Working around poor display performance when folding

It seems that a lot of GPU problems revolve around specific versions of drivers. Though NVidia has their own support structure, you can often learn from information reported by others who fold.

Moderators: Site Moderators, FAHC Science Team

Post Reply
csvanefalk
Posts: 147
Joined: Mon May 21, 2012 10:28 am

Working around poor display performance when folding

Post by csvanefalk »

I am folding on a Fedora 20 box, with a GTX770 running on the 319.76 drivers.

I did expect display performance to take a hit while folding and working at the same time, but it has become all but unworkable. The Xorg process shoots to 100% on the most minute screen updates (scrolling etc), and overall display performance is extremely laggy.

Are there any settings I can tweak in the client or the Nvidia driver settings to work around this? I know the Windows clients allow users to limit GPU usage, but this does not seem to exist for Linux.
davidcoton
Posts: 1094
Joined: Wed Nov 05, 2008 3:19 pm
Location: Cambridge, UK

Re: Working around poor display performance when folding

Post by davidcoton »

There is no effective throttling for GPU usage in Linux or in Windows. The low-level scheduling of GPU tasks is not as sophisticated as for CPUs, and it is just not possible to assign priorities to GPU tasks. Once a task is queued, a later task cannot overtake it.
Image
csvanefalk
Posts: 147
Joined: Mon May 21, 2012 10:28 am

Re: Working around poor display performance when folding

Post by csvanefalk »

Yes, my mistake. Not sure where I got that from.

Currently I have found a reasonable workaround by using software-rendered Cinnamon as my DE. No tearing for now - will see if it stays that way.
Last edited by csvanefalk on Sun Jul 20, 2014 8:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
bollix47
Posts: 2957
Joined: Sun Dec 02, 2007 5:04 am
Location: Canada

Re: Working around poor display performance when folding

Post by bollix47 »

Another setting to check that might help is hardware acceleration ... ensure it is disabled in your browser and for flash.

viewtopic.php?p=248300#p248300
viewtopic.php?p=251796#p251796
Image
bruce
Posts: 20824
Joined: Thu Nov 29, 2007 10:13 pm
Location: So. Cal.

Re: Working around poor display performance when folding

Post by bruce »

They're the same thing. Disabling hardware acceleration is the same as enabling software rendering. Since rendering the screen on the GPU requires that the processing of a block of FAH geometry must be completed before Cinnamon can gain access to the GPU, there will be noticeable lags, While in absolute terms, CPU rendering is slower, it does have the benefit of receiving immediate CPU attention and therefore faster completion.

If your system can accommodate multiple GPUs, connecting your monitor to and added old/slow GPU that doesn't fold might also be worthwhile, but that may not be worth the hassle when CPU rendering is already working.
jrweiss
Posts: 704
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2007 6:56 am
Hardware configuration: Ryzen 7 5700G, 22.40.46 VGA driver; 32GB G-Skill Trident DDR4-3200; Samsung 860EVO 1TB Boot SSD; VelociRaptor 1TB; MSI GTX 1050ti, 551.23 studio driver; BeQuiet FM 550 PSU; Lian Li PC-9F; Win11Pro-64, F@H 8.3.5.

[Suspended] Ryzen 7 3700X, MSI X570MPG, 32GB G-Skill Trident Z DDR4-3600; Corsair MP600 M.2 PCIe Gen4 Boot, Samsung 840EVO-250 SSDs; VelociRaptor 1TB, Raptor 150; MSI GTX 1050ti, 526.98 driver; Kingwin Stryker 500 PSU; Lian Li PC-K7B. Win10Pro-64, F@H 8.3.5.
Location: @Home
Contact:

Re: Working around poor display performance when folding

Post by jrweiss »

At present I have my system set up with Virtu D-mode enabled. When I started GPU Folding on the 7750, I did a bit of experimenting and found that Virtu enabled resulted in a noticeable improvement in PPD, even if screen lag was still evident at times.

Has anyone set up their system so the monitor uses the embedded Intel GPU, while using a discrete GPU for Folding only? Any downsides for strict 2D, non-gaming use? Does Virtu I-mode help or hinder in that case, if it works at all?
Ryzen 7 5700G, 22.40.46 VGA driver; MSI GTX 1050ti, 551.23 studio driver
Ryzen 7 3700X; MSI GTX 1050ti, 551.23 studio driver [Suspended]
csvanefalk
Posts: 147
Joined: Mon May 21, 2012 10:28 am

Re: Working around poor display performance when folding

Post by csvanefalk »

Thanks for the input so far - I am still running software rendered Cinnamon, and it is working beautifully. PPD sits comfortably at 110k, and the only lag issues I have had so far is light hackiness in the browser and YT videos, but everything else works perfectly.
Post Reply