LTT Folding Team's Emergency Response to Covid-19

[Laura Lawson]

if we have a gtx 980 and a gtx 970 can we throw them both into the same pc and use the one not outputting video to fold?

[Laura Lawson]

8 minutes ago, SpiritWrath said:

extremeoverclocking is screwing me!

 

Web client says I have 3.3m points, extremeoverclocking says 2.2 since one day

i have a whopping 70k being reported off 3 computers. still trying to figure out why

[raulinbonn]

2 hours ago, Wouterrinos said:

If you are in the same sort of timezone as me that would be 13 hours + in which case you should try and pause and the fold again to force it to try and get a unit. You might as well just restart the program. 

I am in Central Europe.

But shouldn't the client be able to work unattended, specially when leaving it in "Power:Full" and "When: While I'm Working"?
I don't think It should require our constant monitoring of it, or frequent restarting or pausing/unpausing to get it to start getting again WU's. If that's the case, some serious debugging is in order.

[LAR_Systems]

7 minutes ago, Laura Lawson said:

if we have a gtx 980 and a gtx 970 can we throw them both into the same pc and use the one not outputting video to fold?

Yes that should work fine.
 

Just add the GPUs to your folding client and pause or remove the slot for the GPU card you want to use for display (games perhaps?) and leave the other one folding.

[Wouterrinos]

3 minutes ago, raulinbonn said:

I am in Central Europe.

But shouldn't the client be able to work unattended, specially when leaving it in "Power:Full" and "When: While I'm Working"?
I don't think It should require our constant monitoring of it, or frequent restarting or pausing/unpausing to get it to start getting again WU's. If that's the case, some serious debugging is in order.

Sure, but getting WUs also shouldn't be a problem during normal operation, but guess what, it now is. It never was the most stable program and you should check on it every few days, but in the current state of things if you want to get work done, you have to check every 8 hours or so.

[Spotty]

11 minutes ago, Laura Lawson said:

if we have a gtx 980 and a gtx 970 can we throw them both into the same pc and use the one not outputting video to fold?

Yes you can. Just be mindful of having an appropriate power supply and keeping both cards cool, the top card can overheat if it doesn't have adequate space for airflow.

 

11 minutes ago, Laura Lawson said:

i have a whopping 70k being reported off 3 computers. still trying to figure out why

Do you have a passkey?
It shows that you have submitted 10 work units, the minimum requirement to be eligible for the Quick Return Bonus. Assuming you have been using a passkey your next work unit should be worth a lot more thanks to the passkey.

[AstroAlan]

I gotta say - this project has me interested in a new pc build.

 

I have been on the same CPU and Mobo build for 8 years.  Only added more ram and changed my graphics card a few times (now on 980 ti).  I could take my current build and make it a server for media and set up home security cameras with it.  And to help F@H and Rosetta at home.

Sorry - please don't let this derail the topic.

[ShortRouter]

8 minutes ago, AstroAlan said:

I gotta say - this project has me interested in a new pc build.

 

I have been on the same CPU and Mobo build for 8 years.  Only added more ram and changed my graphics card a few times (now on 980 ti).  I could take my current build and make it a server for media and set up home security cameras with it.  And to help F@H and Rosetta at home.

Sorry - please don't let this derail the topic.

IMO Ryzen 3rd Gen is the way to go right now, but I would wait until autumn for Nvidia RTX 3000 series (Ampere) and new AMD Navi release if the upgrade isn't urgent. Right now, RTX 2070 Super would be my go-to for price/performance.

[LAR_Systems]

1 minute ago, Wouterrinos said:

Sure, but getting WUs also shouldn't be a problem during normal operation, but guess what, it now is. It never was the most stable program and you should check on it every few days, but in the current state of things if you want to get work done, you have to check every 8 hours or so.

 

What kinda makes the LTT F@H events fun is that people that do not normally deal with servers / distributed systems get a taste of general up time and performance monitoring.

 

While in in a perfect world the folding clients would be set and forget there are a lot of factors normally and even more so now that WU servers are very busy that require you to always be checking in on your systems.

Why you should be always checking?

• Overclocks and thermals may become a problem and hurt PPD or crash folding slots
• Other applications may run in background that hurt PPD or compete for resources that crash folding slots
• Someone else did something on a shared computer and messed up folding
• Your internet connection or power dropped / cycled 
• Work units can get stuck, corrupt, etc. requiring a soft or hard reset of Folding.
• These days, you may have to manually pause and start folding client to reduce next check times for fresh WU when they run out of them.

This is what makes Folding contests fun, as it's not just how much hardware you toss at it, it's how often you tweak and maintain that hardware to get the most out of it which is everything from over clocks, to maintenance to just keep it running.

 

Folding is a hobby, bordering on an IT job which is what makes it fun when you're in to computers, think of it as a challenge to keep it going and the points the gamification of how well you do.

[Laura Lawson]

14 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Yes you can. Just be mindful of having an appropriate power supply and keeping both cards cool, the top card can overheat if it doesn't have adequate space for airflow.

 

Do you have a passkey?
It shows that you have submitted 10 work units, the minimum requirement to be eligible for the Quick Return Bonus. Assuming you have been using a passkey your next work unit should be worth a lot more thanks to the passkey.

yes i have all three using the same passkey

[Gorgon]

57 minutes ago, Valentyn said:

 

Yup! Plus people can check if their Overclocks are producing bad work units also in the log.

 

My old man's Super clocked EVGA Hybrid 980Ti produces loads of bad work units, and it's just a factory overclocked one. It maybe gets a single project done a day without issue

If it's consistently failing on WUs then try setting a negative clock offset in afterburner say 50-75MHz to start or under-volting it.

 

When the new Core 22 was in Beta I found they ran just fine on my Pascal cards but failed on Turing and had to under-clock them. Perhaps Maxwell has the same issue but there weren't enough used in Beta for them to apply whatever fix they did for Turing as now the Turing cards at stock run just fine.

 

It could also just be time for a new paste job and the TIM is marginal.

[Inkertus]

16 minutes ago, ShortRouter said:

IMO Ryzen 3rd Gen is the way to go right now,...

With it estimating a 15-30k PPD on my R7 3700x (with 10 threads of 16) I'd say yes.  My R7 1700 only does about 50-75% of that with 14 threads.  I'll have to get more "concrete" numbers later when they each get a job.

[Sbassett]

On 3/20/2020 at 11:00 AM, Sbassett said:

Approaching 2M points for the team. I know it's a lot less than the majority of the people crankin' away, but still feels good!!!!

Surpassed 6M for the team. Loving the stats overall for everyone contributing. Been furloughed since Monday (which means there are a few PCs at my job that are going unused) so I have cranked everything up to full, aside from my laptop (which is still rolling along at medium). Just trying to do my part to help get things back to normal (and get my behind back to work).

[SuperChris]

It's important to contribute! I'm doing it on a ThrottleBook Pro, even!

[MidKnight Reign]

Finally got my first WU, from project 11760, hitting my GPU. 3 and a half hour ETA. Temps well within gaming range.

Hopefully will get my first CPU WU soon.

 

 

 

[Guest]

49 minutes ago, SpiritWrath said:

extremeoverclocking is screwing me!

 

Web client says I have 3.3m points, extremeoverclocking says 2.2 since one day

Did I mention I am stupid?

I did 1m before joining team LTT, so the 2.2 that eoc is reporting is accurate

[SCSI15]

This may have been answered already and I apologize if it has. How and why does overclocking affect PPD?

[LAR_Systems]

1 minute ago, SpiritWrath said:

Did I mention I am stupid?

I did 1m before joining team LTT, so the 2.2 that eoc is reporting is accurate

It happens to the best of us,  trust in EOC, they do a damn fine job.

[bmichaels556]

Man... Seems like my client is just sitting around most of the time either waiting to download, or send work units. Very little of the time is actually going towards folding. I'm able to get CPU work units just fine, but it uses too much power and makes my room way too hot, so I was sticking to my RX 480 but having some trouble. 

 

Any quick fixes?

[Inkertus]

1 minute ago, SCSI15 said:

This may have been answered already and I apologize if it has. How and why does overclocking affect PPD?

Can (and often does) cause instability and errors in the compute jobs which lowers your good output AKA PPD.

[Inkertus]

1 minute ago, bmichaels556 said:

Man... Seems like my client is just sitting around most of the time either waiting to download, or send work units. Very little of the time is actually going towards folding. I'm able to get CPU work units just fine, but it uses too much power and makes my room way too hot, so I was sticking to my RX 480 but having some trouble. 

 

Any quick fixes?

You running the full thread count on your CPU or 50-75% of them?  If full, it will toast your proc and (likely) run too hot.

[SCSI15]

1 minute ago, Inkertus said:

Can (and often does) cause instability and errors in the compute jobs which lowers your good output AKA PPD.

Soooo from what I am gathering, I should put my GPU back to stock settings....Got it.

[Inkertus]

Just now, SCSI15 said:

Soooo from what I am gather, I should put my GPU back to stock settings....Got it.

A good idea for both thermals and stability here yes.  Saves you on your power bill long-term if you keep folding too.

[AstroAlan]

34 minutes ago, ShortRouter said:

IMO Ryzen 3rd Gen is the way to go right now, but I would wait until autumn for Nvidia RTX 3000 series (Ampere) and new AMD Navi release if the upgrade isn't urgent. Right now, RTX 2070 Super would be my go-to for price/performance.

I'm struggling between AMD and Intel.  The last AMD I had was an Athlon with 64 bit started to come out.  After that I have been with the i7-3770k overclocked to 4.6ghz and still on it.

 

I've been looking at Ryzen 3900x and the i-9 9900 with the expectation I would "boost" to bring the ghz to at least 4.6ghz.  I'm aiming to future proof on the cpu and mobo, and then do the gpu later.

[freezer2k]

42 minutes ago, ShortRouter said:

IMO Ryzen 3rd Gen is the way to go right now, but I would wait until autumn for Nvidia RTX 3000 series (Ampere) and new AMD Navi release if the upgrade isn't urgent. Right now, RTX 2070 Super would be my go-to for price/performance.

A cheap 2080 Ti is not that far off though for price/performance?