SPCR Folds Team Blog

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Tue Oct 13, 2009 12:55 pm

The NVidia GT210 and 220 were announced today.

Where's the yawn emoticon?

ZZZZzzzzzzzzz

cordis · Post by **cordis** » Tue Oct 13, 2009 3:32 pm

There was an article on anandtech about the 220 yesterday:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3657

It does look pretty lame. It has a whopping 48 stream processors so it's a half 9600 gso, and lists for about $70, or more than a 9600 gso. It's vaguely ineresting that the card he got is almost a single slot card, the fan on it looks small enough that you could imagine it having a passive heat sink in a different configuration. Couple that with the ability to get hdmi audio from the slot instead of an extra cable, and it seems like they might be focusing on the htpc market with the card. So it could wind up being useful as a quiet but moderately powerful card, not a bad deal for the silencing crowd. But for folders, it's overpriced, and even if it were single slot, sticking 7 into a super motherboard to get less power than 4 9600 gso's is a waste of time. I'm beginning to understand why this was OEM to begin with. Bring on the 300s already, before I start coveting the new AMD cards.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Tue Oct 13, 2009 6:56 pm

It was a good weekend to go home. There was a power outage Thursday so I found my quad powered down. Sure as sheet I powered it up, started all 4 gpus, watched gpu 2 EUE half a dozen times and wind up suspended for 24 hrs. Two days later 2 gpus were suspended. I rebooted and started them all up, and they commenced folding. I have no rhyme or reason for this behavior. The cards are not too hot, the fan speeds are up there, appx 77%, the shaders are at 1700 (I used to run them at 1800 but not anymore). Ice cold the 3rd card always burps, maybe the pci slot itself is not secure enough. On the positive side the setup seldom went over 300 watts.

cordis · Post by **cordis** » Wed Oct 14, 2009 1:25 pm

yeah, you seemed to have perked up considerably. I had a slow night when I took down my big earner to see if I could pull a friends' data off his bad NAS drives. Now I won't pass you until new year's eve, or maybe even next year. D'oh!

And I've had some of those bad gpu WUs too, the 250 in my htpc seems to be particularly prone to getting them. Not sure what the deal is. Although it's vaguely interesting that I'm only seeing them on my windows boxes. They do seem to respond well to just ctrl-c'ing the client and starting it back up. I tried downclocking the 250, but that didn't seem to help. One of those things, I guess.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Wed Oct 14, 2009 4:13 pm

I haven't seen an EUE on my XP dual gpu system since I lowered the shaders to 1700. I mean the thing runs for MONTHS with no manuall intervention, no errors of any kind. AMD CPU and NVidia chipset.

My GTX260 has never had an EUE error. That box seems to continue to experience occasional memory leaks. It runs SMP as well. I seem to hit a batch of WUs and I will slowly run out of memory. A reboot resolves it. Good time to download updates. It's a Vista box, I would have thought memory leaks would have been a thing of the past by now. This is an all Intel box.

I'm looking forward to cutting my folding electric bill more than getting more points. But both would be even better.

The problem child is AMD CPU and chipset. Is that a clue? SB600 by the way.

Post by **NeilBlanchard** » Wed Oct 14, 2009 6:19 pm

Hi,

My brother Nathan has now cracked back into the top 100 on our team. And I had to install the latest OSX client, as things just jammed up and got nowhere. It is now Folding again...

KansaKilla · Post by **KansaKilla** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 5:53 am

So my question for cordis, aris, and all you others is this: are you waiting for the new Fermi cards before upgrading you kit, are you going to go with new hardware that's out currently, or are you going to just wait for changes in the FAH landscape (new clients, etc.) and take a wait and see approach?

My wallet is itching to lay down some $$ for a new card, but my head has too many questions right now.

cordis · Post by **cordis** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 10:58 am

Hey, congrats to Nathan! Always a thrill to see another active folder on the first page.

As for what I'm up to, well, I did just get a 295 to see how much I could boost the ppd/watt in a system. So far it's pretty cool. But doing that left me with a pair of 260s that I'm not using, so I'm looking into motherboards more than graphics cards at the moment. But now that I'm over 50k per day, and I just had to replace my main TV, and I have a big business trip coming up, I'm not really looking at buying anything new right at the moment.

But when I do start buying, it seems like there will be some interesting choices. The clients seem to be getting some significant upgrades. The most interesting one is the beta FahCore11 that supposedly allows for different nvidia cards to fold in harmony. From what I can gather from the Pande boards, it may still require the boards to be in the same family, and it doesn't work for every gpu yet, but it's an encouraging trend. If they can spread the new code to all the clients and it does become easy to mix up different gpus, then you'd really want your motherboards to have as many pci-e slots as you can get. They also seem to be working on OpenCL based clients, and that should open things up a lot more in terms of gpu use. It may give AMD cards a boost, and that would really make things complicated. There are also rumors that 200 series cards are being closed out by nvidia, so supplies may be shrinking, and so prices may level off or go up.

So for now, yeah, there is a lot of uncertainty in what kind of gpu to get next. If I were going for an upgrade, I'd probably go with a new motherboard now, and wait out the gpu situation a little while. Get an i7 board with as many pci-e slots as you can find/afford, get the 8 virtual core boost, and then see how the gpu dust settles. Maybe I'd get a PS3 slim too, I hear that they are much quieter than the old version, and I could use a blu-ray player. Really though, I say that now, but if I see some super deal on a gpu card at Fry's, I'd be tempted to pick one up. And hey, Windows 7 is coming out officially next week, I keep hearing that SMP should work better on that, probably worth checking out.

Edit to add: Warning on 1156 motherboards!
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3661
Scary stuff, be careful what you buy, I guess.

KansaKilla · Post by **KansaKilla** » Fri Oct 16, 2009 12:45 pm

Cordis, you just had to bring up Fry's again and make me almost wish I was back in Phoenix again.

Almost. That was intern year and I can't ever look at a cactus without remembering how utterly miserable I was. Still. . . . Almost.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Fri Oct 16, 2009 5:18 pm

cordis wrote: There are also rumors that 200 series cards are being closed out by nvidia, so supplies may be shrinking, and so prices may level off or go up.

I heard the same, I just don't believe half of what NVidia claims.

KansaKilla · Post by **KansaKilla** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 10:21 am

So would any of you pick up cards now or just wait and hang for the next iteration?

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 11:29 am

That's a tough one. I don't feel like shelling out for a 295. Its too much money and I haven't bought anything for fun in a very long time. I spent an absurd amount of money on tuition again this year. Next year is the last of it, but it too will bite the big one. No vacation at all for me this year, and perhaps not next year depending on where and when my internship will be and what it will cost (internships usually pay squat when they pay anything at all.) Oh did I mention I should start saving for a new car? My 13 year old Toyota has over 250,000 miles on it.

It's not just a matter of shaders either. The utility bill needs to shrink. I don't mind as much in the winter. At the apartment we gravitate towards the PC room most of the evening, we shut the doors and it warms up nicely, no surprise there. I'm not only waiting to see what a GT300 will do PPD wise I want to see how much power it will consume in the process. The idea that a pair of GT300 gpus on a single card using the same electricity as a 295 today would make it tempting. I could literally shut off a pc for each card, eliminating the useless cpu overhead that comes with each additional pc up and running (when it's an AMD). But I found the 65nm to 55nm power drop not very impressive. So who knows?

cordis · Post by **cordis** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 2:17 pm

Hey, congrats to our new #1, cd8uk! Things are changing at the top!

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 12:29 pm

Holy Moly!

$420 for a GTX 295 shipped, and new, not open box.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814127438

But it's MSI -

cordis · Post by **cordis** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 2:19 pm

That's pretty good, the one I picked up earlier this month was $430 with a rebate. I think I've seen them get down to $420 on newegg before for a couple cards that would only show you the price in your basket. I'm not sure what the implication of these kind of deals is for the 300 line, it could be that as the inventory drops for the rest of the cards, the 295s aren't moving as well, so they want to clear them all out before the new cards come out. According to this wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison ... sing_units the high end 300 cards are due in December, so they may want to clear out more of the high end stuff first. The wikipedia article seems to get updated fairly regularly, but I don't know how accurate it is, though. It'll be interesting to see if the prices get any lower.....

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 6:49 pm

I really had to look hard to find what you mentioned about 4th quarter announcements. The GT300 series chart is essentially a collection of empty boxes.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Tue Oct 20, 2009 5:21 pm

Interesting deal. Antec Earthwatts 650 $63 shipped with promo code EMCMLNL52.

Looks like their throwing in a Kinston Micro SDHC 4GB for free until 10/31 as well. Or add an Antec 300 Illusion for another $60, also shipped.

Windows XP Home for a folding box - $80 shipped.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 4:52 am

Methinks Cordis's 295 just started folding.

Yikes

KansaKilla · Post by **KansaKilla** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 5:57 am

Oh . . . my . . . gosh.

cordis · Post by **cordis** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 11:39 am

Well, what really happened was that I took one of my idle gtx 260s and stuck it in a box that I had shut down. I figured it would be good to start an extra machine up before I go on my big business trip, so that way if any machines died while I was gone, I'd have a little extra buffer. Also got kind of a lucky WU mix yesterday, for the previous couple I kept getting those 1888 point ones, they seem to lower ppd, but then yesterday I got a bunch of those 787 point WUs, and they push it up. So eh, better than average day, I'm sure it'll be lower today.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 6:10 pm

You gotta wonder what's going on. AMD releases the 95W X3 435, inferior to the 720, price around $76 it's on par with an Intel 6500, a dual core, and the website are raving? Yeah I want AMD to stick around and stick it to Intel, but this stuff is just silly.

The 620 X4 can barely compete with the Q8400 work wise, but not efficiency wise. I'd burn through the price difference in very little time folding 24/7. I realize most people don't use a cpu this way but for an office desktop this tri-core will prove better than a dual core?

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 11:52 am

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/20 ... eyond.aspx

Yeah baby!

cd8uk · Post by **cd8uk** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 1:35 pm

cordis wrote:Hey, congrats to our new #1, cd8uk! Things are changing at the top!

Thanks! I am worried that my term at No.1 will be disappointingly short, especially considering its taken nearly 2 and a half years of solid Folding to get here.

Congrats in advance therefore to Aris and then, seemingly inevitably, your good self

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 2:31 pm

cd8uk wrote:Thanks! I am worried that my term at No.1 will be disappointingly short, especially considering its taken nearly 2 and a half years of solid Folding to get here.

Congrats in advance therefore to Aris and then, seemingly inevitably, your good self

Haha, thanks and I understand completely what you are saying. At best I will only keep the seat warm for 2 months before Cordis takes it. So Cordis, Happy New Year and Congratulations.

Who says you can't see into the future?

cordis · Post by **cordis** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 3:47 pm

Don't worry, I'll be going on a big trip on Saturday, and back after 2 weeks, so I'm sure I'll lose some points then. Hell, just yesterday two machines had trouble and needed some manual restarts, I can only imagine what shape the farm will be in in 2 weeks.

Of course, when I get back, it'll be into November, I'm hoping I won't need the AC so much, and I can just go balls to the wall then. And I may even have some time for upgrades.....

cordis · Post by **cordis** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 8:00 pm

So has anyone else noticed that aristide and cd8uk are both scheduled to hit 7,000,000 at almost exactly the same time, 4.3 days? What are the odds of that? I hope I'm online to see it happen, it's like a double odometer turn.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Sat Oct 24, 2009 7:46 am

Well Cordis's statement was true for about a day. Not sure what's going on but PPD had dropped, but still too high to indicate the quad is powered off.

All the stuff that Cordis said might happen to him may be happening to me. Let's hear it for folders at remote locations! <insert raspberry here>

cordis · Post by **cordis** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 12:16 am

Yeah, it's already happening to me, 2 days into my trip and one of my gpus is already down. Oh well, I hope the rest hang in there. Sorry to hear about your troubles Aristide, it looks like cd8uk has already broken 7 mil. Note to self, start a new thread, damn.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 8:59 am

I take slowdowns in stride, they don't upset me anymore. I sit around and wonder "What next?"

Doesn't mean I like them though.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 5:21 pm

So Cordis, how much electro powered volted amp watts does your 295 use

Succinct minds want to know.

(I do too.)

SPCR Folds Team Blog

article yesterday

yeah

kind of wait and see

Re: kind of wait and see

congrats to the new number 1!

good deal

actually....

Re: congrats to the new number 1!

Re: congrats to the new number 1!

relax

hey

already happening