Question about GPU on laptop

[frazelle09]

These are our specs...
Operating System: PCLinuxOS 2025
KDE Plasma Version: 6.5.0
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.19.0
Qt Version: 6.10.0
Kernel Version: 6.12.43-pclos1 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 8 × Intel® Core™ i7-4810MQ CPU @ 2.80GHz
Memory: 31.3 GiB of usable RAM
Graphics Processor: Intel® HD Graphics 4600
Manufacturer: Dell Inc.
Product Name: Precision M6800
System Version: 00

It looks like we have a GPU on this lappy. It's probably not all that powerful but would it be more useful than the "normal" CPU config. that we use? If it appears to be more useful than our CPU setup - and we have the drivers installed - would it be possible for you to provide that data that we should enter into the fahcontrol panel?

P.S. We would be more than happy to upgrade to the most recent version of Folding, but our Linux distro does not support systemd...

Have a great day and happy folding!

[Joe_H]

The Intel® HD Graphics 4600 is too old to be used for folding, and should show up as unsupported in the client if it shows up at all. As it is, most of the Intel iGPUs are not powerful enough and will not meet deadlines.

The wikipedia page for Intel GPUs - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_I ... sing_units - lists it as Gen 7.5. The earliest iGPUs that could be used for folding were Gen 9 as best as I can recall, and the higher end ones were usable. Gen 11 were usable, then Intel dropped FP64 hardware support in their Gen 12 iGPUs and the first generation of discrete GPUs. FP64 support returned with the Battlemage based cards.

[frazelle09]

Sigh. Wow. Thanks very much Joe for such a complete, knowledable and quick reply!

This thing is beast - really heavy - but we hardly take it anywhere except Mexico City every 3 - 4 months. But, it's rock solid and just works. Was easy to switch out the keyboard for a backlit one. Perplexity even suggested a newer card - i can't remember which - but when i looked at what removal and upgrade entailed - uf. Well, we gotta do what we can with what we have. Have tried to get other Linux users interesed in the Folding idea, but it's really challenging for their level of expertise to install and configure the program...

Have a beautiful day, be happy, thanks again and happy folding!

[Joe_H]

You are welcome.

About the only thing I would add is that you may do better on CPU folding if you limit the thread count to 4. The i7-4810MQ has 4 cores supporting 8 threads through HT, but using the extra threads increases power consumption and heat for not much gain in processing time for F@h WUs. In some cases all 8 threads on such a processor will actually run slower than a lower number due to contention for the FPU and possibly thermal limiting reducing the CPU clock.

[frazelle09]

As far as i can tell the thermal issue is o.k. We got Perplexity to come up with a simple script which we run after starting folding to limit the CPU usage. We've also got a desktop Ryzan 5 which has been going bannanas til yesterday when Perplexity provided a script for the GPU which is the one attached to the MB. Want to talk to our son when he comes downstairs to ask him if when he upgraded a couple of weeks ago, if he upgraded his GPU and if so, if he'd let me use the old one - lol.

Here's the info on our desktop unit...
Operating System: PCLinuxOS 2025
KDE Plasma Version: 6.5.1
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.19.0
Qt Version: 6.10.0
Kernel Version: 6.12.45-pclos1 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 8 × AMD Ryzen 5 3400G with Radeon Vega Graphics
Memory: 13.6 GiB of usable RAM
Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon Vega 11 Graphics
Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
Product Name: B450 AORUS M

Perplexity says i need more RAM, too - lol. Have a great afternoon up there in W. MA.!

[Joe_H]

When they first came out the Radeon Vega 11 iGPUs were usable for folding. But I don't know if there still are WUs being sent out that are small enough to be processed on one now. You can try and see if you get any assigned, but that might not happen. I do recall that since the iGPU and the CPU are in the same package, the TDP. for cooling is shared. So you may need to do only CPU or only GPU folding. Vaguely I recall the Vega 11 would make a bit more points than most of the AMD CPUs it was packaged with.

As you are running Linux, I don't know what the current situation is for driver support. Natively it will be supported by the Linux kernel as a video display, but the OpenCL support is also required. That was provided by the AMD Adrenaline and other proprietary drivers, I don't recall if the Vega 11 is supported by the ROCm drivers.

[frazelle09]

Just saw him. He said he's got a Radeon Fatboy with 8 Gb. Yuppii! He's switched from Windoze to Mac because of his photography work... We'll be the lucky winner of his last compatible card. Sigh.

[Joe_H]

The Radeon RX 590 is supported for folding. You may run into problems getting full driver support on Linux though. AMD has a habit of dropping full Linux support sooner than it does for Windows, and then just supporting them for video displays without OpenCL support which folding needs. I am seeing mixed results from net searches. Some say it can be done, but need to use older versions of the drivers. Others report not being able to get OpenCL support working.

[muziqaz]

Polaris is no longer officially supported by later ROCm. But nothing stops trying if unofficially it still works, or use older room (5 probably is the one for Polaris).