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Is there much life left for Uniprocessor WUs?
Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 5:07 pm
by Sumner_R
Naturally I don't expect any concrete answers to this question, but I was kind of wondering what some of your opinions might be on the subject. I have a couple of old Pentium 4 machines that I fold on occasionally. What I've noticed is that (I'm guessing because of the new benchmark machine) these older computers of mine are coming dangerously close to the deadlines these days even when they are folding 24/7. I still like to pat my older computers on the head and smile thinking that they still have a use after all these years, but I'm afraid that one day very soon even folding wont be an option for them and it's off to the big recycling center in the sky. So what would you guess to be how much life they have left in them for folding@home? 1 year? 2? 6 months?
Re: Is there much life left for Uniprocessor WUs?
Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 5:36 pm
by P5-133XL
a couple of years ago, I took both my Dell 8400 P4's and placed GTX 460's in them so I could GPU fold but you really need a P4 with PCI-e for that to work and many P4's never had that bus. Worked like a charm. They get the exact same PPD for the same GPU WU's as much more modern CPU's. I do not CPU fold on the same machine because that decreases my GPU folding PPD.
That being said, if you do not have a GPU to use it is hard to justify CPU folding on them because the PPD/W is so low. On the other side, every WU that a P4 CPU finishes is still a step in the right direction. So as long as the CPU's can finish on time then all is good.
Next point, there are still low-end dual core processor CPU's being produced and lots of people are buying them because they are cheap and good enough. With the default of the v7 client being at medium where it only runs a single core there are lots of individuals running uniprocessor WU's so they will continue.
Re: Is there much life left for Uniprocessor WUs?
Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 5:53 pm
by Napoleon
The ancient core_78 for uniprocessors only is still alive and kicking, but looks like they get assigned only to really, really really slow CPUs like my Atom330. But like P5 pointed out, there has even been specific demand for dualcores or lower quite recently: viewtopic.php?f=66&t=23349&p=233160#p233160
Not every project is for big iron, so every little bit helps.
Re: Is there much life left for Uniprocessor WUs?
Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 7:01 pm
by 7im
If you have a PCIe slot, and $250, the new GTX 760 GPU is a good sweet spot for price versus performance. While your P4 will produce 100-200 PPD running a CPU client, it will produce around 60,000 PPD using that new GPU, and will be supported for many years. It's a really great way to extend the life of an older computer.
Re: Is there much life left for Uniprocessor WUs?
Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 7:35 pm
by folding_hoomer
Or you buy an AMD-GPU like 7870 to fold with Core17 and save money while the CPU is only needed to initiate the WU and is than only used infrequent.
Nvidia-GPU´s like GTX760 utilize the whole CPU (P4 without HT) while folding with Core17 - and the P4 is a real power hog . . .
Re: Is there much life left for Uniprocessor WUs?
Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 7:59 pm
by Sumner_R
Thanks for all of your replies! I just took a look and none of them have any PCIe slots. I remember seeing a GT430 once that was a regular PCI card. Do you think those would fold any better than just the CPUs themselves?
Re: Is there much life left for Uniprocessor WUs?
Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 8:14 pm
by Zagen30
Much better. From a couple of reports they do around 5-6.5k PPD on core 15 WUs. They appear to fare worse on core 17 WUs, as I'm seeing a report of around 3k PPD, but that's still a lot better than a P4.
Re: Is there much life left for Uniprocessor WUs?
Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 10:57 pm
by GreyWhiskers
I can attest to the ability of a GT430 to pull down significant performance.
I had an old HP desktop with a Pentium 4/HT 3.2 GHz processor (one core, 2 HT threads) with a AGP bus. When the ATI card I had in the AGP bus was depreciated by FAH so it could no longer get Core 11 work units, I bought a GT430 (Zotac) for the PCI (non express) bus.
As you can see from the GPU-z shots, the card wonderfully overclocks (core 910, memory 780) with complete stability (except for the P8900 zeta unit core unit I show below). The card has no fan, so I bought a USB fan that lays in the bottom of my case blowing directly onto the massive heatsink of the card.
I've included a selection of the projects, both Core 15 and Core 17, it works with. As you can see, it almost finished a p8900 - getting an error after 92%
, but did complete a p7663. The ppd stats show that the card can do these larger runs, but its 96 CUDA core design just isn't very efficient, compared with the Kepler card I also use (e.g., GTX660Ti). I turned off the Advanced Methods flag, so am just getting the basic Core 15 WUs, of many different projects. The ppd runs from 7663 to 2697. Note that this lowest ppd came from a time before I started overclocking the GT430.
Code: Select all
Project WU Name Name Core name Core ver frame time kfact credit ppd D/L (UTC) Complete (UTC) frames compl atoms run clone gen
7624 p7624 HP a475c Slot 01 OPENMMGPU 2.22 00:26:33 0 14,093.00 7,643.70 10/10/2012 07:00 10/12/2012 09:47 100 1980 352 0 87
7625 p7625 HP a475c Slot 01 OPENMMGPU 2.25 00:32:28 0 14,093.00 6,250.70 12/22/2012 01:02 12/24/2012 11:51 100 1980 442 2 7
8074 p8074 HP a475c Slot 01 OPENMMGPU 2.25 00:09:26 0 3,874.00 5,913.70 7/9/2013 16:03 7/10/2013 00:59 100 917 20 10 141
7660 p7660 HP a475c Slot 01 OPENMMGPU 2.25 00:13:03 0 4,431.00 4,889.40 1/20/2013 09:03 1/21/2013 16:22 100 1179 198 0 12
8010 p8010 HP a475c Slot 01 OPENMMGPU 2.25 00:13:24 0 2,510.00 2,697.30 6/22/2012 12:02 6/23/2012 10:27 100 917 0 1337 77
7625 p7625 HP a475c Slot 01 OPENMMGPU 2.25 00:31:18 0 14,093.00 6,483.70 5/6/2013 01:40 5/8/2013 06:21 100 1980 109 0 169
8900 p8900 HP a475c Slot 01 zeta 49:45:00 0.75 2,400.00 92 40000 473 2 6
7663 p7663 HP a475c Slot 01 ZETA 0 00:18:06 0.75 2,898.50 2,306.00 5/20/2013 10:25 5/21/2013 16:49 100 22000 3 34 44
Re: Is there much life left for Uniprocessor WUs?
Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 11:10 pm
by Sumner_R
That's amazing. I never would have thought a regular PCI card could get those numbers. Can you use more than one at a time? They have some on ebay for $45 so maybe I'll try one out.
Re: Is there much life left for Uniprocessor WUs?
Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 11:16 pm
by 7im
Yes, if your P4 has Hyperthreading, you could run 2 GPUs very well.
Re: Is there much life left for Uniprocessor WUs?
Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 11:41 pm
by Sumner_R
Only one of them has hyperthreading. All of my older computers include:
2.4 GHZ P4
2.8 GHZ P4 (HT)
3.0 GHZ Celeron D
2.2 GHZ Athlon 3500+
I can't help it--it's the nostalgia, you know?
Re: Is there much life left for Uniprocessor WUs?
Posted: Thu Jul 11, 2013 12:21 am
by 7im
1 is better than none. And 2 is a bonus.
Re: Is there much life left for Uniprocessor WUs?
Posted: Thu Jul 11, 2013 1:14 am
by GreyWhiskers
Actually, the core15 work units take practically no Cpu time for this card so you might be able to run more than one.
Of course, you need to run win Xp or higher -- no Linux -- for core 15. And DO watch your temps.
F
[EDIT] Do also look out for your power supply capacity. More than one of the 430s might overtax a small PS.
[EDIT2-] There are no guarantees in this business so there is always the possibility that Core 17 will become the wave of the future of GPU folding. I just hope that we get a way to have the assisnment server capable of assigning smaller work units to productive HW like these. But no guarantees.
Re: Is there much life left for Uniprocessor WUs?
Posted: Thu Jul 11, 2013 4:18 am
by Napoleon
GreyWhiskers wrote:Of course, you need to run win Xp or higher -- no Linux -- for core 15.
WINE works for the GPU v6 console client. Takes a bit of tweaking, but it's doable - viewtopic.php?f=54&t=23958.
Re: Is there much life left for Uniprocessor WUs?
Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2013 5:38 pm
by Sumner_R
Hey guys, I was actually rummaging through my old pile and I found another old machine that does have a PCIe slot. It was mentioned earlier that a GTX 760 or a Radeon 7870 would be good choices to use to extend the life of old hardware. But it only has a 300W PSU in it so I was hesitant to run out and buy a new card for it without knowing if that was even enough juice. If not would you happen to know any other recommendations that would run on a 300W PSU?