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BigAdv for Windows is here - A3 bug in Linux

lowfat

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Are the bigadv servers down for windows? I tried to setup a bigadv client today and even after a few hours it wouldn't grab a WU. It had no problem grabbing a regular WU though.
 

Zero82z

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Are the bigadv servers down for windows? I tried to setup a bigadv client today and even after a few hours it wouldn't grab a WU. It had no problem grabbing a regular WU though.
They might just be running out of units. The Windows client doesn't have A2 -bigadv units to fall back on if no A3s are available.
 

10e

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I guess their "rollover" mechanism to -advmethods A3s had an epic server failure. I think another mod there said it should switch over to -advmethods in cases of BigAdv shortages.

6701s for everybody :clap:

I just switched the client that submitted that last BigAdv and had this issue to regular A3s by removing the -BigAdv switch for now.
 

Rison

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Are the bigadv servers down for windows? I tried to setup a bigadv client today and even after a few hours it wouldn't grab a WU. It had no problem grabbing a regular WU though.

Make sure you set your client so they accept "large" instead of the default "medium" sized wu's. That's a common mistake.
But yeah, they said the windows bigadv will be on and off, as they don't have a huge number of wu's I guess.
 

lowfat

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I've also noticed my system is a lot more unresponsive when using the windows client compared to the VMWare linux client. Rather unusable at times.
 

10e

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I've also noticed my system is a lot more unresponsive when using the windows client compared to the VMWare linux client. Rather unusable at times.

I'm seeing it being about the same as an SMP client running -smp 8 with BigAdv, but this is strange, as the VM runs at "normal" CPU priority while the Win SMP client runs at "low". Really weird. So I can also confirm with the VM my system also felt a touch more responsive.

A few things I've gleaned about Windows BigAdv so far:

1) As Rison stated previous to this post, make sure you must select Large WUs
2) Do NOT use -advmethods. If this flag is enabled for some reason you will not receive BigAdv WUs. This has been confirmed by Apollo and one other [H]ard OCP folder.
3) If there is a WU that has failed, and you are 100% sure your system has a stable overclock, ensure that you post on Folding Forum's appropriate sub forum with a full log snippet. Since this is technically a beta program there is no guarantee that all WUs are perfect, or that even the core is.

So far, outside of a couple of days where BigAdv servers seemed to not be sending out work, things seem more stable on the Windows version in terms of A3 BigAdv, but I don't think it's as stable as A2 was.

I guess with the newer A3 core they still have some work to do in terms of bug tracking.
 

lowfat

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I'm seeing it being about the same as an SMP client running -smp 8 with BigAdv, but this is strange, as the VM runs at "normal" CPU priority while the Win SMP client runs at "low". Really weird. So I can also confirm with the VM my system also felt a touch more responsive.

I had set to VM client to 'idle'. So I could game and everything perfectly fine w/ the client running. Definitely not something I can do now.
 

chrisk

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I had set to VM client to 'idle'. So I could game and everything perfectly fine w/ the client running. Definitely not something I can do now.

Have you tried a program like prifinity so that you can set the a3 cores to the lowest setting? May not work as well as the 'idle' property but worth a shot.
 

10e

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I had set to VM client to 'idle'. So I could game and everything perfectly fine w/ the client running. Definitely not something I can do now.

You can stop the client, and restart it with the -config flag, then hit return 5 times, and when asked to configure "advanced options" say "yes" and then you can set priority to idle.

Alternatively you can stop mid unit and change the -smp flag to -smp 7 to free up a core, as long as you can still fold a BigAdv within the 4 day bonus period.
 

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