Folding Forum

So.... i see my gpu getting about 100-150k points per work unit...
My cpu, which folds FASTER is getting about 8-10k points per work unit...
wtf?

GPUs are vastly more powerful than a CPU at the calculations F@H needs.
Your CPU only has a few core vs hundreds in a GPU. This is the main reason GPUs get more points. They are doing more science.

ipkh wrote:GPUs are vastly more powerful than a CPU at the calculations F@H needs.
Your CPU only has a few core vs hundreds in a GPU. This is the main reason GPUs get more points. They are doing more science.

Oh, so there are specifically cpu and gpu work units?

A top end GPU might have several thousand cores (5000 to 9000)

A top end CPU might have 128 cores but 16 is more likely.

In addition, F@H rewards fast results, so the points climb out of proportion to work done.

Currently Core_21 and Core_22 run on GPUs. Core_a7 and Core_a8 run on CPUs

It also depends on your CPU. I have a laptop with an i7-3520m processor, it gets around 11,000 PPD. My desktop with an i7-7700K gets 90-100,000 PPD.

This gets to the other part of what you posted, you said your GPU is folding "FASTER". Without defining what it is doing, you can't actually use that comparison. The WUs for CPU and GPU are set up differently, and WUs from different projects will also have their own differences. A typical CPU WU might have 250,000 or 500,000 steps while a GPU WU will process a million or more steps.

There are other differences that make direct comparisons not easy. But ultimately both CPU and GPU folding contribute. It may take more time for CPUs to do the same amount of calculations, but there are many more CPUs out there compared to GPUs used for folding.

Joe_H wrote:It also depends on your CPU. I have a laptop with an i7-3520m processor, it gets around 11,000 PPD. My desktop with an i7-7700K gets 90-100,000 PPD.

This gets to the other part of what you posted, you said your GPU is folding "FASTER". Without defining what it is doing, you can't actually use that comparison. The WUs for CPU and GPU are set up differently, and WUs from different projects will also have their own differences. A typical CPU WU might have 250,000 or 500,000 steps while a GPU WU will process a million or more steps.

There are other differences that make direct comparisons not easy. But ultimately both CPU and GPU folding contribute. It may take more time for CPUs to do the same amount of calculations, but there are many more CPUs out there compared to GPUs used for folding.

Great, I'mma stop CPU folding then. Only costs electricity and yields almnost no points in return

Leonetienne wrote:

Joe_H wrote:It also depends on your CPU. I have a laptop with an i7-3520m processor, it gets around 11,000 PPD. My desktop with an i7-7700K gets 90-100,000 PPD.

This gets to the other part of what you posted, you said your GPU is folding "FASTER". Without defining what it is doing, you can't actually use that comparison. The WUs for CPU and GPU are set up differently, and WUs from different projects will also have their own differences. A typical CPU WU might have 250,000 or 500,000 steps while a GPU WU will process a million or more steps.

There are other differences that make direct comparisons not easy. But ultimately both CPU and GPU folding contribute. It may take more time for CPUs to do the same amount of calculations, but there are many more CPUs out there compared to GPUs used for folding.

Great, I'mma stop CPU folding then. Only costs electricity and yields almnost no points in return

Like with both GPU or CPU, if points is what you're after, you'll benefit greatly from more modern, faster hardware.
The best current Threadripper (with CPUs 64 cores and 128 threads), can do ~1M PPD.
The best GPUs can do even more.
If your CPU is at least 3Ghz, and you have a full size PCIE 3.0 (x16 or x8) or 4.0 (x4/x8) slot available, I would recommend buying one of the newer RTX 3080 GPUs.

MeeLee wrote:

Leonetienne wrote:

Joe_H wrote:It also depends on your CPU. I have a laptop with an i7-3520m processor, it gets around 11,000 PPD. My desktop with an i7-7700K gets 90-100,000 PPD.

This gets to the other part of what you posted, you said your GPU is folding "FASTER". Without defining what it is doing, you can't actually use that comparison. The WUs for CPU and GPU are set up differently, and WUs from different projects will also have their own differences. A typical CPU WU might have 250,000 or 500,000 steps while a GPU WU will process a million or more steps.

There are other differences that make direct comparisons not easy. But ultimately both CPU and GPU folding contribute. It may take more time for CPUs to do the same amount of calculations, but there are many more CPUs out there compared to GPUs used for folding.

Great, I'mma stop CPU folding then. Only costs electricity and yields almnost no points in return

Like with both GPU or CPU, if points is what you're after, you'll benefit greatly from more modern, faster hardware.
The best current Threadripper (with CPUs 64 cores and 128 threads), can do ~1M PPD.
The best GPUs can do even more.
If your CPU is at least 3Ghz, and you have a full size PCIE 3.0 (x16 or x8) or 4.0 (x4/x8) slot available, I would recommend buying one of the newer RTX 3080 GPUs.

Is that with the new A8 core? If not, expect a +- 50% increase in points.

MeeLee wrote:

Leonetienne wrote:

Joe_H wrote:It also depends on your CPU. I have a laptop with an i7-3520m processor, it gets around 11,000 PPD. My desktop with an i7-7700K gets 90-100,000 PPD.

This gets to the other part of what you posted, you said your GPU is folding "FASTER". Without defining what it is doing, you can't actually use that comparison. The WUs for CPU and GPU are set up differently, and WUs from different projects will also have their own differences. A typical CPU WU might have 250,000 or 500,000 steps while a GPU WU will process a million or more steps.

There are other differences that make direct comparisons not easy. But ultimately both CPU and GPU folding contribute. It may take more time for CPUs to do the same amount of calculations, but there are many more CPUs out there compared to GPUs used for folding.

Great, I'mma stop CPU folding then. Only costs electricity and yields almnost no points in return

Like with both GPU or CPU, if points is what you're after, you'll benefit greatly from more modern, faster hardware.
The best current Threadripper (with CPUs 64 cores and 128 threads), can do ~1M PPD.
The best GPUs can do even more.
If your CPU is at least 3Ghz, and you have a full size PCIE 3.0 (x16 or x8) or 4.0 (x4/x8) slot available, I would recommend buying one of the newer RTX 3080 GPUs.

Okay, that's great thanks. 1M ppd is hefty for a cpu.
But i certainly won't spend a grand on hardware for folding.
If i happen to have the hardware already running, it can fold. But i sadly don't happen to have a $4k 3990x layin around

Leonetienne wrote: Okay, that's great thanks. 1M ppd is hefty for a cpu.
But i certainly won't spend a grand on hardware for folding.
If i happen to have the hardware already running, it can fold. But i sadly don't happen to have a $4k 3990x layin around

The RTX 3080 is probably the best bang for the buck this time around, and costs around $600-700 (depending on model).
One step below (a 3070 isn't out yet), there's any RTX 2060-2080 (second hand), would cost you probably between $250-600.
The 3080 does +5M PPD, a 2080 does ~half that, and would be (second hand) close to the same price as a 3080.
If power cost is important, I'd go with a 2060, 2060 KO, 2060 Super, 2070, or 2070 Super, but only if you can snatch a good price on the second hand market.
Either one of them can run nearly at full speed at a mere 125-130W.
New, they're not worth it.
One step below is a 1650 Super, 1660, 1660 Super, or 1660Ti. That'll be in the 500k-1.4M PPD.
They're still priced in the $175-275 range, at 1/2-1/3rd the price of a 3080, but at 3-10x lower PPD.

I have a 2060 and a 2060 KO on the same motherboard. The Ryzen 5 1600 nowadays just tends them and doesn’t do folding... maybe it should on 4 of its cores, perhaps? With the improved GPU performance of late, I get around 3 million PPD from the two GPUs — though sometimes a few hundred thousand more or less than that.

sorry for going off topic, but i have to ask how your KO compares to the other

Knish wrote:sorry for going off topic, but i have to ask how your KO compares to the other

From my understanding:
2060<2060KO<2060Super
The KO is chosen because the early models the KO was faster than the super for OpenCL, as they only disabled cuda cores.
Newer models are reportedly slower, as aside from cuda cores, other (working) shaders are also disabled to get a more uniform performance out of the KO line.
People bought them for folding expecting near to 2080 performance, when some models didn't even see 2070 performance.