Re-enable older GPU Cores

[nmorgan976]

Hello,
I have come back to folding after an absence...… However, my older nvidia graphics cards in game computers are no longer able to fold (but they used to be able to).
In times of the COVID 19 crisis, couldn't the older cores be re-enabled so that all the computing power could be thrown at it?
I have numerous PC's that used to be capable but seem to be only capable to process data on the CPU's whereas a few years ago, the GPU's able to out perform the CPU.

Regards,
Nick.

[toTOW]

What GPU do you have ?

Minimum requirement to run FAH is to have a GPU that supports double precision computations. It translate to Fermi GPUs (Geforce 4xx series) for NV and HD 7xxx series (including some high end HD 5xxx and 6xxx series) on AMD.

[nmorgan976]

Hello,

In my Laptop, I have a Nvidia Quadro K3100M (This machine is running fine).
In my Gaming PC, I have just upgraded to an Nvidia 1050Ti (This machine is running fine).
In my old gaming PC, I have a GeForce 9800GT ( which only seems to be running on the CPU)… So it looks like I have to upgrade the graphics card on this machine?

Regards,

Nick.

[JimboPalmer]

New cores do better science. Using old cores would make some Work Units only foldable by a small set of cards. And those WUs would take forever.

There were equations where, without Double Precision floating point math, too much rounding happened to provide usable results, just enough DP math was added to prevent that. (DP math is inherently twice as slow as Single Precision floating point math, but is often artificially slowed by the vendor to as much as 32 times slower than SP in an attempt to make you buy a more expensive 'professional' card) F@H needs DP, but tries to only use it where needed.

Many of the older cores were written in vendor specific, sometimes no longer supported, languages. (APIs) By using OpenCL 1.2, only one pool of WUs can be used by any supported card.

i remember folding on a G 205 with 16 shaders, (or cores) today's best cards have as many as 5000 shaders. My old card could never finish a modern WU in time.

[nmorgan976]

Thanks for the reply, looks like I am going to have to upgrade the graphics card then!

[HaloJones]

it really doesn't make sense to fold on cards that old anyway; they use significant power for very little effect. If you get something like a 1070 (available used for $200) for 140W they'll pull around 800Kppd