[Debian 12] Do I need to install CUDA separately?

It seems that a lot of GPU problems revolve around specific versions of drivers. Though NVidia has their own support structure, you can often learn from information reported by others who fold.

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Dr. Banana
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Joined: Mon Dec 05, 2022 6:21 pm

[Debian 12] Do I need to install CUDA separately?

Post by Dr. Banana »

I can fold with my gpu, just interested to know why I can do so despite not installing CUDA. I installed the proprietary driver, but on debian there are separate instructions for CUDA:

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apt install nvidia-cuda-dev nvidia-cuda-toolkit
Do I need these? I think I read somewhere on this forum that fah downloads its own version of the cuda toolkit, is that still true?
bikeaddict
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Re: [Debian 12] Do I need to install CUDA separately?

Post by bikeaddict »

It falls back to using OpenCL if the CUDA libraries can't be loaded. CUDA has significantly better performance than OpenCL, so it's better to use that unless you have some kind of philosophical objection to something proprietary.
pcwolf
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Re: [Debian 12] Do I need to install CUDA separately?

Post by pcwolf »

Seems to me that the -dev and -toolkit are more for *programming* CUDA than running.

Manjaro has a package "cuda" which did improve my folding over just the plain NVidia 550 driver. You can check the folding information log where right after downloading the work project you can see the Platform sort down through Open-Cl to CUDA and shortly thereafter which one is selected for folding.
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toTOW
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Re: [Debian 12] Do I need to install CUDA separately?

Post by toTOW »

The proprietary driver has all the necessary libraries to run FAH with CUDA.
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Folding@Home beta tester since 2002. Folding Forum moderator since July 2008.
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