SMP 64 folding?

[Sumner_R]

Hello,

I've been doing a little folding for a few days a month for the past year or so, but I'm new to this forum. I recently came across a H8QGI+-F motherboard and 4 Opteron 6278 CPUs. 128 GB of RAM. I bought them only because it was a steal, and thought I could do more folding with it. My problem is that I really don't know what I'm suppose to do with it all. I installed Server 2008 R2 on it, and v7.3, but it defaults to SMP 32, with my CPU usage running at 50%. I tried increasing the CPU slot's value to 64, but it said the maximum CPU value was 32. One thing that did work was I simply added a second CPU slot set at SMP 32 and while running 2 WUs at the same time I was able to get 100% CPU usage. But, for some reason, I feel like it's not suppose to work that way? I hear stories of people getting like 500,000 PPD on a single WU and such. Maybe I need to try Linux instead of Windows? Any ideas would be appreciated!

Thanks!

[P5-133XL]

Run Linux and then use client-type = bigadv in an SMP slot.

[Nathan_P]

Welcome to the forum, thats quite a machine you got your hands on.

Try here for everything you will ever need to know about getting the best from your machine http://hardforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=133
To get you going you only need the ubuntu setup guide - everything else can be read and added if needed later

[PinHead]

Put it on Linux and run the -bigadv Work Units. Currently windows is not supported by Big Advantage WU. Then you will have all 64 cores working on a single WU.

[mmonnin]

Run Linux and then use client-type = bigadv in an SMP slot.

7.3 will only show CPU or GPU as it doesn't split out SMP/Uniprocessor and more.

Just put in 64 for the CPU slot, if 7.3 in Linux doesn't do it on default.

[7im]

32 cores is a logical default (maximum) in some of the fahcores when no core count is specified. To go above that count, you must specify a higher number in the client setup, assuming a 64 bit OS.

[Sumner_R]

Hey guys,

Thanks for all of the replies. I think I've finally got it working with ubuntu. I've never used linux before so it took some time getting used to it. When I'm folding with bigadv, the machine runs at 100% on all 64 cores. Curiously, when bigadv isn't enabled, the regular work units still only run at 75%. But that's ok. Thanks for all of your suggestions!

But while I've got you here reading already, I had another small little question. When folding these bigadv work units, how important is the RAM's speed? I ask because I think one of my RAM slots is dead for CPU socket #1, so my RAM is unevenly populated now. Was just a little curious as to whether or not this would have affected the folding speeds or not.

Thanks again!

[Joe_H]

Persons who have tested this and reported on different RAM speeds have shown minor changes in processing time with faster RAM. I don't recall exact numbers, but the results were just a few percent better TPF than using slower RAM.