NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M and Light/Medium/FULL Power Levels

It seems that a lot of GPU problems revolve around specific versions of drivers. Though NVidia has their own support structure, you can often learn from information reported by others who fold.

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TexasDave
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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M and Light/Medium/FULL Power Levels

Post by TexasDave »

I have an ASUS laptop and it has a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M built in.

All is working fine in MEDIUM and FULL Mode.

But when I drop to LIGHT, the GPU stops and says "Waiting for idle" - any ideas how to fix this?

Would really like to fold on LIGHT as I get almost as much folding done but with much less noise and heat. :D

Thanks!!
Neil-B
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Re: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M and Light/Medium/FULL Power Leve

Post by Neil-B »

You don't as such … This is a feature of the client Light power puts the GPU into an only on idle configuration by design … however if you set power to full but adjust the cpu slot for a lower number of cores it will have the same effect … use the advanced control to select the CPU slot and change configuration from -1 to a number of your choice … light would have equated to half you total cores less one for the GPU … not sure how many cores you have so can suggest a figure.
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JimboPalmer
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Re: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M and Light/Medium/FULL Power Leve

Post by JimboPalmer »

If you use Windows, here is step by step:

In the taskbar to the lower right of the screen, you should see a F@H molecule icon, click it (you may need to click an Up Arrow to see it ^)

The second item in this menu is Advanced Control, click it

On this screen to the left is a Configure button, click it

Now you get a screen with a Slots tab, click it

On this white field should be a cpu item, click it and then click edit

By default F@H set the number of CPUs to -1 meaning let the software decide.
You can enter any number from 1 to the number of threads your CPU supports.

If you have GPUs, F@H reserves one CPU per GPU to feed it data across the PCIE bus.

F@H has difficulty with large primes and their multiples number of CPUs.
7 is always large, 5 is sometimes large, and 3 is never large. Try to choose a number that is a multiple of 2 and/or 3.

2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 16, 18, 20, 21, 24, 27, 30, 32 are good numbers of CPUs to choose. (_r2w_ben has advised me of more good numbers)
5. 10. 15, 20, 25, 28 may work most of the time. Other numbers will bite you

Type the number you want, and click save.
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TexasDave
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Re: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M and Light/Medium/FULL Power Leve

Post by TexasDave »

Cool. I am on W10 on this box. I also run F@H on my Linux Server.

So as I have both a CPU and GPU, I need to configure two slots (one for the GPU and one for the CPU) - yes?

In each slot, when I click on "Edit" in the Slot Tab there are three sections (CPU with one field, GPU with three fields (GPU Index+2 GPU Core Indexes), and an Advanced area)

CPU slot is easy - Click on CPU slot in slot TAB. I have 8 threads so put that at 3 as it seems a sweet spot for my CPU (Intel Core i7 6700HQ) - 4 cores, 8 threads.

GPU is trickier. I click on the GPU slot. Do I just fill in the CPU area (under the GPU slot)? And set this to one of the number above? And leave the GPU area amd advanced areas as is at -1?

The fact that there are GPU and CPU areas in both the CPU and GPU slots confuses me.
ajm
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Re: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M and Light/Medium/FULL Power Leve

Post by ajm »

There is a check-box (EDIT: sorry, a radio button) on the left, so it will be either a CPU slot or a GPU slot.
For the GPU, you can leave -1 everywhere. If the drivers are correct, it will work. In Linux, don't forget to install the opencl dev package, too (sudo apt install ocl-icd-opencl-dev).
TexasDave
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Joined: Wed May 13, 2020 2:03 pm

Re: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M and Light/Medium/FULL Power Leve

Post by TexasDave »

Thanks everyone....
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