Coming out of retirement.

[Qinsp]

I folded with several computers, and PS3's, but had to stop.

It's been awhile and I forgot everything.

I have a SR-2 with dual x5650's with Ubuntu 32-bit, Win7-64, and Win8-64 with a nVidia 560 Ti card in it. It had crashed hard and I left it shut down. Seems to run great right now after replacing all the HDD's and reloading the O/S's. I bought it for folding, and it has sat collecting dust until today.

Is it obsolete yet? Which O/S is going to be best, I can run anything I need to? Should I run both the CPU's and nVidia concurrently?

I had it running at 3.9ghz stable, but returned it to stock settings to troubleshoot. I didn't save the settings. Anyone know what I'm supposed to tweak?

There is nothing left on the HDD's but O/S's.

[art_l_j_PlanetAMD64]

Your best overall points-per-day (PPD) performance right now will come from SMP and GPU folding under Windows. Linux does not currently support GPU folding (unless you want to experiment with Wine). Get the latest FAH v7.2.9 software, and use NVidia driver version 306.97 (newer versions do work for some people, but not for others, and there are some risks involved in installing the newer versions).

Linux will probably be better if/when there is a native GPU client, but for right now Windows is it. I would prefer to run Windows 7, but Windows 8 should give you equal performance.

PS: On the Linux side, you should upgrade to Ubuntu 64-bit.

[Nathan_P]

Hi and Welcome back

For your Sr-2, you can either run cpu SMP & GPU under windows or bigadv under linux, for linux you will need a 64bit distro. An SR-2 is still a perfectly good piece of kit - Its successor can't overclock the new xeon's - and will still get over 100k PPD. As for overclocking an SR-2, well there are a couple of guides around but the biggest one is over at [H]ardforum.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1541357

[art_l_j_PlanetAMD64]

For your Sr-2, you can either run cpu SMP & GPU under windows or bigadv under linux, for linux you will need a 64bit distro. An SR-2 is still a perfectly good piece of kit - Its successor can't overclock the new xeon's - and will still get over 100k PPD. As for overclocking an SR-2, well there are a couple of guides around but the biggest one is over at [H]ardforum.

Qinsp would have to replace his dual x5650's with something that has more than 6 cores in each CPU:
Intel Xeon X5650 2.66 GHz Six Core (BX80614X5650) Processor
That is 12 cores total, less than the 16-core minimum. The new CPUs, even if having 8 cores each, would need to have a high enough clock speed to meet the time limit on returning bigadv WUs.

[EXT64]

It has hyperthreading, which (if enabled) will make the client see 24 cores and allow bigadv folding.

[art_l_j_PlanetAMD64]

It has hyperthreading, which (if enabled) will make the client see 24 cores and allow bigadv folding.

As I understand the specification, bigadv requires >=16 physical cores. Hyperthreaded cores do not make the grade.

[P5-133XL]

No, hyperthreading counts towards the 16 core minimum, the only issue at that point is if you can make the deadlines.

[art_l_j_PlanetAMD64]

No, hyperthreading counts towards the 16 core minimum, the only issue at that point is if you can make the deadlines.

Yep, my bad. I thought I had read that somewhere (about the physical core requirement), but the HT cores do count, as you and EXT64 said.

EDIT:
This is where I read it: link

Sorry for not being more clear in the post. It's 16 physical cores in terms of speed (to make the deadlines), but since the client just looks for logical cores (and can't tell the difference between logical and physical cores), the client hard minimum will be 16 logical cores (if we made the client minimum 32 cores, then there would be cases of people with 16 physical cores not working). Since this is a bit confusing to say, I tried to stress the speed needed (16 physical cores), but as before, the key determining issue will be making the deadlines (especially since some people often spoof the number of cores the client detects anyway).

So the speed requirement is easier to reach with 16 physical cores, but really fast 16 (or greater) HT cores can make it as well.

[bruce]

Supposedly the deadlines are tight enough that a 12c24t you're not expected to make the deadline without a pretty good overclock, hence they recommend 16 real cores. Add overclocking to the mix and maybe you do an maybe you don't. i.e.- you take responsibility for any WUs that miss the deadline (and count against your QRB quota) just like you take responsibility if you're successful and get a bonus.

YMMV

[Qinsp]

Thanks!

16 core ante? Wow. What is the typical BigAdv rig comprised of? Don't think Intel makes more than 6 core X56xx family chips?

Win7 reports it's "stolen" since I swapped HDD's out. Boy I hate that nonsense.

[P5-133XL]

Typical: bigadv rig consists of a 4 processor SuperMicro H8QGi/6 or H8QGL Motherboard with AMD 62xx Opteron's

[Nathan_P]

Supposedly the deadlines are tight enough that a 12c24t you're not expected to make the deadline without a pretty good overclock, hence they recommend 16 real cores. Add overclocking to the mix and maybe you do an maybe you don't. i.e.- you take responsibility for any WUs that miss the deadline (and count against your QRB quota) just like you take responsibility if you're successful and get a bonus.

YMMV

As Bruce says, at stock speeds all L56xx and E56xx xeons will fail to meet the current deadlines, x5650's are the bare minimum at stock but ideally you are looking at 3.2Ghz or greater to give yourself some leeway. My x5670's at 3.2 make the deadline with about 10 hours to spare on 8101

[patonb]

My l5639s have 10-12hrs leaway at 3.2Ghz.

See the link Nathen posted to get yourself back up to speed.. Worked for me.

Do 6128s make 8101 deadlines? They're true 16 cores

[Nathan_P]

My l5639s have 10-12hrs leaway at 3.2Ghz.

See the link Nathen posted to get yourself back up to speed.. Worked for me.

Do 6128s make 8101 deadlines? They're true 16 cores

not sure but i'm pretty certain they don't, i think it ended up as you needing 2.2-2.3ghz from a pair of 61xx octocores - i'll do a quick search

[Qinsp]

Well, that was short lived.

I had Windows problems with the SR-2 machine.

So I went to the Main Page of FAH on my desktop at work. I did the normal install. And within 10 minutes, it bricked the computer. Won't even start in safe mode.

The machine had folded several hundred jobs in the past, both SMP and GPU, and has been running 110% solid for CAD and other heavy load applications for a couple years straight. It is the most stable machine I own.

Machine Specs:

AMD 1100 6-core stock speed, watercooled.
4 GB of DDR3 1600
nVidia GTX 460 stock clock
ZR30 monitor (2500x1200?) CAD monitor.
120gb SSD
1 TB HDD
WinXP SP3

Apparently, that is not enough hardware to run the default SMP x GPU.

It is certainly a hardware failure, but can't get WinXP to load even under SAFE mode. Don't know if it's the Mobo, CPU, Memory, GPU, SSD, or what. But something snapped.

Not going to even test the SR-2 machine or any of the work computers that ran F@H before. Can't risk it.

I wanted to assist, but I'm not smart enough anymore to do the troubleshooting required. I'll just have to play Parts Swap. If the SSD trashed, it's going to be a bear to reconstruct the system applications I run. I don't backup the full image, just data.

Sorry folks.