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GPU3 Client Updated And Other News

LCB001

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Aylmer QC.
Stanford has updated the GPU3 client to improve the way it detects the compute capability of the gpu.

Nice little write-up from our fellow Folders at FAH-Addict : News

Original news on 10/31/10:
Mark Friedrichs has just put version 6.40r1 of the GPU3 client online.

The main change in this version is the replacement of the previous method checking for CUDA support, namely by checking the version of CUDA installed on the computer, if it was at all. The client now achieves this end by directly checking the Compute Capability value on the GPU chip itself.

Possible values for detected versions are:

Citation:
v1.0 -> 10
v1.1 -> 11
v1.2 -> 12
v1.3 -> 13
v2.0 -> 20
v2.1 -> 21
Unknown -> 0


The main reason for this change is due to an incompatibility between Core 15 (OpenMM) and cards that only support Compute Capability 1.0 (which means a G8x chip). The change should now prevent unpleasant crashes for owners of these cards, and pave the way towards better hardware detection, perhaps with some specialised optimizations based on the chip capabilities.

This new version comes in the form of an executable file replacement. Quit out of your client and replace its executable with that of the new vesion.

Console version: Folding@home - My Folding Page
Systray version: Folding@home - My Folding Page

Remember to remove the trailing _console or _systray from the file name!

Updated on 01/27/11:
The Systray version of the 6.40r1 (also known as 6.41) client is now available on the High Performance clients download page.

Change log:

  • A new value for -forcegpu flag has been added : nvidia_g80_1.0 will force Compute Capabilities 1.0 (species=10)
  • The old -forcegpu nvidia_g80 value will force Compute Capabilities 1.1 (species=11)
  • If the -forcegpu value is not recognized, the client will pop-up a message then exists.
Source: Vijay's blog



Vijays blog also mentions that the v7 Folding@Home client is currently in Alpha testing, in an earlier post on the Folding Forums he had mentioned that they are hoping for a Q1 release.

Also mentioned was that the ATi GPU3 client is currently undergoing QA testing so hopefully it will be available soon.

Full text from the Blog
The latest GPU3 client is now on our high performance client download page. This new client improves GPU identification and has several other minor improvements.

For those who are unfamiliar with the other FAH clients: there are several types of high performance clients. SMP refers to multi-core CPUs. GPU3 refers to the latest generation Folding@home GPU client. Currently, GPU3 is only available for NVIDIA GPUs, but we are working on a GPU3 release for ATI. For NVIDIA GPUs, we recommend GPU3. For ATI, we suggest GPU2 until GPU3 has passed through its QA testing (going on now). Finally, the v7 Folding@home client (currently in alpha testing) has these functions (SMP and GPU) built in and will not require a special client.

The changes to this version of the client include the addition of a -forcegpu flag ='nvidia_g80_1.0' ; this flag will signal a compute capability of 1.0 (GPU species=10); if the flag ''nvidia_g80' is used the compute capability will be reported as 1.1 (GPU species=11). Also a pop-up dialog box now appears reporting an error, if the -forcegpu flag is unrecognized; the client then exits.

Last but not least, for those waiting for the return of -bigadv for linux Pande Group member kyleb posted this on the Folding forums;

I am currently testing version 2.27 of the A3 linux64 core. I believe this core should solve the remaing Linux Bigadv issues. Once testing is complete, we should be able to enable bigadv on linux
 

chrisk

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Jul 12, 2008
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All good things come to those that wait, and wait, and wait, and wait. :dots:

GPU3 for ATI is absolutely no guarantee that there will be significant performance increases for ATI.

In fact, I would bet against any significant PPD gains for ATI on GPU3 vs what has been seen traditionally.
 

lowfat

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Staff member
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Feb 12, 2007
Messages
12,817
Location
Grande Prairie, AB
Bigadv on Linux again makes Dead Things a very happy, um, dead thing. My multi-socket hardware has proven to be much happier with Linux kernels than Windows.

Better PPD? I'd have no problem throwing Linux on both of my SR-2s if it gave me a solid improvement in performance.
 

Rison

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Folding Team
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Sep 1, 2009
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Halifax, NS
Back when you had the A2 bigadv on Linux, it would be faster on the same box than running Win2k3 server. As for the A3 bigadv, as DT says we can only speculate.

You can be certain when it's available, i'll be throwing debian on one of my 980x boxes to see. (you know.. whenever I get time.. )
 

lowfat

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Grande Prairie, AB
Anyone have any suggestions on a lightweight Linux distro to use? Me = complete n00b when it comes to Linux territory.
 

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