Very slow GPU folding

[Commander Matt]

Using a Radeon HD 6870, F@H folds excessively slow. I have the latest AMD drivers for it.
When compared to SETI@home (not sure if that's a valid comparison, I apologize if it isn't) my GPU pulverizes my CPU in project-finishing (processing?) (see below for specs) while in F@H it's completely opposite; my CPU blasts my GPU out of the water. The TPF for my GPU would be multiple hours, whereas my CPU running only on two cores gets a TPF lower than ten minutes.

This is my setup/config at time of writing:

Folding at Home setup:
Two CPU cores working on project 8608, TPF 5 minutes 20 secs, ETA 7 hours 48 mins (at 12.30%)
Folding power Medium

SETI at Home setup:
Two CPU cores working on two tasks with names that are very long; my GPU "0.117 CPUs + 1 AMD/ATI GPU" also working on a very-long-name-project.
The differences between the GPU and CPU:
Elapsed time on CPU is ~25 minutes (they are within 5 seconds of each other), remaining estimate is 4 hours 35 minutes (they are within 30 seconds of each other). Progress complete (at time of writing) one at 6.8%, one at 6.7%.

GPU: Elapsed time is 18 minutes, remaining 20, at 50%.

On F@H the ETA for GPU would be close to 12 days.

I'm not sure if this is a problem or not.

Specs:
CPU: AMD FX-6300 Hexa core ~3.5GHz, not OC'd
GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 1GB OC'd to 1GHz core clock and 1.25GHz memory clock (OC'd same settings with F@H and SETI@Home)
RAM: 12GB G.Skill Ripjaws X Series, DDR3-1600, three sticks of 4GB.
F@H Version: 7.4.4/Latest at time of writing, 32-bit
SET@Home/BOINC Version: 7.6.6/Latest at time of writing, 64-bit

If anymore specs are needed, please let me know and I will be very happy to oblige.

If you need anymore spec details, let me know and I will be happy to provide.

[Joe_H]

Welcome to the folding support forum.

First, are you attempting to run both F@H and seti@home at the same time? If so, that is not recommended.

Beyond that, you can not directly compare run times of WU's on a CPU versus GPU, or between different projects. WU's for folding come in all sizes, and currently GPU ones tend to be large.

The default settings for GPU folding has it only run when your system is seen as idle. In general that means no input activity from you as a user and the screen shut down or put to sleep. You can set GPU folding to be on at all times or leave it the same. In any case it will take several percent of progress to get a more accurate estimate for ETA and points as well as reach the next checkpoint time. Your 6870 while a good mid range card may need to run near full time to complete most current GPU projects.

PLease see the Welcome topic - viewtopic.php?f=81&t=26036 - for directions on how to find and post your log file. I would also recommend reading the V7 Introduction - http://folding.stanford.edu/home/faq/fa ... roduction/ - available from The Software link at the top of forum pages if you haven't. There are some other useful FAQ's and client information linked there.

[Commander Matt]

Welcome to the folding support forum.

First, are you attempting to run both F@H and seti@home at the same time? If so, that is not recommended.

Beyond that, you can not directly compare run times of WU's on a CPU versus GPU, or between different projects. WU's for folding come in all sizes, and currently GPU ones tend to be large.

The default settings for GPU folding has it only run when your system is seen as idle. In general that means no input activity from you as a user and the screen shut down or put to sleep. You can set GPU folding to be on at all times or leave it the same. In any case it will take several percent of progress to get a more accurate estimate for ETA and points as well as reach the next checkpoint time. Your 6870 while a good mid range card may need to run near full time to complete most current GPU projects.

PLease see the Welcome topic - viewtopic.php?f=81&t=26036 - for directions on how to find and post your log file. I would also recommend reading the V7 Introduction - http://folding.stanford.edu/home/faq/fa ... roduction/ - available from The Software link at the top of forum pages if you haven't. There are some other useful FAQ's and client information linked there.

Thank you for the quick reply.

While not using my computer I am running SETI@Home and F@H at the same time; however, before doing so, I make sure that both programs are running properly, and make sure that the settings are set so that each one only uses 2 cores each, with SETI using GPU as well. Both programs seem to run fine, no resources being taken from F@H. Though when I come back I suspend SETI and set F@H to use 4 cores.

Thank you for the info - I wasn't sure if it was right or not to compare WUs on CPU to GPU, but I thought I should put out the information anyway.

I made sure to have it set to run all time, though I'll be able to have my 6870 running full time without anything else on it, dedicated to F@H/SETI@Home once I get a new card. Is there any way to have less-demanding projects assigned to my 6870? I really don't want to be assigned something that could be done faster if someone else does it.

For posting my log file; should I add the GPU slot first, or should I be fine to post it as-is?

Thank you for your help. I'll be sure to read the Welcome topic and the V7 introduction.

[bruce]

One CPU core needs to be allocated for GPU support when you're folding on the GPU. If you're sharing the GPU, I'm not sure if that means one CPU for FAH and another for Seti, but it might.

I do not have current information about FAH+Seti but at one time, Seti ran at a higher priority than FAH so it could shut out FAH completely if there was a conflict for resources. FAH is designed specifically NOT to compete with other applications and to use only unused resources. Most of the folks asking for help want to maximize FAH perormance when there is (almost) nothing else running (e.g.-your browser doesn't use much, watching a Video might, seti probably does).

Are you adding and removing the GPU slot? Don't do that. You can pause any slot if you run the Advanced Control program rather than the Web control program but apparently you already do run it Right-click on the slot in the Status panel. Configure your system the way you plan to use it, so yes, show the GPU slot.

Also, since we may be dealing with a resource conflict, give us a list of the top tasks using a lot of the CPU from Project Manager (if Windows) and top (if Linu/MacOS)