CPU or GPU Client?

[willwinuk]

Hi,
I have a ATI Radeon HD 3400 and my processor is (I think) Intel Pentium D 3.20GHz 3.20GHz.
Should I use the CPU client, the GPU client or both?

[PlayLoud]

With that setup, I think I would run one GPU2 client, and one standard console client.

[willwinuk]

Ok just to check, I should get the one under 'Windows: V6 GPU2 (ATI 2xxx, 3xxx, 4xxx; nVidia) clients' on this page http://folding.stanford.edu/English/DownloadWinOther
then a cpu console client from this page http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Download

[toTOW]

The main question is : do you plan to run your machine 24/7 ?

If the answer is yes, you can choose to run the GPU2 client + 1 uniprocessor client or one SMP client.

If the answer is no, you can run two uniprocessor clients.

Keep in mind that you have pretty low end hardware, so meeting the deadlines might be an issue with high performance clients (GPU2 and SMP), even if you run them 24/7.

[willwinuk]

ok I think I will just carry on using one cpu client on this machine for now. Thanks

[toTOW]

ok I think I will just carry on using one cpu client on this machine for now. Thanks

Your CPU is a dual core, you can setup two CPU clients if you want to maximize your CPU usage.

[willwinuk]

I give that a try then

[old_fool]

If one has 2 cores (and runs two console uniprocessor clients), and then wants to run a GPU client as well, what should he/she do? I had my two uniprocessor clients configured with machine ID 1 and machine ID 2, and started with command line option -local.

Now that I am (trying to) run the console GPU client, I am not sure should I run that with the -local command line option, as well, or not?

[DanGe]

@old_fool: I don't think these newer clients need the -local parameter anymore; if it is, then you need to run the GPU console client with -local. Make sure you set the GPU client's Machine ID to something not equal to 1 or 2.

[old_fool]

@old_fool: I don't think these newer clients need the -local parameter anymore; if it is, then you need to run the GPU console client with -local. Make sure you set the GPU client's Machine ID to something not equal to 1 or 2.

Yeah, I went ahead and appended "-local" to the gpu client exe just in case. And of course, I have different machine IDs in client.cfg.

I have a question about usereg in client.cfg. From what I understand, usereg - whether or not to use IE settings for proxy config - has been removed from the 6.x clients. But when I ran the GPU client with -configonly, it put usereg=no into my client.cfg file. WTF? Also in fahwiki for the 6.x client, usereg is not documented and not even mentioned, and yet the client puts it in client.cfg.

And lastly: nocpulock=1 in the [core] section confuses me. The way I understand it (not explained in the 6.x client.cfg fahwiki) is that if it is equal to 1, it means yes - that is, do disable CPU affinity lock. And that means that the CPU's affinity CAN be set to one CPU or the other, right???? Or does it mean that the affinity is set automatically by the client? Right now I don't even have this parameter in my client.cfg file, so what does that mean, is that equivalent to nocpulock=0 ?
Don't tell me this sh*t ain't confusing

[bruce]

I have a question about usereg in client.cfg. From what I understand, usereg - whether or not to use IE settings for proxy config - has been removed from the 6.x clients. But when I ran the GPU client with -configonly, it put usereg=no into my client.cfg file. WTF? Also in fahwiki for the 6.x client, usereg is not documented and not even mentioned, and yet the client puts it in client.cfg.

Since editing client.cfg is contrary to the EULA and strongly discouraged, in any case, there's no documentation for things that nobody understands. Of course that won't stop people from looking or asking questions, but the only way we find out about things like that is for somebody to make a change, discover it was a mistake and report it here.

Several years back, Microsoft added a security patch which effetively "broke" the functionality of FAH's "Use IE Settings?" Since it hasn't worked correctly unless you have a version of XP with very few security patches, the function does not eixist in V6.

And lastly: nocpulock=1 in the [core] section confuses me. The way I understand it (not explained in the 6.x client.cfg fahwiki) is that if it is equal to 1, it means yes - that is, do disable CPU affinity lock. And that means that the CPU's affinity CAN be set to one CPU or the other, right???? Or does it mean that the affinity is set automatically by the client? Right now I don't even have this parameter in my client.cfg file, so what does that mean, is that equivalent to nocpulock=0 ?
Don't tell me this sh*t ain't confusing

Different question . . . same answer: If you want to do exhaustive enough tests to figure out what it means, you can add what you learn to fahwiki. In that regard, this is strictly a self-help forum (and wiki) for any detail that isn't announced by the Pande Group, and client.cfg only has internal documentation. The official position is that all files created by FAH are internal files and the proper way to change them is with the -config or -configonly flag. That means the only choices are whatever you get by answering Yes or No to the configuration question.

. . . oh, and I don't know the answer to either of you questions.

[hrlow2]

to toTOW
Earlier you stated that a dual core CPU could run 2 clients
I have an older P4 3.4GHz HT processor.Would that be the same? shows as 2 CPUs on Device Manager.
How would you set 2 CPU clients up to run at the same time?

[7im]

Sorry, 1 physical core and 1 virtual (HT) core do not run at twice the speed. The 2 CPUs in device mangler is a visual trick that Windows plays on unsuspecting people. The project recommends running 1 CPU client per CPU core.

2 CPU clients compete for resources, and run much slower. However, HT is very helpful if you can run 1 CPU and and 1 GPU2 client. The GPU2 client doesn't really need a "real" core to operate well. There will be a very slightly slowdown in that configuration, but not like twice as slow as with 2 CPU clients.

[hrlow2]

That kicks me out then. Only running the built in onboard graphics.

[7im]

If that Motherboard supports PCIe, you could always consider upgrading your GPU sometime down the road. That's probably the least expensive way to seriously increase the production on that system.