Folding@Home performance on older GPUs

[VoraciousGorak]

Hey, so it's almost winter time here, and guess what that means! It means I'll be Folding until Florida is once again hotter and muggier than the devil's buttcrack. I have a Secret Weapon in the mix (R9 290X OMG SO EXCITED) but until then I'm Folding on some older hardware, trying out the new FAH client. A few questions, though:

SMP PPD seems to have tanked hardcore. It's not 100% idle right now, but a 4.4GHz 2500K running DDR3-2133 should be pulling more than 9700PPD, right? Did they rebalance the equation that much?

Second: my HD 6950 is running at ~50% GPU load right now on project 11293. It's pulling out 3200 PPD. The points-per-watt on this card are atrocious right now. I'm on Catalyst 13.1 drivers right now if it makes a difference.

I'm having a hard time finding answers to how to speed things up with this particular GPU. Is it not worth Folding on stuff lower than a 7000 series? Is it worth running my GTX275 and GTX460 anymore? Did SMP PPD tank that bad or should I just use FAH GPU Tracker for SMP stuff?

 

[sheroo]

When I'm running my 2500K @ 4.4 - with no gpu folding on the 6.34 console client on Win 7 I get about 15K PPD. Can't shed any light on the GPU though.

 

[Jeff_s510]

my 2500K @ 4.4 has tanked between 8k - 12k PPD. ive recently stopped folding on it.....not worth the wear and tear imo.

 

[stevehat1]

The newer cards put out great PPD wirh a fraction of the heat of the older cards, I would not run Core 17 on anything less than a 560TI 448. just MO

I have a half dozen 460s laying here with no folding future, just not worth running anymore.

All of my SMP folding is optimized to support Core 17 folding, i.e. cores are sacrificed as necessary to optimize GPU folding. 4 core stuff is running at -smp2 at best, a 2 core machine is not running SMP at all, just there to feed a 7950.......

Things have changed a bunch in the last few months.

The 6950 will soon run out of WUs as core 16 is at EOL

Sorry to be a doomsayer but things have really changed recently, I think blah has quit a SMP folding and is only doing GPU and i'm not too far away from the same.

I would think a 290X would make you forget about everything else you have for folding, it should be a beast, haven't seen any numbers yet but with that many SP's it has to be WOW!!

 

[VoraciousGorak]

I didn't realize the 6950 would soon be too archaic to Fold, but I guess the architectures have changed dramatically on both sides of the GPU wars. My 460 is pulling more PPD than the 6950 by far, and probably drawing less power; judging by the PPD I'm getting, I don't think any of the hardware in my sig is worth Folding on anymore unless the nights really do get cold enough to warrant a space heater.

 

[Jeff_s510]

The newer cards put out great PPD wirh a fraction of the heat of the older cards, I would not run Core 17 on anything less than a 560TI 448. just MO

I have a half dozen 460s laying here with no folding future, just not worth running anymore.

All of my SMP folding is optimized to support Core 17 folding, i.e. cores are sacrificed as necessary to optimize GPU folding. 4 core stuff is running at -smp2 at best, a 2 core machine is not running SMP at all, just there to feed a 7950.......

Things have changed a bunch in the last few months.

The 6950 will soon run out of WUs as core 16 is at EOL

Sorry to be a doomsayer but things have really changed recently, I think blah has quit a SMP folding and is only doing GPU and i'm not too far away from the same.

I would think a 290X would make you forget about everything else you have for folding, it should be a beast, haven't seen any numbers yet but with that many SP's it has to be WOW!!

I did try core 17 on my 560Ti, went down to 12k PPD, down from 25K on core 15.....these were the same magical WU's i was getting 100K+ ppd with on my 760, which is only getting 23K on core 17 now, and 12K on core 15

 

[hmmblah]

The newer cards put out great PPD wirh a fraction of the heat of the older cards, I would not run Core 17 on anything less than a 560TI 448. just MO

I have a half dozen 460s laying here with no folding future, just not worth running anymore.

All of my SMP folding is optimized to support Core 17 folding, i.e. cores are sacrificed as necessary to optimize GPU folding. 4 core stuff is running at -smp2 at best, a 2 core machine is not running SMP at all, just there to feed a 7950.......

Things have changed a bunch in the last few months.

The 6950 will soon run out of WUs as core 16 is at EOL

Sorry to be a doomsayer but things have really changed recently, I think blah has quit a SMP folding and is only doing GPU and i'm not too far away from the same.

I would think a 290X would make you forget about everything else you have for folding, it should be a beast, haven't seen any numbers yet but with that many SP's it has to be WOW!!

I have one SMP client left. It just isn't worth it anymore for the little PPD you get. The 680 and 2 7950s I'm running run cool, quiet, and the PPD is excellent. Also, my PCs are not sluggish at all for 90% of what I'm doing. The only time I need to pause folding is during a game. It's not very exciting I guess, but I really hope this trend continues.

I'm really anxious to see what kind of PPD the new AMD cards will be pulling.

 

[sheroo]

Would an old skt 775 E5300 have enough stones to adequately run an R9 280X? Could it run 2?

Is the R9 280X going to perform exactly like the 7970?