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Lockheed_Tvr
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How are some users getting so many points per work unit?

Wed Jul 03, 2013 11:14 am

I'm just jumping back into folding more seriously and the huge difference in ppd between users surprised me. Looking into it, I see that some get points that are triple mine (yes, I have the passkey and get the bonus points). I've noticed fuzzhead and JpinTo get single units that return around 30K points when the best I see is around 8-9K.

Then I looked at some other teams and this guy, http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_summary.php?s=&u=342176 is getting 200,000+ points per work unit! How is that achieved? I'm running relatively modern hardware but 250K is just insane.

Any thoughts?
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Flying Fox
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Re: How are some users getting so many points per work unit?

Wed Jul 03, 2013 11:50 am

Lockheed_Tvr wrote:
I'm just jumping back into folding more seriously and the huge difference in ppd between users surprised me. Looking into it, I see that some get points that are triple mine (yes, I have the passkey and get the bonus points). I've noticed fuzzhead and JpinTo get single units that return around 30K points when the best I see is around 8-9K.

Then I looked at some other teams and this guy, http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_summary.php?s=&u=342176 is getting 200,000+ points per work unit! How is that achieved? I'm running relatively modern hardware but 250K is just insane.

Any thoughts?

I usually don't trust the WU count number so much. However, looks like they may be beta testers with the new ginomous FahCore 17? They are talking 100K+ ppd.
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BIF
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Re: How are some users getting so many points per work unit?

Sat Jul 06, 2013 3:31 pm

Well, I sort of doubt it has to do "only" with the new core. I suspect the 200-300 PPD people are probably running multiple multi-core/multi-slot systems to get those BIGADV work units with their 20% bonus bounty.

The FAH17 core may perform more efficiently/faster, but it comes with risks, per one of the FAQs I read someplace, and you don't get any bonus points for running it. According to the FAQ, FAH17 requires "more donor interaction" and to make up for it, gives you more risk for crashes, buggy behavior, and maybe (as I interpret it), the potential for lost WUs.

Been playing with it this weekend and just today I have activated it on both laptop and workstation (both meet the requirements), but it doesn't seem to give me any discernable benefit. Maybe I need to be patient for a new WU.

But even so, the upshot to me is that any benefit the new cores give me would be ONLY due to the new core being more efficient, minus the time your system wastes on any failed WU's. I'm still getting 8-14 hour WUs, which is 33-50% of a days' available processing time. Points lost from one failed WU (if it fails at the end or during upload) on my 12-thread system can't be made up by one successful WU in the remaining 10 hours (given a 24 hour day, which is how I assess the risk here).

If the next work units (due tomorrow afternoon sometime) are slugs too, I am probably going to disable the advanced processing before I go back to work on Monday. I just don't need to come home at the end of a long day to find out that a WU failed or the app failed at 8:30 am, losing me the entire day of processing potential.

Side Note:

The latest FAH control also has a slider which is nicer for adjusting the load, but for some reason, my Sandy Bridge i7 Asus laptop won't even engage its GPU unless I have the slider set to "full", which is not recommended for a laptop. So I left it on "light". The disappointment for me is that this laptop is now only making 5400 PPD, which is 75% worse than it did last October and 20% worse than my old Q6600 machine. The laptop was clearing 19k to 22k PPD during last October's Frankenbot festival (and it was set to use 75% of resources back then), so something's wrong somewhere.

So far I am not enthusiastic. I will try to reserve judgement for another couple days, however.
 
Lockheed_Tvr
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Re: How are some users getting so many points per work unit?

Sat Jul 06, 2013 3:40 pm

Thanks for the replies.

I added the setting for client-type to advanced and started getting core 17 WUs but ppd dropped. I'm not seeing extra credit on some of them and though they are higher base points, it's taking over a day to process on both my 650ti and on my 7790. I think I'll drop the advanced setting for now. I also got some odd opencl errors on the machine with the amd 7790.

I don't have a 16 core machine that seems to be the minimum for the bigadv units. Oh, well. Thanks.
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BIF
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Re: How are some users getting so many points per work unit?

Sat Jul 06, 2013 3:58 pm

Yep, mirrors my observation. PPD seems to be very very low compared to last year. I'm very disappointed because I don't know if this affects everybody equally or just me. It's especially disappointing with the laptop with 8 threads now under 5,000 PPD and the big workstation only clearing 27,500 PPD with 12 threads and an HD7970 all running at full tilt.

Enthusiasm is definitely watered down now, and tolerance for the extra heat in July is running thin.

Curious: How do you tell if you got a Core17 work unit?
 
Lockheed_Tvr
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Re: How are some users getting so many points per work unit?

Sat Jul 06, 2013 4:05 pm

Perhaps I'm mistaken but there is a line in FAHControl under the Status tab that says "FahCore" and mine says 0x17 next to it. I'll grab a screen shot. If I'm wrong, please let me know.

Image
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BIF
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Re: How are some users getting so many points per work unit?

Sat Jul 06, 2013 4:14 pm

Yep, that's it, I saw it on my laptop just before you posted your screen print.

It's not running yet; it is only queued up for the GPU with "Paused:Waiting for idle". But the log hasn't indicated the project number or that it got the work yet. I think the laptop has to clear the current SMP work unit before it can use the 0x17 core. The desktop hasn't got one yet; he's still working on an x16 and an xA4 at the moment but won't be done with either for another 7 hours.

I'll let it run and we'll see what happens.
 
Lockheed_Tvr
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Re: How are some users getting so many points per work unit?

Sat Jul 06, 2013 4:17 pm

Oddly, I'm getting bonus points on this one (on a GTX550ti) but the 650 and 7790 aren't.
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BIF
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Re: How are some users getting so many points per work unit?

Sun Jul 07, 2013 8:49 am

Hi again.

Last night on the desktop, who's slider is set to "Full" and CPU is 95%+ in use, I stopped my GPU core to play a game. Around 2 am, I started it and went to bed. This morning, I see it's working on an x17 unit now, and the PPD indicator says nearly 130,000. Yikes!

At first, I checked to make sure that I wasn't missing a decimal point. It really does appear to be 10X efficiency, and it appears that there are more bonus points than in the past.

GPU:0:Tahiti XT (Radeon HD 7970)

20% Complete, ETA = 5 hours, 30 minutes

Base Credit 6000
Estimated credit 28435
Estimated PPD 98864
Estimated TPF 4 min, 8 sec
Project 8900
Fahcore 0x17

And Points Per Day in the global section says 128935.

On the laptop, who's slider is set to "Light" and CPU is 60% in use, it seems that he too is working on an 0x17 core:

32% complete, ETA 1.16 days
Base Credit 6000
Estimated Credit 11155
Estimated PPD 6552
Estimated TPF 24 min 31 sec
Project 8900
Fahcore 0x17

PPD in the global section says 6909 right now, which is very low.

The interesting thing about the laptop is that he always says "Paused:waiting for idle", and he seems to not be doing anything on that x17 GPU core. The percentage for the GPU work does rise over time, but with an ETA that originally started out at 1.5 days, that percentage will rise slowly; less than 4% per hour. I also suspect that the "Light" setting might only dispatch work when the laptop goes into "idle" after I stop using it for a few minutes, and/or when the screen goes off.

I'll give it another day or two, but at this point, I think it may not be worth running the laptop even on "light" setting.
 
Lockheed_Tvr
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Re: How are some users getting so many points per work unit?

Sun Jul 07, 2013 10:23 am

Very interesting. My understanding is that that the gpu doesn't start working unless the screen save kicks in if the slider is less than 100%. I don't know if the cpu and gpu are independently adjustable some other way.
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BIF
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Re: How are some users getting so many points per work unit?

Sun Jul 07, 2013 2:52 pm

Yeah, me neither. It looks like the 7.3.6 client had an "optionectomy". Quite a few former options seem to be missing.

I "think" I like the slider, although it is less granular than the old controls. Time will tell.

A couple hours ago, I decided to retire the laptop from folding; at 6,000 points per day, it's just huffing and puffing and blowing a lot of heat for no real benefit, hence my reason for the rage-quit. If I could get it closer to its old mark of 20K+ or comparable to the desktop at near 100K, then I might go for it.

But as it stands now, it's still a very good laptop (Sandy Bridge Quad Core with 8 threads) and it's not worth the risk, wear, and tear on the laptop's fans and other components. As soon as it is done with the remaining GPU x17 work unit (sometime Monday afternoon), I'll shut it down and remove the folding client and control software.

I am thinking of building a new server system later this year to work as a possible file, database, and animation rendering server and to do folding when unused. I might want to overbuild it so I can get some BIGADV work, but that will be a lot more system than I'll need for my non-folding work. Right now, however; I have too many other fish to fry and besides, these summer days are just too hot to justify standing up a new heat source in my home.
 
Lockheed_Tvr
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Re: How are some users getting so many points per work unit?

Sun Jul 07, 2013 3:24 pm

I'm very much in agreement about adding another heat source this summer. I've always been nervous about folding on laptops. The cooling systems just don't seem robust and replacing fans is next to impossible. I'd bail on it, as well.
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fuzzhead
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Re: How are some users getting so many points per work unit?

Sun Jul 07, 2013 6:55 pm

Yes I am running two GPU's for project 8900. A geforce 660ti OC gets 71,000 ppd.
And I have a geforce 770 that gets 100,000 ppd. That is 25k and 28k a unit.
I have a AMD 7970 that is here unopened and another Intel 3930k hex core unopened.
Some day I will get them running. As was mentioned it is Summer, and it is in the 90's in Florida
so I am in no hurry. That should be another 150-180k ppd.
On Nvidia you have to give them one cpu core due to crappy opencl drivers. With AMD
you do not need to give them a cpu core. I use Process Lasso to adj cpu affinity.
I assume JPinto is running 8900's also. We shall see if he comments.

Happy Summer,
Fuzzhead
 
BIF
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Re: How are some users getting so many points per work unit?

Sun Jul 07, 2013 8:15 pm

I just purchased a 5-seat home license for Project Process Lasso!

But I am not using it to control affinity as yet. My hex-core doesn't even break a sweat while folding. However, I have had to stop the GPU slot when playing Civilization V in a window, or it will crash. It would be nice if I could just have the GPU slot stop itself whenever I open a game or something known to give it hiccups.
Last edited by BIF on Thu Jul 11, 2013 4:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 
Khali
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Re: How are some users getting so many points per work unit?

Mon Jul 08, 2013 6:00 pm

I noticed last night I have to move the slider down to the Medium mark to play games on my system. Fired up Skyrim and it was a slide show when I tried to move. It was cool to watch the rain fall in game with the slider set to High. The rain came down like snow, slowly drifting down to the street in Solitude.

I was reading some of the stickies about folding talking about larger work units. I have nothing like this mentioned in the FAH control panel. I am guessing they do not do large work units any more, the sticky was from 5 or more years ago.
 
fuzzhead
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Re: How are some users getting so many points per work unit?

Wed Jul 10, 2013 7:49 pm

BIF it is Process Lasso. Make sure you exclude the folding processes and set them to normal.
In the options set forced mode or it will revert after every unit.

What user name are you folding under as I do not see your points here.
http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/ ... ?s=&t=2630

I turned on most of my folders except some of the GPU's and HFMnet is showing 562,997 at this
moment in time. Put the 7970 in today to test.

It is summer and I will turn a lot of this off until TRFrankenbot after a couple days.

Best Regards,
Fuzzhead
 
BIF
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Re: How are some users getting so many points per work unit?

Thu Jul 11, 2013 4:00 pm

fuzzhead wrote:
I have a AMD 7970 that is here unopened and another Intel 3930k hex core unopened.
Some day I will get them running. As was mentioned it is Summer, and it is in the 90's in Florida
so I am in no hurry. That should be another 150-180k ppd.


My 3930k + 7970 yield between 110,000 and 120,000 PPD. But I have no tweaks in Process Lasso yet and I pause the GPU slot whenever I want to play Civilization V. :)

And...

USS_Firehorse is fast approaching your six. Okay, maybe not Fuzzhead's six. But to everybody else...

"knock knock"
 
Lockheed_Tvr
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Re: How are some users getting so many points per work unit?

Wed Jul 17, 2013 9:07 pm

I'm turning a lot of stuff off right now. Holy cow it's hot out. Turning off 3 folding machines in my home office dropped the temp 10 degrees even with the A/C on!
Nothing clever.
 
BIF
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Re: How are some users getting so many points per work unit?

Fri Jul 19, 2013 4:58 pm

Yes, I may have to come out of maximum warp when August starts to melt my dorsal shields. :roll: I really should put up solar panels; I think it would be awesome to run a portion of my folding and aircon from the sun. Except for the initial cost, that is.
 
Khali
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Re: How are some users getting so many points per work unit?

Sat Jul 20, 2013 11:59 am

See, that's the problem with solar energy. Its a big crap shoot on how long your panels will last. I have seen claims ranging from 2 to 5 and all the way up to 40 years before they have to be replaced, depending on the quality of the panels. Then add in the average of 5 to 8 years to earn back what you paid for the equipment to start with. So, chances are you might have to replace the panels right when you are breaking even on the deal.

If they ever figure out how to make them more efferent and get a consistent quality as a industry it might be worth doing.

Any way back to the topic at hand. I am holding off firing up any more machines myself because of the heat. With just one system running I have to a window air conditioner running, in addition to the central air system, in my upstairs office area.
 
NathanielPillar
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Re: How are some users getting so many points per work unit?

Sun Nov 13, 2016 12:11 pm

I'm getting 800K+ On a single desktop PC.

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