New to folding! Hello!

[WestX64]

Hello everyone! I just built myself a new desktop PC and it's decently high end (compared to what I've built before). Since I have so much performance to spare, I've been looking for something I could do to utilize that extra performance when I don't really need it for myself. So I remembered something I saw one of my uncles doing over eight years ago and decided to look up this Folding@Home thing. Last night I downloaded the program onto my computer and started folding and messing around with the software a bit. However, I feel like it isn't using the full potential of my PC and I'm not exactly sure how to fine tune it to my computer...

I've done many Google searches and read through the FAQ but I'm still very confused on how I may be able to set the program to squeeze out as much power from my PC as it can. Here are some of the specs from my computer:

Intel Core i7 4770K @ 3.50ghz
Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 (2GB GDDR5)
8GB of 1600mhz system memory

The CPU is liquid cooled with a Corsair H100i and the graphics card has the EVGA ACX cooler on it. The case also has some decent cooling setup that I keep tweaking to try to make it perform better and better. I have not over locked my CPU, although I probably could very easily. Also, the Folding@Home program is running off of a Samsung SSD and my internet connection download speed is 20mbps with a 2mbps upload. The OS is Windows 8.1 64-bit.

Do you all have any suggestions on how I might be able to tweak the Folding@Home software to maximize it's performance on my computer? Should I just leave the "slots" set to -1? All I've really done so far is turn the slider up to "full" in the web browser control thing.

Thanks all!

[JimboPalmer]

Full is good, setting the number of CPUs to 7 may help, as that GPU driver currently uses one full CPU in a loop when processing core 17 work.
That GPU should get core 17 work most of the time, it is the core 17 units that use a full CPU, if you get lots of core 15, you can use all 8 CPUs but core 17 should give more points.
If you find that your graphics get laggy, you can set the GPU to idle only
No more work will be done, but if you give yourself a passcode, you will get more points. (after about 8 successful units)

Neither the SSD nor the internet will hurt, but they won't do much good, either. RAM size or speed is not important either, but won't hurt.

All the best!

[WestX64]

Okay, thank you for your reply, JimboPalmer! When I get home from work today, I'll set the number in the CPU slot from -1 to 7. That's what you meant for me to do, right?

Also, it's good to know that it's really only the CPU and GPU specs that matter at all. Do you think overclocking the processor to something like 4.00Ghz would help much? Or would that not make much of a difference?

[Zagen30]

OCing always helps as long as it's a stable OC. Keep in mind that an OC that's stable in benchmark software or games may not be stable for folding, though 4.0 GHz should be fine.

You'd see better results overclocking your GPU vs. your CPU. I think a 4770k will get around 25k PPD at stock, while a 770 can get around 70k at stock on core 17 WUs. At best you might be able to get another 5k PPD out of the CPU for 30k total. In comparison, from many people's reports it seems like OCing a 770 to the point where it gets around 100k PPD isn't hard and is stable on most cards.

One very important thing is which GPU drivers you're using. The first Nvidia driver after 327.23 had a bug that severely degraded core 17 folding performance on most Kepler cards (in the range of 70% slower), and there hasn't been a fix in any of the drivers since. There is a new version of core 17 in beta testing that has a workaround, but no word on when that will be moved to a full release. If you don't need newer drivers for games or something, you should consider rolling back to 327.23.

[jrweiss]

Ensure the Intel Turbo mode is enabled in BIOS. With that, you'll get 3.9 GHz out of the 4770 without messing with any OC settings. CPUz (cpuid.com) will confirm the actual rate. Similarly, GPUz (techpowerup.com) will tell you your GPU load, clocks, and temps.

If your motherboard has an "automatic" OC feature in BIOS or via software, you might try that rather than messing with manual adjustments.

[WestX64]

@Zagen30: Yeah, that's why I was only thinking about overclocking about 500mhz to 4.00ghz because an overclock like that tends to be pretty stable unless I got a really bad luck of the draw which I really hope I didn't.

I could just overclock both my CPU and GPU and reap the benefits from each overclock. However, I have no experience with overclocking GPUs... Time to learn something new I guess! From what I know, my graphics card was made to be easily overclocked. It is an EVGA GeForce GTX 770 superclocked with ACX Cooler. Here is more information about it:
1111mhz base clock
1163mhz boost clock
1536 CUDA Cores
If any of that makes a difference... Though, I was also thinking about trying to liquid cool my GPU since in some games the card reaches 70C which is still a safe temp but I would prefer lower. If I liquid cool it then I could probably achieve a better overclock too.

As far as I know, I'm currently using the latest drivers. The GeForce Experience software regularly updates the drivers for me. 70% is a MASSIVE performance decrease though! I may have to look into rolling back the drivers for my graphics card if that's the case. Thank you for that tip, Zagen30!

@jrweiss: Yeah, turbo boost is turned on by default in my motherboard's BIOS I'm pretty sure but I will double check that when I get home. My motherboard is a Z97 Gigabyte board and there is a program called EasyTune I can download which would allow for quick one click overclocking. However, I'm not sure how much I trust that...

[jrweiss]

I tried EasyTune once on an older Gigabyte board. Never again! When I checked the CPU voltage after it did its thing, it was WAY higher than the max spec for the CPU. Hopefully they've improved it in the past 6-8 years...

[WestX64]

I tried EasyTune once on an older Gigabyte board. Never again! When I checked the CPU voltage after it did its thing, it was WAY higher than the max spec for the CPU. Hopefully they've improved it in the past 6-8 years...

Thanks for your input, jrweiss. Although I'm sure Gigabyte has made great improvements to their EasyTune software, I just do not trust software to automatically overclock for me and would much rather take the time to do it properly myself.

I do have a question about the Folding@Home Web Control client though. There are basically two sides to the Web Control, one which says CPU, and one which says GPU. My question is, under the CPU it gives me a "Points Per Day" (PPD), but under the GPU it gives me an "Estimated Points". Are these different measurements? How I was reading them before was that each one was the PPD for that particular slot, but the change in the wording makes me think otherwise. Is the PPD under the CPU slot the combined PPD for both my CPU and GPU? What is the EP under my GPU?

[bruce]

When looking at a WU being processed by either a CPU or a GPU the GUI shows:
ETA / Base Credit / Estimated Credit / Estimated PPD / Estimated TPF.

The base credit can be found in the Project Summary linked from the top of this page.
The total credit can be ESTIMATED using the formula shown here. You'll notice it depends on elapsed_time which can only be estimated when the WU is folding, so the total Credit and PPD and TPF are all estimated, too (assuming you have a qualified passkey). [Without a passkey, the total credit will be the base credit as long as the WU doesn't expire.]

The GUI also displays a Total Estimated PPD by adding all the estimated PPDs.

[WestX64]

Thank you for that clarification bruce! I do in fact have a passkey linked to my Folding@Home client.

Right now the client has been running for several hours. I have installed the graphics driver 327.23 as suggested and changed my CPU slot to 7 so that seven threads are used. When I look at the stats in my client, this is what I am seeing:

---CPU Slot---
Base Credit: 1,676
Estimated Credit: 7,004
Estimated PPD: 10,983

---GPU Slot---
Base Credit: 17,123
Estimated Credit: 31,234
Estimated PPD: 23,966

Is that good or bad given the specifications of my CPU and GPU? It seems kind of low given what Zagen30 seems to have estimated earlier...

[bruce]

If you check the FAQ regarding passkeys, you'll find that you must complete at least 80% of the WUs assigned to you and at least 10 WUs before you'll get the QRB points based on that passkey and that username. It looks like you have completed 2 WUs, not 10 yet. The bonuses will kick in automatically once your passkey is "qualified"

[WestX64]

Thank you for that information, bruce! Well, I have been letting my computer run full throttle for the past couple of days and it looks like it has finally completed 11 WU from what I can see on the following page:
http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/mai ... me=WestX64

On top of that, I have been reading more into the FAQ that you linked me and I think I'm beginning to understand the GUI better now. According to what you're telling me, my passkey should now be "qualified" since my computer has completed 11 WU, right? So my PPD should be more accurate? Here is what I am getting now (and this fluctuates per WU but generally not much):

CPU PPD = 12,000
GPU PPD = 46,000

I have been paying close attention to the PPD throughout the day and across multiple WU and it always seems to sit right in that area give or take one or two thousand PPD. Is that normal on the hardware I have in my PC? It seems like it should be much higher than that given what other people have estimated here and in other threads I've seen around the net. It's rather disappointing to see really...

[7im]

It has to be 10+ WUs completed that are bonus eligible. There are still some WUs available for GPUs that do not get a bonus and so do not count towards the 10 count.

Are the points for a completed WU that register on the stats pages like EOC now matching what the client estimates? If yes, then you are getting the bonus.

[bruce]

The most recent WU from your GPU clearly earned a bonus.

Hi WestX64,
Your WU (P10466 R0 C323 G32) was added to the stats database on 2014-09-10 07:05:02 for 29946.8 points of credit.

[WestX64]

Bruce, yeah I just noticed that. My system finished that WU about 30 minutes or so after my last post and the points ended up being higher than the client had estimated, I guess that was the bonus? I still don't understand as thoroughly as I should, but I am trying my best to really understand what is going on. I really like the concept behind Folding@Home, I just want to maximize the use of my hardware whenever I'm not using it (which is about 18-20 hours a day) and I want my hardware to be able to process as many WU in a given amount of time as possible. Basically, I want to contribute to the program as efficiently as possible. Right now my GPU is working on WU 10466 (0, 311, 75) and is estimating that it will be done in about three hours from now. The EP for this is 14,500 and I am keeping watch to see if that is what I end up with at the end or if I get more than that. the GPU PPD is still showing around 48,000 but I guess that isn't too accurate. Still, besides overclocking, setting my CPU to 7, and switching my GPU's driver back to the older version, what else can I do to better utilize my current hardware for folding?

Also, I was thinking about slipping another GPU into my machine strictly for use with Folding@Home so that even when I need my primary CPU and GPU for other tasks, I would still have a secondary GPU running full throttle 24/7 on the Folding@Home client. I don't have a lot of money to spare on something like that right now though. I was thinking somewhere in the range of $100-$200. The problem is, I cannot find any consistent information anywhere on Google about today's graphics cards and estimated PPD from them. I was leaning towards something like a GTX 750 Ti right now but that may change depending on the feedback here in this thread. What are the most important factors in considering a GPU for folding? I don't plan on using the card for SLI, my current GTX 770 is fine for everything I need, so that is not an important factor for me, this new GPU would be strictly a folding card.