Folding Forum

I just launched FAH on a new PC (Win7 64-bit) that has a GeForce GTX 745 video card. The new CPU slot is cooking right along, but the GPU slot is crawling, with an estimated finish time of 10 days for its first WU ! The nVidia console states version 345.20 for the driver. Is this video card just a lame folder, or is it a driver problem?

The nVidia console states the the card has 4096 MB DDR3 dedicated video memory.

Anyone else running this GPU with FAH? THANKS!

I wouldn't call the GTX 745 either a lame folder or an outstanding folder. It's sort of in the low to mid-range with 793 GFLOPS.

More information would be helpful, especially since you didn't tell us which project you're running and there's a really wide variation. See the link at the top of this page to "Project Summary"

How long has that WU been running? It takes a while for the client to generate an estimated completion time.

The default configuration sets (A) the CPU WU to leave one CPU to feed the GPU and (B) sets the GPU to run only when the system is idle, so if your system is set to sleep when idle or for some other reason doesn't go to idle, that can have a HUGE impact on GPU performance.

Thank you for your reply. The project number is 9123 using core 18. Now that it has run for its first 90 minutes, the client shows a WU ETA of 1.24 days with an estimated TPF of 18 mins. 38 secs. I guess my 10 day ETA was read too early (in the first 30 minutes)... sorry for the premature panic.

I have all sleep settings set to "Never". I'll check it tomorrow and see if the 1.24 day ETA changes. Thanks again. I've been folding with various CPUs for over 8 years, but this is my first GPU experience.

Might be worth your while to try the "max-packet-size" = "small" setting for your GPU slot. That way your GPU would get only older core_15 work. Methinks you'd need a faster GPU to benefit from Quick Return Bonus. See http://www.linuxforge.net/bonuscalc2.php for reference - a 18:38 TPF suggests a completion time of 1.29 days for 9123 WUs, and about 9200 PPD.

I presume a 745 could get you more with older projects (7620-7627). If my moderately overclocked ancient 430 can get about 7000 PPD with those, I'd think a 745 might bring you >10k PPD. Furthermore, project 7620-7627 WUs have very relaxed deadlines, so if you need to pause folding every now and then, time won't be an issue.

If you followed that link at the top of the page, you'll see that project 9123 has a preferred deadline of 10 says, so finishing it in 1.24 days is certainly acceptable ... and will generate a good bonus.

If you have not applied for a passkey and installed it into your client, you should do so if you're in any way interested in the points you can earn. Some folks care about them a lot; others are only interested in supporting the research. We help you, either way.

The GTX745 is a Maxwell GPU and for the best performance with Core18 WUs you have to use NVidia driver 347.xx or newer,
see Core 18 v4 (Windows/Linux)

I'm using NVidia driver 347.88 WHQL, which is running very stable for me.

Thank you for your responses. I just upgraded the driver to the latest offered by nVidia for this card, which is 353.30. The TPF is unchanged from 18:38. I will just let it cook with the core 18 jobs. (I always use a passkey). If anything significant changes, I will update here. Thanks again!

Replied too soon... 353.30 driver not stable, installed 347.88 driver and now all appears to be good.

Newly installed 347.88 driver shows a massive improvement. Estimated TPF now down to 10 mins 41 secs. A great recommendation... thanks DutchForce!