LTT Official Folding Month 2021!!!

[Red :)]

2 minutes ago, GOTSpectrum said:

Had my meds messed up by the docs and was in hospital over the weekend which was fun. The funeral is on wednesday so I will 100% not be available for that day. 

Oh dear, sounds like quite a bit of a ride.

[GOTSpectrum]

3 minutes ago, Red said:

Oh dear, sounds like quite a bit of a ride.

It wasn't so bad, just frustrating more than anything

[shaz2sxy]

Signed up !!

 

Bring on the Electricity bills!!!

 

will be doing GPU only

 

have a 3070 FE and 3060ti FE

 

 

[Pezui]

Tossed this into a prize pool, at some point these will be given in the name of folding! 

[Egg-Roll]

9 hours ago, Schnoz said:

Many of these older devices are quite capable of office work. It's a shame that they're being thrown out by the masses simply due to a slow or failed hard drive.

There are plenty of companies (people) who do just that, but buyer beware... Some of them will do bare minimum and sell it for profit, I have known about such things which is why I typically avoid laptops less sold by the actual B&M store.

 

I personally can't even find a DOA computer for under $100 locally lol... So I might try my P4 tho not sure if that will work even on Linux or might just drop them into unraid if I run out of time. To make things even more fun work has said "hey we need you NOW" asked for the rest of the week to finish up what I'm doing unless they needed me sooner, well yea  No complaints tho, back to work finally!

[ir8munk33]

On 11/1/2021 at 2:12 AM, BondiBlue said:

I know it's something we often joke about (using F@h machines and mining machines as heaters), but I actually do use mine for that purpose. My main desktop keeps one room warm, my NAS and secondary desktop keep the office warm (mainly for some pets in the same room), and another system keeps my bedroom warm. That lets me keep the heating turned down for the rest of the floor so I'm not heating unused spaces when I'm not in them. 

When i'm not folding, I'm mining, and its how I keep my office warm, whilst making a couple of pounds a day 

[IkeaGnome]

Unfortunately I'm a ways away from home and can't keep an eye on things. I can't participate in the event, but thanks to everyone who is. 

When @GOTSpectrum sees my discord message I'm throwing in for some rewards as a thank you to everyone who can participate. 

I hope everything is going well for everyone.

[Alex Atkin UK]

First time trying my new build on this, have to say I'm quite pleased though I probably wont use it much during the event thanks to Forza Horizon 5.

R9 5950X PBO clocking 4.26Ghz staying just under 80C on a Deepcool AS500 with 30 threads at 217815 est PPD.

Palit RTX 3080 GamingPro LHR 70C GPU, 82.5C Hot Spot, peaks to 1920Mhz despite not going over 100% TDP, 4320904 est PPD.

Its pulling about 600W from the wall.  Its the first time I've had a GPU in a long while that is fine with the default fan profile, though to be fair I've had blower coolers the last two cards as I went ITX until they finally started making GOOD full sized cases.

[Pezui]

Hum... Just won a 3060 for $337, I guess I can let it fold for a month or so and retire the 1030 that I use for sending video to my 9" monitors. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

1 hour ago, Pezui said:

Hum... Just won a 3060 for $337, I guess I can let it fold for a month or so and retire the 1030 that I use for sending video to my 9" monitors. 

Looking at your sig I'm clearly not getting close to you in the PPD table.

[BondiBlue]

3 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Looking at your sig I'm clearly not getting close to you in the PPD table.

Hey, it wasn't until about a month and a half ago that I was finally able to hit 1M+ PPD when I got a new GPU. I don't get a lot of points (compared to others here), but I just keep going along. 

[xWeegix]

That's OK @BondiBlue I'm going to rock my ol' 1080 in my main rig and the new addition T600 in my unraid server. I may see if I can rope my wife to throw the 970s at it heat permitting. Maybe I'll be able to match a RTX 3000 series that way.

[BondiBlue]

21 minutes ago, xWeegix said:

That's OK @BondiBlue I'm going to rock my ol' 1080 in my main rig and the new addition T600 in my unraid server. I may see if I can rope my wife to throw the 970s at it heat permitting. Maybe I'll be able to match a RTX 3000 series that way.

Yeah, with all my systems I'm about on par with an RTX 3060 for PPD. I've got an RX 570, a GTX 1660 Ti, and a few CPUs all folding. I actually use them to heat parts of my house, so the heat is actually welcomed most of the time.

[Pezui]

2 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Looking at your sig I'm clearly not getting close to you in the PPD table.

Oh don't worry, people are running up on me real quick. @IgorSinelnikov putting up damn near 40m a day....!!!! That's impressive at an industrial level. 

[GOTSpectrum]

7 hours ago, Pezui said:

Oh don't worry, people are running up on me real quick. @IgorSinelnikov putting up damn near 40m a day....!!!! That's impressive at an industrial level. 

Getting into Den-Fi levels of production... Good 

[shaz2sxy]

I'm sure last year I was in the top 100 

 

I'm now 500 lol

 

 

 

[dogwitch]

2 hours ago, GOTSpectrum said:

Getting into Den-Fi levels of production... Good 

idk why my first sign up for event failed. so i re signed up.

[Starman57]

19 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

First time trying my new build on this, have to say I'm quite pleased though I probably wont use it much during the event thanks to Forza Horizon 5.

R9 5950X PBO clocking 4.26Ghz staying just under 80C on a Deepcool AS500 with 30 threads at 217815 est PPD.

Palit RTX 3080 GamingPro LHR 70C GPU, 82.5C Hot Spot, peaks to 1920Mhz despite not going over 100% TDP, 4320904 est PPD.

Its pulling about 600W from the wall.  Its the first time I've had a GPU in a long while that is fine with the default fan profile, though to be fair I've had blower coolers the last two cards as I went ITX until they finally started making GOOD full sized cases.

That system looks like it's a contention nightmare.  Folding is stepping on its own toes, both on the R9 5950x and the RTX 3080.

 

Looks like some optimization is in order.

[Alex Atkin UK]

8 hours ago, Starman57 said:

That system looks like it's a contention nightmare.  Folding is stepping on its own toes, both on the R9 5950x and the RTX 3080.

 

Looks like some optimization is in order.

I did say I hadn't run it on that machine before and it was 25% into its first run with default Medium folding power settings.  Not sure what you mean though as the 3080 is showing about double the PPD of my 2080..

 

I did think firing up 30 CPU threads on Medium folding power was a bit nuts.  Although funnily enough if I turn off GPU folding and leave CPU running, I can game absolutely fine.

Dropped to 16 threads and CPU now is at 282K PPD, GPU 4227K.

[Arrogath]

1 hour ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Dropped to 16 threads and CPU now is at 282K PPD, GPU 4227K

Yeah, the extra threads didn't seem to be doing much for you really. Personally I leave my 3950 on 14 threads, but that's more to keep some CPU overhead available for general use and also keep the radiator fans quiet while I'm sleeping. My 3950/5700xt varies between 1m to 1.8m depending what power limit I let the GPU run at. I also like the idea of a full physical core or two being available if the GPU gets hungry and wants some data

[GrockleTD]

I'm sorry if there was a post somewhere that i missed, but would i be able to confirm that i am indeed signed up for the event?

[HeavensLastHope]

Signed up, I think. It just asked for forum / f@h name. Some folk above me seemed unsure. I guess I'm in the same boat and wanted to double check.

[Starman57]

12 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I did say I hadn't run it on that machine before and it was 25% into its first run with default Medium folding power settings.  Not sure what you mean though as the 3080 is showing about double the PPD of my 2080..

 

I did think firing up 30 CPU threads on Medium folding power was a bit nuts.  Although funnily enough if I turn off GPU folding and leave CPU running, I can game absolutely fine.

Dropped to 16 threads and CPU now is at 282K PPD, GPU 4227K.

 

11 hours ago, Arrogath said:

Yeah, the extra threads didn't seem to be doing much for you really. Personally I leave my 3950 on 14 threads, but that's more to keep some CPU overhead available for general use and also keep the radiator fans quiet while I'm sleeping. My 3950/5700xt varies between 1m to 1.8m depending what power limit I let the GPU run at. I also like the idea of a full physical core or two being available if the GPU gets hungry and wants some data

any of the Ryzen 16 core CPUs seem to run the fastest at 15 threads on F@H.  When running 30 threads, each are almost always contending for the FPU (FPU32 and some FPU64), even though you'll see slight improvement in score which is caused by Windows flopping some of the threads from the unused core.  Do not run F@H on all 16 cores.  You'll be contending for cores in processing everything else, including your GPU needs.  So in essence, it's still contending for core resources, and more concerning, it's still killing access for the GPU resources (Don't do this - your GPU is your fastest processor for F@H).

 

14 threads are fine for lowering power use (and hence heat and noise), however, the A7 F@H cores that used to be used had a problem when threads that were a multiple of 7 (or a prime number) because it caused domain decomposition.  The A7 F@H core would drop the threads automatically from 14 to 12 (13 is a prime number).  The A8 F@H core seems to be immune to the multiple of 7 threads issue, however I'm not sure if all of the WUs are no longer on the A7 core, and am still unsure if the prime number issue is still there.

 

The other problem of scheduling 15 threads on the R9s is Windows itself.  It's scheduler is pretty brute force.  It doesn't work quite as well as Linux's scheduler.  So some special sauce is needed to rein in Windows penchant for spraying threads around, and at many times to the most inappropriate core (don't get me started on this as it's another long reply).  That's where CPU affinity comes in.  Forcing the scheduler to do your bidding without resorting to a CPU free for all.  However, the Windows task manager isn't a great tool to use for this as it doesn't keep your settings for affinity every time you run a program.  Yes, you can change them, but once the program leaves and is rerun, it's back to the CPU free for all.

 

That's where "System Explorer" comes in.  Adding this program, and using it's "permanent" checkbox for CPU affinity makes sure that you are the master of certain programs, and only the programs that you specify.  Of course, my FahCore_a8.exe is forced to run on 15 of odd numbered threads (1,3,5,7.....), and FahCore_22.exe (for GPU) runs only on the one remaining core (2 threads - actually 3 because of my 6900xts need for processing... but you get the idea).  Everything else in Windows is a CPU free for all, so there's no change to your "experience".

 

So what effect does System Explorer have on the system.  It forces Windows to stop the FPU contention by running F@H only on one CPU thread per core.  Very little else will run on the remaining thread for that core.  If something does, it will most likely not need to use the FPU as it's not math related, so the sharing of the instruction pipeline will allow that thread to be processed without much delay.  This will likely cause some grief to the cache for that core and will also cause a context switch.  But running the F@H thread by itself mostly eliminates the context switching, and of course keeps the cache coherency high.  The 5950x has an advantage here as 8 cores share their cache, whereas the 3950x has 4 cores at a time sharing their cache.  Having stuff in cache memory speeds things up, so you don't want to pollute cache much, and you don't want threads popping into and out of cores because it can result in a lot of threads having to have their memory contents copied to different caches which eats CPU cycles getting it done.

 

Ok, special sauce done.  Now for the extra special sauce.  Finding out the "runt" of your 16 core CPU.  Yes, the worst one.

 

That's where "Clock tuner for Ryzen (CTR)" comes in.  It's the only program I've found so far that reports the "Core quality".  Yes, it's used for overclocking.  I don't use it for that as I've found PBOs fine grained adjustments far more advantageous than my often heavy handed and restricted tuning.  But CTR will report the "quality" of your CPU cores.  This quality value is what Windows (and Linux) see when they think of scheduling a thread.  Run CTR, choose "Tuner" and look at the CPU quality values.  The lowest value is your "runt".  That's the one to pick on so to speak.  That's the one you're going to skip over when assigning F@H CPU affinity for your Ryzen 9.  Yes, this runty CPU will also be picked on to keep your GPU fed (assign the CPU affinity to just this Core's 2 threads), and it's also the one to be picked on for running anything that you deem necessary to keep off those A8 F@H cores.  I'm personally kicking Chrome to this runty processor only because I use one window of LAR systems "Folding in the Dark" extension and I don't need much processing for it - so off to the runty CPU it is.  Oh, and if you "need" more CPU threads (which will impact your Ryzen 9 F@H processing), take a look again at CTR and make note of the next lowest quality value.  This will be your "runty understudy" waiting in the wings and use it for your "extra" needs (ideally only the 2nd thread).

 

So with these changes, F@H performance is very predictable when processing on your CPU and GPU, with the exception of the variability of the WUs themselves.  PBO appears to clock the R9 cores higher as it's generally running about 50% and thereby using less power in doing so (as for less heat - that's debatable).  (Actually, FahCore-a8.exe uses 46.8%, FahCore_22.exe uses about 1% or so, the Windows "system process another .1 to .5%, and in my case Chrome uses about .5 to 1%).  The Ryzen 9 5950x numbers I get are in the 600K-700K range consistently.  The 3950x numbers are in the 500K-600K range too.

 

So now that things aren't flopping around generally stepping on each others toes in many varied ways, you're getting more done and producing less waste.  Time and power.  Win-win.

 

Have fun with this.

S

 

P.S. If you're running Linux, it's far easier.  Set the CPU cores to 15 and you're done.  Linux seems to be far more efficient and smarter in scheduling.  For interest sake, I've seen over 800K PPD numbers using Linux for the Ryzen 9.  Yowza!  That's GPU territory.

[GOTSpectrum]

Well Today I woke up with my system offline, looks like another stick of dominator platinum has shit the bed... down to 4GB of ram on my main system now and don't think I have the money to buy more. Will have to see. 

 

I think I will try to RMA the ram but without the original purchase order I'm not sure if I can. 

 

Why in gods name does all this crap always happen to me right before a folding event... 

[Red :)]

29 minutes ago, GOTSpectrum said:

Why in gods name does all this crap always happen to me right before a folding event... 

meanwhile...