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Optimizing AMD Set UP

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2020 12:14 am
by j0hn0b
Hey guys, I have f@h up and running now. I'm using a Ryzen 7 1700x and AMD RX 5700XT, but my points per day are listed as 80k. When using other guides as a reference, it seems extremely low. Does this card require a switch into compute mode or something stupid I'm missing?

I was wondering if there are any ideas on how to optimize things a bit, I have everything at stock settings. Hopefully, there's room for more points here somehow. Thanks!

Re: Optimizing AMD Set UP

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2020 12:56 am
by JimboPalmer
F@H gives a Quick Return Bonus, if you have a PassKey. If you have done 10 Work Units and complete 80% of them successfully, you qualify.

Now the bad news: there seems to be a difficulty getting a passkey the week. viewtopic.php?f=61&t=32217

https://apps.foldingathome.org/getpasskey

with your F@H user name, and an email address. I hope yours arrives promptly.

Because you are Folding with your 5700XT, your 1700X will try to use 7 CPUs, but F@H hates large primes and their multiples. so 6 CPUs will be used.

I hope that pumps up your PPD!

Re: Optimizing AMD Set UP

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2020 1:14 am
by j0hn0b
I'll definitely work on getting the passkey, I had actually posted over there too regarding that. Should I change the settings on my program away from the defaults? I had already seen that leaving it open at -1 to choose 15 cores was bad, so I decreased it to 12. Should I further decrease it to 6? I'll share am image of the program in case that's helpful. I really appreciate this help

https://imgur.com/a/lDnQGLi

Re: Optimizing AMD Set UP

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2020 3:10 am
by bruce
12 is a reasonable number. So is 6 or 8 or 9. Those would be small changes compared to getting the passkey and completing 10 units.

Re: Optimizing AMD Set UP

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2020 4:53 am
by j0hn0b
I've set up the passkey, I'll see when I get the next 10 units complete. You don't think the points earned without the bonus is too low? I didn't think the bonus was that much

Re: Optimizing AMD Set UP

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2020 5:12 am
by bruce
The bonus is large. (too large compared to the non-bonus baseline, IMHO)

Re: Optimizing AMD Set UP

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2020 5:19 am
by j0hn0b
With passkey set up and getting the bonus, I'm at around 700k points per day. It's using 10 CPU cores and my 5700xt compute 1, should it be using more than 1 compute unit/core? I'm wondering how realistic the 1m from benchmarks online are. Thanks for the help!

Re: Optimizing AMD Set UP

Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2020 3:18 am
by bruce
By design, GPUs work on a single assigned WU, complete it quickly, earn a sizeable bonus and move on to the next assignment.

How many PCIe slots does your computer have? You may be able to add another GPU.

Re: Optimizing AMD Set UP

Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2020 4:06 am
by JimboPalmer
j0hn0b wrote:I didn't think the bonus was that much
When the Quick Return Bonus was set up, both CPUs and GPUs were much weaker, so the bonus was a much lower % of the base value.

Since we live is wonderful times with powerful CPUs and GPUs, the bonus is huge today as they return MUCH quicker.

My Core Duo from 2009 only makes 1.3k PPD, so they used to be minor. Your rig is 500 times as rewarded.

Re: Optimizing AMD Set UP

Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2020 5:19 am
by j0hn0b
I definitely have the slots to add another GPU, just no GPU to add. I'm thinking about testing out vast.ai to increase my team points instead, not sure how I'd set a passkey up on that though.

Re: Optimizing AMD Set UP

Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2020 10:58 am
by foldy
On vast.ai you can use the same username and passkey you created on your PC.

Re: Optimizing AMD Set UP

Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2020 7:23 pm
by j0hn0b
foldy wrote:On vast.ai you can use the same username and passkey you created on your PC.
Ah, okay. You can use the same user name and passkey on multiple computers? I was under the impression each had to have it's own name and passkey combo

Re: Optimizing AMD Set UP

Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2020 7:33 pm
by Joe_H
Nope, that impression was wrong. You can use the same username and passkey on as many computers as you want. Just follow the terms of use that you need permission to f the owner to run the client on computers you do not own.

Re: Optimizing AMD Set UP

Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2020 7:59 pm
by bruce
This information needs additional emphasis. Do you suppose the overwhelming onrush of passkey applications are for a small subset of actual new users?

Re: Optimizing AMD Set UP

Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2020 8:46 pm
by j0hn0b
I definitely think so. I had submitted for passkeys under 4 names the last couple days before I realized that the system was down. I originally thought I was setting it up wrong. Since then, yeah I've thought I needed to set it up individually on each computer.