GPU2 client for nVidia cards

[gedon]

some interesting news
Folding@home: GPU2 WU's in "production mode"

[ThunderRd]

Yeah, I'd heard that we were finally working on live WUs.

Good to know that the GPUs are finally making a real contribution

[gedon]

@ThunderRd: what os do you use?

I installed the 177.89 today and I couldn't see any improvement over the 177.35 (Win XP).

with the 177.83 my laptop is folding, too top ten I'm coming

[ThunderRd]

XP for me as well. I don't see a huge difference either but it did seem to be a bit faster on one of the WUs, I forget which one now. [.89 that is]

[PorPorMe]

I've got a problem here and I don't know how to lay it out. First off some of it is my responsibility for not reading this thread from the beginning. I Looked into it, found out my rig didn't meet specs, so I didn't go any further. I started looking for a new video card and I had no idea of this information.
Folding Forum • View topic - 5000+ PPD for $70
I just saw that tonite as I was looking around. I then came back here and saw the discussion along the same lines. Again I take responsibility for not reading the thread but it would have been nice if someone would have mentioned that the right video card can increase PPD 14x! That would have made quite a difference in my decision making process!
I know it now and it's what I'll be shooting for next.

[ThunderRd]

Originally Posted by PorPorMe

...it would have been nice if someone would have mentioned that the right video card can increase PPD 14x! That would have made quite a difference in my decision making process!

Mike:
In our defense, we aren't mind readers. [At least I'm not, for sure.] How would we know that you were in the market for one?

The GPU client is brand-new and separate from the CPU clients. I don't think that anyone here can possibly know your hardware plans, budget, upgrade paths, OS preferences, etc. All we have is your signature, and what we know about you from your posts.

There are new clients released regularly, and updates fairly frequently. [for the betas, which most of us are running.] The final release clients, such as the one you are running, don't get updated as often. I [and others, like Sam, Cliff, and gedon] try to keep abreast of the developments and announce them here so the team can make updates as well. I participate in the community forum daily, so I usually have the information before others here, and I post for their benefit.

You're doing the right thing. Read this forum, and keep in touch with what's going on in the folding community forum. Many of those guys over there have forgotten more than I know.

Your signature says you have a 7300, which isn't a CUDA-enabled card, and can't run the GPU client. Why would anyone mention that you could buy a new card unless we knew you wanted one? You could buy a Skulltrail and twin quads and increase your production to 10-15k a day, too.

[Samuknow]

Now that I am up and around a little more, I am going to hit this back up. I did not have the time to keep at this and had to setup SMP back up to keep crunching. Hopefully I can get this pumping out the points.

[MUff1N]

Originally Posted by ccperf721p

@gedon: Thanks for the 177 tip, almost doubled the production going to those drivers.

Although I don't Fold (financial reasons & electric bill) I still read these posts from time to time.
I've been raving about these newer drivers for months now because of the gaming improvements.

Anyways, I've since moved on to the 177.83 drivers with PhysX enabled.
Has anyone tried these drivers out for either gaming or Folding?
I'm not sure if these 177.83 drivers support folding or not but they sure are kickass for gaming.

[ccperf721p]

PorPor did start a thread about buying a new vid card, but to be honest, folding never crossed my mind when recommending one to him. Too many things going on to keep my mind out in front of stuff.

I ran 1/2 a WU on my 9800 with stock cooling and decided that was not the ticket to a long lasting card.

[ThunderRd]

Originally Posted by Samuknow

Now that I am up and around a little more, I am going to hit this back up. I did not have the time to keep at this and had to setup SMP back up to keep crunching. Hopefully I can get this pumping out the points.

Hope so, Sam. I've been keeping SMP and the GPU clients happy together for a while now and it hasn't been too difficult. Download that little app I posted a few weeks back from Edgemeal software called Set Affinity II. You can set sticky affinities to run the SMP client on 3 cores, and give the GPU client exclusive access to the 4th. Runs all day and all night, and the 1 machine produces between 5800 and 6300 ppd depending on the WUs.

On your box, you should know that the newest beta client supports multiple cards [but not in SLI]. There are some tricks to setting it up that I'm not versed in, so you'll have to do a little research at the forum. It involves two monitors and extending the desktops before installation. All of the info that you need is there, but I haven't studied it as yet, because I put my 9600 in the XP box. The 8800's are headed for the Linux box as soon as there is a GPU Linux client.

Originally Posted by ccperf721p

I ran 1/2 a WU on my 9800 with stock cooling and decided that was not the ticket to a long lasting card.

What kind of temps were you getting that it scared you like that? That card should be good to 90 or 100C easily. On the 177.89 drivers my 9600GT runs about 68-70C folding, and I've never seen it get past 75 yet, on a single-slot solution[it was somewhat hotter on 177.7x]. And yours has a dual slot cooler, no?

[gedon]

Glad to see you back, Sam
Did you change something on the first page of this thread?

Originally Posted by MUff1N

...Has anyone tried these drivers out for either gaming or Folding?
I'm not sure if these 177.83 drivers support folding or not but they sure are kickass for gaming.

YES, 177.83 works with f@h, it's the first time my laptop gpu folds so I cannot compare it

here are some experiences on my 8800GT
174.55 slowest
177.35 fastest
177.89 a little bit slower than 177.35

[ThunderRd]

Originally Posted by gedon

here are some experiences on my 8800GT
174.55 slowest
177.35 fastest
177.89 a little bit slower than 177.35

The reports of driver production are as varied as the people writing them, and I guess that's 'cause of all the different HW configurations. I can't say that I concur with what you found on your box. Here's what I had:

177.35 baseline for me
177.66 not much speed improvement, if any
177.79 a significant improvement, about 3% or so over 177.35
177.83 skipped this one, because 177.89 was released two days later
177.89 about 5 seconds per frame faster on one or two WUs, but noticeably cooler-about 3C

I get about 1:25-1:35 per frame with 177.89 on any WU I have seen so far. I've done probably 300+ WUs to date.

We merged two threads a month or two ago so the first page is a bit out of sequence...all the posts are there, though.

[gedon]

I've seen a "big" increase in speed from the latest client/core update three weeks ago. Time went down from 1min 17.5sec to 1min 15.5sec with 177.35.
177.89 is ~0.3sec per % slower. I have to check the clockrates, it's possible that I clocked it down sorry

@ThunderRd
amaizing times, you say "per frame" but I think you mean "per percent"?

[Samuknow]

Up and running and flying. Lets see what happens.

[ThunderRd]

@Sam: SMP+GPU?

@gedon: yes, frame=%. But you are the one with the amazing times-1:17-I can't get this 9600GT to go that fast, and it's been ahead of, or at least competitive with, most of the 8800s out there. I just push the shader settings and it flies.

[Samuknow]

Nope. Still running a dual core. The GPU client is fast. Much faster then SMP.

[ThunderRd]

My bad. I knew that you have a dual.

What I meant to write was:

GPU+GPU? [Meaning do you have both of them running?]

[gedon]

The 8800gt has 75% more shaders than the 9600gt, but it's only 10-20% faster. Has the 9xxx series any improvement over the 8xxx series (G92)? I thought they are pretty much the same. Or is it f@h that do not need all 112 shaders.

[PorPorMe]

Originally Posted by gedon

The 8800gt has 75% more shaders than the 9600gt, but it's only 10-20% faster. Has the 9xxx series any improvement over the 8xxx series (G92)? I thought they are pretty much the same. Or is it f@h that do not need all 112 shaders.

I'll preface this by saying i don't know a lot about video cards and what you guys are doing. I've been looking to buy a vid card so I've been reserching them. By the info I've seen, your numbers arn't correct. Those specs say that the 9600GT has 1625 and the 8800Gt has 1500. Here is the link for those specs.

Comparison of Nvidia graphics processing units - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[gedon]

1. the 8800GT has 112 shaders (streamprocessors) the 9600GT only 64
2. I have a factory overclocked card (700/1700/1000 - core/shader/mem)
3. both of us overclocked the shaders, I reached the maximum at 1850MHz, I think ThunderRds 9600GT has only a few MHz more - 50 or 100MHz