Folding Forum

Not much help, just an observation:

I have 4 video cards; ATI 5670, GTX 460, GTX 460, GTX 560 Ti. All with the MFR's recommended drivers.

None are overclocked, all have better than stock cooling in 68-72°F temp controlled rooms. It's a lab environment.

All the SMP's have been solid so far. None of the GPU's have been. This is only a few days. All the cards still work. At first I assumed I broke them. I finally read I'm supposed to run certain versions of drivers for the cards.

To a layman, GPU folding appears not to work. Before, it was normally when you overclocked that problems occurred. Now, just a normal quick install is lethal for me.

This is perhaps just a coincidence that 4 cards that work fine crash as soon as I start folding with them. I do not know. Someone smart needs to figure it out.

Qinsp wrote:Not much help, just an observation:

I have 4 video cards; ATI 5670, GTX 460, GTX 460, GTX 560 Ti. All with the MFR's recommended drivers.

None are overclocked, all have better than stock cooling in 68-72°F temp controlled rooms. It's a lab environment.

All the SMP's have been solid so far. None of the GPU's have been. This is only a few days. All the cards still work. At first I assumed I broke them. I finally read I'm supposed to run certain versions of drivers for the cards.

To a layman, GPU folding appears not to work. Before, it was normally when you overclocked that problems occurred. Now, just a normal quick install is lethal for me.

This is perhaps just a coincidence that 4 cards that work fine crash as soon as I start folding with them. I do not know. Someone smart needs to figure it out.

With FAH v7.2.9, GPU folding is just as easy as CPU folding, as long as you have the right driver version.

First, make sure that for the NVidia GPUs, you are using driver version 306.97. Although newer drivers do work for some people, there have been many, many reports of serious problems from other users. The 310.xx drivers are particularly bad, especially 310.90.

I have 8 video cards: 2 x GTX 275, 2 x GTX 285, 2 x GTX 460, and 2 x GTX 660 Ti. Two of the cards are not folding, as they are in Linux systems.

I should be able to help you get your GPUs folding, if you supply the information on each system, like your CPU, the power supply specs, which GPU is in that system, the CPU and GPU temps (when they are folding), and information from your log file as described here.

It would probably be easiest to work on one system at a time, then when that's working OK, go on to the next system.

Thanks!

OK, "Miss Piggy":

SR-2 with 2x X5650 and 12GB DDR3-2133, CPU temp while folding = 44/48°C.
Win7-64 SP1, no other app software.
EVGA GTX 560 Ti with latest driver.

Card was 40°C when I last looked. Then it lost it's mind. I could tell by touching the GPU, that it wasn't folding, but the screen was frozen, and the CPU's were generating heat (it has LED temp sensor for CPU). It's running v310.90 driver. So I assume the rest of my nVidia's are too.

It's a huge Lian Li case with 6 large external fans and a 1000w Silverstone 80 Silver PS.

So I guess the first step is to roll back the drivers on it?

Qinsp wrote:It's running v310.90 driver. So I assume the rest of my nVidia's are too.

It's a huge Lian Li case with 6 large external fans and a 1000w Silverstone 80 Silver PS.

So I guess the first step is to roll back the drivers on it?

Yes, going back to the 306.97 driver should get you going, assuming that the driver was the only problem.

Thanks,

I'll post what I see on the next test with the rollback driver.

Yup, the 306.97 ran. Was about 13k PPD per card, 35k ppd for the whole box.

Then the "700w" powersupply blew up. 2 x GTX460 stock clock + 1090T CPU/SMP was too much for it. I didn't take a power reading, but it should have under 600w?

Qinsp wrote:Yup, the 306.97 ran. Was about 13k PPD per card, 35k ppd for the whole box.

Then the "700w" power supply blew up. 2 x GTX460 stock clock + 1090T CPU/SMP was too much for it. I didn't take a power reading, but it should have under 600w?

The GTX 460 specs show a Maximum Graphics Card Power of 160 W each. The 1090T CPU specs show 125 W. That's 445W total, so it depends on how much power everything else in the computer uses. I have an 850W power supply in my 2 x GTX 460 rig, with a Phenom II X4 955 CPU, and I would suggest that size for your replacement PSU.

EDIT:
The PSU in my 2 x GTX 460 rig is an OCZGXS850:

Wish I had read this thread a couple of hours ago...
Brand new build (1 hour old) win7 with a GTX 680 on latest V7 .3.2 client.. was on 301.42 but no go for the Kepler it downloaded a core 15 but message "paused waiting for idle" is all I get.
Trying the 306.97. Maybe I've missed something obvious..

kiore wrote:Wish I had read this thread a couple of hours ago...
Brand new build (1 hour old) win7 with a GTX 680 on latest V7 .3.2 client.. was on 301.42 but no go for the Kepler it downloaded a core 15 but message "paused waiting for idle" is all I get.
Trying the 306.97. Maybe I've missed something obvious..

Wow, fantastic build, I'm envious.

When it's up and running, please consider posting your results here, or adding them to the database here.

And if any issues do come up, I would be glad to help in sorting them out.

Keep on folding,
Art

@kiore

...paused waiting for idle...

When you installed v7.3.2 you probably allowed the option that triggers the screenserver method which means it won't start folding until the computer has been idle for a period of time. Think it's 5 minutes but I haven't tried the new client yet (tomorrow hopefully) so I'm not sure what the timeout is. Changing the option that causes the screensaver mode to be used should result in your GPU folding or don't touch the keyboard or mouse until the screensaver engages and your GPU should start folding.

bollix47 wrote:@kiore

...paused waiting for idle...

When you installed v7.3.2 you probably allowed the option that triggers the screenserver method which means it won't start folding until the computer has been idle for a period of time. Think it's 5 minutes but I haven't tried the new client yet (tomorrow hopefully) so I'm not sure what the timeout is. Changing the option that causes the screensaver mode to be used should result in your GPU folding or don't touch the keyboard or mouse until the screensaver engages and your GPU should start folding.

Ah OK so not a driver issue then, thanks.

kiore wrote:Ah OK so not a driver issue then, thanks.

No, it's an attempt to deal with the so-called "screen lag" problem which bothers people when FAH uses the GPU very heavily. When you are using the computer, GPU processing can be suspended and it can resume work when you're not using it.

If you want it not to do that adjust the slider to the right (Full) in Webcontrol, or right-click the systray and choose full there. Medium waits for 5 minutes of idle before starting.

bruce wrote:

kiore wrote:Ah OK so not a driver issue then, thanks.

No, it's an attempt to deal with the so-called "screen lag" problem which bothers people when FAH uses the GPU very heavily...

The screen lag will vary from system to system. I initially had screen lag with Windows 7 but with Windows 8 and 310.90, I don't have any screen lag at all including HD media playback on the same hardware.

BTW, nice build kiore

PantherX wrote:The screen lag will vary from system to system.

Yes, my screen lag went away in Windows 7 with driver 306.97, when I upgraded from a GTX 285 to a new GTX 660 Ti OC.