SPCR Folds Team Blog

cordis · Post by **cordis** » Tue Oct 27, 2009 12:15 am

I think the last I looked, the system as a whole was burning 450W or so, but that's with the processor and a gtx 275 going in there too, so that's not really what you're looking for. And since it's currently back at home on the other side of the world, I can't really pull it out and get a difference wattage. I'll try to remember when I get back home, but it'll be a week and a half before that can happen.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 1:14 pm

Whoa, the team managed 300,000 PPD on occasion.

Not too shabby.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 3:19 pm

Corsair 850watt PS for a C note

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817139009

Shipped!!!!

kittle · Post by **kittle** » Thu Oct 29, 2009 12:35 pm

well a while back my GTX280 died and & ate the warranty with it -- so now im saving for a new card to stick in my main system.

Since this is my main PC, the folding will be paused on the evenings and weekends while im using it. Im currently looking at a GTX285 w/2GB as a good balance between annoying cooling needs, high power and good performance.

Any other suggestions on what works good for folding PPD and Gaming?

KansaKilla · Post by **KansaKilla** » Thu Oct 29, 2009 4:37 pm

aristide1 wrote:Corsair 850watt PS for a C note

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817139009

Shipped!!!!

it's showing up as $120 when i follow the link--was this a newsletter special?

KansaKilla · Post by **KansaKilla** » Thu Oct 29, 2009 4:46 pm

the nvidia cards are generally much, much better folders than ati at the moment. but, the decent price / performance cards are getting extremely scarce. can't find a gtx 260 now to save my life. ati cards are too hot and power hungry per point, so you should stick with nvidia for the moment.

the conundrum is what to do with fermi right around the corner. fudzilla is reporting it's coming at the end of december but supply looks like crap, so it'll be expensive for sure.

if you have to get a card today, go for a 260 or 275 or 285 like you mentioned. decent for folding and decent for games. if money is an issue right now (when is it not, right?) then you could be decently served for the immediate future with a gts 250 which is still getting decent points per day and is still relatively cheap. (i say this in part because the 260 is barely able to be found, and if it is found then the prices are higher than a couple of months back due to shortage and demand.)

if you can wait for fermi and have some change laying around, then do that. this is the path that i'm going to follow.

unless i change my mind tomorrow.

cordis · Post by **cordis** » Thu Oct 29, 2009 11:05 pm

Yeah, I'll chime in on the 250 too, it's cheap enough and it seems to be in decent supply. A 285 will definitely be good, but in terms of ppd/$ I'm not sure it's the best. Before I OC'd it mine got into the 7500-8500 ppd range, certainly nothing to sneeze at, but it does cost plenty. A 250 will get around 5000-5500 ppd, and at a 3rd of the cost for more than half the performance, it's a little tough to beat. So it would be a cheaper bridge card until the new cards come out.

Of course, if you're looking at doing some gaming too, and you don't want to wait for the latest version and you need the speed now, a 285 would be good. Although if you're going to spend that money, the incremental cost to go up to a 295 isn't that much more, and the ppd boost is a big increment up. Mine seems to run like dual 260s, so it's around 14000 ppd total, not quite a double 285 but it will definitely move some pixels if you need it. It is a noisy card, though, and the power consumption is certainly non-trivial, if you have to upgrade your power supply that will be a point against it. Eh, there's pros and cons, depends on what's important to you now.

Thinking about it a little bit more, it may be a good time to pick up a reconditioned card, if you can find a cheap one. If you want something to just hold you over until the new cards come out, then getting a 2 year warranty wouldn't make much sense anyway, and if you can save some money, why not? Another alternative to ponder.

cordis · Post by **cordis** » Thu Oct 29, 2009 11:18 pm

Is it me, or has there been a little bunch up on the producers list lately? It seems like cd8uk has surged to pull almost dead even to Aristide's production level, KansaKilla is up the last couple weeks and getting within striking distance of those two, SebRad had a pretty stellar week last week and is staying strong, and aspd has pulled out of a couple of down weeks to be a pretty solid performer. What's up, is everyone just tweaking their setups, have we seen some payoff from some Windows 7 upgrades, have the new gpu FahCores that work with different gpu sizes and types been paying off? Whatever it is, I like it, keep it up!

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 9:29 am

As stated elsewhere 2 of my cards were taking 24 hour sabbaticals, until I did the Cordis kick-start method (multiple restarts). But yes, cd8uk and I will probably continue to be neck and neck.

The 6 million zone is open for new players by the way. Don't let it sit empty for too long.

cordis · Post by **cordis** » Sat Oct 31, 2009 9:41 am

Don't worry, I won't.

And by the way, congratulations to our new #1:

Aristide1!!!!!!

Very nice, although I have to wonder, what's up with cd8uk?

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Sat Oct 31, 2009 11:25 am

I didn't want it this way.

cd8uk · Post by **cd8uk** » Sat Oct 31, 2009 12:17 pm

aristide1 wrote:I didn't want it this way.

Sorry, Aris, been having a few problems with my broadband and everything needed to take a little nap. Still only getting 0.6Mb

Got to do a Win7 rebuild on my major ppd machine (GTX 260 SLi) and that should be back up soon. You never know, there may be a new number 1 again in a few days

CD8UK

cordis · Post by **cordis** » Sat Oct 31, 2009 12:43 pm

Alright, bring it back up ASAP! Sounds like it's going to be a rumble, I can't wait!

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Sat Oct 31, 2009 1:42 pm

I was wondering if I was going to break 700K this month, and whoa....., I broke 800K.

Now if I can just right the quad to jump start (restart) gpus from a remote location then I will really be good.

cordis · Post by **cordis** » Sun Nov 01, 2009 6:34 am

Yeah, I thought I could use the fahweb.com site to monitor my farm over this trip, but wouldn't you know it, a day or two before I left the guy says he's taking the site down for maintenance for a couple weeks. So that was a waste of time. But whatever you do for monitoring, the big hole is the restart problem. I've been thinking about writing some code to do that, maybe I'll make that a little higher priority. Eh, one of these days.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Sun Nov 01, 2009 12:07 pm

KansaKilla wrote:it's showing up as $120 when i follow the link--was this a newsletter special?

Yes it was.

Man 1 or 2 days ago there was an open box gtx295 for like $352. Needless to say that one didn't last long. But I think it was an MSI, hence my reservations.

KansaKilla · Post by **KansaKilla** » Mon Nov 02, 2009 2:42 pm

I don't know, $350 smackers for a used board would make me think twice. Or three times. There's got to be a reason that someone didn't like it, or it wouldn't have been turned back in.

I've reached the point where I'm craving stability over absolute productivity. Fire and forget, and all that. In the long run, I think it makes a bit more sense for me.

cordis · Post by **cordis** » Mon Nov 02, 2009 10:29 pm

Now, a message from Tales of WTF:

http://en.fah-addict.net/news/news-0-88 ... a-cost.php

So, that's bizarre. Not sure I'm even convinced it's real, but how freaky would that be? And if they're really coming out with this, what does that say about 300 cards? Just strange, is all.

cordis · Post by **cordis** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 2:40 am

Another new #1? Looks like it's

cd8uk

Again having taken #1 back from Aristide. Although it's close, they're currently ranked 777 and 778 in the project, amazingly close. So I'll probably stop announcing unless one of you pulls ahead for good, the yo-yo ranking is wearing me out.

frenchie · Post by **frenchie** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 4:22 am

Official links :
http://www.evga.com/articles/00503/
http://www.evga.com/products/moreinfo.a ... P3-1178-AR

also, a little quote just for fun :

Requirements
Minimum of a 680 power supply.
(Minimum recommended power supply with +12 Volt current rating of 46 Amps.)
An available 6-pin PCI-E power connector and an available 8 pin PCI-E power connector

hahahahaha !!! I think this is funny when ATI is starting to go the power saving route... Imagine the idle power consumption of this thing !!!

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 10:20 am

Video card makers always quote excessively high power requirements because so many power supplies are junk.

$349 for a GTX275? Are they on crack?

--------------------------------------

Also - I saw an article where TSMC 40nm yields were 40%. I thought that was good until I read they were 60% last month.

Essentially what we're saying is you buy a 40nm card today you pay for one that works and one that fails. No wonder they cost so much.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 10:27 am

cordis wrote:Now, a message from Tales of WTF:

http://en.fah-addict.net/news/news-0-88 ... a-cost.php

So, that's bizarre. Not sure I'm even convinced it's real, but how freaky would that be? And if they're really coming out with this, what does that say about 300 cards? Just strange, is all.

Yes the news is real, I've seen remarks about it elsewhere. Also - The shaders counts on not even multiples, so perhaps just using the big boy for folding may be best.

Oh this is the $349 card? Ehh, they're still on crack.

cordis · Post by **cordis** » Wed Nov 04, 2009 1:08 am

Hey Aristide, congrats on being back on top again, looks like you've been there about a day.

But in other, much more sad news, our team has now fallen from 49 to 50, we just got passed by Poland.

frenchie · Post by **frenchie** » Wed Nov 04, 2009 8:35 am

Hopefully, if all goes well, touch wood, fingers crossed (and all that...), I'll be back to folding on my main rig tomorrow !!!

And I have a project on the way to get an intel P4 (2.8GHz I believe) folding, maybe with what I assume is an AGP 6800GS

(Be afraid Cordis and Aristide, be very afraid !!!!

)

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Wed Nov 04, 2009 11:10 am

Haha, there is nothing to fear. Cordis is going to run us all down in a brief period. That's the sound of inevitability.

Other news, this supposed, NVidia should announce its latest in 40nm technology, a 96 shader model. The alleged date is Nov 17th. Like the current batch of Asus 9600 GSOs it's a 128 bit memory bus and 512MB of GDDR3. <place yawn emoticon here>

I'd like them to be on the same NewEgg page with the current bunch of 96 shader units. The Asus cards are still $40, and the new ones will be what? $120?

Oh brother.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Fri Nov 06, 2009 10:12 am

AMD's latest energy hog:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/di ... 65-c3.html

Energy savings seems to be acquired by applying a more realistic voltage to start with, versus their prior voltage settings.

It continues to be an excellent replacement for anyone who still has an Easy Bake Oven from the 1960s. That toy "baked" goods with a 60 watt light bulb. This could be the next step up.

frenchie · Post by **frenchie** » Fri Nov 06, 2009 1:37 pm

Just installed CPU and GPU clients on Windows 7

Works perfectly.

I'm back in the fold for SPCR !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Fri Nov 06, 2009 2:27 pm

You know why?

Because Windows 7 should have been Vista SP2.

In the long run I bet Vista becomes obsolete before XP does, at least from the users point of view.

cordis · Post by **cordis** » Fri Nov 06, 2009 8:47 pm

Hey, great news Frenchie, keep on folding!

In other news, I'm back home, and just restarted a few gpus that had been stalled, so I should be back up to speed sometime soon. I've been down in the 40k range for the last few days, it'll be nice to get back to babying the farm and keeping things up to speed. Woohoo!

KansaKilla · Post by **KansaKilla** » Sat Nov 07, 2009 6:07 am

cordis wrote:But in other, much more sad news, our team has now fallen from 49 to 50, we just got passed by Poland.

At least it wasn't Ukraine. The Ukraine is weak!

SPCR Folds Team Blog

sorry

yeah

in other news...

don't worry

yeah!

remote monitoring

another dual gpu....

new #1

Re: another dual gpu....

sad news

I'm back too!

Re: sad news