Optmizing my options.

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Imakuni
Posts: 7
Joined: Sun Dec 07, 2014 4:36 pm

Optmizing my options.

Post by Imakuni »

I've been a member of BOINC for quite a while, but after slapping in a gtx 970 while I wait the money to buy the CPU for my new rig, the client just went nuts with GPU crunching. According to MSI afterburner, gpu usage was about 50-70%, and the older gpu, that I put running in a 4x slot, was just straight up giving errors. So I decided to use Folding for GPU and BOINC for CPU. I was able to configure both clients to run only applications I wanted; Folding is recognizing both cards and has delivered results with both already.

BUUT, I feel the client is not running very well. GPU usage is weird, it get's to ~98 then spikes down to 60-80 then spikes up again, and PPD on the 970 is about 50~60k, which I find odd, since I'm seeing other posts with much higher numbers. And the second card I'm running, a Radeon HD 6670 is just taking an entire week to finish 1 WU, even while running at 24/7. My frankenstein machine consists of an A6-3500 processor OC'd to 3.2 ghz, 16gb 1600mhz ram, A75M-D2H mobo, gtx 970 running at 1.4ghz, and Radeon HD 6670 stock on the 4x PCI-E lane.

So... are these readings normal? Is there anything I can do optimize folding? Also, as a side note, can I use the integrated graphics on the APU? Wasn't able to make that last one run.

(sry for the wall of text :e?: )
bruce
Posts: 20910
Joined: Thu Nov 29, 2007 10:13 pm
Location: So. Cal.

Re: Optmizing my options.

Post by bruce »

I believe your options will improve soon. The current drivers for Maxwells have a couple of features that FAH uses which have problems. NVida has acknowledged them and FAH has been attempting various workarounds to keep the science going but Maxwell has not reached its full potential yet.

BTW, you can expect periodic dips in gpu production though your description doesn't say enough to know if yours are normal or not. FAH suspends processing briefly to write checkpoints to disk periodically. You can expect it to wait on the CPU and disk for that.
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