Folding Forum

I now installed FAH on this PC with 6+6 threads and 2 GPUs. However, the programm could not start because of some problem with OpenGL.
As I had read earlier today in one of the threads here, this might have to do with the fact that the OS is WinXP (64-bit, SP2). The driver for the Nvidia GTX980TI's is 361.75. Various other GPU tasks under BOINC are working fine though.

Any chance to get FAH function on this machine?

FAH install guide for windows, requirements section. https://folding.stanford.edu/home/guide ... ide/#ntoc4

Following the link above, you'll find Stanford's support statement which generally follows the product's owner's recommendations. General support by Microsoft's for Windows XP ended in 2009 although it was extended until about a year ago. Some software may still run on it but recent code makes use of features which were first introduced in 2007 with Vista.

hm, this is a pitty, but probably not much I can do about
I would so much have liked to contribute to FAH with my 6-core/HT - 2xGTX980Ti computer. However, in view of GPU crunching is some 20% slower in all Windows OS after XP, due to this dumm WDDM overhead, I am running this PC on Windows XP (64-bit). And furhter, as the 64-bit version does not come with an SP3, the requirements listed in https://folding.stanford.edu/home/guide ... ide/#ntoc4 are not fulfilled.

What concerns the OS, FAH seems to be a little more choosy compared to other Grid Computing projects; because all other ones I have been working on so far (and this is quite a lot) had no problem whatsoever with my WinXP 64-bit SP2.

As said above, it's a pitty

If this machine is dedicated to computing and you don't want to pay for a new Windows licence, you could switch to Linux ...

Else, note that XP is now unsupported, even by Microsoft, so it would be a good idea to upgrade (even for your own security).

You make this claim that GPU crunching is 20% slower in later Windows OS's, that is not supported by any reports we have ever seen. I am certain we would have had reports of such a major slowdown from the many persons doing GPU folding, An argument against this slowdown is that persons folding on Linux get comparable production to those using more recent versions of Windows.

Yes, there is WDDM overhead but while that overhead may reduce the frame rate for screen refreshes, FAH ignores both the hardware and software that is used to update the screen. FAH makes use of either OpenCL or CUDA driver API which exercise the 3D computational components of the GPU. I doubt that WDDM changes any of that.

I would expect a detectable change if you're displaying the protein, but not when you're computing it. The protein display program may help with donor recruitment but it's not an integral part of the science and few people use it after they get started with FAH.

Windows XP 64 does support CPU folding. I still have an XP box for legacy software support, and it folds using the CPU portion of the client.

It does not support GPU folding very well.

Joe_H wrote:You make this claim that GPU crunching is 20% slower in later Windows OS's, that is not supported by any reports we have ever seen. ...

I got this Information from the GPUGRID Forum, and as far as I can judge, they seem to have some real experts there.
In fact, some people there have obviously made tests with work units of the same type (so they are very similar to each other) being crunched on XP and on a later Windows version, and the comparison of crunching time clearly showed this difference of about 20%.

I am not an expert, so it might well be the case the the computation method used by FAH is somewhat different to the one used by GPUGRID.

Here is what the Fah experts have reported in this forum.

Yes, GPUs fold slightly slower in Windows, likely due to the driver model used in each type of OS (vs Linux) but closer to the 10% mark. And what those other experts didn't say is that overclocking a GPU in Windows is simple and more than makes up the ~10%, and that overclocking in Linux is not easy. So the OS choice doesn't really matter.

If you can get a good set of drivers installed in Linux, Overclocking is by far easier.

mmonnin wrote:If you can get a good set of drivers installed in Linux, Overclocking is by far easier.

The word "If" is not needed in Windows. And this is only just recently supported in Linux.

But that is not the point! With folding, many other factors have a bigger impact on performance than the choice of operating system, and so OS choice falls to personal preference for all but the extreme enthusiast. Linux being a slight winner (currently) but extra effort may be needed. YMMV.