After getting "had" by a string of unstable A2-core SMP WUs crashing out on me, about a week ago I decided that it was finally time to upgrade all of my Linux SMP systems to the latest version of the client. A few things that people need to be aware of on the latest Linux client:
- The new client will give you a lot of A3-core (a.k.a. "GRO-A3") WUs.
- Unlike older SMP WUs, the GRO-A3 WUs do not launch multiple processes to do the crunching; it is a true multi-threaded implementation. The upshot of this is that you will see only a single FahCore_a3 process running, but it will peg all of your CPU cores.
- You will want to register a passkey with F@h, and configure your clients to use it. Use of a passkey makes you eligible for bonus points on the GRO-A3 WUs, and it is the bonus points which make them decent PPD producers.
- The bonus apparently does not kick in until you've successfully turned in 10 SMP WUs using your passkey, and you need to maintain at least an 80% successful (and on-time) turn-in rate thereafter to continue receiving bonuses.
- The project summary page shows the raw (no bonus) point values for the GRO-A3 WUs. This makes it difficult to guesstimate how many PPD a GRO-A3 WU is producing while it is running, since the bonus is calculated based on how far ahead of the deadline you turn in the finished WU. The HFM monitoring tool (mentioned elsewhere on these forums) supposedly has the ability to estimate the bonus points (I have not independently verified this).
- Raw point values for most of the GRO-A3 WUs (so far) appear to be in the 300-500 point range, with raw PPD in the 250-750 range depending on the system (I have a mix of mostly older dual- and quad-core AMD systems). With the bonus factored in, I am typically seeing credits of around 1500-1800 points per WU, which makes them pretty good producers -- roughly on par with the old A2s (when they weren't crashing out).