Folding Forum

I'm new to folding and just had a few questions.

Before my questions, this is my hardware:

Intel i-7 950 3.07ghz
EVGA nVidia GTX 570 superclocked
6gb ram
win7 64bit


I installed the GPU3 client and have that running, would the v7 client work better for my system? and how stable is it v7?
This is my gaming/everyday computer, although I don't game too much right now due to a busy schedule, and I'd like to be able to help out when my computer is just sitting around

gamer4life18 wrote:I'm new to folding and just had a few questions.

Before my questions, this is my hardware:

Intel i-7 950 3.07ghz
EVGA nVidia GTX 570 superclocked
6gb ram
win7 64bit


I installed the GPU3 client and have that running, would the v7 client work better for my system? and how stable is it v7?
This is my gaming/everyday computer, although I don't game too much right now due to a busy schedule, and I'd like to be able to help out when my computer is just sitting around

Hi there gamer4life18, and welcome to F@h and this forum,

V7 is under heavy development. The plan is to make it the recommended download by January, so they're pushing debugging pretty hard. Anyone can download v7 and try it out, but it does have some bugs and small quirks about it. I've been folding for about a year now, and I was a little hesitant to jump on v7 until some important things were addressed. As you can see from Dr. Pande's blog post: http://folding.typepad.com/news/2011/10 ... eased.html I was quoted and those things were taken care of. So now I'm trying it out. It has a nice GUI, good easy-to-use buttons and all, and is pretty stable. But for the most part it pretty much does exactly the same science as the regular v6 clients. Your welcome to try out v7, but bear in mind its not perfect. In my opinion, I would recommend that you just hold with v6 for a little bit, and perhaps in a couple months switch over. We're trying out v7 because our bug reports and feature requests help push development, which in the end makes nicer software for everyone including newcomers.

There is also the SMP client which should work well on your i7. If you get a passkey, you can wrack in bonus points which non-linearly award you for quick WU returns. Both the SMP and GPU3 are very productive and highly efficient.

In our case, the single biggest advantage of V7 today would be that you install and monitor FAH for both the smp and gpu hardware with a single client. To run them on V6, you need to install two clients and you need to assign unique values for Machine id. I've found it to be extremely stable.

Thanks for your replies.

I'm going to keep what I have currently installed running for now, although I am going to look into SMP and get that installed/give it a shot.

I was also wondering, is it safe for my hardware to keep running at almost full usage for an extended period of time(i.e. while I'm not at home or while I'm sleeping, or even folding for days at a time)?

gamer4life18 wrote:I was also wondering, is it safe for my hardware to keep running at almost full usage for an extended period of time(i.e. while I'm not at home or while I'm sleeping, or even folding for days at a time)?

In general, yes. The biggest danger is heat. Modern computer chips are precision instruments, and are perfectly capable of running continuously like that. However, if they get too hot, it can cause problems. Now, most systems are designed to adequately cool themselves, especially desktops. Laptop components actually have a higher heat tolerance than desktops. Clearly your fan will rev up and cool things down, so as long as it can circulate air right, I'd say that yes it is safe. Distributed computing is become more and more widespread, and F@h is running on hundreds of thousands of CPUs and GPUs. If they had safety issues like that they wouldn't be participating. So in a nutshell, yes, it is safe.

Thanks Jesse_V, that was my biggest concern about keeping it running for extended periods.

I think my temps are okay for my GPU, it's running at 92% usage at 58c with my gpu fan set to 65% speed

gamer4life18 wrote:I was also wondering, is it safe for my hardware to keep running at almost full usage for an extended period of time(i.e. while I'm not at home or while I'm sleeping, or even folding for days at a time)?

Check your CPU and GPU temps. Typical desktop limits are 70C for the CPU and 100C for the GPU (though figures for specific CPUs/GPUs are sometimes hard to find). Laptop CPUs are typically limited to 100C. If you're running at least 10C less than the limit, you should be fine.

My Q9650 runs about 48C with F@H running, and it has been running full-tilt 24/7 since I built it in June 2009. My Q9450 system is a year older, and runs around 5C hotter (stock cooler vs Noctua on the 9650). I routinely leave the house for 2+ weeks for business trips, and have had no problems.

My Lenovo laptop runs full-tilt on both cores whenever powered. On AC the CPU runs around 70-75C; in the 50s when throttled down on the battery. Again, no problems in almost 3 years...

@gamer4life18,
your CPU has a maximum Tcase of 67.9C at stock clocks, and the GPU has maximum temp of 97C. No problems with your GPU, there's a wide margin. However, since it is factory OC'd (732MHz => 797MHz), you will always want to have a reasonable margin to 97C in all cases, for stability. Heat is the enemy of overclocking, and while 732MHz is specified to be stable at 97 maximum, chances are that 797MHz wouldn't be. Also, latest and greatest GPUs aren't necessarily used to their full potential with current WUs, not even with P762x WUs. Those WUs (still in -advmethods) work the GPU harder in any case. CPUs are different, it matters little whether you reach 100% utilization with multiple uniprocessor, SMP or BigAdv.

It's best to monitor temps closely when you start folding 24/7 to make sure you have a decent margin, and then you can forget about it for a while. But it's a good idea to check every now and then. Things like gradual dust buildup in the fans and heatsinks will lead to rising temperatures in the long run. So if you get the nagging "hmm, my computer somehow sounds louder than before" -feeling, it's high time to check temps, fans and dust buildup. Fans could also break with disastrous consequences, unless thermal throttling kicks in quickly enough. However, these concerns aren't really FAH specific, they apply to all heavy workloads, gaming included.

For example, I've been folding P762x WUs on my fanless GT430 (stock clocks) for a while now, no problems whatsoever even though the GPU temp is slightly above 90C when folding at full blast (100% CPU+ION+GT430). I don't even dream of OC'ing the GT430, though. FurMark can push the GT430 temp slightly above its specified max 98C on a hot day if I really try to scorch my rig (Intel Linpack with large memory chunk for CPU/memory and FurMark Extreme Burn for both GPUs). Then again, FurMark is sometimes dubbed a "power virus" or "GPU killer", supposedly designed to stress all aspects of your GPU concurrently. On a side note, I get some geeky kicks from FAH pushing the pedal to the metal on my GT430. It's quite impressive that FAH gets so close the Furmark Extreme Burn without actually rendering graphics and pushing the GPU memory particularly hard. All that with a CPU load which is negligible even on a lowly Atom330.

FWIV, see my sig link if you want to run a burn-in test similar to mine, before I declared my setup "folding stable". Better monitor the temps closely and let it run for several hours. It takes a while for the temperatures to max out.

Thanks Napoleon, quite informative.

I've been folding full speed for ~7-8 hours now. The temps seem to be holding up nicely I think.

GPU temp is currently 55c, bounces between 55-59c; 99% load; fans at 65% speed
CPU temps have been really steady, varies throughout the cores between 50-60c

gamer4life18 wrote:GPU temp is currently 55c, bounces between 55-59c; 99% load; fans at 65% speed
CPU temps have been really steady, varies throughout the cores between 50-60c

Those temps are actually CPU core temps, folding 100% CPU + 99% GPU?!
Most impressive, as the cores will run hotter than Tcase. Heat flows from cores to the CPU case, and that requires a difference in temperatures. For me, the difference can get pretty high, almost 30C. Beware, at least Speedfan 4.41 and 4.43 reported way too low core temperatures for me, there was a consistent 35C offset error when I checked against CoreTemp. My CPU temp (==Tcase) should be correct, though, it matches with BIOS and other utilities.

Updated my HW info behind the sig link, this is what I'm seeing at the moment (P7620 WU on GT430), folding full blast for a while just to test a thing or two. One great thing about autumn weather over here, my room temp has dropped a little, computer temps have followed suit.
Note: I've corrected the offset error manually in the SpeedFan Advanced settings for this screenshot:

Napoleon wrote: Those temps are actually CPU core temps, folding 100% CPU + 99% GPU?!

Yep! the temp in my room is pretty low right now, so I'm sure that's helped some with my temps.
Right now it's about 23c in my room, but it's usually around... 25 to 27c. Sometimes during the summer the temp in my room will get up to around 31-32c

EDIT: Forgot the pic

Just a caution: Beware of temps reported in BIOS on reboot. It takes only a second or 2 for core temps to drop significantly after Folding is stopped, so those reported even 15 seconds later on reboot are not representative.

A tool that reports directly from BIOS while the machine is running would be much better.