Everyone gets a bit leery when talk of setting up virtual machines and crazy Linux installs to boost your PPD, but I've found a couple of really good guides which, with a minimum of technical knowledge and some patience, can have you doubling your PPD from your CPU with the SMP client!
That's right DOUBLE! My i7 920 was running around 3.5k PPD and now it's up to about 7k PPD thanks to this setup.
All this without losing the amazing PPD that your GPU clients put out in Windows and not having to mess around with dual booting and other such crap.
I recommend you follow both guides to make sure you get everything set up right and make sure to go in and do the edits to set the memory higher from the second guide. I read both of them and they helped me get set up quite painlessly in about 30 minutes or less.
Here is an excellent guide from the EVGA Forums - Full Credit goes to Ruredee over at EVGA for this guide, I just reposted.
Make sure to set core affinities for each Virtual Machine
Make sure to set Priority to Low for each VM
(Task Manager>Processes then right mouse on the process)
FAHSpy works better for checking your progress as FAHMon gives you a *hung* error even when the cores are folding away fine.
For setting priority, open your folding.vmx (or whatever you changed the name to) with Notepad in Windows and add the following to the bottom.
I use PriFinitty to set the GPU clients to "Below Normal" priority and that helps keep the PPD up.
That's right DOUBLE! My i7 920 was running around 3.5k PPD and now it's up to about 7k PPD thanks to this setup.
All this without losing the amazing PPD that your GPU clients put out in Windows and not having to mess around with dual booting and other such crap.
I recommend you follow both guides to make sure you get everything set up right and make sure to go in and do the edits to set the memory higher from the second guide. I read both of them and they helped me get set up quite painlessly in about 30 minutes or less.
Here is an excellent guide from the EVGA Forums - Full Credit goes to Ruredee over at EVGA for this guide, I just reposted.
And another similar and equally excellent guide from XtremeCPU Forums - Full Credit to brentpresley, I just reposted hereORIGINAL: lsclincoln
After looking over the F@H section I noticed that no guide was around to setup a VMWare SMP. I figured I could try. The setup Im running nets me between 4000-4500 ppd on a Q6600 at 3.2 while running one GPU2 at the same time.
Virtualization or VT must be enabled in bios and your processor must support.
Step 1
Go to Temporary Maintenance - VMware - VMware and download the latest version(2.5.1). BTW you'll have to register to download.
Click download.
Then this screen is next requiring you to register.
Choose the home/personal use options.
Once registered you'll be allowed to download.
Step 2
Go to Folding Virtual Appliance and download the virtual machine.
Step 3
Install VM Player from step one. After install restart computer as required.
Step 4
Extract the folding appliance.In my picture I just extract to desktop. You can extract to wherever you'd prefer.
If you are using a dual core then you'll only need to extract once. If using a quad then rename the extracted folder and extract another instance. I renamed both of my extracted folders like shown.
Step 5
Open the extracted folder and doubleclick the bottom file.
This will open the VMPlayer and start the virtual machine. And will bring you to this screen.
At this point the computer is folding and should be reflected in cpu usage. Now to configure.
Type the Ip address (192.168.1.69 in my case) in your web browser. You should see this if everything is running correctly.
Click Reconfigure then you'll see this screen.
After configuring to your liking click reconfigure at the bottom. The instance will have to be restarted in order for the changes to take affect. Also this is how I set mine up to run two on my Q6600. I chose 2 cpu per smp.
Now go back to the VM Player as it now needs to be restarted for the changes to take affect.
Click VMPlayer>Troubleshoot>Reset.
Now its running and configured. Wasnt so hard even with my lack of skill explaining. If on a Quad and you extracted two folders then do the same setup as the first.
Now for a lil fine tuning.
After I have both running I go to the task manger to set the priority and affinity.
The top two are the virtual machines. Im running two so if only running one you'll only see one. I set them both at low priority and assign two cores for each instance.
To monitor with FAHMON or Fahspy simply point either monitoring app to
\\<your ip>\c\etc\folding\1\
I hope this helps people. I hope its not confusing and I will try to make it easier in time.
Like I said at the beginning I get 4000-4500 ppd from my Q6600 at 3.2ghz using this setup. Alot more than Windows SMP.
FahSpy Link fahspy150.zip Download File on FileFront
A couple of pointers once you're done.Here is what is necessary to do what I set out for:
0) You MUST be running a 64-bit Operating System for this to work (sorry, but the Linux VM SMP client is 64-bit only).
1) TURN ON Virtualization (VT) in your computer's BIOS if it is not already on.
2) Download VMWare player (Google this, latest version is 2.5).
3) Install VMWare player, reboot required.
4) Download Notfred's Virtual Disk Image file from the above link and unzip to a separate folder.
5) Make 4 copies of the folder unziped in Step 4 (I called my VMfold-1, VMfold-2, etc.).
6) Rename the two files in each of the 4 folders from folding.xxx to VMfold-1.xxx. This is CRITICAL because you really don't want 4 VMPlayer sessions running with the same name.
7) Open VMfold-1.vmx with your favorite text editor and make the following 3 changes:
- change the line:
memsize = "640"
to
memsize = "1152" <------- 1.125GB RAM (the A2 core has a tendency to stall out at the end of WUs if you run less than this)
------------------------------------
- change the line
displayName = "Folding@Home"
to
displayName = "VMfold-1"
------------------------------------
- change the line:
ide0:0.fileName = "folding.vmdk"
to
ide0:0.fileName = "VMfold-1.vmdk"
------------------------------------
8) repeat step 7 for EACH of the 4 VM disk folders you created in Step 5, adjusting the names accordingly.
9) open VM Player and direct it to open VMfold-1, let the session boot on it's own (it will select the proper folding client after a pre-set timeout, generally the entire boot takes about 90 seconds or so).
10) on the VM Player screen take note of the IP address assigned to the VMWare session and open a web browser and type this IP address in the address bar. You should see a Folding@home web page with different data listed and options for configuration changes.
11) click on "Reconfigure this host and any USB drives".
12) change the USERNAME and TEAM NAME to match your user and team.
13) change the SMP PER INSTANCE to 2.
14) click on the RECONFIGURE button.
15) click on the "here" link to go back to the main page.
16) click on Reboot enabled: enabled link.
17) click on "here" to reboot the VM Player machine so that you start folding under your username and team.
18) repeat steps 9-17 for each VM Player.
Make sure to set core affinities for each Virtual Machine
Make sure to set Priority to Low for each VM
(Task Manager>Processes then right mouse on the process)
FAHSpy works better for checking your progress as FAHMon gives you a *hung* error even when the cores are folding away fine.
For setting priority, open your folding.vmx (or whatever you changed the name to) with Notepad in Windows and add the following to the bottom.
This totally works!
All of you guys who are folding with i7s, use the following at the bottom:
priority.ungrabbed = "idle"
processor0.use = "FALSE"
processor1.use = "FALSE"
processor2.use = "FALSE"
processor3.use = "FALSE"
processor6.use = "FALSE"
processor7.use = "FALSE"
Then for each instance, just change the processor numbers! Great stuff, lemonline! Thanks for that!
I used Notepad from the Windows 7 Accessories menu for this.
I use PriFinitty to set the GPU clients to "Below Normal" priority and that helps keep the PPD up.
Last edited: