directx9c - check
make sure the 3d DLL is where it should be - check
download the CLI console version - check

Drat - default settings still require it to run in a Command window.
Tried running it as a service, requires "Allow interact with desktop"
The feeder starts but the GPU client doesn't.
Try running as a background user (set up the right "Policy" settings)
No dice.
Only running in the Command window. Would be just as well with the GUI version!
Anyway, got some work and it's processing about 3 frames per hour.


A day and a half later:
Well, the processing time has improved. The stability is better due to both improvements in the gpu client & the cpu based "feeder".

But the screen lag is still there and it is REALLY persistent too.

Did some more reading:
Saw a suggestion to set the priority to "low" (Advanced config).
Made no difference at all.
Also, the X1650 doesn't allow things like temp monitoring or the finer O/Cing and throttling controls. I can't get a newer ATI driver than 6.4 to work on Win2K (Looks like some of our Win2K days are finally coming to a close when the drivers for middle-aged hardware have been discontinued for the OS).

So, it runs and it gets through the work, but it gets in my face and ticks me off while I am simply trying to view a couple of web-pages. No way you can play a flash-game with this running. The mouse pointer just freezes for a second and just when you thing you have control back away it goes again. I have restarted the 2nd wu with the "-oneunit" flag. About midday tomorrow it will finish and I'll get on to another project again.

Interesting exercise. I didn't expect miracles, but slightly more disappointing than I anticipated. I had really got to hoping that the "lag" issue was more controllable. I cannot run this on my main workstation without the lag driving myself and my family bonkers.

If anyone has found I sure-fire way to get this beastie to run on a X1650 without lag, keeping the desktop very usable, let us know please.

ps - for the record, the X1650 is PCIe on a dual-core mobo with 2GB RAM, which has plenty spare, and nothing allocated to the second core, which stays idle so the lag is not a CPU or RAM issue and disk writes are set to the default of 15 minutes.

[vaio]

Folding killed my 1900xt within 6 months

edit: Never did get around to actually playing a game with it

[drezha]

Hum that sounds bad. Been using the SMP client for a while and thats worked fine on a Quad

Never used the GPU client as I'm a nVidia man ;)

[Jason1478963]

I have been running 3 GPU's for a while without much trouble. I don't dedicate a core to the graphics card as folding@home is a secondary project. this may help keep the temps on the GPU down a bit.

AMDave
I couldn't confirm the ATI driver 6.4 works well with the GPU client. I was looking at this site link http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=75 I don't have any of these GPU's in my main machine. I think I had your lag problem in the earlier ATI driver. I couldn't find any newer drivers for your windows 2000. Does the lag get better if you run other projects on both cores? Maybe this would free up the GPU enough to reduce your lag??

Good luck

[sentient_life]

Do you need at least a dual-core CPU to run the GPU F@H client? I've got a x1650 on my A64 3400+ computer.

[Frederic Brillouet]

It wouldnt recognise my HD3870's. suckers.

[Dee]

Yikes! I wish I'd seen this lot before I said I'd join this one! Sounds too difficult for me!

[drezha]

Dee, there is a simple client that doesn't require any help what so ever. This is for the client that uses the graphics card to do all the work.

When you visit the FAH site to download the client (http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Download)
It should give you a list of the clients and at the top of the list it should say "
Recommended software (based on information furnished by your browser)"

Just download the GUI version (if you want pretty graphics and easy to use/setup - I recommend you run this one unless you mind digging into the command line and shortcuts) or the CLI version (might run a bit quicker if you tend to keep the graphics on the other client open but is harder to get going)

I recommend you download and get this file
http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandeg...ng@Home503.EXE

If you get stuck, the install guide is here
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/WinGraphicInstall

Hope that helps (slightly - I'm never to good at explaining!)

[Frederic Brillouet]

Yikes! I wish I'd seen this lot before I said I'd join this one! Sounds too difficult for me!

Dont worry, its only graphics cards clients were talking about

[BlackAdder]

The GPU client doesn't seem to make your machine studder if you have the 512 ram version of the video card, this is especially true of the X1600 and X1650 cards. I'm running a X1950 pro 256 meg AGP in a spare machine with the GPU client and you wouldn't know it's running.I have run both the X1600 and X1650 cards and I didn't have any real problems...the client burns out cards because of all the extra heat they make while running the client, one solution it to run ATITOOL and use that to speed up the video cards fan to keep the temp (in my opinion) under 65c, 60 c is even better and I have done that too with the fan control.The client uses the cpu at 100% but the work is all done on the video card,the cpu drain is caused by DX9 and is a polling process, kinda like .... do you still need me....do you still need me...from DX9 to the video card drivers, again it is a polling thing and the cpu is not really doing any work. The drain on the cpu and the system is again not as pronounced with video cards with 512 of memory for some reason...with my 1600 and 1650 I was completing WU's in 2 and 1.5 days respectively...hope this helps