180.70 and 180.60 beta for folding?

[Julien_FX]

Hi,

I just came across these 180.70 drivers and the only information about theses drivers I can find is from a chinese web site (translated): http://translate.google.ca/translate?u= ... n&ie=UTF-8

From that web site, it seems that theses drivers are to promote F@H, should we expect more PPD from theses drivers?

Also from this Website there is a performance increase from 588 ns/day to 624 ns/day.

XP 32

XP 64

Vista 32

Vista 64

Please keep in mind that they are beta drivers and I did not test them, so download and use at your own risks.

EDIT: The 180.60 drivers are similar and are available directly from NVIDIA CUDA Zone so it might be safer to download from that website. the 180.60 and 180.70 drivers include CUDA 2.1 beta which would most likely cause a HUGE drop in cpu usage without affecting the PPD much. The cpu usage can drop from 100% to close to 0% in windows XP.

[osgorth]

That's exciting, I'll try these as soon as they download (painfully slowly atm).

[Julien_FX]

From this web site: http://www.xfastest.com/redirect.php?ti ... tpost#zoom
it is suppose to give a PPD boost.

[Julien_FX]

These server might be faster

Windows XP 32-bit:

http://drivers.mydrivers.com/drivers/24 ... XP-XP-MCE/

Windows XP/2003 64-bit： Windows XP/2003 64-bit:

http://drivers.mydrivers.com/drivers/24 ... 4-2003-64/

Windows Vista 32-bit： Windows Vista 32-bit:

http://drivers.mydrivers.com/drivers/24 ... For-Vista/

Windows Vista 64-bit： Windows Vista 64-bit:

http://drivers.mydrivers.com/drivers/24 ... -Vista-64/

[toTOW]

Use at your own risk ...

[Julien_FX]

Use at your own risk ...

Yeah, that's what I said in the OP. I have edited it to appear bold so that everyone knows...

[jevans64]

I loaded these drivers on ONE machine for testing. I have a "twin" rig still running nV 178.24 that I will compare it with.

Specs on BOTH rigs
Q6600 @ 3.2GHz, 2GB DDR2-1066, eVGA 9800GTX+ @ 778c/1890s/1000m, GPU2 v6.20r1 Core v1.19.

One thing I noticed right off the bat is the CPU usage dropped to virtually 0. The p5506 PPD dropped from 5841 to 5604 and the GPU temperature increased 6C -- from 58C to 64C.

An SMP client is running on cores 0,1,2 so I set it to run on ALL 4 cores. There was NO drop in PPD from the GPU client. The SMP client hasn't been running long enough to report any PPD increase there.

GPU2 frame times for p5506 went from 1m11s for nV 178.24 to 1m14s for nV 180.70.
SMP frame times for p2665 went from 15m50s ( 3 cores ) to 14m21s ( 4 cores ).

What is the possibility that nVidia has done away with needing very little CPU cycles for GPU2?

Or is it just some kind of error detecting CPU usage?

EDIT:

I installed the new driver on another machine just to confirm GPU temperature increase and CPU usage decrease.

This system is running a Q6600 @ 3.0 GHz, 2 GB DDR2-1066, eVGA 9800GTX+ @ 738/1836/1000, Windows XP sp3.

CPU core 3 usage is at around 0.30% and GPU temperature is up 7C on average. PPD is down from 5760 to 5604 ( p5506 ) but the SMP can now fold on all 4 cores.

I don't like the temperature increases but I'll wait and see what happens with the p5847 before I make a final decision.

[yurexxx]

Yes, wait for p5847 to come for perfomance testing of WUs with 1000+ atoms!

[AJL]

Yes, wait for p5847 to come for perfomance testing of WUs with 1000+ atoms!

Ugh, that'll kill our PPD - hopefully the nVidia engineers have been able to improve the performance on larger WUs.

Oh, and a 7degC increase in temp - I'll have to forget about OCing come summer

[MtM]

Higher temps, lower ppd.. wouldn't touch it with a 10 feet pole at this moment.

Like I posted on xs, I will only run either drivers from cuda_get, or those recommended by the PG ( which are.. the one's from cuda_get ). Only 3rd party I would advice for other drivers are those with cards which needed a modified inf, like the one's you could get from laptopvideo2go.

[slugbug]

jevans64, which drivers did you previously have installed? The drop in cpu usage on XP is definitely intriguing, and the increased temps can probably be managed by increasing the fan speeds a little.

[werty316]

Did your CPU temperature changed at all?

[Grendel]

Like I posted on xs, I will only run either drivers from cuda_get, or those recommended by the PG ( which are.. the one's from cuda_get ).

Which right now are the 180.60 drivers.. 180.70 are Quadro drivers.

[extrasalty]

Awesome! So far CPU usage on WinXP below 5% measured with Taskinfo. Finally. Frame times are slightly up, but dear god, the CPU usage is gone. CPU usage is 1 min of 11 min processing so far (almost 7% of WU). Temperatures seem to remain the same. There goes the only reason to switch to Vista.

[Outback_Jon]

I downloaded and installed the 180.60 Beta drivers from nVidia's site. Frame times on my 8600GT are nearly the same. A couple of seconds difference, but I'll easily give that up for the reduced CPU time. Core_11 is actually showing 0% CPU usage in WinXP. And the WU is progressing nicely.

Now as soon as I finish the standard unit I'm running on my CPU, I'll try going back to SMP. SMP didn't work too well on a dual core with the GPU taking most of the cycles on one core.