Folding Community Board

[Juggy]

I have a spare 2080 Super, 3070 and a 3700X I want to put in a Folder.

 

Is there still a massive gain with using Ubuntu over Windows?

[LazyDev]

2 minutes ago, Juggy said:

I have a spare 2080 Super, 3070 and a 3700X I want to put in a Folder.

 

Is there still a massive gain with using Ubuntu over Windows?

They use to be a huge improvement using Linux compared to Windows. Since the Cuda update, I don't know if this improvement still exists. I was gaining an extra 2M ppd when I was using Linux in August. @Gorgonwould be the one to ask.

[Bitter]

5 hours ago, LazyDev said:

Windows been a mong. Threw a code 43 on my 1070, and disabled it. I had to manually reinstall the GPU to get it to work again. Why can't Windows leave my cards alone?

 

Interestingly, a static picture of my web browser was stuck on my monitor, even after pressing the reboot button on the system. The system did reboot, but the GPU was still out putting a static picture of my browser. This is a first.

Try Linux, I run my main folding box on Xubuntu and use the processor graphics in BIOS as the video output so the cards aren't rendering anything but proteins. Works well, it's pretty stable, and can run for long periods of time without rebooting or crashing. Other than some system updates (which are entirely optional) the thing pretty much never needs to reboot except for power loss.

[LazyDev]

5 minutes ago, Bitter said:

Try Linux, I run my main folding box on Xubuntu and use the processor graphics in BIOS as the video output so the cards aren't rendering anything but proteins. Works well, it's pretty stable, and can run for long periods of time without rebooting or crashing. Other than some system updates (which are entirely optional) the thing pretty much never needs to reboot except for power loss.

Did try Linux in August, but the lack of HDCP support, means the 720p display on a 1440p panel with movies drove me into insanity. I did try unRaid, but the overhead is huge. I'm stuck with Windows for now, unless I go down the road of a dedicated rig. The Ryzen 7 3700x doesn't come with an iGPU, so a discrete GPU is required. Reliability is key to the system's performance, and having the option of a graphical interface just make the job of diagnostics far easier. I could go back to Linux in the future, but it won't be on my main rig due to the lack of compatibility.

[Gorgon]

59 minutes ago, Juggy said:

I have a spare 2080 Super, 3070 and a 3700X I want to put in a Folder.

 

Is there still a massive gain with using Ubuntu over Windows?

Like the old adage from Photography that “the best camera is the one you have” if your most comfortable with Windows and have little to no Linux experience it’s probably best to stick with what you know. The learning curve can be steep.

 

I don’t think there’s as much of an improvement running Linux these days with the new CUDA core. I can’t really offer a comparison as I don’t run Windows on any of my folding rigs and I run the GPUs at lowered power limits to increase efficiency and reduce heat and electricity costs.

 

Personally I prefer Linux as I run all 5 rigs headless and manage them using SSH which I’m very comfortable with. You can also use X Windows and it certainly has a much smaller footprint than Windows 10 but even Windows seems to be getting less bloated.

 

About the only definite advantage for Linux is if you want to run many cards in one system and have limited PCIe lanes as Linux still appears to have much less overhead on PCIe compared to Windows. Still, it seems that even Windows works OK for mid to higher end cards limited to PCIe3 x4 so it likely shouldn't be a consideration unless you’re planning on running 6 3080s or 2080tis off one motherboard.

[Juggy]

4 minutes ago, Gorgon said:

Like the old adage from Photography that “the best camera is the one you have” if your most comfortable with Windows and have little to no Linux experience it’s probably best to stick with what you know. The learning curve can be steep.

 

I don’t think there’s as much of an improvement running Linux these days with the new CUDA core. I can’t really offer a comparison as I don’t run Windows on any of my folding rigs and I run the GPUs at lowered power limits to increase efficiency and reduce heat and electricity costs.

 

Personally I prefer Linux as I run all 5 rigs headless and manage them using SSH which I’m very comfortable with. You can also use X Windows and it certainly has a much smaller footprint than Windows 10 but even Windows seems to be getting less bloated.

 

About the only definite advantage for Linux is if you want to run many cards in one system and have limited PCIe lanes as Linux still appears to have much less overhead on PCIe compared to Windows. Still, it seems that even Windows works OK for mid to higher end cards limited to PCIe3 x4 so it likely shouldn't be a consideration unless you’re planning on running 6 3080s or 2080tis off one motherboard.

Thank you for the feedback, I am comfortable with Linux but more comfortable with Windows so I will stick with it.

[Bitter]

32 minutes ago, LazyDev said:

Did try Linux in August, but the lack of HDCP support, means the 720p display on a 1440p panel with movies drove me into insanity. I did try unRaid, but the overhead is huge. I'm stuck with Windows for now, unless I go down the road of a dedicated rig. The Ryzen 7 3700x doesn't come with an iGPU, so a discrete GPU is required. Reliability is key to the system's performance, and having the option of a graphical interface just make the job of diagnostics far easier. I could go back to Linux in the future, but it won't be on my main rig due to the lack of compatibility.

Yeah I don't use my main PC for 24x7 folding, I built one just for that from parts I had around somewhat. Asus H97 board with 8GB DDR3 1600 running an i5 4590T CPU which has a 35W TDP and honestly sticks to it pretty well. That base gives me two PCIe slots to stick cards in. I got a P106-100 a while back somewhat cheaply and that's been the main folding card, I've rotated in some other hardware from time to time, a RX580 and most recently a 1650. The 580 was too power hungry and never really got efficient with tuning, the 1650 is more efficient and produces almost as much PPD as the 580 at 1/2 the power use but it's destined for a different PC that's a holiday gift. I'd like to scoop up another P106-100 for way cheap or a 1650 Super/1660 if the price is decent. There's some P106-90's going for $60-70 shipped but their PDD isn't that much better than the 1650 and I think it uses more power.

 

Anyway, having a dedicated PC just for folding is really advantageous since you CAN just run the more stable OS on it to set it and forget it. Haswell stuff is pretty cheap on ebay but so is the older 1151 socket stuff now too, 6th gen Intel I think. If you're running Nvidia cards you need at least one CPU core per card, so just run a low power 4 core and have two cores left over for system overhead.

[LazyDev]

1 hour ago, Bitter said:

If you're running Nvidia cards you need at least one CPU core per card, so just run a low power 4 core and have two cores left over for system overhead.

I don't know if the CPU core performance and/or design of the CPU affects the overall performance of the GPU. In theory, it would, but I don't know what the core is calculating in the load that it's doing.

[viming_aint_easy]

5 minutes ago, LazyDev said:

I don't know if the CPU core performance and/or design of the CPU affects the overall performance of the GPU. In theory, it would, but I don't know what the core is calculating in the load that it's doing.

I believe that this is a consequence of what GPU you have.  Nvidia cards use polling (which works best with dedicated cores), while AMD cards use interrupts (which doesn't care).  I'd link to some folding forum posts, but it looks like their SSL cert expired today.

[LazyDev]

8 minutes ago, viming_aint_easy said:

I believe that this is a consequence of what GPU you have.  Nvidia cards use polling (which works best with dedicated cores), while AMD cards use interrupts (which doesn't care).  I'd link to some folding forum posts, but it looks like their SSL cert expired today.

So getting a Ryzen 9 with a system with more than 4 GPU's could make sense, especially if it's a daily driver? This just reinforces the need for the 5950X just to have the CPU cores so SMT could be disabled.

[viming_aint_easy]

3 minutes ago, LazyDev said:

So getting a Ryzen 9 with a system with more than 4 GPU's could make sense, especially if it's a daily driver? This just reinforces the need for the 5950X

I'm not sure if the cores the card would need to specifically physical, or if hyperthreaded ones are fine, but I presume they are.  So, depending on your workload, you may be fine with a r7 or r5.

[Juggy]

Interesting, I run my 3070 and 3950X with 24 threads for Folding and my overall average score is around 3 million.

 

Remove the CPU slot and overall average is above 3.5 million. 

 

Seems the new 3xxx series cards may like a lot more horsepower from the CPU

 

I will have to monitor this for a few days/WU's to get a better idea

[LazyDev]

27 minutes ago, Juggy said:

Interesting, I run my 3070 and 3950X with 24 threads for Folding and my overall average score is around 3 million.

 

Remove the CPU slot and overall average is above 3.5 million. 

 

Seems the new 3xxx series cards may like a lot more horsepower from the CPU

 

I will have to monitor this for a few days/WU's to get a better idea

I noted this behavior with my GPU's before I got my 3080. Makes me wonder how much of an impact a good CPU has to the GPU performance. It's the sole reason why I don't fold with my 3700x CPU.

[Juggy]

7 minutes ago, LazyDev said:

I noted this behavior with my GPU's before I got my 3080. Makes me wonder how much of an impact a good CPU has to the GPU performance. It's the sole reason why I don't fold with my 3700x CPU.

Yeah, I actually noticed the same on my 2080 Super but it seems more so with 3xxx

[Gorgon]

7 hours ago, Juggy said:

Interesting, I run my 3070 and 3950X with 24 threads for Folding and my overall average score is around 3 million.

 

Remove the CPU slot and overall average is above 3.5 million. 

 

Seems the new 3xxx series cards may like a lot more horsepower from the CPU

 

I will have to monitor this for a few days/WU's to get a better idea

This will depend on the WU. Some of the recent newer WUs require calculations (Double Precision Floating Point? AVX?) that only can be done on the CPU so your GPU will block (sit idle) while the CPU does the necessary work. The more threads you have available (free) the faster these intermediate calculations can be done so the GPU can get back to work.

[Kilrah]

Hmm my 1070 is idle, no WUs available... guess the moonshot has finished.

[marknd59]

3 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Hmm my 1070 is idle, no WUs available... guess the moonshot has finished.

Babysitter kicked in for me a little while ago.

[vsteel]

20 hours ago, yaboistar said:

 

3070 is down in the leagues a bit just below the Rev.A version of the 2080

Running my 2080 Rev A hard to fix that and get it back on top of the 3070.

 

[Gorgon]

1 hour ago, Kilrah said:

Hmm my 1070 is idle, no WUs available... guess the moonshot has finished.

It shows 98.7% Complete but I did notice last night I wasn't getting any moonshot WUs at one point but after I un-paused folding at 19:00 when my electricity price halves after 20-30 minutes of some slots stuck downloading that they fixed themselves and started getting work.

 

I suspect the Moonshot WUs are drying up and it will require some manual intervention to load more COVID projects.

[marknd59]

WU's are definitely drying up a bit. At least the event is over.

 

 

Spoiler

20:03:02:WU00:FS02:Connecting to 65.254.110.245:80
20:03:02:WARNING:WU00:FS02:Failed to get assignment from '65.254.110.245:80': No WUs available for this configuration
20:03:02:WU00:FS02:Connecting to 18.218.241.186:80
20:03:03:WARNING:WU00:FS02:Failed to get assignment from '18.218.241.186:80': No WUs available for this configuration
20:03:03:WU00:FS02:Connecting to 65.254.110.245:80
20:03:03:WARNING:WU00:FS02:Failed to get assignment from '65.254.110.245:80': No WUs available for this configuration
20:03:03:WU00:FS02:Connecting to 18.218.241.186:80
20:03:04:WARNING:WU00:FS02:Failed to get assignment from '18.218.241.186:80': No WUs available for this configuration
20:03:04:ERROR:WU00:FS02:Exception: Could not get an assignment
20:03:04:WU00:FS02:Connecting to 65.254.110.245:80
20:03:04:WARNING:WU00:FS02:Failed to get assignment from '65.254.110.245:80': No WUs available for this configuration
20:03:04:WU00:FS02:Connecting to 18.218.241.186:80
20:03:05:WARNING:WU00:FS02:Failed to get assignment from '18.218.241.186:80': No WUs available for this configuration
20:03:05:WU00:FS02:Connecting to 65.254.110.245:80
20:03:05:WARNING:WU00:FS02:Failed to get assignment from '65.254.110.245:80': No WUs available for this configuration
20:03:05:WU00:FS02:Connecting to 18.218.241.186:80
20:03:06:WARNING:WU00:FS02:Failed to get assignment from '18.218.241.186:80': No WUs available for this configuration
20:03:06:ERROR:WU00:FS02:Exception: Could not get an assignment
20:03:12:WU02:FS01:0x22:Completed 680000 out of 2000000 steps (34%)
20:04:04:WU00:FS02:Connecting to 65.254.110.245:80
20:04:04:WARNING:WU00:FS02:Failed to get assignment from '65.254.110.245:80': No WUs available for this configuration
20:04:04:WU00:FS02:Connecting to 18.218.241.186:80
20:04:05:WARNING:WU00:FS02:Failed to get assignment from '18.218.241.186:80': No WUs available for this configuration
20:04:05:WU00:FS02:Connecting to 65.254.110.245:80
20:04:05:WARNING:WU00:FS02:Failed to get assignment from '65.254.110.245:80': No WUs available for this configuration
20:04:05:WU00:FS02:Connecting to 18.218.241.186:80
20:04:06:WARNING:WU00:FS02:Failed to get assignment from '18.218.241.186:80': No WUs available for this configuration
20:04:06:ERROR:WU00:FS02:Exception: Could not get an assignment

 

 

[cbigfoot]

need i say more? i blame all those that got 30x0's

[LazyDev]

I'm getting alot of work units from 14905-14908. These are Covid-19's. I'm just about getting the units. Makes me wonder if I should setup Boinc when Folding at Home has no work units available.

[cbigfoot]

ok Calculon is getting a quick revamp gotta swap out the PSU FInally got a new one in so i can swap it out and RMA the one that is going Click click click click click click click click click click click click click lol

 

8 mins all better thank you SEASONIC AND FRACTAL!!!

 

EDIT SON OF A )&#!)($#*#) A F*#%(# Label was in the fan... i knew i should have pulled it out to see what it was...oh well i now have a spare 750 watt lol when i get 2x 30x0 i will need it to run the 2x2060s in flexo lol

[LazyDev]

@cbigfoot I bet your rig was easier to cable manage than mine. It's crammed in there for me.

 

[jctappel67]

Just found out that Chrome Remote Desktop is a thing. Now I can manage my machines for free and without knowledge of the techno-wizardry. Just wish it didn't involve selling another portion of my soul to our greedy, sadistic benevolent overlords, but c'est la vie when you're 'poor' and not well-versed in the dark arts.

 

Wish I'd known about it during the Covid-19 event and Folding Month. Would've kept me from going dark a bunch of times, but oh well. 

 

Edit: To keep Google from holding too much of my soul, I switched to a different VNC. Thanks to @Bitterand @LazyDevfor giving me the idea.