LTT Official Folding Month 2020!!!

[justpoet]

41 minutes ago, marknd59 said:

The first folding system I put togeather had a budget of around £800 for GPUs and at the time it worked out that 2x 2060 was the best way to go. Next when it came time to update my daily driver that had a RX 580 and a RX 590 in it the best PPD/KwH was the 2060 super and it may still be we don't have enough data on the 3xxx and the CUDA processing yet to run the numbers.
 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iauimDyaUS0jnpeYqRNbM2uub-ASvS1OEz2yEUNJgls/edit#gid=0

I look forward to the updated spreadsheet once everything works itself out and 3000 series are able to be included as well.

 

I would suggest a cell to put the kwh cost into, so anybody can make proper use of it, rather than either having to manually do stuff or just base on your 17 cents.

[marknd59]

4 minutes ago, justpoet said:

I look forward to the updated spreadsheet once everything works itself out and 3000 series are able to be included as well.

I need to talk to LAW.Systems about how long to wait for the numbers to settle down then I'll update the sheet.

[justpoet]

3 minutes ago, marknd59 said:

I need to talk to LAW.Systems about how long to wait for the numbers to settle down then I'll update the sheet.

I just noticed he has the power info in the details for each card.  Just not displayed at the top level.

[marknd59]

2 minutes ago, justpoet said:

I just noticed he has the power info in the details for each card.  Just not displayed at the top level.

Yea the sheet does too. We were both working on gathering the same kind of information at the same time he used some of the data i had gathered and I was using data from his databases but we both came up with the same answer 2060 super was the way to go.

[GOTSpectrum]

(☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞           ☜(ﾟヮﾟ☜)

[RollinLower]

40 minutes ago, GOTSpectrum said:

(☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞           ☜(ﾟヮﾟ☜)

nice.

[Black Sallet]

Well baking my GTX 1060 in the oven amazingly actually fixed it so I can fold again (for the time being at least).  My spare GTX 460 wasn't really going to cut it.

[chaozbandit]

1 hour ago, GOTSpectrum said:

(☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞           ☜(ﾟヮﾟ☜)

Nice.

[chaozbandit]

14 hours ago, Collin_S said:

I got it working for my laptop, and the slots show up for my desktop. but it says both are at 0% and shows no other details. Though what I was looking for was the ability to track the overall points made by an individual client, like in a history.

You have to enable remote access on your client machines and then reboot FAH. Only then can HFM access the slot data; HFM itself has a work unit viewer that keeps track of WU status from the time HFM is installed and running on the host machine.

 

 

[Shlouski]

4 hours ago, marknd59 said:

time it worked out that 2x 2060 was the best way to go

 

Sounds right, I always thought they were the sweet spot, and still might be, that's why I have ordered one.

 

Average prices and ppd for me:

 

2060 ko €260 1.6 ppd

€1 = 6154 ppd

 

2070 €400 2.2 ppd

€1 = 5500 ppd

 

2080 super €650 3.2 pdd

€1 = 4923 ppd

 

3090 €1350 6.2 ppd

€1 = 4592 ppd

 

If you are only folding and have plenty of space for many cards then the 2060 makes sense, but the 2060 becomes much more expensive when you have to buy the computers around them

 

[Favebook]

8 hours ago, Collin_S said:

For any of you folders out there with over a 16 core CPU and on Linux, Big Advanced WU's are definitely worth considering... https://foldingathome.org/support/faq/installation-guides/configuration-guide/

Do not bother with that. That command has been discontinued.

[marknd59]

6 minutes ago, Shlouski said:

Sounds right, I always thought they were the sweet spot, and still might be, that's why I have ordered one.

Not sure if your talking about 2060 or a 2060 super but in either case run with a 80% power limit. It will drop the power draw but will have no noticable effect on PPD ( at least I was not able to identify a drop in PPD). Card will also run a bit cooler.

 

[Rybo]

 

[Gorgon]

9 hours ago, DirectingGnu2 said:

Uh don't bother with high end cpu, its all in the gpus. Nowadays cuda cores matter now, I personally wouldn't bother with AMD until Big navi comes out.

@TheDailyProcrastinator As others have said CPU WUs don't yield a lot of points and these days you likely want to leave a couple extra threads free in addition to the 1 per NVidia GPU and 1 for all AMD GPUs recommended in the past. But some recent WUs use a lot of CPU when starting up so this may be why some folks have noticed a slight decrease in PPD when CPU folding or it may just be a Windows thing (I use Linux for all my dedicated folding systems).

 

But though I started building my systems with low thread count CPUs and the minimum amount of RAM now that I'm contributing to BOINC I've replaced the CPUs with higher thread counts and increased the RAM for BOINC.

 

x299/x399 systems just aren't worth it for multi GPU setups. A lower-tier x570 board that supports bifurcation, a PCIe3 x16 to 4 PCIe3 x4 in x16 slots, combined with 16-32GB RAM (for BOINC or 8-16GB for just F@H) and a R5 or R7 processor will happily feed 6 mid range NVidia GPUs in a mining frame (see my sig and this thread) and cost less per GPU than an x299/399 system.

 

The downside of having many GPUs per system is when, not if, but when, the WU servers start screwing up and you have to reboot to get a single slot folding again you roll ALL the GPUs back to the last Checkpoint and it gets messy.

 

Though I like AMD GPUs, and bought a couple of RX5700XTs, they're just not as efficient at folding as NVidia cards even without the recent boost in NVidia cards due to an improved CUDA core.

 

Theoretically a 5700XT should be able to match a 2070 - 2070S in PPD but in practice they yield about the same as a 2600 used to (1.1 - 1.3MPPD). This appears to come down to AMD Driver issues and given their track record getting their gaming drivers working properly I don't expect to see them putting the effort into the compute portion of the GPU drivers required for Navi or Big Navi anytime soon.

[Collin_S]

9 hours ago, DirectingGnu2 said:

Uh don't bother with high end cpu, its all in the gpus. Nowadays cuda cores matter now, I personally wouldn't bother with AMD until Big navi comes out.

One way that a high end CPU could help though would be in having more PCIe Lanes for the GPU's, more cores to help control the WU's, and potentially being designed to run at higher usage for longer.

[Collin_S]

3 hours ago, chaozbandit said:

You have to enable remote access on your client machines and then reboot FAH. Only then can HFM access the slot data; HFM itself has a work unit viewer that keeps track of WU status from the time HFM is installed and running on the host machine.

 

Remote access is already enabled on both my desktop and laptop, as I have it set up so that both show up in FAH Control on both systems. The weird part is that HFM is running on the desktop already, so it is really strange that the desktop is the one that is not showing up correctly.

 

Update: after having HFM off overnight, it is now working correctly. Don't know why, but it is.

Edited October 15, 2020 by Collin_S
Updating about HFM working

[mattheginger]

9 minutes ago, Collin_S said:

One way that a high end CPU could help though would be in having more PCIe Lanes for the GPU's, more cores to help control the WU's, and potentially being designed to run at higher usage for longer.

Are higher end CPU's really going to give more longevity though? I mean I understand that some of the very top end CPU's are binned, but I've had an i5 & an i7 (Sandy & Ivy bridge) running boinc for years at 100% load 24/7 (not to mention the years of Battlefield they played before that ). No drama at all. My belief is it's mostly about controlled temps... Unless you plan on running mad overclocks, I just find it hard to believe there'll be a difference in durability.

 

[Gorgon]

30 minutes ago, Collin_S said:

One way that a high end CPU could help though would be in having more PCIe Lanes for the GPU's, more cores to help control the WU's, and potentially being designed to run at higher usage for longer.

Currently under Windows or Linux you can run a 2080S on only 4 PCIe3 lanes with no discernible decrease in PPD and using PCIe bi-furcation and m.2 to PCIe3 x16 adapters you can get 6 x4 lanes and hence 6 GPUs running off a x570 board using a low end 4c/8t processor and 12-16GB system memory.

 

When you calculate the per-slot (GPU) cost of HEDT systems they're just not worth if for folding. They might make sense if you want to do BOINC concurrently but likely the per-thread cost of a 3900x or 3950 would still be lower than ThreadRipper.

 

My longest running system is a 12 year-old iTX motherboard with 4GB DDR3-1666 and a PCIe2 x16 slot and an Athlon II x64 at 2.8GHz. It will easily keep a 2070Super folding at full bore. As long as you keep your GPUs and CPUs running below 80C and don't abuse your VRMs mid-range Desktop systems will happily run BOINC and F@H for years with only the occasional dusting and less-frequently a re-pasting required.

[DailyProcrastinator]

35 minutes ago, Gorgon said:

-snip-

Thank you for this info, I am likely just going to pickup a second 1080Ti as I can get a really good deal on one. 

[Stormtrooper_007]

16 hours ago, cbigfoot said:

HAHA the StormTrooper missed me  

Nooooo! I think i might need to ramp a a few more systems .....

[GOTSpectrum]

1 minute ago, Stormtrooper_007 said:

Nooooo! I think i might need to ramp a a few more systems .....

Don't worry, clone troopers were no better 

[cbigfoot]

38 minutes ago, Stormtrooper_007 said:

Nooooo! I think i might need to ramp a a few more systems .....

no you good you dont need any extra systems....

[d0ks]

 

I run three systems: two at work and only for 12 hours (a 2080ti and a 1070) and one at home, a 2060 super. And i'm pushing them as far as i can and getting an average of...

4 maybe 5 mil PPD if the lottery is good to me.

 

In my imagination, you guys pulling those numbers in the top ten places, have access to some mighty hefty equipment. And i can only envy you for that :))

 

Great job everyone, this is my first folding event since i'm new here, but i'm having a blast. So thanks for the competition :))

 

 

[GOTSpectrum]

3 minutes ago, d0ks said:

 

I run three systems: two at work and only for 12 hours (a 2080ti and a 1070) and one at home, a 2060 super. And i'm pushing them as far as i can and getting an average of...

4 maybe 5 mil PPD if the lottery is good to me.

 

In my imagination, you guys pulling those numbers in the top ten places, have access to some mighty hefty equipment. And i can only envy you for that :))

 

Great job everyone, this is my first folding event since i'm new here, but i'm having a blast. So thanks for the competition :))

 

 

It is lots of people like you who make this event what it is, so thank YOU!

[Rybo]

4 minutes ago, d0ks said:

 

I run three systems: two at work and only for 12 hours (a 2080ti and a 1070) and one at home, a 2060 super. And i'm pushing them as far as i can and getting an average of...

4 maybe 5 mil PPD if the lottery is good to me.

 

In my imagination, you guys pulling those numbers in the top ten places, have access to some mighty hefty equipment. And i can only envy you for that :))

 

Great job everyone, this is my first folding event since i'm new here, but i'm having a blast. So thanks for the competition :))

 

 

I think the people at the top have huge corporate AWS accounts that they have permission to use where they work or something.  Well, either that or there are 10+ people on this event that have the equivalent of like 10 2080TIs (or 30 1070's!).  Not unheard of, but I think the former is more likely.