Folding Forum

My system is an Intel Core i7 870 @ 2.93ghz 64-bit Win7 12gb mem. I installed the beta SMP2 as a service with -smp and big switches. Taking just under 7 hours per unit after 4 WU's.

Am I as good as I can get?

Welcome to the forum, snerd.

What sort of graphics card(s) does that system have? You might want to install the GPU client as well. In addition there is a new version of the client, V7, released recently that can use all your hardware (CPU and GPUs) from one client, as opposed to the V6 clients, each of which had to be installed separately (i.e. one for SMP and one for each GPU you have). It's located at https://fah-web.stanford.edu/projects/FAHClient/. Note that your hardware won't run better with this client, as the cores (the software that actually runs the calculations) used by V6 and V7 are the same; the benefits of this version come from ease-of-use.

Also, are you using a passkey? Once you turn in 10 SMP WUs with the passkey, you get a Quick Return Bonus of extra points based on how quickly you turn in WUs, and with an i7 that bonus will be pretty substantial. The amount of science done is the same, but you are incentivized to turn them in quickly, which is better for the project as a whole.

It's got an nVidia GTS240 1024 card in it. I tried the GPU client but don't like the slowdown of my display...... any way to make it not noticeable?

Yes, I have a passkey and am using it.

I can boot Ubuntu also...... is there any performance difference under Linux?

Thanks!

ETA: I pulled a room fan over to my box and pulled the side cover off and keep it on. The temps on 4 cores are steady at around 78c. Is that not too hot for continuous crunching?

78C's on the warm side, but from what I've read it's not in the danger zone. What are you using to measure temps? I use RealTemp, which I had heard is more accurate, and which usually seems to report higher temps than SpeedFan et. al. My i7-930 @3.8 GHz runs in the high 70s and has done so for almost a year now without issue.

Last I heard there were minimal performance differences between Linux and Windows. If you normally use Windows, stick with that.

Do you have Aero enabled? Apparently if it's disabled the GPU client causes major slowdown, but enabling it fixes that issue. There are certainly other reasons for slowdown w/the GPU client running, but I don't really know them that well; you might try searching the forum for suggestions.

Hey guys,

Just wanted to chime in really quick because I am running a very similar system to Snerd, but with an HP Blackbird motherboard. Aero made the exact difference you desire created the potential mentioned by Zagen, at least for me.

I'm using CoreTemp. By positioning my room fan on the open side I've gotten it down to 75C now. I also turned off hardware acceleration in FireFox and that solved my video lag problem.

So are you good to go, or are you trying to continue improving performance?

ByteCache wrote:So are you good to go, or are you trying to continue improving performance?

I think I'm good to go. I d/l a bigadv today and am looking at 49:13 TPF so am looking for some big points!

word to the snerd, haha (that my ebonics for the day)