Join the MicroCenterOfficial Folding@Home Team: #257944

cine_chris

kmiller922 said:

Now how cool would it be to get a hold of that new Nvidia AI chip and put that to work if it was affordable. There i go dreaming again.

Picture a Transformer that eats WUs.

cine_chris

<deleted>

MightyMayfield

The first billion of many, hopefully!

kmiller922

@MightyMayfield Congratz

Kirito

Nice Job!

It will only take me twenty five years to get to where you are now!

Needless to say, I am glad we aren't folding origami cranes to accomplish this.

Kirito

cine_chris

@MightyMayfield Kudos to everyone supporting the team.  I saw that. I too was enjoying a more modest celebration, 100 million. Dallas hit 100 million milestone yesterday too,   We also have 3 donor teams about to reach the 1/4 Billion level. 

Wommwalsh

Congratulations to all! Team rank of 92 isn’t shabby either. 

My mostly antique collection is going to drop out of the top 20 soon, especially when the summer heat throttles it (quite a surprise to be here in the first place).

Kirk says: “I need more power”. Scotti says: “I’m giving her all she’s got”. I say: “Maybe we need a new ship”! Maybe there will be a MC-Folders team discount sale someday…

kmiller922

I'm just surprized that somehow I've managed to get into the top 30 for the team, working on finding other ways to keep eveything nice and cool to keep the pace going, maybe make it part of a keg-er-rater, why not 

cine_chris

Wommwalsh said:

Maybe there will be a MC-Folders team discount sale someday…

Starting with the 1st pick of open-box GPUs would be a good starting point. 
&/or a sponsored rebate program for MCfolders perhaps? 
Discount points for reaching folding plateaus? 
MCfollder team face masks?
Free gear for making foolish forum comments or senior-retiree folders?  (going for a double)

Yellowbillycat

cine_chris said:

The weather is starting to heat up in the ATL area, so I'll have to start throttling back on the F@H effort soon.

@cine_chris One of the things I don't miss about living in ATL: Summer.
I'm agonizing over how to get across the 5M PPD barrier.  I've hit a GPU ceiling.  I knew I was done when I pulled a GT 1030 out of the bottom of a box and slapped it in a Core2Duo.

kmiller922

I think the only way I can cross the 3M PPD is to get another system going just not sure if I should if a miner rig would be a good way to go about it since i don't know linix at all. I don't know if this would be the best way to dive into a operating system I've never used before.

cine_chris

@kmiller922 From what I read on the EVGA forum you don't go less than a 4x PCIE slot and they talk about running i3s with Linux.  On Win10, I see about 30% cpu utilization on an older i5 with one RTX GPU.   This system is running two GTX 1660s with a XEON E3-1230 v3; it gets about 30% cpu utilization.  NO folding on the older CPUs it just wastes watts.  Best GPU for me has been the MSI Ventus 2060 super. I'm buying another one tomorrow and returning two open-box 1660s.  I'm going to try and run two of these in an open-chassis over the summer.  That box should sustain ~3milPPD, likely more.  The EVGA guys talk about power capping their GPUs to control temp & power draw.  I use MSI Afterburner to do that and set a fan profile that minimizes thermal fluctuations during checkpoints and WU cycling HTH

cine_chris

Yellowbillycat said:

@cine_chris One of the things I don't miss about living in ATL: Summer.
I'm agonizing over how to get across the 5M PPD barrier.  I've hit a GPU ceiling.  I knew I was done when I pulled a GT 1030 out of the bottom of a box and slapped it in a Core2Duo.

@Yellowbillycat
LOL & LOL   I had two 1050Ti w/i7 cpu running until very recently chasing you guys. 
I still have some Core2 Duo too... found a local group that'll take donations and currently collecting all that into boxes, A4,A6 AMDs too. 
I'd try to add a RTX 2060 super in an open-chassis.  I've gutted two old tower systems down to their bare chassis.  I'll get some pictures to post.  I'm planning to tread water until we see what AMD & Nvidia will unveil in the fall. PCIe4, lower pwr consumption & anticipated huge performance jump in GPU tech, I'm trying to curb my enthusiasm   
 

kmiller922

Then I might be better off trying to vertical mount my 980 ti and get another 2080ti then if I'm understanding that correctly @cine_chris. I've managed to keep my gpu nice and cool no higher than 66c and running a I-9 9900 processor to my surprise has been not to far behind on the wu's. Since getting the aoi cooler for the cpu it has been running smooth as glass. Might try to go that route power use has been running at a steady 95% efficiency. 

Yellowbillycat

cine_chris said:

@kmiller922 From what I read on the EVGA forum you don't go less than a 4x PCIE slot and they talk about running i3s with Linux.

Interesting.  I have a 1x PCIe riser on the way ($6) to get an idle P106-90 running.  I'll have to compare it to the other P106 that's in an 8x slot right now.  4x risers are cheap, but out of China, so sloooow delivery.
Currently running:
R7 1700 + RTX 2070 Ubuntu 18.04
i5-6600K + GTX 1070 + P106-90 Ubuntu 18.04
i5-2400 + GTX 1650 (when it itsn't running Zwift) Windows 10
Core2Duo + GT 1030 Ubuntu 20.04
P71 Laptop i7-7700HQ + Quadro M620 Windows 10

kmiller922

The other system I have up and running is my sons gamming laptop mobil 1080ti nvida and I9 8950hk processor. Both systems running windows 10 pro  So yeah I guess I should get more systems up and running as well when I can aquire them lol. But one other thing I noticed is that gpu usage is only about 30-40% avg sometimes 50% is there a way to get it to use all of it or at least more?

cine_chris

@kmiller922
A 2080Ti, at 300 watts power draw is a lot of heat & requires a big pwr supply.  The latest Folding spreadsheet says 2.7M PPD for the 2080Ti!  I suspect I could get ~3M PPD on avg from two 2060 Super for near the same power & <2/3 $$$, but I have several boxes to hold stuff.  Right now the 2060 is running 1.34M PPD & the 2070 is at 1.87M PPD.  The 2060 is usually higher, around 1.5 , but WUs vary.  <rant>11748 project is the one that's pulling down the 2060.  I complained about another project & got a response from the proj mgr.</rant>     

ChrisHarshman

Yellowbillycat said:

Currently running:
R7 1700 + RTX 2070 Ubuntu 18.04
i5-6600K + GTX 1070 + P106-90 Ubuntu 18.04
i5-2400 + GTX 1650 (when it itsn't running Zwift) Windows 10
Core2Duo + GT 1030 Ubuntu 20.04
P71 Laptop i7-7700HQ + Quadro M620 Windows 10

funny... glad to see I'm not the only one running some old garbage CPU just to hold another graphics card to get a few more points.  Did you try 20.04 just for the challenge?  I've read there are a lot of broken dependencies with the drop of Python2 support.  Setup I have currently:

Ryzen 5 1600 + GTX 1660 TI  (open box deal!)  dual boot Windows 10 and LUbuntu 18.04
Ryzen 5 1600 + GTX 1660 super  running LUbuntu 18.04
FX-8320 + GTX1650 super  (only folding on GPU)  running LUbuntu 18.04
Core 2 Duo + GTX 1060  (only folding on GPU)  running Debian Buster
...and I've been trying to talk myself out of getting another graphics card for my Celeron J3450 processor machine ;-)

Also @MightyMayfield, congrats on the billion mark!

cine_chris

@Yellowbillycat , I'm a Zwifter too. Going to add a GTX 1050Ti to that box to run the video, which I can just pause for Zwift. That box will be close to 1M PPd with everything running smoothly & none of the WU that have been choking the 1660s.

kmiller922

My mistake I think was not keeping another copy of a os for another system, I just kept doing upgrades when it was time and didn't think I was going to need another system so that's why I only have my one tower and laptop here. That and I would need a crash course on linux for dummies as well if i go that route on a system solely for folding.

cine_chris

cine_chris said:

@Yellowbillycat , I'm a Zwifter too. Going to add a GTX 1050Ti to that box to run the video, which I can just pause for Zwift. That box will be close to 1M PPd with everything running smoothly & none of the WU that have been choking the 1660s.

About as anticipated, that system is runnng in the 900k PPD area.  I'm thinking about trying to sustain 3-4M PPD over the summer months with two systems.  Adding the GTX 1050Ti paused running video, allowed me to run Zwift w/o crashes with the CPU & !660 super at full.  Sometimes I get lucky and my ideas actually work. 

Kirito

kmiller922 said:

My mistake I think was not keeping another copy of a os for another system, I just kept doing upgrades when it was time and didn't think I was going to need another system so that's why I only have my one tower and laptop here. That and I would need a crash course on linux for dummies as well if i go that route on a system solely for folding.

Linux is easy.  I am using Fedora on three of my four folding machines.  I like it because of the support I get and the way I can make it look like Windows when I build machines for other people who are unfamiliar with Linux.  My daughter ran a machine for four months before she knew I had switched her off of Windows.  Go to www.distrowatch.com and find a flavor of Linux you like.  Ubuntu looks like Mac.  Mint is easiest and can look either way.  (You can make any Linux distro look like anything).  And best of all it's all free.  I chose Fedora and then googled "28 things after Fedora install" which gives you a command line walk through on what you need to do next.  Then google FAH for Linux and follow the instructions.

Just don't start with Arch as a distro unless you really do want to play at the deeper end of the pool.  If all you have known is Windows then use something easier with more built in GUI's.  That said, once you get into the habit of doing your routine maintenance from the command line you might find it faster and easier.  JMHO.

Kirito

kmiller922

Well we may be down to 48.6% of the total users we had but we are still turning and burning
  GO TEAM

ryau

BTW a new Windows client is available: 7.6.13 https://foldingathome.org/start-folding/

Wommwalsh

ryau said:

BTW a new Windows client is available: 7.6.13 https://foldingathome.org/start-folding/

I thought I saw a bunch of bug reports on that version – but I can’t seem to find them now.

ryau

Wommwalsh said:

ryau said:

BTW a new Windows client is available: 7.6.13 https://foldingathome.org/start-folding/

I thought I saw a bunch of bug reports on that version – but I can’t seem to find them now.

I ran it overnight with no issues, but I'm running it on a single machine, no complex set up here.

ChrisHarshman

Yes Linux can be easy.  One of the reason I have 3 machines folding on LUbuntu 18.04 is because how quick it is to setup a new machine, plus it operates more efficiently.  A number of people online report that you will earn more points folding on Linux.

I've been running the 7.6.13 client on Linux for a couple of weeks now, it's been fine there.

ryau

Interesting, not sure I want to switch to Linux, but I did manage to fine tune my config to get about a 20-25% increase in PPD. I have a 3950X (16C/32T) and found running multiple CPU slots with 4 threads each seems optimal. I've also applied a mild CPU OC, but am leery of pushing it too much as temps climb pretty high for not much performance gain.

MissingNOLA

Question for those who know better than I:
I've gotten an old Core2Duo system resurrected with a Linux OS.  The graphics card is too ancient to fold and this CPU doesn't eek out enough points to justify its power drain.  Anyone know of a cheap PCIe GPU that would work in this clunker to make it worthwhile?  Don't want to spend much since folding is the only use this box will ever get.

MissingNOLA

kmiller922 said:

My mistake I think was not keeping another copy of a os for another system, I just kept doing upgrades when it was time and didn't think I was going to need another system so that's why I only have my one tower and laptop here. That and I would need a crash course on linux for dummies as well if i go that route on a system solely for folding.

I was in the same boat, but was able to find enough info online to get an old PC running without too much trouble, and I'm no techie.  You'll need a blank thumb drive (8gb should be plenty).  Pick your Linux flavor (I'm using Mint; best? Maybe not, but I don't really care right now) from a distro (previous reply to you had good direction there).  Download the Linux file and find the Rufus app (also free - this let's you make a bootable thumb drive).  Once you've saved the Linux download to your current PC, put in the thumb drive and run Rufus; it will ask you to point it to that Linux file, which it will use to make the Linux thumb drive.  You can then boot another machine from that thumb drive and the OS will run from it.  You can install on a HDD from there, if you like.  
There are plenty of online videos demonstrating how to do this, just find one that speaks to your level.