Nvidia Driver Tuned for Running Folding@Home?

[Stonecold]

well, that all goes to the difference between consumer and professional cards.
Both AMD, and Nvidia make professional cards that have the exact(except in many cases not crippled)GPU that goes into consumer cards.
Often the difference between these $4000 professional grade cards and the $500-$1000 consumer cards is only the optimized software(drivers)...that and that they intentionally cripple some of the GPU compute capability inherent in identical silica....

Do you have source on this? If it's true, why are there no professional drivers downloadable from pirate sites (not an endoresment btw, please don't delete this post)? A GPU can run any (working) driver that the OS throws at it, which is why the open source Nouveau driver is available. The only thing I see Nvidia "hiding" is the specific documentation on how to control the GPU well (one of the biggest reasons Nouveau is so slow is because Nvidia GPUs start with a very low clock rate when first initialized, but the driver is suppose to raise the clock rate to normal afterwards. Nvidia refuses to give out the documentation that would tell the Nouveau team how to do that, so Nouvaeu is stuck running on a very underclocked device).

[Jesse_V]

The only thing I see Nvidia "hiding" is the specific documentation on how to control the GPU well (one of the biggest reasons Nouveau is so slow is because Nvidia GPUs start with a very low clock rate when first initialized, but the driver is suppose to raise the clock rate to normal afterwards. Nvidia refuses to give out the documentation that would tell the Nouveau team how to do that, so Nouvaeu is stuck running on a very underclocked device).

That's a very interesting observation, thank you for that insight. You wouldn't happen to have a source on that yourself, would you?

[mdk777]

Well, I confess I have not looked closely lately.

At one time, you could indeed get Significant multiple increases in performance with consumer cards(over consumer cards with consumer drivers)...If you had the professional drivers, the professional programs, and the ability to defeat the DRM which required matching drivers to hardware to allow the professional drivers to run.

Since the risk/benefit was so poor, and the DRM continuously improved in complexity, I have not seen any reference of success for some years.

general review of performance differences...due largely to optimized drivers.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/bes ... 93-33.html

[Mitche01]

For anything older than gtx780 or titan. Mosr people have found drivers 32x.xx fold the best.
Hope this helps you.

[7im]

Yep. 327.xx for everything except the GK110 devices. Those can used the latest version.

[leggazoid]

NVIDIA 361.xx and above is working full speed on Core 17 now. How can we get the installation FAQs updated to reflect this?

[Nicolas_orleans]

The only thing I see Nvidia "hiding" is the specific documentation on how to control the GPU well (one of the biggest reasons Nouveau is so slow is because Nvidia GPUs start with a very low clock rate when first initialized, but the driver is suppose to raise the clock rate to normal afterwards. Nvidia refuses to give out the documentation that would tell the Nouveau team how to do that, so Nouvaeu is stuck running on a very underclocked device).

That's a very interesting observation, thank you for that insight. You wouldn't happen to have a source on that yourself, would you?

Hello Jesse_V, just search for nouveau + reclocking on phoronix, basically, to re-clock the card, you either need documentation to write an open source reclocking, or a closed-source firmware. From regular reading on phoronix, my understanding is that there is indeed a lack of documentation, and that the firmwares are released when the equipment is starting to be obsolete.

However, things are moving these days for... Keplers

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page= ... el-Spin-RC

Very recently some patching has been done in 4.5 kernel, allowing for reclocking / boosting Keplers :

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page= ... veau-Boost

[bruce]

You guys have reopened a 2-year old topic.

Re-clocking of Nouveau drivers may be interesting to some, but it has nothing to do with FAH since the default installation lacks OpenCL. Has anybody tried adding OpenCL and been able to fold (albeit slowly)?