Folding Forum

Hi,
I'm running a Quadro M5000 and it seems to be folding OK but I've noticed that the description in folding@home advanced control, and in gpus.txt, is different to that shown by GPU-Z.

gpus.txt says:
0x10de:0x13f0:2:4:GM107 [Quadro M5000]

GPU-Z says GM204. This is the page on techpowerup.com about it:
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/q ... 5000.c2756

I don't know if it makes any difference to how folding@home works, I haven't found an explanation of the gpus.txt file just yet (I found an out of date link on Information About GPUs.txt File that I'm going to ask to be updated).

Welcome to Folding@Home!

This is my limited understating, perhaps in time real experts will wake up

0x10de:0x13f0: These two fields are assigned by the card vendor. Ideally they would be unique but actually we sometimes have very different GPUs assigned the same ID.

:2: this is the vendor, Nvidia in 2, AMD is 1, Intel is 3

:4: this is the species. Species are assigned by F@H and a new species is created when new capabilities are exploitable by the F@H software.

:GM107 [Quadro M5000] this is a comment field displayed for humans, but not used by the software. usually the first volunteer who requests a new entry in GPUs.txt gives this info.

Just to expand on JimboPalmer's post, the description field is either based om the first report of the card asking for it to be added, or based on information that shows up in the drivers released by AMD or nVidia. Sometimes that information is for a whole group of new cards prior to their release, and the chip information may change. In this case it appears the card was added as part of such a batch, a group of sequential device ID numbers. It is possible that the initial information has this GPU based on a 1st generation Maxwell chip, when released they actually sued the 2nd generation GM204.

It was mislabelled like M4000 ... I changed both descriptions to show the correct GPU.

toTOW wrote:It was mislabelled like M4000 ... I changed both descriptions to show the correct GPU.

Thanks for updating that but I'm not so worried by the description as by the difference in the other parts; I could see differences in the other values for cards described as using GM204 and was concerned that mine wasn't being utilised as much as it could. However I've done a bit more searching the forum and I think (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) that it may just affect the size of WU assigned to my GPU.

Looking at the new GPUs.txt: This says that my Quadro M5000 is species 4 and the GeForce GTX 980 is species 5, as per example above

JimboPalmer wrote::4: this is the species. Species are assigned by F@H and a new species is created when new capabilities are exploitable by the F@H software.

I don't know what the GL suffix refers to so I appreciate that this may make the difference between species, as could the other hardware on the card and the firmware on it I guess. Techpowerup.com ranks the GeForce GTX 980 as better than the Quadro M5000 in their relative performance rating.

If the only difference between species 4 and species 5 is the size of the WU assigned rather than how hard the GPU is worked at any one moment then I'm not worried at all. I can't fold 24/7 so it suits me to get WUs that can definitely be completed in the time I can let it fold.

Thanks for all the replies. Definitely helping me understand a bit more about how it all works.

DRQ wrote:If the only difference between species 4 and species 5 is the size of the WU assigned rather than how hard the GPU is worked at any one moment then I'm not worried at all. I can't fold 24/7 so it suits me to get WUs that can definitely be completed in the time I can let it fold.

It means whatever the project owner chooses to have it mean.

FAH has a long-range plan to give more meaning to the assigned species value and establish an automatic preferencing system when good choices can be made by the server.

In the short-term it's up to the project owner to decide which species his/her project can/cannot be assigned to.