Can Anyone Help Me figure this out

[lebeatnik]

first my title comes of very much so ( i cant be bothered) but that's not the reason we all have busy lives and i do too but i would like to help or I would not even post or try) So please don't think i cant be bothered i just don't have the time to fully research i have done distributed computing before but not on a system as complicated as my current system.

SO.....I was wondering if anyone can help me set up folding as right now i am running the windows GUI and it seams to not really be using my system to its full advantage.

Folding wise My PC has
Dual Radeon 7770s (i believe i should run them separately non crossfire)
CPU AMD FX-8150 8 cores running at 4GHz each (at base speed they "turbo" higher when needed.

Now the GUI version doesnt seam to be using anythiung other than one cpu core and i have no idea about the GPUs i think its not using them at all.

I installed the GUI just to get it going kinda as i want to use the CLI anyway as I use the PC enough that i wouldn't want it to run constantly as a system application but i will probably set it to run overnight when i am not using my PC for anything other than browsing

Basically i am asking if anyone can hook me up with all the need to know reading for my system without having to go through the whole forum i would like to help

 

[Thrasher]

since you already have it installed go to this link
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/WinGuide#ntoc8
and select -
Multi-client Installation - Adding slots (Expert and above)

from the list of options, it will take you to the page showing how to set up the slots for the type of unit you want to run.

when first installed it always defaults to a simpler setup.

 

[lebeatnik]

I am trying my best at the moment i am not familiar to this software and right now i have what seams to be 2 of my CPU cores and my 2 gpus running although they seam to not be doing anything? still cant get more CPU threads or make it work as i look at it it is not processing any data. the link shows a how to with a different version or on another OS so the GUI is not the same. I want to do the most i can but its harder than i expected. I consider myself PC savvy although i am not grasping on how to get the client to work (i understand the principal of what we are doing though)

Here is a screenshot showing that not all at at least most of my cores are running (idk if its supposed to be like that or not)

 

[lebeatnik]

I have never owned a 8 Core CPU (actually my last PC only had 2) SO folding with all cores is something i don't understand how to do. Also the GUI is x86 is it just the GUI and the program can run all cores?

I think i got it right here are some pics although for some reason GPU-z doesn't say my gpu's are working but core temp shows all CPU cores are working (when folding I have my system set to default settings just as i am using full resources i have yet to really push the system and see how fast i can overclock it to its best heat/wear to performance ratio yet) right now 8 cores at 3.6 is pretty nice although i can easily go past 4 just using my Main board Software Being the CPU is unlocked (BLACK EDITION ...)

in all check out these picks and tell me if i got it going well and if you can help me tweak it i would appreciate it I would like to give anything i have to help i cant donate monetarily to such things but i can sure let them use my PC to process things so they don't have to pay millions more for super computers when their is distributed computing like this. anyway i have been blabbing here are the screen shots. I Hope someone reply's to tell me how i am doing and if it is set correctly. (also i hope the images are large enough for you to read them?

 

[moorea]

change cpu slot to smp -1. The -1 tells the client to use all the cores. If that doesn't work change it to smp 16 (hyper threading doubles the physical core count). That would tell it that there are 16 cores. Folding on gpu's takes some of the processors power to work and many set their smp down a little to allow the gpu's to run better without making thier computers run laggy. So you could go with smp -14. You can find these options by changing to "advanced" in the top right hand corner and then selecting "configure". Then click on the "slots" tab. Click on your smp and then click "edit".

 

[lebeatnik]

do i need to disable crossfire for this to work?
i should set cpu to -1 and GPU -14?

I tried some of the settings you said and it stalled i must have done something wrong

(i consider myself computer literate i built this thing lol but this boggles me as i cant seam to get it working to my systems maximum potential)

it would be awesome to get a sticky that tells how to work multi thread CPU's and Multi GPU systems for F@H i would benefit from it lol

 

[Thrasher]

you should get the cpu widget for your desktop to know how much of the cpu is used.

if you are running the latest version then the pics are for this one (on windows). if you do not see all these options expert mode is not selected. the mode should be top right side of the tool bar somewhere.

the very first thing you have to do is get out of simple mode and use expert mode. it will add all the stuff you see in the pictures into your GUI

then in expert mode you go to the slot panel - delete all of them then add just one smp (multi cpu) and one for GPU. and see if they both start.

in simple mode the program tried to configure itself and doesnt always do the greatest job of it.

you should have no problem getting to the main screen with the mode (novice advanced, expert) no problem when starting with the F@H control shortcut.

 

[moorea]

do i need to disable crossfire for this to work?
i should set cpu to -1 and GPU -14?

I tried some of the settings you said and it stalled i must have done something wrong

(i consider myself computer literate i built this thing lol but this boggles me as i cant seam to get it working to my systems maximum potential)

it would be awesome to get a sticky that tells how to work multi thread CPU's and Multi GPU systems for F@H i would benefit from it lol

I'm willing to bet it wasn't stalled, sometimes depending on the working unit it might take a while for it to go from 0% to 1%. The smp -1(cpu) will be what you want. The gpu will be a little tricky to get both running. You don't have to disable crossfire. Start with gpu 0. This should get the first one going if it is in slot 0 (the uppermost slot on your motherboard). Then try adding another slot and select gpu and set it to 1. You'll want to download gpu-z program to monitor your gpu usage to tell if its working on both. Here is a screenshot of mine. I'm running smp -1 for my cpu which is a intel 3930k quad core (8 with hyperthreading), so you'll see "smp 8" in the pic below. I only have one gpu set to -1 and it auto detects which slot it is in, in this case slot 0.

 

[loft]

If you're going to fold with this system then simply stated:

Using AMD/ATI video cards requires at least ONE thread to process information for video cards. One SMP set to 6 and two GPU. One GPU should have a slot ID of 0 and the other should be 1. SMP should have a slot ID of 2.

SMP needs to be set to 6 to allow a thread to process information for your GPUs, otherwise they will all combat each other and starve each other of valuable clock cycles.

I would highly recommend you do not set the SMP slot to -1 since you are using ATI video cards; this will force the SMP slot to use all 8 cores/threads which would then cause your GPU's to sit and wait for a chance to use the cpu to process information.

Unless I'm mistaken; the AMD chip - while having 8 cores - the cores are single threaded, unlike HT with Intel chips which create two threads per core. Since the AMD is single threaded you are limited to 2-4-6-8 SMP threads to use.

Hope this helps.

 

[loft]

Also I would recommend downloading and installing the 7.2.9 client as 7.3.6 is still in infancy and a little... well, underdeveloped.

https://fah.stanford.edu/file-relea...ows-xp-32bit/v7.2/fah-installer_7.2.9_x86.exe

Cheers.

 

[Thrasher]

something else to keep in mind, as i am looking for new parts to build another pc, i ran across the new 8 core cpu as possible candidate. and found some programs if they arent written correctly for multi threading do not see the hexcore properly as it is not 8 full cores it is 4 full cores and 4 partial cores, folding may not understand what the other 4 cores are and may be having a problem recognizing them as full cpu cores as the hex is from the server line of cpus and relatively new so they may not have written the desktop client code to handle something like this.

best bet would be to just set it to use 4 cores and the GPU's

 

[loft]

something else to keep in mind, as i am looking for new parts to build another pc, i ran across the new 8 core cpu as possible candidate. and found some programs if they arent written correctly for multi threading do not see the hexcore properly as it is not 8 full cores it is 4 full cores and 4 partial cores, folding may not understand what the other 4 cores are and may be having a problem recognizing them as full cpu cores as the hex is from the server line of cpus and relatively new so they may not have written the desktop client code to handle something like this.

best bet would be to just set it to use 4 cores and the GPU's

Folding works fine with hyperthreading/multithreaded/multi core cpu's but he is using an AMD chip... no hyperthreading... it uses hypertransports which is completely different than hyperthreading. Again - the cpu has eight cores. He can utilize up to six of them and leave the other two allocated for the GPU's... that will maximize his folding performance. Using four cores is going to leave two cores doing nothing.

 

[Thrasher]

not according to AMD and what im reading on hard ocp they are not full physical independent cores, they are partial cores.
as even AMD states when having problems over clocking to turn off the partials. as they may be hindering the full physical cores.

the only reason i bring this up is the AMD chips are based off the server chips now and they have stated they wont make desktop cores/chips anymore and said they have no desire to stay in the desktop performance game against Intel, and am wondering if the program itself is having problems within the pipeline and cashe as they are shared and obviously this isnt written for server type threading.