Why do my estimated daily points fluctuate so much?

[Kyle_Brandtjen]

I leave my computer on all the time and 90% of the time only folding home is running and it is set to use full power. but the points fluctuate from 20,000 (usually 30,000) to 65,000. why is there such a big change when no new programs are being started? shouldn't it remain relatively constant?

[Zagen30]

It would help to know what your hardware is.

In theory, yes, PPD should remain relatively constant. There will always be scaling oddities when one's hardware differs from the benchmark machine, especially if yours is significantly more or less powerful. But obviously you're seeing more than the 10% or so variation they usually shoot for.

I'm guessing you have an Nvidia card. There are currently two cores that Fermi/Kepler cards can use: core 15, which is older and on its way out in the next year or so, and core 17, which is newer and better. Core 17 earns higher PPD on most Kepler cards and some Fermi cards than core 15, both because it uses the QRB system for points and because the work it does is more valuable than that of core 15. The low PPD you see is probably from core 15 WUs, and even there there are some core 15 projects that earn better PPD than others due to some not being rebenchmarked when others were.

To give some concrete examples, my GTX 780s can do around 175k PPD on project 8900, which uses core 17. The better-earning core 15 projects are around 60k, and the lowest-scoring core 15s are around 38k.

[Kyle_Brandtjen]

I have an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 approx. total memory 2683mb
I have 16 gigs of ram any other hardware information needed?

[Zagen30]

No that's pretty much it. As I said above, it's likely due to the varying PPD of the core 15 projects, which I don't think they're going to fix at this point.

[P5-133XL]

There is a rounding bug in v7.3.6 that causes estimated PPD fluctuation that is supposedly fixed in beta v7.4.2. This bug was especially evident with Core_17 WU's.

[Kyle_Brandtjen]

how do I know what core im using? and where can I download the fastest folding home client? all I can find on the site is the fah-installer_7.3.6_x86.exe

[P5-133XL]

The advanced control lists what core each slot is using.

There is a new section in the forums for Beta v7.4.x and the first post in the section gives DL info for the current open beta client: viewtopic.php?f=94&t=25657

Do note, that the new v7.4.2 beta is incompatible with the current HFM.net version v.0.9.1 revision 595. If you use HFM.net that may be a deal-breaker for switching to the new folding client.

[Zagen30]

Also note that there are no faster or slower clients, as the client doesn't do any of the calculations. The core and project are what determine your PPD. Currently it's rather random whether the WU you get is from a core 15 or core 17 project, and you may see long stretches of WUs for one of those cores.