Not much heat from project 8043

[moritzgedig]

I currently have a PRCG 8043 (0, 375, 89) FahCore 0x15 WU running on my nVidia GPU 450GTS that seems to do very little.
It is progressing but not utilizing the GPU.
Is there a problem with that project or just few atoms?

[P5-133XL]

I do not know anyone that can answer that without more information. What you need to know is %gpu usage. There are several applications that can tell you that. Most overclocking utilities will have that capability as well as GPU-Z.

[moritzgedig]

It seems to be fully loaded. With the GPU-Z tool I can now better tell the fan speed and temperature.

60°C @ 10% and 1.9GHz seems low though.
Maybe it is just that cold in here, I broke my room thermometer.
I suppose games utilize more (2x ? ; + fixed function - memory controller - drivers) of the chips area and therefore produce much more heat?

[Napoleon]

I've seen temperature differences between projects myself, even though the GPU utilization has been 99% all the time. I'd think some projects (simulating bigger proteins?) utilize the GPU harder than others regardless of the GPU utilization percentage. Perhaps 8043 is one of those smaller ones (2387 points / WU). If you happen to pick up a 8018 WU (5757 points / WU), for example, your card will probably draw more power and consequently run a few degrees hotter.

Games tend to utilize the GPU memory harder than FAH does (which is why GDDR5 cards tend to be faster than the ones with slower memory). FAH workload is focused on the shaders. Memory speed does make some difference, but nowhere near as much as in games.

[Napoleon]

BTW, one way to make sure that the GPU is utilized as much as possible is to give FahCore_15.exe process high priority. I do that automatically using Process Lasso because the process is shut down and restarted with low priority between WUs. Thus the GPU load of my GT430 is a flat 99% line all time, even when I use my computer for daily tasks.