my folding output will be down for a couple of days, and then back up to full force!

[twoodcc]

well i'm back at my place and got my latest rig back up and going. i took out the 2 x 9800GTs b/c of heat, and they don't produce all that much anyways. i'm trying it at 3.8 ghz running bigadv and 2 x gpus. we'll see how long it lasts this time

[lordonuthin]

Originally Posted by twoodcc

you're really getting one?! if so, you'll have to start a new thread about it, and give up updates!

Got it! I had just enough time to put it in a case but not enough to boot it up before work The heat sink that Intel give you is BIG, but would probably fit in a 3u. Maybe. My case is 4u so lots of room. I put 12 gigs of ram it it too, just need a gpu now (from one of the other machines for now). I think I will see what is on Ebay or craig's list.

[twoodcc]

Originally Posted by lordonuthin

Got it! I had just enough time to put it in a case but not enough to boot it up before work The heat sink that Intel give you is BIG, but would probably fit in a 3u. Maybe. My case is 4u so lots of room. I put 12 gigs of ram it it too, just need a gpu now (from one of the other machines for now). I think I will see what is on Ebay or craig's list.

really? oh man, you've got to fill us in on how it does. some screen shots please! and maybe some pics of the thing also?

i was tempted to get one, but decided to save some money for now. i might get one late this year or next year

[twoodcc]

well i think i finally got my home built system running at 4.0 ghz. it has been a long journey, to say the least. but it's folding away a bigadv unit and 2 GPUs. hopefully this will last all week since i'll be away

[lordonuthin]

Originally Posted by twoodcc

really? oh man, you've got to fill us in on how it does. some screen shots please! and maybe some pics of the thing also?

i was tempted to get one, but decided to save some money for now. i might get one late this year or next year

I've finally got it folding, took a while cuz I didn't have the bios set to boot from USB-cdrom, that USB part is important also I tried Ubuntu 10.4 but there is a problem with folding and libc on 10.4 so I tried a copy of 8.04 that I had and it didn't want to install. I finally had to download 9.10 and after getting it installed, folding on it and configured; it works woo hoo! It's always something when I install Linux but I usually figure it out after a while...

I trid to go to 4Ghz but I must not have set something right and it didn't work so I went back to stock 3.33, it folded the first frame in 27 minutes which is exactly what my mac pro does: for less than half the cost. I then set it to 3.6 Ghz and it seems to be stable without upping the voltage. I hope it can do a frame in 25 minutes I'm waiting to see...

[lordonuthin]

Originally Posted by twoodcc

well i think i finally got my home built system running at 4.0 ghz. it has been a long journey, to say the least. but it's folding away a bigadv unit and 2 GPUs. hopefully this will last all week since i'll be away

Great you have it working now and hopefully it will stay up a week.

I had a power outage that I didn't know about and didn't check all of my machines for a day, oh well it's only 20 or 30 thousand points

edit: added pics

I'm cloning the drive, a 40 gig ssd to the 74 gig Raptor so I can avoid taking 2 days next time...

[twoodcc]

Originally Posted by lordonuthin

I've finally got it folding, took a while cuz I didn't have the bios set to boot from USB-cdrom, that USB part is important also I tried Ubuntu 10.4 but there is a problem with folding and libc on 10.4 so I tried a copy of 8.04 that I had and it didn't want to install. I finally had to download 9.10 and after getting it installed, folding on it and configured; it works woo hoo! It's always something when I install Linux but I usually figure it out after a while...

I trid to go to 4Ghz but I must not have set something right and it didn't work so I went back to stock 3.33, it folded the first frame in 27 minutes which is exactly what my mac pro does: for less than half the cost. I then set it to 3.6 Ghz and it seems to be stable without upping the voltage. I hope it can do a frame in 25 minutes I'm waiting to see...

oh wow. yeah i had the same problem with 10.4 - i also had to run 9.10.

yeah you'd have to change the voltages to get it to work at 4.0 ghz. but 3.6 should be good (i think)

Originally Posted by lordonuthin

Great you have it working now and hopefully it will stay up a week.

I had a power outage that I didn't know about and didn't check all of my machines for a day, oh well it's only 20 or 30 thousand points

edit: added pics

I'm cloning the drive, a 40 gig ssd to the 74 gig Raptor so I can avoid taking 2 days next time...

thanks. i hope so. it should finish it's first bigadv unit in the next few hours.

oh dang. yeah i hate those power outages. not good for folding.

[twoodcc]

Originally Posted by lordonuthin

Great you have it working now and hopefully it will stay up a week.

well it's not looking very good. it should have posted a bigadv unit by now. and my number of gpu units are looking lower - which means that something crashed. man it only had 12 hours left on the bigadv unit when i left, and now nothing. it was folding way at around 34:30 per frame inside a VM.

[lordonuthin]

Originally Posted by twoodcc

well it's not looking very good. it should have posted a bigadv unit by now. and my number of gpu units are looking lower - which means that something crashed. man it only had 12 hours left on the bigadv unit when i left, and now nothing. it was folding way at around 34:30 per frame inside a VM.

Bummer that's aggravating...

[twoodcc]

Originally Posted by lordonuthin

Bummer that's aggravating...

tell me about it. and i can't fix it until this weekend. but hopefully i can get it stable then

[lordonuthin]

Originally Posted by twoodcc

tell me about it. and i can't fix it until this weekend. but hopefully i can get it stable then

Speaking of aggravation, I'm having trouble with my new system. I'm back to stock cpu speed and for some reason the wu's don't want to use all of the cores/threads so bigadv units are running at 45+ min per frame now from 27 min per frame the first time I ran folding.

[twoodcc]

Originally Posted by lordonuthin

Speaking of aggravation, I'm having trouble with my new system. I'm back to stock cpu speed and for some reason the wu's don't want to use all of the cores/threads so bigadv units are running at 45+ min per frame now from 27 min per frame the first time I ran folding.

oh man. that's not good. what flags are you using?

-smp 12?

[lordonuthin]

Originally Posted by twoodcc

oh man. that's not good. what flags are you using?

-smp 12?

yeah, -smp 12 but one core now shows minimal use. Before I restarted it it showed 4 cores with minimal usage... I'm going to try tossing the config file and see what happens. And of course it loses the wu each time I shut folding down.

[twoodcc]

Originally Posted by lordonuthin

yeah, -smp 12 but one core now shows minimal use. Before I restarted it it showed 4 cores with minimal usage... I'm going to try tossing the config file and see what happens. And of course it loses the wu each time I shut folding down.

oh ok. man that stinks. it losing the unit even when pressing control-c?

hmm. i'm not sure. but keep us posted on how it's going

[twoodcc]

Originally Posted by lordonuthin

yeah, -smp 12 but one core now shows minimal use. Before I restarted it it showed 4 cores with minimal usage... I'm going to try tossing the config file and see what happens. And of course it loses the wu each time I shut folding down.

so do you have it up and folding now?

i've been working on mine this morning. i gave up on 4.0 ghz and it's now running at 3.7 ghz. i think this is stable, but i guess we'll see

[twoodcc]

well i lost another bigadv unit on my alienware rig. but i did get my 2nd gtx 260 going on that machine, so that's a plus. and i just upped it to 3.7 ghz. we'll see how it goes

[lordonuthin]

Originally Posted by twoodcc

so do you have it up and folding now?

It is folding at stock speed with threading turned off and it is doing big normal units at 3 minutes per frame. For some reason it hasn't gotten any -bigadv units since I set it up like this. It is using all 6 cores at least.

Originally Posted by twoodcc

i've been working on mine this morning. i gave up on 4.0 ghz and it's now running at 3.7 ghz. i think this is stable, but i guess we'll see

3.7 is still really good, hope it stays there ok.

Originally Posted by twoodcc

well i lost another bigadv unit on my alienware rig. but i did get my 2nd gtx 260 going on that machine, so that's a plus. and i just upped it to 3.7 ghz. we'll see how it goes

I'm starting to think that gpu's are the only way to go from now on; you tend not to lose wu's on them and if you do it only takes a couple of hours to catch up to where you were on the last one, not the day or 2 like bigadv units.

Hope that Alienware rig works ok now, can you get anymore gpu's in it?

[twoodcc]

Originally Posted by lordonuthin

It is folding at stock speed with threading turned off and it is doing big normal units at 3 minutes per frame. For some reason it hasn't gotten any -bigadv units since I set it up like this. It is using all 6 cores at least.

awe man. well at least you have it going. it's too bad you don't have it running bigadv units though.

3.7 is still really good, hope it stays there ok.

thanks. yeah i can live with 3.7. i just hope it stays stable

I'm starting to think that gpu's are the only way to go from now on; you tend not to lose wu's on them and if you do it only takes a couple of hours to catch up to where you were on the last one, not the day or 2 like bigadv units.

Hope that Alienware rig works ok now, can you get anymore gpu's in it?

yeah that's true, but the gpus use more power and so then more heat than the bigadv units. with bigadv, you get more points/power usage, which is a big deal. but they can be a headache.

thanks. no, the alienware only holds 2 double wide gpus. now i have to in there and they are both going.

[lordonuthin]

Now my Mac Pro is only getting normal wu's not bigadv units. It was interesting watching the MP and i7980x running side by side, I'll try to get a screenshot later when I get home, they were very close in time per frame at about 3 minutes... hope they get some more bigadv units out for us to run

[twoodcc]

Originally Posted by lordonuthin

Now my Mac Pro is only getting normal wu's not bigadv units. It was interesting watching the MP and i7980x running side by side, I'll try to get a screenshot later when I get home, they were very close in time per frame at about 3 minutes... hope they get some more bigadv units out for us to run

oh wow. i wonder if they are getting ready to do away with bigadv units?

well my home built rig crashed again just before i left last night. it just froze in windows. i got it back up before i left, but who knows if it's still going. by looking at my output, i don't think it is, but i'm not totally sure.

[twoodcc]

well i'm pretty sure my home built rig is down. you can see a clear difference on the number of WU's completed. i wasn't planning on going there this weekend either

[SciFrog]

Seing your "adventures", no way I would ever try to do anything on a custom rig...

[twoodcc]

Originally Posted by SciFrog

Seing your "adventures", no way I would ever try to do anything on a custom rig...

well i wouldn't say that. it wouldn't be as big of a deal if i was at the machine everyday, then a quick change of a few settings and it's back up. but being away, this is not fun.

[lordonuthin]

Originally Posted by twoodcc

well i wouldn't say that. it wouldn't be as big of a deal if i was at the machine everyday, then a quick change of a few settings and it's back up. but being away, this is not fun.

It will be easier once you get moved.

[lordonuthin]

Originally Posted by SciFrog

Seing your "adventures", no way I would ever try to do anything on a custom rig...

But it's so fun cursing at the thing because you did something wrong and have to reboot into the firmware yet again. Ahhh, but once you get it right it feels good that you only took 3 days this time, the last time took a week or more each time gets a little less painful, usually anyway.