Folding on IGP?

[Ragnar Dan]

Has anyone tried to run a GPU folding client on an IGP motherboard?

I've had a BE-2400 Brisbane sitting around for the last 5 months (originally bought to test a mobo) and figure it ought to be useful for Folding@Home since I've already got DDR2 and I think I have a decent PSU for it.

There are some fairly reasonably priced IGP boards with either nVidia and ATi integrated graphics at Newegg, and if I can get much additional output from that for the cost of a hard drive, I may give it a try, assuming VMware Server works under Windows 2000. Otherwise I'll have to buy a new OS, and that will likely make it too expensive to be worth doing. Or it will make a separate video card a better idea, anyway (in for a dime, in for a dollar sort of thing).

I'll probably run notfred's ISO on it at first, though, which means he gets the first week's output (if I can manage to edit the config file and kill the client and restart it manually, which saves me the cost of a CD ).

[jeffry55]

If you have a CD drive or a thumb drive lying around, using NotFreds folding ISO would be the cheapest and quickest way to get up and folding. Your Brisbane is a dualcore CPU, right? It could run the SMP client.

[Flying Fox]

If you have a CD drive or a thumb drive lying around, using NotFreds folding ISO would be the cheapest and quickest way to get up and folding. Your Brisbane is a dualcore CPU, right? It could run the SMP client.

He was talking about folding using the IGP, not the CPU. Notfred's stuff don't do GPU folding just yet.

[jeffry55]

If you have a CD drive or a thumb drive lying around, using NotFreds folding ISO would be the cheapest and quickest way to get up and folding. Your Brisbane is a dualcore CPU, right? It could run the SMP client.

He was talking about folding using the IGP, not the CPU. Notfred's stuff don't do GPU folding just yet.

I was thinking that IGP would be pretty unproductive. That's why I suggested SMP.

[Flying Fox]

If you have a CD drive or a thumb drive lying around, using NotFreds folding ISO would be the cheapest and quickest way to get up and folding. Your Brisbane is a dualcore CPU, right? It could run the SMP client.

He was talking about folding using the IGP, not the CPU. Notfred's stuff don't do GPU folding just yet.

I was thinking that IGP would be pretty unproductive. That's why I suggested SMP.

I only have the 6-series IGP so I can't test for him. I think RD knows what he gets for SMP folding and he just wants to know how much he can expect folding on IGP.

[Ragnar Dan]

Thanks for the replies.

FF has it right.

I looked around on the Foldingforum and it's not very promising looking at the ATi boards. A 3200 HD gives something in the 200 PPD range, I think I read (though maybe it was 400 PPD, or the 3300 HD. Whichever it was, it's not much.) I can't get any information for nVidia boards, though, except someone last September trying to get a 750a IGP to fold, and nobody knew whether it would work (there was an error but some thought not enough memory was assigned to it for folding).

So I think I'll just forget about it for the time being. The only question left is if integrated graphics would reduce the overclocking potential for the CPU. I still have a 6600 GT I can use in the machine, but I'm also considering putting that in my Opteron (main machine) to allow the GPU client and general video performance to improve while using the machine, which would mean I still need a video card for the BE-2400...

[farmpuma]

Newegg has a couple of GeForce 8 series open box mobos for $55 + shipping, an 8200 and an 8300. I went all the way to the Nvidia website and still couldn't find out how many core processors the 8200 has. I gave up.

I'm gonna guess these IGPs have sixteen cores at most, but if they had thirty-two cores you might make 1000PPD on the good GPU WUs.

[Ragnar Dan]

I'm still undecided on what mobo to get. I'm leaning toward AMD/ATi, though, since I'm all nVidia already and it seems like there's more likelihood of something useful that I don't know about being discovered on their hardware. As for open box, I've found not having a backplane cover and other useful things like SATA cables or molex-to-something-I-need adapters is something I'd rather avoid.

[jeffry55]

I'm still undecided on what mobo to get. I'm leaning toward AMD/ATi, though, since I'm all nVidia already and it seems like there's more likelihood of something useful that I don't know about being discovered on their hardware. As for open box, I've found not having a backplane cover and other useful things like SATA cables or molex-to-something-I-need adapters is something I'd rather avoid.

All of the Open box NVidia cards I purchased recently (6 or 7) from NewEgg came with all the goodies. I now have significantly more than a standard "Butt Load" of video card adapters.

If you buy open box and don't get all the goodies, let me know what you want and I will send it to you.

We are all Gerbils here.

[Gerbil Jedidiah]

I have an ATI3450 that was getting 300 or 400 PPD IIRC. The SMP client on the dual-core will do better, especially if you run Linux... But hey, why not get the IGP folding too?

[Flying Fox]

I'm still undecided on what mobo to get. I'm leaning toward AMD/ATi, though, since I'm all nVidia already and it seems like there's more likelihood of something useful that I don't know about being discovered on their hardware. As for open box, I've found not having a backplane cover and other useful things like SATA cables or molex-to-something-I-need adapters is something I'd rather avoid.

All of the Open box NVidia cards I purchased recently (6 or 7) from NewEgg came with all the goodies. I now have significantly more than a standard "Butt Load" of video card adapters.

If you buy open box and don't get all the goodies, let me know what you want and I will send it to you.

He was talking motherboards though. I/O shield is kind of hard to come by, because when people return things they will most likely forget to take out the I/O shield from the case.

I have an ATI3450 that was getting 300 or 400 PPD IIRC. The SMP client on the dual-core will do better, especially if you run Linux... But hey, why not get the IGP folding too?

Not if it is doing like 50ppd and are guaranteed to miss deadlines. I have a few WU on my 3450 that misses deadlines, and I can see the IGP being worse.

[jeffry55]

Shield?! You don't need no stinkin' shield!!

Okay, the last three MBs I got "Open Box" from NewEgg had all the goodies, including shield and cables. I'll send those too! A pair of tin snips will make any EM shiled fit!!

But if it is going to be a dedicated folding node, why bother with a case? I sit my folding nodes on a shelf in my garage. All the lights from the MB, GPU, fans, etc. look really cool when it is dark in the garage. My neighbor thinks I am working for the CIA.

[Gerbil Jedidiah]

I have an ATI3450 that was getting 300 or 400 PPD IIRC. The SMP client on the dual-core will do better, especially if you run Linux... But hey, why not get the IGP folding too?

Not if it is doing like 50ppd and are guaranteed to miss deadlines. I have a few WU on my 3450 that misses deadlines, and I can see the IGP being worse.

I think the 3450 and 780G are pretty much the same thing, so he should get 300ppd.

[Ragnar Dan]

So... what's a good deal for a very reliable mobo, hopefully with no chipset fan?

[jeffry55]

So... what's a good deal for a very reliable mobo, hopefully with no chipset fan?

How about ths ASUS MB? Passive cooling and amd/ati chipsets with two PCI-E x16 slots. All for $49.99!

[Ragnar Dan]

This is the Gigabyte board I'm looking at most strongly, because it has IGP (the thread title, remember? ), is probably more reliable than an Asus, will probably overclock decently, has all the goodies included, and has a warranty. I'm also thinking about picking up a 750 GB WD drive so I can put folding video cards and Windows on other machines (unless someone makes a Linux/Wine ISO that runs the client in a hurry - EDIT: Whoops! Lookie here), but I have to say trusting all that data to one drive worries me. Yeah backups, well, one of these days I'll do better at that. When I get a machine that uses almost no power, yet can act as a fileserver, that is.

[Ragnar Dan]

So I'm thinking that Gigabyte board is the way to go... and I'll play with the Linux->Wine->GPU2 thing, which means I'll "have" to buy that 750 GB drive, and that will allow me to remove 2 PATA drives and replace them with the 750, and use one of those drives in the Gigabyte board.

Unless someone has a better idea. I'm amenable to experimental ideas here, as you may be able to tell.

[Flying Fox]

I just want to caution you that with an IGP (assuming it is on par or less with the HD3450 which I have), some of the WUs may miss deadlines so it may not be that worthwhile.

[Ragnar Dan]

Yeah, I expect that's true.

It's too bad nobody knows the GPU's specs in the nVidia IGP 8200 series (farmpuma's remarks are probably accurate, though I'm pessimistic about them having more than 16 or so "processors"). I just discovered that my wanted Gigabyte ATi/AMD board is out of stock, too. D'oh.

That, and I can't recall where I read about the number of platters the WD Black Edition 750 GB drives have. Even WD's site doesn't show that info. in the limited specs. they list (found via Newegg link).

I should buy the drive and another free shipping item I want which will hopefully work with Linux (a wireless NIC) right now, but I like to order things all at once. Even though it doesn't cost me any more to do it separately due to Newegg's screwy shipping charge methods.

[Gerbil Jedidiah]

Yeah, I expect that's true.

It's too bad nobody knows the GPU's specs in the nVidia IGP 8200 series (farmpuma's remarks are probably accurate, though I'm pessimistic about them having more than 16 or so "processors"). I just discovered that my wanted Gigabyte ATi/AMD board is out of stock, too. D'oh.

That, and I can't recall where I read about the number of platters the WD Black Edition 750GB drives have. Even WD's site doesn't show that info. in the limited specs. they list (found via Newegg link).

I should buy the drive and another free shipping item I want which will hopefully work with Linux (a wireless NIC) right now, but I like to order things all at once. Even though it doesn't cost me any more to do it separately due to Newegg's screwy shipping charge methods.

If you would like me to do some experimental research I could load up a GPU client on Dad's 780G mobo. I could put it on my "david00214" folding ID so we'd know how well it does. There is nothing folding for that ID at the moment.

[Ragnar Dan]

If you want to, but I'm doubtful about the production. You'll probably have several errors at first, as the foldingforum posts I read indicated.

Thanks, though. If you can do it and see what it's reporting for PPD, it would at least be interesting.

Edit: That'll teach me to ninja edit my spacing...

[Gerbil Jedidiah]

If you want to, but I'm doubtful about the production. You'll probably have several errors at first, as the foldingforum posts I read indicated.

Thanks, though. If you can do it and see what it's reporting for PPD, it would at least be interesting.

Edit: That'll teach me to ninja edit my spacing...

I've installed it but so far it's not working. We'll see what happens. It's team 2630 username "david00214" if you care to look. I wouldn't expect any points to show up until tomorrow though.

[Gerbil Jedidiah]

OK, it is working. It's just very slow. Perhaps I should not have said yes to the big WUs.

[Ragnar Dan]

OK, it is working. It's just very slow. Perhaps I should not have said yes to the big WUs.

When I first read that I started thinking, "Hey, maybe I can quit getting those 511 point dogs on my GPUs."

But then I remembered the WUs are only so big (current 511 point one is 99147 bytes), so they're probably all classified as small. The 384 pointer before that was 70803 bytes. (And looking back in the FAHlog, a 353 pointer was under 50000 bytes.)

[Gerbil Jedidiah]

OK, it is working. It's just very slow. Perhaps I should not have said yes to the big WUs.

When I first read that I started thinking, "Hey, maybe I can quit getting those 511 point dogs on my GPUs."

But then I remembered the WUs are only so big (current 511 point one is 99147 bytes), so they're probably all classified as small. The 384 pointer before that was 70803 bytes. (And looking back in the FAHlog, a 353 pointer was under 50000 bytes.)

As you can see, the IGP is taking it's sweet time crunching its first WU.



FF, is this thing going to make its deadline?

[Ragnar Dan]

According to Stanford's list of WU's, it wants the WU back inside of 72 hours at most, and will release the WU to someone else to crunch again after 48 hours. And yours isn't going to make it. Assuming 58.6 minutes / frame, it will take above 97 hours to finish.

Time to overclock the living heck out of that thing, and/or increase RAM, or something.

[farmpuma]

Bad news from the Nvidia front via this arstechnica article.

There appears to be some confusion on this point, as several websites have reported that the 8300's mGPU has 16 streaming processors. I took this question direclty to NVIDIA's technical staff, and received confirmation that this is not the case; the AMD-based 8300 mGPU has eight streaming processors, a 500MHz core clock, and a 1.5GHz shader clock.

[biffzinker]

On this Nvidia 8500 GT that I have overclocked to 705 MHz/1728 MHz/Memory 485 MHz in a secondary system it's showing 4-5 hours to complete.

[08:28:39] Project: 5772 (Run 14, Clone 70, Gen 83)
[08:28:39]
[08:28:39] Assembly optimizations on if available.
[08:28:39] Entering M.D.
[08:28:45] Will resume from checkpoint file
[08:28:45] Working on Protein
[08:28:46] Client config found, loading data.
[08:28:46] Resuming from checkpoint
[08:28:46] Verified work/wudata_01.log
[08:28:46] Verified work/wudata_01.edr
[08:28:46] Verified work/wudata_01.xtc
[08:28:46] Completed 1%
[08:28:46] Starting GUI Server
[08:29:08] Opening C:\Documents and Settings\Nick\Application Data\Folding@home-gpu\MyFolding.html...
[08:33:02] Completed 2%
[08:37:17] Completed 3%
[08:41:36] Completed 4%

[Ragnar Dan]

Just to update the thread, I ended up ordering the Gigabyte IGP board mentioned earlier in the thread. And I also added the 750GB drive though I'm not sure how much I'll trust it. I'll remove the PATA drives and copy their contents to the new one, and consider some backup options.

Then again, there are other options for the new box, too. I'll figure it out after I put it together and see how it performs.

[Gerbil Jedidiah]

Just to update the thread, I ended up ordering the Gigabyte IGP board mentioned earlier in the thread. And I also added the 750GB drive though I'm not sure how much I'll trust it. I'll remove the PATA drives and copy their contents to the new one, and consider some backup options.

Then again, there are other options for the new box, too. I'll figure it out after I put it together and see how it performs.

As you can see from my experiment on Dad's 780G you're probably not going to have a lot of points luck folding: http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/ ... =&u=198499