Best Systems?

[Jakem8]

So let's say, hypothetically, that someone had a hypothetically "unlimited" amount of cash to spend many thousands on systems to run FAH, what would be the best idea? Price to performance isn't really a problem, although money doesn't want to be wasted; neither is electrical costs.
I'm thinking that maybe someone who isn't me would be best to get a 4x980Ti system and multiply it a few hundred times? Or what would be the most efficient folding computer?

[bruce]

How do you define "most efficient" in that context?

GPUs produce a lot more points than CPUs since they do an awful lot of processing per hour, and the latest and best GPU does better than lesser models -- within the category of "normal" consumer-grade GPUs. Spending the extra money that you'd pay for a professional grade GPU isn't useful for FAH.

[davidcoton]

If someone has that amount to invest in FAH, maybe there are other things than user hardware: perhaps sponsoring better user software (mainly bells and whistles, but some more prompt error correction and better summary/reporting tools) to encourage all the donors, or making a grant to PG to employ someone to handle donor communications (oh wait -- wasn't that tried? What happened?)

[Jakem8]

How do you define "most efficient" in that context?

GPUs produce a lot more points than CPUs since they do an awful lot of processing per hour, and the latest and best GPU does better than lesser models -- within the category of "normal" consumer-grade GPUs. Spending the extra money that you'd pay for a professional grade GPU isn't useful for FAH.

Sorry, my original question was a little convoluted.
How would one go about getting the most ppd out of a large system? So yes, basically, my question was would someone be best off going down the consumer grade GPU route or would very high-end Tesla-esque cards be a good idea? Or how about Intel's coprocessors?

[toTOW]

See my answer here : viewtopic.php?p=279986#p279986

And for Intel coprocessors (Xeon Phi or IGP), they are not supported by FAH.

[Nathan_P]

Per machine it would be the following, A 2 cpu workstation mobo with a pair of xeon 18c/36t cpu's and7 watercooled 980Ti gpu's. That's 7 gpu's producing about 450-500k PPD each and a pair of cpu's that should pump out another 300k on top. Don't forget all the water cooling gear, a huge case and a pair of 1500 watt PSU's

[bruce]

Nathan is certainly not wrong, but seven cheap cases/CPUs would accomplish the same thing in a more modular form (if space is not a problem) and each one would probably handle the heat of one CPU just as effectively. (That's why I asked what you mean by "most efficient")

[HaloJones]

And the cost of the 2cpu workstation motherboard, RAM and Xeons would pay for having each of those 980Ti GPU in its own case with its own mobo, HD, CPU, RAM and PSU.

[Ricky]

This summer, I built a workstation with the 2 processors and have 2 graphics cards. A couple weeks ago, I built my brother a gaming PC with a GPU like mine. His is a "FTW" grade whereas mine is "SC". His machine gets almost double the performance on the GPU as I do. His overall PPD is 30% more than mine with less than half the cores and running 1/3rd the CPU cores. He also boots in far less time. I wonder if there is a BIOS overhead with workstations. Any ideas?

Both systems run Windows 8.1 OS.

[Nathan_P]

What cpu's and gpu's are you and your brother using? Are you both on PCIe gen 3 and the same size slots, x8 or x16? Boot times are longer on a 2 cpu board as the bios has to check nearly twice as much however once its past that though any SSD should have windows up and ready to use in around 20 seconds. Also the average xeon is clocked a lot lower than its desktop equivalent.

Lots of variables to look at and eliminate before we can say that you have a problem

Try swapping gpu's and see if that makes a difference.

[Ricky]

Nathan_P

I have:
2 E5-2630 v3 cloched at 2.4 GHz
1 GTX 980 04G-P4-2981-KR
1 GTX 960 04G-P4-3968-KR 4GB FTW

He has:
1 i7-5820K clocked at 3.3 GHz
1 GTX 980 04G-P4-2986-KR 4GB FTW

I think it is excellent idea to swap boards with him, but he might not get his back; just kidding. We live 950 miles apart, so I can't swap cards with him.
He boots windows 8.1 in about 20 seconds. I take about 2 minutes. The BIOS on mine takes most of the time, but the windows on mine seems to take longer than his. I built his machine so he could fold, but he only can do it at night. Every bit helps though.

So this experience gives me the impression that a gaming system is better than a workstation/server.

[bruce]

He boots windows 8.1 in about 20 seconds. I take about 2 minutes.

Replace your hard drive with an SSD like his. This will make a pretty small change to FAH, but it will make your system more responsive. FAH spends a very small fraction of its time doing disk operations, but every little bit helps.

Report the model of both his and your GPU, or better yet, post the first page of FAH's log.

[Ricky]

Bruce,

His drive and mine are the same - 500GB SSD. The brand of the GPU's are all the same- EVGA. I have been thinking that his GPU is FTW and mine is just standard. That is a possible bug difference. My 960 happens to be FTW, and it clocks at 1404 GHz, and the 980 clocks at 1126 GHz.

I also have been possibly getting projects that generate lower points. If that is the difference, I don't care. I am only thinking of efficiency. I do notice that the clock rates and the number of cores of my 2 GPU cards do work out by math. 140K PPD average for the 960 and about 224k PPD average for the 980.

[codysluder]

Does it help an SSD if you delete unused files (Disk Cleanup) and then Defrag?

[davidcoton]

I'm not sure what FTW signifies. If it's just the 4GB memory, that is not usually significant for FAH.