Folding Forum

Meki01 wrote:Thanks for the support!.

We are all limited by what we know about your system, as you see, we all find out more about your 'ecosystem' as we both ask questions of each other.

I find I understand multiple Windows boxes with GPUs in each, you may find a method that suits what you want to use to fold.

Quite a lot of motherboards would support 2 x8 slots.

JimboPalmer wrote:

Meki01 wrote:Thanks for the support!.

We are all limited by what we know about your system, as you see, we all find out more about your 'ecosystem' as we both ask questions of each other.

I find I understand multiple Windows boxes with GPUs in each, you may find a method that suits what you want to use to fold.

Quite a lot of motherboards would support 2 x8 slots.

Yes, ....
My next folding project:
Board: Asus ROG Strix B450-F Gaming II with
1x PCIe 3.0 x16 │ 1 x PCIe 3.0 x4 │ 1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 │ 3 x PCIE 2.0 x1
CPU: AMD RYZEN9 3900x
Graphics cards 2 x Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 550

That should be buzzingn ...

Meki01 wrote:

JimboPalmer wrote:

Meki01 wrote:Thanks for the support!.

We are all limited by what we know about your system, as you see, we all find out more about your 'ecosystem' as we both ask questions of each other.

I find I understand multiple Windows boxes with GPUs in each, you may find a method that suits what you want to use to fold.

Quite a lot of motherboards would support 2 x8 slots.

Yes, ....
My next folding project:
Board: Asus ROG Strix B450-F Gaming II with
1x PCIe 3.0 x16 │ 1 x PCIe 3.0 x4 │ 1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 │ 3 x PCIE 2.0 x1
CPU: AMD RYZEN9 3900x
Graphics cards 2 x Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 550

That should be buzzingn ...

That motherboard has:
1x PCIE 3.0 at x16
1x PCIE 3.0 at either x8 or x4 (depending on the use of an M.2 drive)
1x PCIE 2.0 at x4.
3x PCIE 2.0 at x1.

The 2 PCIE 3.0 are enough for your 2 550s and the third PCIE 2.0 at x4 can host an older card if you have it laying around.

... and if you can accept a slow card that is going to get less than its full performance level, the 1x will work but might also be limited by the number of threads your CPU has.

Many thanks to everyone for your tips!

Hello! The new, better board with 8 PCIe slots has arrived. Equipped with an I7 processor and 8 GT 730s, unfortunately I have the same picture as before. Some cards need up to 35 days for a WU, others can do it in one day ... Although this board has a PCIe 3.0 bus, unfortunately only x1 ... The board is therefore not suitable for Folding @ Home either - a shame!

But in the meantime my Asus ROG Strix B450-F Gaming II is running with an AMD RYZEN9 3900x and 2 x Radeon RX 550 cards and generating around 410,000 PPD

The 730 is the slowest nVidia GPU that FAH can use. Each one operates on a separate assignment so I wouldn't expect a significant change in throughput unless it was choked by the CPU. Your primary limitation in in your GPU's speed.

The GT730 comes in two flavors GF108 (Fermi) and GK208 (Kepler), Everything after the GT730 is Kepler or better.

FAH supports CUDA on Kepler or better. Don't expect much out of the Fermi or earlier since they only run OpenCL.

The AMD GPUs are entirely another story.

gunnarre wrote:What is the model number of that board?
What is the PCIe width of the slots? Are they all x1? If so, even replacing the CPU might not be worth it - though the GT 730 is a small GPU so it might still work: viewtopic.php?p=338263#p338263

MeeLee wrote:I've already replied multiple times to this question.
It's up to you to find and accept those settings, or just go against it.
In most cases:
PCIE 1.0 x4 / 2.0 x2 / 3.0 x1 is not recommended for folding. You could fold on it, but will experience serious PPD penalties on budget to mid range GPUs.
PCIE 1.1 x16 / 2.0 x8 / 3.0 x4, good enough for GTX 1600 series GPUs under Linux (an RTX 2060 gets 975k PPD in Linux, which is slower than a Core 21 WU), or up to a GTX 1060 in Windows.
PCIE 2.0 x16 / 3.0 x8 is good enough for up to a 2080Ti under both Linux and Windows. Estimated upcoming 5000+ shader/core gpus might be limited in Windows, but should fold fine in Linux.
PCIE 3.0 x16, there's currently no GPU that would exceed this PCIE bandwidth, but if there were, it would be a GPU with 8000 cores or more.

That info, though correct at the time, is pretty much outdated by today's standards.
It was also aimed towards the latest GTX 10 and 16 series GPUs, and RTX GPUs.
It may not be reliable info anymore, especially with the latest core updates.

The reason his system takes so long finishing WUs, is because the GPUs are not even mid-class, but budget GPUs, with limited shaders.
They might run fine on a PCIE 2.0 x1 slot,
He may want to upgrade his CPU to a Celeron dual core 4 threads though (they have em nowadays running at 3Ghz, which will make it about 4x faster), although not sure if Celeron has a CPU that runs hyperthreading with DDR3 memory.
My real advice would be to buy a modern PC, with a single RTX GPU. It'll be much faster, smaller, and consume much less power and heat.

He is using an old mining rig, and as such, old mining rigs, outdated for mining, will be even more outdated for folding, as folding requires a much faster system than mining does.

From the link below, the best CPU upgrade would be a Core i7-2715QE. Refurbished versions can be found for $50 to $70 online.

Second best would be the Core i7-2620M, sold for $50 on ebay.

List of compatible CPUs:
https://www.cpu-upgrade.com/CPUs/Intel/ ... e/847.html

It's a cheap upgrade that will increase PPD for sure, but personally I would wait until GPU prices drop, and just replace all the GPUs with a single, more modern GPU.

We're bound to see a whole bunch of re-labeled RTX 3060 GPUs coming from China (that in reality were just 2000 series GPUs, that got bios flashed and sold as if they're offbrand 3060s.
The same happened to the GTX 1000 series GPUS a few years ago.

MeeLee wrote:From the link below, the best CPU upgrade would be a Core i7-2715QE. Refurbished versions can be found for $50 to $70 online.

Second best would be the Core i7-2620M, sold for $50 on ebay.

List of compatible CPUs:
https://www.cpu-upgrade.com/CPUs/Intel/ ... e/847.html

It's a cheap upgrade that will increase PPD for sure, but personally I would wait until GPU prices drop, and just replace all the GPUs with a single, more modern GPU.

We're bound to see a whole bunch of re-labeled RTX 3060 GPUs coming from China (that in reality were just 2000 series GPUs, that got bios flashed and sold as if they're offbrand 3060s.
The same happened to the GTX 1000 series GPUS a few years ago.

Are you talking about the GT 450s that got flashed to GTX 750 and 1050 ti's? Here in Greece people sell those as: Chinese 1050ti. That way the hope to avoid any backlash from the buyer, since they technically said Chinese ( and thus fake). There was also a store which tried to pull such a scam lately and a youtuber got wind of it, in his efforts to build an affordable pc for his audience. The backlash was huge, and the site was review bombed on the local "ebay" of sorts.