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Slow SMP folding - Asus G45 - Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha
Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 7:35 pm
by PlayLoud
Due to my MB (GIGABYTE GA-G33M-DS2R) taking a dump, I bought a new MB (Asus P5Q-EM). Unfortunately, due to the G45 chipset being so new, I had to install the Alpha release of Ubuntu 8.10, as 8.04 could not work with the SATA controller on the MB.
Anyway, I finally got everything set up, and my Q6600@3.0GHz seems to be folding rather slowly. FAHmon currently shows my PPD at 4221 for project 2669 (A2 core). This is far below the roughly 5600ppd I was getting with my old MB on Ubuntu 7.10.
The CPU is clocked at 3.0GHz (333x9), just as before. Temps are below 60C. No other processes are running. -forceasm is on. The system monitor seems to be showing the CPU workload at about 70%, which seems a little low for an A2 core WU. Each % is taking about 6.5 min, instead of about 5 min as before.
I can't figure out what is causing the slowdown. Could it be the Alpha OS? The chipset itself? The compatibility between the two? Something else that I am not even thinking about?
I really don't want to replace this board with an older G33 board (I hate replacing MBs in general), but since this is a dedicated Folding Rig (soon to be doubling as a file server), I want the best folding performance I can get, and this is no small drop in performance.
Anyway, does anybody have any insight on what may be causing this slowdown?
Thanks in advance,
Re: Slow SMP folding - Asus G45 - Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha
Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 8:18 pm
by shatteredsilicon
Can you check what you RAM b/w is? F@H seems to not gain much from core clock speed, but does seem to gain a lot from fast RAM I/O, so that seems to be where it tends to get bottlenecked. Have you made sure you put your DIMMs in the right slots for both channels to be active? (Sorry, I don't mean to teach you to suck eggs, I'm just trying to come up with things that could plausibly be causing a performance drop like that.)
Re: Slow SMP folding - Asus G45 - Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha
Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 8:19 pm
by bollix47
I noticed something similar on my Q6600 @ 3.0 Ghz on an Asus P5K(4 gig of 667Mhz ram) when running the a2 core using Ubuntu 8.04.
The PPD was down from what I was getting on other systems similar to your figures.
I dropped my o/c and went back to stock settings and the scores on the the a2 core projects actually increased to around 4500PPD(can't recall what they were with the o/c but they were considerably lower).
Unfortunately that dropped my speed on the a1 core WUs but at the time I was getting a lot of a2 core projects so I left it at stock with the added benefit of lower temperatures. Now I'm getting mostly a1s but I like the lower temps so I've left it with the hope that the a2 frequency will pick up.
Sorry that doesn't help you much but I found it interesting that the PPD would go up by lowering the o/c.
I was convinced it had something to do with the a2 core but now, with your report, it might have something to do with the later versions of Ubuntu or something about the o/c that one of them didn't like? The confusing part being that the o/c works fine with the a1 core getting an expected 25% increase in PPD.
Hope someone comes up with a possible reason since winter's coming and I could use the extra heat now.
Re: Slow SMP folding - Asus G45 - Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha
Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 9:49 pm
by PlayLoud
shatteredsilicon wrote:Can you check what you RAM b/w is? F@H seems to not gain much from core clock speed, but does seem to gain a lot from fast RAM I/O, so that seems to be where it tends to get bottlenecked. Have you made sure you put your DIMMs in the right slots for both channels to be active? (Sorry, I don't mean to teach you to suck eggs, I'm just trying to come up with things that could plausibly be causing a performance drop like that.)
The RAM should be good. They are both in the yellow slots (as they should be). They are (2GB kit (1GBx2), Ballistix 240-pin DIMM, DDR2 PC2-6400). Stock is 800MHz, but they are currently running at 835MHz with the OC (no 1:1 memory divider on the board).
Re: Slow SMP folding - Asus G45 - Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha
Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 10:20 pm
by shatteredsilicon
It could just be that the chipset isn't handling memory as fast. To give you the idea of how much it bottlenecks on RAM I/O:
I have an Asus Maximus Extreme with DDR3-1600 RAM, and currently (temporarily) running an E6600 @ 500x7=3500. This yields only negligible PPD gain compared to 500x6=3000, even with DDR3-1600 RAM. With DDR2, the saturation point will be considerably lower. On my Q6600 I've found very little difference in F@H performance between 2.8, 3.2 and 3.6GHz with 400MHz FSB. Integrated MCH is the only reason why AMD chips can keep up at folding, despite lower clock speeds and smaller caches.
Since E6600@500 FSB yields 8.5GB/s memory I/O and Q6600@400 FSB yields 8GB/s, E6600 @ 3.0 GHz gets a bit under 3600PPD. Q6600 @ 3.2 GHz gets just under 6000PPD on twice as many cores, clocked almost 10% faster. Going up to 3.5/3.6GHz doesn't really do anything apart from upping the temperatures and power consumption.
Re: Slow SMP folding - Asus G45 - Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha
Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 10:47 pm
by PlayLoud
Well, I am thinking of buying an old G33 board, and returning this one. I can't have my dedicated folder sucking. I really don't want to do that, so I am hoping some solution presents itself.
Re: Slow SMP folding - Asus G45 - Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha
Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 10:53 pm
by shatteredsilicon
You could try a different kernel. That might solve some of the problem.
Re: Slow SMP folding - Asus G45 - Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha
Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 12:08 am
by MstrBlstr
Not sure if this is still an issue in Ubuntu 8.10, but just in case.
Slow folding in Ubuntu 8.04
--
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
~ Albert Einstein
Re: Slow SMP folding - Asus G45 - Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha
Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 6:48 am
by PlayLoud
I was actually the OP in that thread.
That was due to a speedstep problem with my laptop. The people who responded got me running at full speed again, and I've been folding well on my laptop since. This unfortunately, is a completely different problem.
Re: Slow SMP folding - Asus G45 - Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha
Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 1:32 am
by MstrBlstr
What does $ cat /proc/cpuinfo say?
Re: Slow SMP folding - Asus G45 - Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha
Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 5:44 am
by PlayLoud
MstrBlstr wrote:What does $ cat /proc/cpuinfo say?
Code: Select all
jim@The-Quadfather:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 15
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz
stepping : 11
cpu MHz : 3005.546
cache size : 4096 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 4
core id : 0
cpu cores : 4
apicid : 0
initial apicid : 0
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl pni monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr lahf_lm
bogomips : 6011.09
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:
processor : 1
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 15
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz
stepping : 11
cpu MHz : 3005.546
cache size : 4096 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 4
core id : 1
cpu cores : 4
apicid : 1
initial apicid : 1
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl pni monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr lahf_lm
bogomips : 6011.14
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:
processor : 2
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 15
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz
stepping : 11
cpu MHz : 3005.546
cache size : 4096 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 4
core id : 2
cpu cores : 4
apicid : 2
initial apicid : 2
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl pni monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr lahf_lm
bogomips : 6022.84
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:
processor : 3
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 15
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz
stepping : 11
cpu MHz : 3005.546
cache size : 4096 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 4
core id : 3
cpu cores : 4
apicid : 3
initial apicid : 3
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl pni monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr lahf_lm
bogomips : 6011.06
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:
On a side note, somebody over at ExtremeOverclocking recommended running the program using
sudo chrt 2 ./fah -smp -forceasm -verbosity 9, which has helped speed up my ppd from 4200 to 5200, but is still short of the 5500-5600 I was getting before on the same project. Also, using that command bogs down my computer, so that my mouse only displays at about 5 fps or so (which is rather annoying). I don't really know what the command does, as I am not an experienced linux user (I mostly installed it for FAH).