Folding Forum

I have used F@H a while ago in the past, but it was a while back and purely for the sake of folding (i.e. not in the background).

Now I want to start again, but run it in the background on my HP MicroServer N40L. For those that don't know it's a really low power server (powered by a Turion X2 @ 1.6GHz). It also has a slot for a PCIe graphics card - although it has to be low profile and single slot width (no big coolers). I'm running it with Windows Server 2012 Essentials.

I've currently got an AMD HD 7450 graphics card installed in the server, and it's showing an estimated 550PPD. But it only seems to be loading the GPU 30% (checked via GPUz). Should it only put a 30% load on the HD7450 or is something wrong somewhere? I keep looking around and I see that nVidia cards such as the GT620 would get substantially more. Would I benefit from swapping to an nVidia card, and if so what performance could I expect out of each card? I guess I'd be looking at the GT610, GT620 and possibly the GT630 if I can find a low profile one that fits the N40L.

The CPU is also fairly limited in what it can do - pretty underpowered but it's well suited to a home server in all honesty. At the minute, I'm only running F@H on one core so I can keep some power left the for N40L - although it's only showing a PPD of 89; I'm not quite sure it's even worth running on this CPU?

Would anyone be as kind to simply share their thoughts on the matter?

Welcome to foldingforum.org, Biohead

In today's environment, you'll find a lot of people who run on equipment that's a lot more powerful but personally, I also run on what they call underpowered equipment. It's really your decision to make. Something like a file server or a router is designed for a specific task but it's going to be running 24x7 whether it folds or not so in my way of looking at it, whatever its CPU can produce is "free" (which was one of the early goals of FAH).

The HD7450 can fold, too. Yes, there are a lot of things you can do to increase your production, but they generally come with a cost (even if it's only added electricity) which also makes that your decision. The low profile NV cards are fine, too. (I have a GT610 in one of my low-power systems.) Both graphics cards currently use an older version of the analysis code but there's a new version currently being beta tested. When it's ready for release, it will make both of those GPUs more productive, but you might as well start now and let them upgrade themselves whenever that actually happens.

Most of the time, changes in video drivers don't matter much, but they've been going through some pretty radical changes recently so you might want to look at them, too. There's a lot written here in the forum.

The low GPU utilization is caused by the AMD driver. You can go back to 12.8 or install a newer version with SDK 2.7.

Thanks guys. I'd read about the AMD driver issue and this actually got me further into it than I hoped.

I updated to the latest beta catalyst release, and it would only update the catalyst program - not the graphic driver itself (that was stuck on version 9.xyz when it should've updated to 12.xyz). So I completely wiped the drivers and catalyst off the system, and downloaded the latest standard package. Same issue - would not install the graphics driver, just the HDMI audio driver and CCC. After a bit of trying, on fresh OS installs too, it turns out the ONLY driver I can install is the one that is supplied with the card on the install disc.

I put this down to it being a HP OEM card. So, as I know the 6450 and 7450 are the same I took the risk and flashed it with a 6450 bios (A DELL branded one none-the-less!) and the latest beta drivers installed without a problem. Now folding at 86% utilisation which will do nicely. Just to keep an eye on my system temps now. Thanks guys!