NVS 5100m not getting any credits. Please help.

[One-Hand]

I just started folding and I am pretty new to it and the thing is I have a lot of mid range AMD CPUs at home that are doing nothing so I got them folding, all of them are doing fine my problem is my laptops GPU.


It's a GeForce NVS 5100m and I don't think I am getting any points for the WUs the GPU is getting done. Anyone knows why this could be and how to fix it?

 

[mihapiha]

The question I ask myself is what your GPU is folding. I didn't even know them laptop GPUs were supported.

I'd use HFM.net to check on the expected PPD for your hardware. Very easy setup in Windows. That way you at least know what it's doing...

Any screenshots?

 

[SnW]

Best is to post you're F@H log (text file) ..
this way i can help you out...........

 

[One-Hand]

Sorry for the slow reply, my internet crashed.

I have made a dropbox link so you should be able to see all the logs I have.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ttqpi671dij4vef/1D0DKqLGcF

Here's a screen shot.

 

[mihapiha]

I think you're getting all the points. Looking at your stats you got plenty of points the first two days before the standford server had an issue with updating the stats.

You got quite a few points, I'm sure couldn't have gotten without the GPU. I think it's the GPU which causes the client problems to calculate what points ought to be expected. Try HFM.net as the alternative tool for that. And if you haven't done so, get a passkey: http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-passkey

The clients doesn't seem to work well properly yet with your particular driver. That's not a driver issue, but the fact that Stanford hasn't optimized it yet for your system.

 

[stevehat1]

Looks like like you are doing GPU 2 WU's and the V7 Client doesn't calculate points fro those WU's. HFM.NET is also my recommendation for a points monitoring tool.

 

[One-Hand]

Thanks for the help guys! I will be looking in to HFM.net and see if it solves the problem.

I may also be looking in to a dedicated rig for folding... Are the Nvidia GPUs best for this sort of thing because of CUDA or is AMD just as good at folding?

 

[mihapiha]

Thanks for the help guys! I will be looking in to HFM.net and see if it solves the problem.

I may also be looking in to a dedicated rig for folding... Are the Nvidia GPUs best for this sort of thing because of CUDA or is AMD just as good at folding?

AMD GPUs are poorly supported. This is a result of poor driver-support though. So if you wanna build a GPU based folding farm, nVidia is a must at this point.

Alternatively it is quite interesting to fold with a faster CPU too. For this to become really interesting, the hardware must surpass the performance of a Core i7-3930k @ 4.2 GHz. Only if your CPU(s) is/are faster, you get big WUs with some major bonus points.

These types of systems are really good if wattage-consumption is something you care about deeply, because CPU based folding farms just generate loads of points per watt consumed. The initial investment into such a folding farm is very big though. I spend about 4000 Euro on mine...

 

[stevehat1]

I would hold off for a little while on GPU based purchases. Unified GPU core 17 is in beta ATM and seems to run on openCL and the Nvidia cards are not doing as well as AMD/ATI. This all could change before release of the new core. Also this new core will be QRB

 

[One-Hand]

I would hold off for a little while on GPU based purchases. Unified GPU core 17 is in beta ATM and seems to run on openCL and the Nvidia cards are not doing as well as AMD/ATI. This all could change before release of the new core. Also this new core will be QRB

I will wait and see if I go GPU or CPU (maybe both) until then I shall try and convince my school too use one of their render machines to fold at night. I don't think it ever gets powered down so it won't make any major difference on the electricity bill and I'm not sure if it's a 2660 Xeon or a 3960X. One of them is in the server room and the other is in the render rig.

 

[mihapiha]

It really depends how your folding-farm is set up. Mine uses a whopping 700W while folding. Which seems like a ton of power for one rig. But because it's a quad socket system and the PPD I get out of it, it truely is worth it.

GPU based folding farms so far had a sweetspot with pretty much every graphic card generation. So far the GTX 460, GTX 560, GTX 660 were pretty awesome in terms of F@H performance for enitial price and consumption. The x60-Series nVidia cards seem to really be the sweetspot. Whether this will change any time soon, I don't know. Stevehat1 I imagine is right and soon AMD card could prove to become really useful for F@H.

Right now dual or quad-socket CPU folding is the king of the hill...

 

[One-Hand]

Finally I got it all up and running again! The laptop is nothing to be proud of but it's doing what it can and the rest of my systems are now farming along. The schools render rig also folding on its 3960X but under no name.

Any numbers on the GTX Titan? One would think that's a good card for this kind of thing or is this the only thing it's not good at?