Folding Forum

I use my 1950x for a plex server as well as work and sometimes it does transcode some 4k movies so I need probably at least 6-8 cores free. I'd like to use the remaining for Folding. Right now I have two slots, one 8 and one 16. Is this the best configuration?

It sounds reasonable. Since some of the resources are shared between the threads you may need to experiment a bit to see what works well while transcoding. Possibly pausing one of the two slots would be an approach to take during a transcode session.

I saw in your other thread that you have a 1060 in that machine. Have you tried hardware transcoding? Your plex server will use very little cpu time with hardware transcoding enabled.
If that works, you could configure your cpu folding with 24 threads, or whatever configuration works best (12 + 12, 15 + 9? There are other forum threads for this cpu, but I haven’t kept up with them)

Kebast wrote:I saw in your other thread that you have a 1060 in that machine. Have you tried hardware transcoding? Your plex server will use very little cpu time with hardware transcoding enabled.
If that works, you could configure your cpu folding with 24 threads, or whatever configuration works best (12 + 12, 15 + 9? There are other forum threads for this cpu, but I haven’t kept up with them)

There is a warning that says hardware transcoding could reduce quality which is why I have not enabled it. Plus I had issues with Nvidia drivers and would rather wait until I can upgrade video card to AMD before messing with them again.

Folding runs at low priority. If the transcode tasks are rare or finish quickly then one 32 slot would be the most productive. Second choice would be one 24 slot but there are occasionally projects that fail. These are normally caught during beta testing but not always. The safest set-and-forget configuration is what you have: one 8 and one 16.

24core WUs rarely fail tbh … even running advanced/beta I can't recall having on of my 24/56 core slot WUs fail - I'll check later … it isn't unknown, but not a regular occurrence and the benefits of running 24core rather than a 16core and an 8core to the science (and the bonus points) probably outweighs the risk of a 24core WU failure imho.

It might be worth a quick trial/test with transcoding set on higher priority than folding and try a 32core slot … "In Theory" the transcoding shouldn't be impacted - the folding will be slowed, but only for the periods when transcoding is running, and then will make maximum use of the spare cycles … on CPU slots impact on "most other tasks" from folding can be minimal so might be worth a check?

bamapolitics wrote:

Kebast wrote:I saw in your other thread that you have a 1060 in that machine. Have you tried hardware transcoding? Your plex server will use very little cpu time with hardware transcoding enabled.
If that works, you could configure your cpu folding with 24 threads, or whatever configuration works best (12 + 12, 15 + 9? There are other forum threads for this cpu, but I haven’t kept up with them)

There is a warning that says hardware transcoding could reduce quality which is why I have not enabled it. Plus I had issues with Nvidia drivers and would rather wait until I can upgrade video card to AMD before messing with them again.

Gotcha. I’ve transcoded using my 970 with no noticeable issues, but I don’t watch 4K content.
Also, if you’re having driver issues, I’m guessing this is a Linux system? Good luck with amd drivers. I’ve found nvidia much easier to deal with.

Nvidia doesn't support Wayland and I don't want to fall back to x11