Dual gpu help needed

Hi,

A fellow folder here from another team that needs some help if anyone would be so kind, please.

Hi, I have a NVidia 8800GT PCIe) which I have been folding with for the last week or so, and need some help. This card replaced an older NVidia FX5500 (PCI) which was not current enough to fold with. I am now interested in trying to install both cards, let the 8800 fold away, and use the 5500 to run my graphics and monitor.

So far, I have installed the FX5500, and got a blank screen at boot up. In order to get it working, I had to disable the 8800, install the fx5500 drivers, and reboot. I now have the monitor running on the 5500, and have enabled the 8800 again, so each card is installed with the proper driver. I then checked my fah log, and found that it was not folding on the 8800. I have it running as a service, and the service is stuck as 'starting' so I can not run the configonly shortcut in order to uninstall the service and try a fresh install. I'm guessing that disabling the 8800 and installing the drivers for the fx5500 threw the fah gpu client for a loop (so to speak), but don't know how to correct this.

I also get a popup stating that I have a non compliant GPU or need to install a driver for my gpu when I try to run the configonly shortcut. It references my fx5500, NOT the 8800GT. SO even disabling the service and restarting sounds like it wont work, as it still stops the configonly shortcut from loading, based on it seeing the fx5500. I'm starting to think I will have to revert back to the 8800 to wipe f@h, make my driver changes and such, and then reinstall f@h and hope that it finds the 8800.

Does anyone have any ideas short of pulling the 5500 out, reverting back to the 8800 as my main gpu in order to stop and uninstall the service, then starting over? Even if I do this, will this work? Has anyone successfully had a PCIe card folding, and a PCI card running the graphics on the same system?

If it matters, this is on WinXP Pro

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Vgolfmaster

First off, how dare you come from another team ... um, I mean, welcome to the forums

Why do you want to run the FX5500 as your main card?  I'm just curious, I fold on an 8800GT and it rarely interferes with anything I do.  Java applets are sometimes a little sluggish, but if I stop or pause the client while I'm using Java and then restart it, no problem.  I have shortcuts set up for that purpose.

Anyway, I was going to suggest that the -gpu n flag may be necessary, but it seems this only makes the client look for the nth CUDA-enabled card, which is of course no use in this situation.
The F@H FAQ suggests that it's not possible to run F@H on a secondary GPU where the primary card is not supported by F@H - http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-NVIDIA#ntoc32
It's been a while since I've used multiple displays or cards, so I might be off track ... but could you have the 8800GT as the primary card, but have the FX5500 as the display card?
If not, then I think you may well be out of luck here, but someone else might have a suggestion for you.

P.S. I see you fold for Team Raging Bull, ranked 228 at the last update.  Nice work your team is doing there, tell them we said hi.

Edit: Doh, I just checked your message board and saw you'd got a fix already.  I thought that was only for Vista systems, my mistake.  Glad you got it sorted, anyway.  Fold on!

lol, Hi Calum,

I'm not all the way there, but getting closer. I appreciate the reply, and thanks for not letting a different team number get in the way!

I don't have any serious issues with running the 8800 alone, and will do just that (again) if this doesn't work, just thought I'd give it a shot and see if it helps my production at all. I don't do a lot of gaming, but when I do the gpu folding doesn't seem to step aside as nicely as cpu folding, so I just want to try and separate tasks between the gpu's.

As far as primary and secondary cards, I've never configured any that way, and didn't even know it was a possibility. This is my first attempt at multiple gpu's. Any info you can offer might be a big help. And as I said, if this just won't work, I'll revert back to only the 8800. SO far I have them both installed and have the monitor running off of the 5500. I installed a dummy plug on the 8800 so it appears to windows and to f@h to have a monitor installed. That is working, as windows extended the desktop to both 'monitors', lol. My issue now, is that folding didn't pick back up on the 8800. I can't access the configonly setup, as it prompts me that I have an incompatible card, or need to install a correct driver. This is running as a service in xp by the way.

I am not sure of my next step. I see there is a flag for multiple gpu's,

http://fahwiki.net/index.php/How_do_I_k ... %3F#-gpu_x

and also saw this info for multi-gpu setup:

http://folding.stanford.edu/English/WinGPUGuide

I just dont know which to try, or if I need a combo of the two. Any and all suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Will pass on your greeting to the team, much appreciated!

thanks for not letting a different team number get in the way!

The way I see it, we're all in this together.  Not helping someone because their points go to another team makes no sense, anything I can do to help anybody fold is another step towards the cure.

I don't do a lot of gaming, but when I do the gpu folding doesn't seem to step aside as nicely as cpu folding, so I just want to try and separate tasks between the gpu's.

That's fair enough, I haven't tried gaming with the GPU client still running so I wasn't aware of the performance hit.  A thought that just came to me, is that it would be possible (although time consuming) to have folding pause or stop when a game is launched, and resume when the game is closed.  That may be something to consider if this dual GPU doesn't pan out.

As far as primary and secondary cards, I've never configured any that way, and didn't even know it was a possibility.

The way I meant it, is that the primary card is the main display card, or the card that is used first.  For example, in most BIOSes there is an option for something similar to "Init display first" which can be set to PCI or PCI-E.  The wording does vary and it's not on all boards.  I figured changing that might help, if you set the primary/first card to the 8800.  However, that might then mean your display would have to be on that card.  I've never messed with multi-card setups at all, so it was just a thought.  From you saying you have tried dummy plugs, what I said could be irrelevant.

I am not sure of my next step. I see there is a flag for multiple gpu's,

I referred to that a little in my first reply.  It seems that is only for multiple CUDA GPUs, for example if you had an 8600GT and 8800GT, the flag could be used to set up one instance of F@H on the 8600 and the other on the 8800.  That's the way I understood it, anyway.

I have to say that looking at what you've tried, I do think you've exhausted all the solutions I could think of, however I'm no F@H expert so I wouldn't say it can't be done, just that I don't know how if it can.

Calum,

I did it !!

I was tinkering while waiting for replies, and poured over the multi gpu instructions. What ended up working was actually very simple. According to the multi gpu instructions, the desktops have to be extended to each monitor. I switched that back, as I had closed down the 2nd monitor option for this earlier, then set the 2nd monitor option (all of this in the display properties 'Settings' tab) to 'primary' and VOILA, it started fine!

As a bonus, it even picked up at a partially completed w/u and I didn't have to start over. 86% is 86%!

I did have a large reduction in my frame rate with all this tinkering, so I will need to watch that and see if I need to do anything to correct it. Went from 2m 20s avg on frame rate to almost 4m 30s. I should mention also that while I downloaded them just in case, I did NOT install the CUDA drivers, toolkit or source code, this all worked with the newest NVidia driver (190.38) for this 8800.

Hopefully this means I am done and it is all good, well, except for re-training everything as to WHICH desktop to open under, lol.

Thanks again for the help and assistance. My first attempt at this, and your tips definitely got me looking in the right places, and I would have struggled for along time looking for the answer had you not suggested the primary option for the 8800. Very easy now that I see it, I just never had a need before!

Great to hear you got it working, another 8800GT for the fold is great news.  You're very welcome for the help, glad you found us and happy to help.
I've also learnt from this, so it could be helpful for me too.
Your reduction in frame rate may be due to the fact that it's only just started again (if that's the case) it should pick up again fairly quickly.
The Nvidia drivers are all you should need, the extra CUDA toolkit etc is mainly for developers.

Thanks again Calum,

1 follow up ? if you don't mind.

Task manager (processes) shows 4 instances of FahCore_11.exe as it should for my CPU folding (dual core as a service), but now also shows an entry for FahCore_11.exe which I assume is for the gpu, but this is the first I have seen it.

What troubles me, is that it is constantly using anywhere from 35-50% of the cpu cycles. This doesn't sound right to me if it is in fact related to gpu folding. Shouldn't it be using only the gpu processing power until send/receive? I do also have an entry for F@h-GPU.exe, but it does not show any cpu usage.

the for cores for cpu folding are listed under my login, while the new core entry and the gpu.exe entries are listed as 'system'; if that matters.

I also just found another issue......

extending the desktop and setting the 8800 as primary worked while I was running off of the 5500. unfortunately, when I reboot it shifts gears on me, and sends the desktop to the primary display, the 8800 (which is a dummy plug, not a monitor) so I have no desktop when windows loads. eeerrrrr, make that, I have a desktop, but I cant see the primary and the 5500 is blank at boot up. I'm going to have to dig more and see if there is a way around setting the 8800 as primary in order to get f@h to see it and use it.......

good news,

reinstalling the NVidia driver got my frame rates back and cleared up the cpu usage of the gpu core. i'm back to 'normal' now! thanks for ALL of the help!

With the time difference, I wasn't able to view your posts.  Your first reply, I was walking the dog, the others I was fast asleep.
I saw that you'd got a solution when I checked your message board this morning.  Reinstalling the driver is exactly what I would have suggested, high CPU usage (almost an entire core) is typical of older drivers, it's a characteristic of the way F@H on a GPU works under XP.
Glad you got a solution and you're now able to fold.