Join the MicroCenterOfficial Folding@Home Team: #257944

cine_chris

@ryau

Is there any method to find out if our local MicroCenter have inventory for any of the RTX 3000 cards?? 

I'd get in line if there was an opportunity to get available gear.
It looks like I have two dates in the current EVGA notify queue!
Not the 3080s, but I'll take it.  Guess it could take months to reach my date:time for the 3080.  I found out about the 3080 sign-up list late and I'm 5 days out on that list.  

ryau

cine_chris said:

@ryau

Is there any method to find out if our local MicroCenter have inventory for any of the RTX 3000 cards?? 

I'd get in line if there was an opportunity to get available gear.
It looks like I have two dates in the current EVGA notify queue!
Not the 3080s, but I'll take it.  Guess it could take months to reach my date:time for the 3080.  I found out about the 3080 sign-up list late and I'm 5 days out on that list.  

We have customers camping outside our stores each day, and with inventory being constrained, we usually sell out by lunchtime. Sometimes we don't have enough to satisfy the line, so unfortunately I have no way to determine if you can go to the store and pick one up.

cine_chris

@ryau
@MightyMayfield
I had a reservation for a couple of heatsinks & decided to head over to the Marietta store early to see what the line was like. The line started to form about 8:40.  It wasn't very long and a young man showed-up with vouchers for the available gear.  Not unpleasant, even in the mid-30 temps, so people didn't need to endure low-temps very long.  Once inside, Andrew the store manager, was personally supervising engagement with the customers and making sure they were asked good questions about how they planned to use the gear.  I felt they did an exceptionally professional and courteous job of managing the entire process.  Good news, I managed to snag an MSI 3070 Gaming X Trio (triple fan) GPU, it should be ideal for folding.
It was a much better experience than I had expected. 
Also, everyone was wearing masks, properly fitted which was the first time that I've seen the local MC staff fully compliant with the published guidelines. 

MightyMayfield

Glad to hear you were able to grab one!

JBug55

@cine_chris
Looking forward to seeing your numbers once the new card is installed and working. 
I've had good experiences at my local store (Sharonville) with Covid compliance. As an old retired guy, while I don't go out shopping much I want to be as protected as can be when I do go.

nanobots

groot said:

any security concerns with this?

such as RATs? Not likely. This is a great way to use your resources if you have them.

kmiller922

@cine_chris from the looks of your ppd very nice addition congrats on getting ahold of the new gear. I will however have to wait on getting some additional hardware might have to move in the very near future.  

cine_chris

JBug55 said:

@cine_chris
Looking forward to seeing your numbers once the new card is installed and working. 
I've had good experiences at my local store (Sharonville) with Covid compliance. As an old retired guy, while I don't go out shopping much I want to be as protected as can be when I do go.

@JBug55 I'm also an old retired guy.
To compare the 3070 to the 2070s, I decided the best method was to power-cap them both at 200 watts (even playing field) and compare the efficiency in a stingy power environment.  Their max power limits were closer than I expected 240 v 235 watts for the 2070s.  So, I need to let them run for a couple of weeks and compare the logged data in HFM.
Currently, with everything running, it looks like15-16MPPD total output.
The cooler on that MSI 3070 Gaming x Trio is a beast, fan 35% @58C

cine_chris

kmiller922 said:

from the looks of your ppd very nice addition congrats on getting ahold of the new gear. I will however have to wait on getting some additional hardware might have to move in the very near future.  

Moving is no fun, ever. Hope the change goes smoothly for you.

kmiller922

hope you had a place to keep the 2070 going @cine_chris
at first looks very nice

kmiller922

Just a FYI incase you haven't heard the news lately, there are two new mutations of the covid-19 in the UK.  There is a ton of research being pumped out right now on treatment and therapy that iis going to chew up alot of gpu and cpu time just wanted to make sure everyone is ready for it. The new mutations from the sounds of it are worse so we need to stay hard fast and on track.

MightyMayfield

Howdy! Apologize for the lack of presentness on the forum and the slowdown of foldings-going-on. Every day seems to have been busier than black friday for the past little while and things show no sign of slowing down. Promise I'll keep doing my best to keep things going upwards!

cine_chris

MC must have a big sale going.
I went by early & there must've 50 people camped out in front of the store. 
So no 3080 today.  I have slots waiting from my latest build, from yesterday...  4ea pcie3x16 &  2ea pcie3x8.
 

Phoenixx101

Chris I am so jealous, the opportunity's there are amazing! I have read that folding takes a hit when going down in lane count so I would love to see your numbers on the 8x slots once you've had it running for a bit. I'm curious about the limit because you can get used bitcoin mining motherboards with 12+ 1x lanes for almost nothing nowadays. Do you run windows or Linux for your folding machines? I am stuck with windows on my main machine for gaming purposes, but my second unit could be converted to Linux I just haven't invested the time into learning how to setup it all up. 
Sadly my folders are both coming down for much needed maintenance this weekend so I will lose a day or two of science. But the upside is that if I can make it to the Mayfield store on Sunday (weather permitting) I'm going to pickup literally whatever the cheapest 300 series ATX motherboard is so I can run my 1060 in addition to the 2080 in my second machine. ITX was nice when the goal was a tiny machine but for a science box it certainly has it's limitations. 
Merry Christmas and Safe Happy Holidays to everyone in the meantime!

MightyMayfield

I haven't seen much of a performance hit for folding until I get down to 3.0x4 links. 3.0x8 seems to only have marginal issues too small to be sure of even for a 3090.

cine_chris

My other recent experiment was this guy, 2ea pcie3x8 & 2ea pcie2x4.  It's been running near 4M PPD on Linux! I dropped on the 750 Ti & 1050 Ti to make sure all the slots were working.  It a little Supermicro mATX X9SCM mobo.  Turns out the 750+1050 are producing near 1/2M PPD on the x4 slots.  Other two cards are 1660Ti & 2060super

kmiller922

Hope everone has a safe and happy holiday season lets keep up the great work everyone.

hughjazz44

I just noticed that Folding@Home is writing LARGE volumes of data.  My new 980 Pro has seen over 22 TB of writes.  I tried installing the Folding client to a USB flash drive to alleviate this, but writes are still occurring on the C drive.  Is there a way to fix this?  If not, I will just stop Folding entirely, because I'm not interested in ruining a brand new drive.

kmiller922

@hughjazz44
Ask the guys on the folding Fourm you can get there by clicking on the about star on the advanced control pannel. Also keep in mind that the data that's being downloaded is the work unit that your processing normaly its mainly stored in your physical memmory or where ever you have your virtual memmory configured to. Hard drive are desinged for constant read write as well and there are very few time of hard drive failure due to read write issues. Much less the ssd drive are made for massive read and writes.

cine_chris

hughjazz44 said:

I just noticed that Folding@Home is writing LARGE volumes of data.  My new 980 Pro has seen over 22 TB of writes.  I tried installing the Folding client to a USB flash drive to alleviate this, but writes are still occurring on the C drive.  Is there a way to fix this?  If not, I will just stop Folding entirely, because I'm not interested in ruining a brand new drive.

Never heard of that occurring.  It sounds like a hung logging process or similar event.  

kmiller922

It would seem some are thinking that because they have a vaccine now much less two that the fight is over. I can tell you first hand that its far from it. Besides for the therapy research that they are now doing for treatment for those who have the covid-19, now there are two more mutations that have been confirmed. Both of which can take the life of the patient faster than the strain that came to the US from Europe originally. We really need to stay the course and keep at the research as much as possable. 

MightyMayfield

kmiller922 said:

It would seem some are thinking that because they have a vaccine now much less two that the fight is over. I can tell you first hand that its far from it. Besides for the therapy research that they are now doing for treatment for those who have the covid-19, now there are two more mutations that have been confirmed. Both of which can take the life of the patient faster than the strain that came to the US from Europe originally. We really need to stay the course and keep at the research as much as possable. 

I have been folding on my personal account for nearly ten years. No reason to stop now. I'll actually be moving some hardware around in the coming days to try to optimize heat and power usage.

cine_chris

Unfortunately, our MCO team effort is fading 
Down from 300 to 255 active folders and points are showing a significant dip.
The vaccine rollouts & Google touting their folding achievements might also have detracted from the f@h effort?   

kmiller922

It does seem that way unfortantly, I for one will be keeping the folding efforts going on my end. Lord knows the therapy research is still going and there have now been reports of people still getting covid-19 after first dose of the vaccine. For me today is a bit of a sad day I was informed a few hours ago my next door neighbor passed away last night while in quarintine at home, he came home from the hospital that the staffing was severly strained, he went in having a sever stroke and was awaiting test result for testing after starting to show symptoms. So long story short for all that I do personally know that we have lost to this I will be staying the course and atempting to aquire what i can to add to the folding power as I can.

cine_chris

Yesterday was my new PR (personal record) 16.3M PPD. 
The Folding active user count decline accelerated ~12/1.
A behavior pattern for Folding (& other pursuits), is to begin with an end-in-mind, it appears that the vaccine roll-out announcements might've triggered that.  The MCO team appears to be part of that, dropping ~35M PPD.
https://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/team_summary.php?s=&t=257944

Phoenixx101

One thing I'm optimistic for moving forward is when the current generation video cards are actually available to be purchased. The 3060 ti can turn close to 2.8 million PPD and costs $400 where you used to have to spend $800 or more to get that kind of power. Even as the active user numbers dwindle the potential for strong output remains possible, but I'd wager its unlikely until we get to a point where buying a card is no longer a chore that needs planned out, and more possible when you can simply order a card online or head into a store knowing there will be products on the shelf. Be it demand, supplychain issues, shipping delays the one thing common to everything right now is that Nvidia and AMD just weren't ready for a healthy launch this time around. My step-up to a 3080 is unlikely to be ready until april at the earliest 6 months after the product launched! My setup is two very expensive cards but nothing exotic at all just a single 3090 and 2080 super and they put me in 3rd (on the MC team) consistently for daily output. For around $1200 I could beat out with 3 3060ti. Another way to look at that is if just 3 people came online with those same 3060ti's they would be close to my contribution daily depending on how much time they game. In summary as newer much faster and less expensive cards end up in more systems it leaves me hopeful and excited!

cine_chris

An interesting team reversal is the Alliance Francophone team.
Up >200% since Sept 1. A long-established team #51,  it looks like the virus resurgence in Europe might've triggered the support.   Switch the chart to weekly, to see the rise.
https://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/team_summary.php?s=&t=51

hughjazz44

hughjazz44 said:

I just noticed that Folding@Home is writing LARGE volumes of data.  My new 980 Pro has seen over 22 TB of writes.  I tried installing the Folding client to a USB flash drive to alleviate this, but writes are still occurring on the C drive.  Is there a way to fix this?  If not, I will just stop Folding entirely, because I'm not interested in ruining a brand new drive.

-Edit-
I think it actually IS the Folding client.  I'm still doing some testing, but I think the checkpoints and logs are adding up.  I'm going to let the client run on a USB flash drive for a few days to see what happens.

0legravy_leg

I had most of my machines shut down over the holidays when i wasnt using them for "normal use" also turned one of my main folding machines (2060 ko) over to my son so thats 1.2-1.6m ppd out of the mix.. will try to keep at least the other 2 running more consistently which is about 2.4m ppd (5700 and 5700xt).  My "heavy hitter" thats running a 2080ti needs a tear down for maintenance, change fluids, blow the dust out the radiators, change a noisy fan, ect ect.   

cine_chris

hughjazz44 said:

-Edit-
I think it actually IS the Folding client.  I'm still doing some testing, but I think the checkpoints and logs are adding up.  I'm going to let the client run on a USB flash drive for a few days to see what happens.

I'd see HFM the Folding logger I run, but I'd have to wait a long while for FAHcore to even be visible. Also, on the Folding forum or Discord, I never hear complaints about disc access. Check the logs in the Folding controller tab for errors that might cause a flood of logging.   Hope you get it resolved.  Your contribution to the team effort is appreciated.