Folding Forum

Edited my previous post: I'm curious why FAH doesn't show an even 8GB total memory. That's weird in my book... FWIW, 3770K CPU supports max 32GB (depending on memory type), so that shouldn't be a problem either.

It occurred to me: maybe the on-CPU HD4000 graphics is causing some weirdness. Could you see if you can disable it in BIOS and/or Windows Device Manager?

In case the HD4000 is somehow interfering, we could then see if we can get it to cooperate nicely with the GTX295. If you don't need the GTX295 for gaming, that just might offer an interesting possibility. You could connect your display to HD4000 and have the GTX295 fold in the backgroung. In my experience there's no screen lag as long the GPU(s) which are folding do not output anything to the screen. For example, I only need to pause my ION GPU (integrated 9400GT, also FahCore_11.exe) when I'm using my computer, the GT430 happily folds in the background without causing lag or any other issues.

BTW, I just unpaused my FahCore_11.exe, and you "Page Fault Delta" indeed seems to be seriously wrong. Process Explorer shows plain old 0 for me. The same goes for FahCore_17.exe which feeds my GT430.

Napoleon wrote:It occurred to me: maybe the on-CPU HD4000 graphics is causing some weirdness. Could you see if you can disable it in BIOS and/or Windows Device Manager?

In case the HD4000 is somehow interfering, we could then see if we can get it to cooperate nicely with the GTX295. If you don't need the GTX295 for gaming, that just might offer an interesting possibility. You could connect your display to HD4000 and have the GTX295 fold in the backgroung. In my experience there's no screen lag as long the GPU(s) which are folding do not output anything to the screen. For example, I only need to pause my ION GPU (integrated 9400GT, also FahCore_11.exe) when I'm using my computer, the GT430 happily folds in the background without causing lag or any other issues.

BTW, I just unpaused my FahCore_11.exe, and you "Page Fault Delta" indeed seems to be seriously wrong. Process Explorer shows plain old 0 for me. The same goes for FahCore_17.exe which feeds my GT430.

I disabled HD4000 in Device Manager - made no difference. But yes, if I switch my monitor to use it as a primary device folding on the GTX 295 has no issues. Sadly, that's a no go for me as the HD4000 doesn't want to output 1900x1200 to my monitor over HDMI for some reason+have awful overscan in 1080p (it thinks my monitor is a TV apparently .

So yes, seemingly just using the GTX 295 while folding seems to cause lag+the page faults to occur, but this still doesn't explain why when the WUs start initially it doesn't happen. Weird.

Edit: So I'm pretty sure the lag is associated with VRAM swapping out after all (to disk? to system memory?). In PE there's a graph called Dedicated GPU memory - with no applications running it says 406 MB and it runs fine at Full. The moment I fired up Chrome and started using some stuff like auto-complete etc the PE reading took a dip to 70MB, page faults started being logged and my desktop came to a crawl. I closed Chrome and in a 5 secs or so it came back to normal. So I guess I'm just out of luck or need a new video card with more memory to run in Full. The 'OK before reboot' must have been a memory situation fluke I think.

Darn. HD4000 supports 1920x1200 (standard WUXGA, 16:10 ratio), so at least in theory it should support also the more exotic 1900x1200. But ultimately it is up to the HD4000 driver (and configuration tools). I'm not familiar with the HD4000... does it have any sort of control panel item allowing you to specify custom resolutions for your display?

In a pinch you could try creating a custom 1900x1200 resolution in the NVidia Control Panel and checking if the HD4000 also offers that choice when you attach the display to the HD4000's HDMI connector. For example, my display is native 1680x1050, but the NVidia GPU allows creating higher resolutions and downscales them to native resolution. I was able to create 1900x1200 and 1920x1200 in NV Control Panel. Said panel didn't offer the 1900x1200 or 1920x1200 choice but standard Win7 method of changing resolution did (right-click on the desktop -> Screen resolution). Yay, my screen was actually able to display 1920x1200 and also 1900x1200, although deviating from my native 1680x1050 resolution made things look less than pretty.

Well, actually the 1900x1200 was only an underscanned version of 1920x1200, leaving a small unused area at the top of the screen. But that makes sense in my case, both 1680x1050 and 1920x1200 have the same aspect ratio (16:10), so scaling up by the 1920:1680 == 8:7 and then underscanning it for 1900x1200 sounds like the easy way out.

All I'm saying, if the only thing preventing you using the HD4000 for display and dedicating the GTX295 for folding is the apparent lack of 1900x1200 support in HD4000, there could possibly be some ways to tweak the 1900x1200 support also for HD4000.

BTW, what does GPU-Z have to say about your various GPUs?

Thanks - Sorry - I meant 1920x1200 - I think HD4000 supports resolutions way above 1920x1200 but it's some sort of an issue with the HDMI negotiations or some such... I forced 1920x1200 but it looks like crap Have to look more into it. However I think I figured out an easier solution though - just broke SLI. In maximize 3d performance the VRAM is mirrored and I end up with 896MB total instead of 896MB per GPU. Now, as it seems the average WU I get from FAH wants 420MB per GPU you can do the math No wonder I'm starved - the OS is left with something about 56MB of available VRAM - it's a wonder the screensaver runs So breaking SLI (Disable Multi-GPU mode) theoretically gives each GPU 896MB of VRAM and so far my experiment has proved successful Cheers - hope that thread is useful to folks in the future.

Edit: OK, fixed resolution - so My monitor is 16:10 1920x1200 which the HD4000 doesn't want to input - it drops me in an overscanned 1920x1080 (16:9) resolution.

Edit 2: Actually I think breaking SLI should be in a FAQ or something - doesn't matter if FAH can access both GPUs with SLI on or off - if they're bound to be starved out of VRAM if SLI is on.

Quoting Xbitlabs Intel HD4000 review:

Moreover, there are a few limitations in resolutions and monitor connection types. Theoretically, a desktop system on an Ivy Bridge processor can offer three outs: the first one - a universal out (HDMI, DVI, VGA or DisplayPort) with maximum resolution of 1920x1200, the second one – a DisplayPort, HDMI or DVI with up to 1920x1200 resolution, and the third one – a DisplayPort supporting higher resolutions up to 2560x1600.

Good call on breaking up the SLI. I have 512MB allocated for my ION, and it's barely sufficient when I fold with it while doing lightweight browsing with Opera, like now. But still... HD4000 should support Custom Resolutions. Click the pic below for Intel Graphics FAQ / "I cannot select a resolution larger than 800x600 or 1024x768. How do I fix this?" reference:


What choices are available if you connect your display to the CPU/motherboard's HDMI connector and try tweaking display modes and/or (custom) resolutions with the Intel graphics driver's control panel?

When I switch to the HD4000 HDMI the max is 1920x1080 (1080p) and it overscans (borders are cut off). When I force it to 1920x1200 it displays but again overscans - when I compensate manually it looks really bad (skewed, fonts not clear enough, etc.).



Cheers

I see. One last thing to try with the HD4000: the maximum resolution and refresh rate for single-link DVI / vanilla HDMI is 1920×1200 at 60Hz. So, you may need to manually reduce the refresh rate to max 60Hz, in addition to forcing the resolution to 1920x1200.

Napoleon wrote:I see. One last thing to try with the HD4000: the maximum resolution and refresh rate for single-link DVI / vanilla HDMI is 1,920×1,200 @60Hz. So, you may need to manually reduce the refresh rate to max 60Hz, in addition to forcing the resolution to 1920x1200.

I'm already at 60Hz - as I said I can get 1920x1200 to display, but my monitor is quite old (BenQ FP241W) and doesn't have something called HDMI 1:1 pixel mapping which would properly display the image (without it being stretched). I'd like to try with a HDMI->DVI adapter but I don't have one handy. Cheers and thanks for the assistance!

Please note that neither of the following WUs are bad since they were completed successfully:
Project: 5767 (Run 12, Clone 88, Gen 2746)
Project: 5768 (Run 5, Clone 178, Gen 2958)

PantherX wrote:Please note that neither of the following WUs are bad since they were completed successfully:
Project: 5767 (Run 12, Clone 88, Gen 2746)
Project: 5768 (Run 5, Clone 178, Gen 2958)

Thanks - as mentioned above I've solved my problems in the meantime - they were caused by running out of VRAM due to the size of the WUs and my GTX 295's limited memory (896MB in SLI). I solved this by breaking SLI. Works like a charm.

SLI provides zero benefit for FAH although you may want it for other programs.