Jump to content

Dedicated GPU for folding

Go to solution Solved by Imakuni,

Well, from what i've learnt from various sources gaming tends to not use many cores so with 8 (well, hyperthreaded but F@H seems to use everything) to use on this processor I'd have enough room to have one folding whilst gaming, no? Also, I know that you can manually configure the amount of (well, the percentage of) cores used.

Maybe. Nvidia cards will suck 1 entire thread, which eventually has to be processed by one of the 4 physical cores, regardless of HT. It may not be as bad as non-HT, but I'd expect a perceptible loss when playing intensive games (light gaming should be fine, though).

The title may be a bit misleading, but if I were to add in, say, a 660Ti to my system right now, would I be able to only fold on only that and not the 290 and have my 290 for gaming and such? I'm curious c:

USEFUL LINKS:

PSU Tier List F@H stats

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

The title may be a bit misleading, but if I were to add in, say, a 660Ti to my system right now, would I be able to only fold on only that and not the 290 and have my 290 for gaming and such? I'm curious c:

It is possible to only fold on one GPU. You can select the component you want to fold on with a right click and then select "fold".

But if you're still able to play is a different question, which I currently can't answer.

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

The title may be a bit misleading, but if I were to add in, say, a 660Ti to my system right now, would I be able to only fold on only that and not the 290 and have my 290 for gaming and such? I'm curious c:

Although you can configure the software to do it, why would you? When not gaming, you'll probably want both GPUs on, crunching for you; while gaming, you also don't want the 660ti stealing one of your CPU cores for itself, so you'd just turn F@H down entirely.

Want to help researchers improve the lives on millions of people with just your computer? Then join World Community Grid distributed computing, and start helping the world to solve it's most difficult problems!

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

My folding rig uses an GTX 760 and an i5-4690.  It folds on both the processor and the graphics card.

Intel i7-4790K Processor, 32 GB Kingston HyperX Fury DDR3-1600 RAM, ASUS Z-87 Pro Motherboard, Corsair RM 750 PSU, 250 GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD, 2 x 1TB Seagate Barracuda HDDs, ASUS GeForce GTX 970 STRIX GPU, Corsair Carbide 500R Case, AFT Pro-77U Card Reader, Dell UltraSharp 24 Monitor – U2415, Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920, Windows 9 (Windows 10 with StartIsBack++)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Although you can configure the software to do it, why would you? When not gaming, you'll probably want both GPUs on, crunching for you; while gaming, you also don't want the 660ti stealing one of your CPU cores for itself, so you'd just turn F@H down entirely.

Well, from what i've learnt from various sources gaming tends to not use many cores so with 8 (well, hyperthreaded but F@H seems to use everything) to use on this processor I'd have enough room to have one folding whilst gaming, no? Also, I know that you can manually configure the amount of (well, the percentage of) cores used.

USEFUL LINKS:

PSU Tier List F@H stats

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Well, from what i've learnt from various sources gaming tends to not use many cores so with 8 (well, hyperthreaded but F@H seems to use everything) to use on this processor I'd have enough room to have one folding whilst gaming, no? Also, I know that you can manually configure the amount of (well, the percentage of) cores used.

Maybe. Nvidia cards will suck 1 entire thread, which eventually has to be processed by one of the 4 physical cores, regardless of HT. It may not be as bad as non-HT, but I'd expect a perceptible loss when playing intensive games (light gaming should be fine, though).

Want to help researchers improve the lives on millions of people with just your computer? Then join World Community Grid distributed computing, and start helping the world to solve it's most difficult problems!

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Maybe. Nvidia cards will suck 1 entire thread, which eventually has to be processed by one of the 4 physical cores, regardless of HT. It may not be as bad as non-HT, but I'd expect a perceptible loss when playing intensive games (light gaming should be fine, though).

If you have 4 cores and an intel cpu with hyper threading that means you have 8 logical cores and 4 physical.

You can distribute load/tasks to those 8 logical as if they were physical cores. Depending on the particular

game in question that sacrifice is a very small one to make.. that is if you give a single care about folding. 

 

the usage could be everything from 1% to 15% tops with some of the newer cores, which might very well

correspond to practically zero ingame performance loss, as cpu's aren't all that well utilized and tend to

kinda be fast enough, especially if you have a higher end intel cpu.

 

 

To answer the ops question, yes. You can have more than 1 gpu, dedicate one or more to folding and use

the remainder to run your monitor, games etc as normal. Although while mixing nvidia/amd gpu's in the same

system might very well work, i do it myself. It can lead to problems.. I have a 970 dedicated to folding while 

using a sapphire 7950 as my daily driver.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

If you have 4 cores and an intel cpu with hyper threading that means you have 8 logical cores and 4 physical.

You can distribute load/tasks to those 8 logical as if they were physical cores. Depending on the particular

game in question that sacrifice is a very small one to make.. that is if you give a single care about folding. 

 

the usage could be everything from 1% to 15% tops with some of the newer cores, which might very well

correspond to practically zero ingame performance loss, as cpu's aren't all that well utilized and tend to

kinda be fast enough, especially if you have a higher end intel cpu.

 

 

To answer the ops question, yes. You can have more than 1 gpu, dedicate one or more to folding and use

the remainder to run your monitor, games etc as normal. Although while mixing nvidia/amd gpu's in the same

system might very well work, i do it myself. It can lead to problems.. I have a 970 dedicated to folding while 

using a sapphire 7950 as my daily driver.

Alright :D I'm most likely going to get myself a 670 or something more powerful once they're available on EVGA's Bstock (Yaaaa £19~ :D)

USEFUL LINKS:

PSU Tier List F@H stats

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

×