Folding Forum

Joe_H wrote:
With GPU folding active, sleep is disabled. This is because in many cases sleep removes power from the GPU, and loses the current folding data. On waking the usual result is a crash of the folding process or corruption of the data. CPU folding does not have the same issue as the default sleep settings preserve the data in RAM or save to the hard drive for restoration after coming out of sleep.

Hi!
Is it okay then to turn off my PC before a WU assigned to GPU is complete?
And is there a way to use sleep while not compromising the progress?
When I manually pause a WU it still won't let me go to sleep.





THANKS EVERYONE

Simplest is to pause folding completely, then let your system sleep or shut it down. You can usually resume afterwards from a checkpoint. The problem arises when sleeping with the GPU slot active as no indication is given to the software that the data in the GPU RAM might have gone away or have been otherwise changed. You don't see any issues on the display because the video system knows to refresh the screen after sleeping has ended.

Not recommended is changing the client default from disabling sleep when active. Persons have done that, but you have to remember to pause the WU before sleep. Along with that you would have to keep the system from going to sleep on any automatic setting.

You can always pause the client and manually force it to sleep when all slots are in the ready state

Joe_H wrote:Simplest is to pause folding completely, then let your system sleep or shut it down. You can usually resume afterwards from a checkpoint. The problem arises when sleeping with the GPU slot active as no indication is given to the software that the data in the GPU RAM might have gone away or have been otherwise changed. You don't see any issues on the display because the video system knows to refresh the screen after sleeping has ended.

Hi!

First thanks for tips. I am now running core_17 and it's running smoothly at cca. 35000PPD.
The CPU usage while running only core_17 (CPU slot paused) is very low, going around 5%.
Does it make sense now to use the CPU slot since I was getting only about 2-3000 PPD from my CPU? My processor is i3 3220 so would it decrease GPU performance if I use CPU as well (with threads set to 2 or 3)?


Regarding the sleep:

I am NOT using automatic sleep. My windows power settings are set so that computer NEVER goes to sleep on its own.
The thing is, when I manually stop slots by moving the slider to the left (to OFF), I still cannot initiate sleep.
Both CPU and GPU slots go to ready, but when I click on SLEEP, the computer just goes to LOCK.

So basically, I never shut down/sleep without pausing F@H, but SLEEP doesn't work even after pausing it.

Adding a CPU slot should not decrease the GPU performance much, if any. Core_17 will take a full core during the initial setup of a WU before sending it to be processed on the GPU. How long that takes depends on the speed of the CPU and the size of the WU. The core will use the CPU again every couple percent of progress when a checkpoint is written and the data validated. Whether the additional contribution from the CPU slot makes sense is up to you.

As for sleep, once folding is paused it should be possible. Perhaps someone else has run into that problem and can post if they figured out what was preventing sleep.

Hi Joe

Thanks for the info.
I was asking because previously the core_16 was using significant CPU resources all the time (26% usually) and the CPU slot was using the rest so they were kind of clashing.
Anyways, I will try to see what works out the best.

EDIT: core_17 works way better. 8-10x more PPD and as you said it only utilizes significant CPU resources for short periods.

And I hope this topic will help other people.

P5-133XL wrote:You can always pause the client and manually force it to sleep when all slots are in the ready state

"ALL" slots need not be paused. A CPU slot will resume properly after a sleep; only the GPU slot(s) must be paused. It doesn't matter whether this is done using the slider or by right-clicking the slot in FAHControl. Whenever you pause ... resume folding, the FahCore will resume from the previous checkpoint. Using sleep on an active CPU project will retain more of your progress.

Your QRBonus will be reduced, of course, since you're delaying the WUs, but that's your choice.

bruce wrote:

P5-133XL wrote:You can always pause the client and manually force it to sleep when all slots are in the ready state

"ALL" slots need not be paused. A CPU slot will resume properly after a sleep; only the GPU slot(s) must be paused. It doesn't matter whether this is done using the slider or by right-clicking the slot in FAHControl. Whenever you pause ... resume folding, the FahCore will resume from the previous checkpoint. Using sleep on an active CPU project will retain more of your progress.

Your QRBonus will be reduced, of course, since you're delaying the WUs, but that's your choice.

Hi!
Yes, I always first pause the GPU process if I shut down my PC.
The problem is that I simply cannot sleep my computer no matter what, and this started to happen since I started using F@H. Whatever I try, it just locks instead of going to sleep.

Only thing I tried in my BIOS was trying both S1 and S3 levels of sleep, but no difference whatsoever.

Have you tried exiting the FAHClient?