LTT Official Folding Month VI

[justpoet]

1 hour ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Figures it wouldn't be so easy.

If Gamers Nexus has reviewed the model you got, they always include a takeapart or fan replacement ease section, which usually also mentions RGB controls.

[Alex Atkin UK]

2 hours ago, justpoet said:

If Gamers Nexus has reviewed the model you got, they always include a takeapart or fan replacement ease section, which usually also mentions RGB controls.

I don't think anyone has actually has, but then my dexterity is a big enough gamble when building PCs, fiddly stuff like GPUs I'm just not touching for something so minor.  Its why I haven't even replaced the thermal pads on my 2080 which really need it, given its only my backup backup backup folding card now.  I feel its a higher chance of me breaking it, than it frying itself.

[Shlouski]

@Gorgon

@Windows7ge

@leadeater

 

If I were to try a get Linux working on this machine which distro would you recommend?

 

3700x

16gb ram

120gb SSD

3x 4080

2x 4070ti

Pcie1 4x4x4x4 bifurcation

Pcie2 4x 

 

Will the multiple cards and bifurcation make things more complicated?

 

Has anyone added any extra client options like client-type advanced?

[Windows7ge]

35 minutes ago, Shlouski said:

@Gorgon

@Windows7ge

@leadeater

 

If I were to try a get Linux working on this machine which distro would you recommend?

 

3700x

16gb ram

120gb SSD

3x 4080

2x 4070ti

Pcie1 4x4x4x4 bifurcation

Pcie2 4x 

 

Will the multiple cards and bifurcation make things more complicated?

 

Has anyone added any extra client options like client-type advanced?

That depends on if you want to unlock vGPU on any of these card. Then you'll want either Windows w/ HyperV or what I would recommend PROXMOX. Then you can pass vGPU's to other Linux or Windows VMs (after hacking the cards) and run those vGPU instances in isolated environments. You'll need a lot more storage and RAM though.

 

The increased cards should not increase the complexity since each bifurcated slot will appear in it's own IOMMU group so the system would see them as four cards in four slots unless there's a kernel level issue regarding that many GPU's in which case enabling Above 4G Decoding in your BIOS may or may not help.

[Shlouski]

17 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

either Windows w/ HyperV or what I would recommend PROXMOX. Then you can pass vGPU's to other Linux or Windows VMs (after hacking the cards) and run those vGPU instances in isolated environments.

 

Using Hyper-V I was able to pass a 4090 to a virtual windows machine, it worked for gaming on the host and the VM, but fah couldn't see a compatible card on the VM even though the 4090 showed up in device manager.

 

I'm thinking of moving from windows to Linux on this machine to see if that improves performance, I just need to figure out whuch distro would be best for me, as I'm inexperienced with Linux it might be best that I get one that's more user friendly. 

 

I used Ubuntu a little many years ago, would it be a solid choice?

[leadeater]

3 minutes ago, Shlouski said:

I'm thinking of moving from windows to Linux on this machine to see if that improves performance, I just need to figure out whuch distro would be best for me, as I'm inexperienced with Linux it might be best that I get one that's more user friendly. 

 

I used Ubuntu a little many years ago, would it be a solid choice?

if you want to try out vGPU unlock then definitely install Proxmox as the hypervisor/bare-metal OS, the guides and help you'll find are based on that. Then an Ubuntu VM would be fine, Ubuntu is what I always use.

[Alex Atkin UK]

1 minute ago, Shlouski said:

 

Using Hyper-V I was able to pass a 4090 to a virtual windows machine, it worked for gaming on the host and the VM, but fah couldn't see a compatible card on the VM even though the 4090 showed up in device manager.

 

I'm thinking of moving from windows to Linux on this machine to see if that improves performance, I just need to figure out whuch distro would be best for me, as I'm inexperienced with Linux it might be best that I get one that's more user friendly. 

 

I used Ubuntu a little many years ago, would it be a solid choice?

I use Fedora and its not super complicated, mostly just a case of adding RPMFusion and installing the right packages.

 

A less bleeding edge distro might help though, as I do sometimes have issues where the kernel gets updated and RPMFusion haven't caught up yet, so I have to boot back into the old kernel for a couple of days.

Is there a distro designed for AI workloads perhaps that might have a more consistent NVIDIA support from the distro itself?

[justpoet]

4 minutes ago, Shlouski said:

 

Using Hyper-V I was able to pass a 4090 to a virtual windows machine, it worked for gaming on the host and the VM, but fah couldn't see a compatible card on the VM even though the 4090 showed up in device manager.

 

I'm thinking of moving from windows to Linux on this machine to see if that improves performance, I just need to figure out whuch distro would be best for me, as I'm inexperienced with Linux it might be best that I get one that's more user friendly. 

 

I used Ubuntu a little many years ago, would it be a solid choice?

Ubuntu is the "de facto" for finding guides to do something, so I'd probably suggest it just for that reason, and that it is capable.

[Windows7ge]

6 minutes ago, Shlouski said:

Using Hyper-V I was able to pass a 4090 to a virtual windows machine, it worked for gaming on the host and the VM, but fah couldn't see a compatible card on the VM even though the 4090 showed up in device manager.

 

I'm thinking of moving from windows to Linux on this machine to see if that improves performance, I just need to figure out whuch distro would be best for me, as I'm inexperienced with Linux it might be best that I get one that's more user friendly. 

 

I used Ubuntu a little many years ago, would it be a solid choice?

Chances are if you don't mess up any settings you'll see a small but noticeable performance gain running compute applications on Linux instead of Windows. I found this to be true for both CPU and GPU when on BOINC - the project WCG.

 

That being said it's not as user friendly or full-proof as Windows. With the right permissions you can do things in Linux that instantly brick your install kind of like deleting System32. So think about familiarizing yourself with Linux in VM's and the like before jumping into swapping your bare metal OS.

 

As someone new to GNU/Linux the *buntu's are a safe bet. There's Ubuntu, Lubuntu, Kubuntu, PopOS, Linux Mint. Some are built around being more plug'n'play than more obscure distros. I remember Peppermint was popular and I think still is. Among many other variants. Although each have their own under-the-hood differences your engagement with the OS will be mostly the GUI so pick whatever appeals to you the most as the desktop environments vary wildly. For CUTA/OpenGL applications you might want to make sure NVIDIA's proprietary drivers will install and run on whichever you pick though. For gaming on Linux PopOS is popular and should work for compute like F@H though I've yet to verify that so take it with a grain of salt.

 

You can do a lot of crazy things with Linux like install the desktop environment of a different distro onto your system and run that instead of what came with your distro. Pretty cool. Like moving from a environment that resemble a Windows desktop to one that resembles MacOS.

[leadeater]

7 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

For CUTA/OpenGL applications

[Windows7ge]

@leadeater Alright I'll admit I have no idea what I'm talking about when it comes to NVIDIA graphics. I grew up with AMD. This Tesla P4 is only the 3rd NVIDIA card I've owned in over 15 years.

[Windows7ge]

Actually while I'm here since leadeater so graciously dragged me into the conversation is this a folding month competition?

 

I'm running my new (to me) Tesla P4 through some paces. Need to validate the long term reliability of the licensing server so I'm folding for team LTT right now. Can I still get in on the event or am I too late? I can compete for last place.

[justpoet]

12 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

Actually while I'm here since leadeater so graciously dragged me into the conversation is this a folding month competition?

 

I'm running my new (to me) Tesla P4 through some paces. Need to validate the long term reliability of the licensing server so I'm folding for team LTT right now. Can I still get in on the event or am I too late? I can compete for last place.

Sign ups close on the 29th, see first post for link.

[vsteel]

2 hours ago, Shlouski said:

@Gorgon

@Windows7ge

@leadeater

 

If I were to try a get Linux working on this machine which distro would you recommend?

 

3700x

16gb ram

120gb SSD

3x 4080

2x 4070ti

Pcie1 4x4x4x4 bifurcation

Pcie2 4x 

 

Will the multiple cards and bifurcation make things more complicated?

 

Has anyone added any extra client options like client-type advanced?

If you are new to Linux I would go with Ubuntu or at the very least a Debian distro of some sort.   If you are experienced it doesn't really matter, they are all pretty similar unless you want to run Intel's Clear Linux, which really chews up data but I don't think for folding it will buy you much of anything since all of the work is in the GPUs. 

 

Personally I run Kubuntu as I like the KDE interface.

[vsteel]

23 hours ago, leadeater said:

Yep, but what may happen is you will get 100% utilization and the per task time might change from 1 hour to 1.2 hours. Just a note to do the math and make sure actually better 

 

It probably is with such a small time difference while doing more WUs in similar period of time. It would be really interesting to actually try it and see. I'm pretty sure you can get it working on the RTX 4090, ask @Windows7ge

If you can do it on a RTX 4090 I would be surprised, that is one of the things Nvidia doesn't want you doing with their consumer cards.  They make it easy on the pro cards though.  

 

I am not sure why anyone would want to split is for FAH though because my 4090 is always running at 98% to 99%  I don't see where splitting it would gain anything.    I do get the multiple person gaming machine aspect.  It seems like the card is running pretty much as hard as it can already with 1 work unit.  

 

[leadeater]

59 minutes ago, vsteel said:

If you can do it on a RTX 4090 I would be surprised, that is one of the things Nvidia doesn't want you doing with their consumer cards.  They make it easy on the pro cards though.  

You can and it's not "supported" or "free", which is also why I'm not going to link to how to do it 

[Gorgon]

10 hours ago, Shlouski said:

@Gorgon

@Windows7ge

@leadeater

 

If I were to try a get Linux working on this machine which distro would you recommend?

 

3700x

16gb ram

120gb SSD

3x 4080

2x 4070ti

Pcie1 4x4x4x4 bifurcation

Pcie2 4x 

 

Will the multiple cards and bifurcation make things more complicated?

 

Has anyone added any extra client options like client-type advanced?

 

9 hours ago, Shlouski said:

... I'm thinking of moving from windows to Linux on this machine to see if that improves performance, I just need to figure out whuch distro would be best for me, as I'm inexperienced with Linux it might be best that I get one that's more user friendly. 

 

I used Ubuntu a little many years ago, would it be a solid choice?

Yes, Ubuntu would be a solid choice but I wouldn't recommend attempting to change over this close to the event nor starting with a system with 5 GPUs. I'd start with a single system with 1 GPU to get your feet wet.

 

BiFurcation shouldn't make it more complicated. If it works in Windows on your hardware then it should work under Linux.

 

I don't bother with the Advanced Options usually except "pause-on-start"="true" when testing.

[Windows7ge]

18 hours ago, justpoet said:

Sign ups close on the 29th, see first post for link.

Oh it hasn't started yet. Alright cool. So I read the first post. Just submit my forum name, folding name, and create a passkey? I already joined team LTT and I'm folding.

[IkeaGnome]

25 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

Oh it hasn't started yet. Alright cool. So I read the first post. Just submit my forum name, folding name, and create a passkey? I already joined team LTT and I'm folding.

Correct, you don't have to do a passkey, but it'll get you the QRB for more points. You are at 2.1m points towards LTT's team so everything else in your set up went correct. We can't see if you have the passkey enabled just by looking at stats though.

[Windows7ge]

5 minutes ago, IkeaGnome said:

Correct, you don't have to do a passkey, but it'll get you the QRB for more points. You are at 2.1m points towards LTT's team so everything else in your set up went correct. We can't see if you have the passkey enabled just by looking at stats though.

I did create a passkey and I used it when I setup my folding client so it should be good to go.

 

I have no context as to what constitutes a lot of PPD so what are some people here averaging?

[IkeaGnome]

3 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

I did create a passkey and I used it when I setup my folding client so it should be good to go.

 

I have no context as to what constitutes a lot of PPD so what are some people here averaging?

It depends heavily on what you are running for hardware.

If you're just running that TP4 you should be around 900k PPD.

Tesla P4 Folding@Home PPD Averages, Power Consumption & Research Projects (lar.systems)

[leadeater]

7 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

I have no context as to what constitutes a lot of PPD

[Windows7ge]

2 minutes ago, IkeaGnome said:

It depends heavily on what you are running for hardware.

If you're just running that TP4 you should be around 900k PPD.

Tesla P4 Folding@Home PPD Averages, Power Consumption & Research Projects (lar.systems)

The number fluctuates wildly day to day but evidence suggests ~900k is what I'm averaging.

 

I want to split it into two GRID P4-4Q vGPU's as I'm seeing a swaying back and forth of % utilization. I think running two project tasks at the same time would be better and on Linux at that if I can get it working.

 

@leadeater Based on the numbers I've been seeing I'm getting the feeling my ~1.2mill PPD is "cute".

[Needfuldoer]

I guess this is as good a time as any to jump into a folding event, for reals this time. I have two of these available:

 

Dell Precision Rack R7910

2x Intel Xeon E5-2667 v4

2x Nvidia RTX 3060 12GB

128 GB PC4-2400 Reg ECC RAM

200 GB boot SSD

2x 1100w 80 Plus Platinum power supplies

 

These are primarily built for tinkering with AI stuff like video upscaling, and I've bene picking up these OEM 3060s as they pop up for decent prices. The fins on their heatsinks run front to back, so they actually have a snowball's chance of being cooled in a 2U server chassis.

 

I also have a tower Precision 7910 chassis with a 1600w power supply that can take three GPUs, but it was in a basement flood up to about 2" deep and I haven't tested it since. (It was working before, it was in clean ground water, and a switch that was in the same flood survived. There's hope for it, but I'm also lazy.)

 

What kind of performance do you think I'll see from these? Better than a space heater, I hope...

[leadeater]

4 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

@leadeater Based on the numbers I've been seeing I'm getting the feeling my ~1.2mill PPD is "cute".

It's more than zero which is my current PPD haha