Setting up two GTX 550 Ti on Ubuntu 18.04

[Joker]

This was a stretch goal for getting all my old cards working. I've heard mixed messages about whether the nVidia GTX 550 Ti is too old to fold or not:

The GTX 550 Ti is in the list of supported GPUs since is does support double precision computation.

From: viewtopic.php?f=80&t=33320&p=318290&hilit=+gtx+550+#p318290

Steps so far:
(1) Install minimal Ubuntu 18.04
(2) install ocl-icd-opencl-dev
(3) install FAHclient and FAHcontrol
(4) manually add GPU slot with all -1 settings
(5) changed Expert "gpu" setting from "false" to "true"

That's what I have currently. In earlier attempts I tried also adding the graphics drivers PPA and installing nvidia-driver-440. That didn't work, and it screwed up the display resolution, so I didn't trust it, and I reinstalled Ubuntu. I think Ubuntu installs nvidia-driver-390 or something like that on its own, so this fresh install has linux drivers that are maybe old, but seem reliable.

Right now the error I'm getting is that no OpenCL device is found for the slot.

If the GTX 550 Ti is too old to work, I want to prove that so I can give up

-Joker

[HaloJones]

open a terminal window and run "nvidia-smi"

if that doesn't work, your nvidia drivers are not installed and they do need to be. Although FAH uses OpenCL it needs the drivers too.

My advice would be to download the nvidia drivers - I use 415 on one rig and 420 on another so it doesn't seem to matter which - sort out your display modes. Then install the opencl and then install fah.

[ipkh]

500 series cards are out of support.
The latest driver is in the 391 branch released about 2 years ago.
It might not support OpenCL 1.2, but load up the proprietary driver list and try that driver.
Make sure to include any nvidia-xxx-compute packages as well.

[Joker]

It appears to be working! I think folding on a GTX 550 Ti is possible!

What I did after the steps above:

* ran nvidia-smi, which failed and instructed me to install nividia-340
* installed nividia-340
* rebooted
* removed existing GPU slots
* added new GPU slots with -1

I'll give confirmation after each of my two cards submit their first WUs, but I think it works!!

I find it really annoying that the problem seems to have been that I needed to try a bunch of different driver versions. After adding the drivers PPA, running "nvidia-drivers devices" in Ubuntu clearly marked "nvidia-drivers-440" as the "recommended" install, so of course I followed that, but that totally failed to work.

And even without adding the PPA, Ubuntu was marking "nvidia-drivers-390" as the recommended version. I did not try that one, because nvidia-340 seemed like it was a better guess based on the output of nvidia-smi.

It's annoying that I was guessing. I still don't know if nvidia-drivers-390 would have worked. And the nagging question is, if nvidia-drivers-390 does work, would it let my cards fold more efficiently? Should I try those?

[Joker]

Make sure to include any nvidia-xxx-compute packages as well.

I did not install any of this, but it seems to be working anyway (see post above). Is there any reason I still should?

[ipkh]

At this point, I'd not worry about it.
Which version of ubuntu are you using?
The ppa is probably not needed.