So I've been playing around with 2 Core i7 rigs and wanted to share my experiences on how maximize your PPD on them.
Here is one of my setups:
Core i7 920 @ 3.7GHz
ASUS P6T
6GB DDR3
Dual 9800GX2 Vid cards
Now here was my main issue:
If you run SMP under linux, you get a MASSIVE PPD boost compared to SMP under windows (even with the Dual SMP and SMP affinity changer tricks we have come up with). The main reason for the big PPD difference is that the Linux client will fold work units with the new A2 core, where all other OSes but OSX are limited to the older and less efficient A1 core. The new A2 core can spawn a full 8 threads using the "-smp 8" command variable. Something we can only dream of with Windows SMP folding right now. Using the A2 core w/ the SMP8 command gets you about 9000 PPD off a single core i7 CPU with hyperthreading on. Nothing to sneeze at to say the least.
Great, install linux and get folding, you say, right? Not so fast.
Doing so would effectively make the two 9800GX2 cards I have installed useless for folding. There are some reports of FAH GPU2 working under Linux using WINE for emulation, but I have not been impressed and the setup seemed rather tedious, to say the least. And, frankly, I'm in love with Win7 and don't want to give it up.
So, Linux and SMP or Windows and GPU w/ crippled SMP? Well, I don't like either of those choices.
How about running Linux under VMWare while in Windows? Now that is a possibility, but VMWare limits your Guest OS to just 2 cores. Would 4 VMWare sessions running the Linux SMP A2 core do as well as one native session running A2 with the SMP 8 command? Time to find out.
Since I really really hate setting up linux, and wanted something I could distribute across multiple machines, I decided to go for a pre-set folding@home distro made by Notfred.
Here is the distro, all ready to be run in VMWare player:
Folding Virtual Appliance
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.
That's it, not as hard as it might sound and my PPD on the two Core i7 systems I fold on jumped from 4500 to 9200 PPD. Not bad for just a "software" upgrade. I also see substantial PPD increases out of a Q9550 (compared to dual Windows SMP) as well as an E6600 and a T7600 (laptop).
For those wanting to custom name your the Windows Network name of your VMs, haysdb came up w/ the following work around:
First, you need to assign static IP addresses to the VMs. Then you can give the shares less cryptic names than FOLD-xxxx.
There are two lines that need to be changed in the .vmx VM Virtual Machine Configuration file:
In my router configuration, in the Static DHCP section, I entered the MAC addresses, the IP address I wanted them to have, and Hostname, which I named the same as the folders: VMfold-1 thru VMfold-4.Code:#-------------------------------------------------------------------- # The default behavior is to get an IP address dynamically assigned # by DHCP. That's OK but then we never know for sure what the IP # addresses are going to be except within a range. And the share # name becomes something like fold-933C or fold-B03D. Not very # meaningful. With "Static DHCP" the router will assign a specific # IP address based on the MAC Address and also a host name such as # VMfold-1, which then becomes the share name in Windows. #-------------------------------------------------------------------- #ethernet0.addressType = "generated" ethernet0.addressType = "static" #-------------------------------------------------------------------- # The MAC address must be different for each instance. # It must be in the range 00:50:56:00:00:00 to 00:50:56:3f:ff:ff #-------------------------------------------------------------------- #ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:cf:93:3c" ethernet0.Address = "00:50:56:00:00:01"
Now in FahMon the locations are:
\\VMfold-1\c\etc\folding\1\
\\VMfold-2\c\etc\folding\1\
\\VMfold-3\c\etc\folding\1\
\\VMfold-4\c\etc\folding\1\





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