Q9450 and RX480

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Joe_dela_Hiti
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Q9450 and RX480

Post by Joe_dela_Hiti »

I recently migrated my folding machine from W10 to Ubuntu 20.04. Results in the new setup look promising, it seems like the GPU is folding more / faster than before.
Having read a couple of threads on the best GPU to match the Q9450, my conclusion is that the RX480 is actually too powerful for the Q9450.
So what I am wondering is: would the RX480 fold even more if I would remove the Q9450 from folding operations so that it would 100% serve the RX480 instead of serving the RX480 and folding ?

Any thoughts ?
Neil-B
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2: Xeon E3-1505Mv5@2.80GHz, 32GB DDR4, NVME, Win10 Pro 20H2, Quadro M1000M 2GB, FAH 7.6.21 (actually have two of these)
3: i7-960@3.20GHz, 12GB DDR3, SSD, Win10 Pro 20H2, GTX 750Ti 2GB, GTX 1080Ti 11GB, FAH 7.6.21
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Re: Q9450 and RX480

Post by Neil-B »

Welcome to the forums :)

One pf the best ways to check this would be to try it ... Monitor the performance you are getting from running them both then set the Q9450 to "finish" and once it pauses after completing the wu it is on then you can see what the performance difference is for the rx480 ... obviously projects perform differently so it can be tricky ... if you set your cause to Alz for the period of the testing/comparison you may get just p18201 wus which are pretty stable with little variance which would help you notice any improvementmore easilly.
2x Xeon E5-2697v3, 512GB DDR4 LRDIMM, SSD Raid, W10-Ent, Quadro K420
Xeon E3-1505Mv5, 32GB DDR4, NVME, W10-Pro, Quadro M1000M
i7-960, 12GB DDR3, SSD, W10-Pro, GTX1080Ti
i9-10850K, 64GB DDR4, NVME, W11-Pro, RTX3070

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Joe_dela_Hiti
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Re: Q9450 and RX480

Post by Joe_dela_Hiti »

Thanks ! Will do that after the first full week of folding in the new setup so that I have a comparison to W10.
Joe_dela_Hiti
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Re: Q9450 and RX480

Post by Joe_dela_Hiti »

Preliminary result after one day of folding on GPU only is a bit confusing.
I took the log from when the CPU was still folding and computed the average time between completed steps and checkpoints.
For the GPU it was 39 min 28 seconds between checkpoints , 7 min 43 seconds between steps (a couple of errors happened which caused restarts, real averages are closer to 31 min 40 sec between checkpoints and 6 min 20 sec between steps)
For the CPU it was average 13 minutes between steps. I can't remember having had so many errors running on W10 then again I am wathcing more closely than usual this week.

In any case, with the CPU on idle since yesterday, timings for the GPU are now 13 min 39 secs between checkpoints and 6 min 50 secs between steps. So time between checkpoints is way faster, time between steps is slower. I guess it's because it's a different project that it's working on which is just calculated differently.

I'll stick with my plan and give it a week to run GPU only to see if the GPU benefits from the CPU working for it instead of "competing" with it (the Q9450 rarely gets more than 7K points per WU) but the first full week on Ubuntu was not bringing what I had expected. Just over 1.5M points and 17 WU versus average a little over 2M points and 24 WU per week on W10 in the past.

Hints, anyone ?
toTOW
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Re: Q9450 and RX480

Post by toTOW »

You can't use these metrics : the depends on the project your are computing.

Use FAHControl or HFM, and look at the PPD values. Also, make sure you are comparing values from the same project.
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Joe_dela_Hiti
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Re: Q9450 and RX480

Post by Joe_dela_Hiti »

toTOW wrote:You can't use these metrics : the depends on the project your are computing.

Use FAHControl or HFM, and look at the PPD values. Also, make sure you are comparing values from the same project.
Thank you for pointing that out. I am fairly new to the matter, still finding my way.
The obvious goal is to contribute as much to science as I can with this old rig as my cognitive skills are negligeable.
The rig has now run for an entire week with just the GPU active and clearly it is producing more points.
Although I do suspect that points are an indication of the added value to science, I can't help but wonder if it'd be better to finish more work units rather than "mine points".

Any thoughts on that ?

Also, the Q9450 has 4 cores but the profile previously showed 1 CPU. Should I have set that value to 4 instead of 1 ?
gunnarre
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Re: Q9450 and RX480

Post by gunnarre »

You should aim for high stability and PPD. In other words, the main goal is to not crash the WU, return it within timeout, and third get the highest PPD you can get on your gear. Folding@Home rewards quick returns of work units because it works like a relay race: The work servers are waiting for your results to make work for other folders, and gives you a bonus for returning it quicker. So aim for PPD (points per day) rather than work units per day.

One should aim to return the WU within the Timeout deadline, to avoid duplication of work.

(More detailed benchmarking of WUs looks at "time per frame" of the exact same WU, but this is mostly something that the researchers and beta tester would look at, so ignore that unless you have the exact same WU to compare with different configurations/systems.)

If folding on the CPU causes your overall system PPD to drop, you should probably only fold on the GPU. If you want to CPU fold, you probably only should use 2 cores - but since your CPU lacks both SSE and AVX support, I think you shouldn't even try to fold on that CPU.
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Joe_dela_Hiti
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Re: Q9450 and RX480

Post by Joe_dela_Hiti »

Thanks for that information. I will leave it running just like it is now for the moment as it looks stable to me.
The only thing I plkan to change is to change the preference from Covid to Anything as soon as the pandemic is over.
I may investigate how to slim the Ubuntu OS down a bit more and see if there is anything obsolete I can remove from it that might be eating CPU time.
All that PC will ever do from now on is to fold.
My main reason for moving from Windows to Ubuntu was the increasing Windows maintenance overhead.
Ubuntu seems much more...relaxed
BobWilliams757
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Re: Q9450 and RX480

Post by BobWilliams757 »

If you are going to be doing any tweaking and experimenting, it might be worth installing HFM to monitor your work units. It's simple to set up and will show trends over time such as expected PPD with various work units, any increases with changes to OS, memory, clocks, etc. If nothing else it keeps track of the work you've done in an easy format.

https://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=34516

You can also access HFM with another system if you set it up, that way you don't even have to get in front of the folding system unless you want to. You can see what it's doing from another system and just let it fold away. It might save you some space if you only hook it up to a monitor, keyboard and mouse when needed.
Fold them if you get them!
Joe_dela_Hiti
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Re: Q9450 and RX480

Post by Joe_dela_Hiti »

Because I haven't gotten FAHControl and FAHViewer to work on Ubuntu 20.04 yet I have installed FAHControl on my windows PC. I have literally not touched the Ubuntu PC that is doing the folding since I installed and started the client under Ubuntu and the best thing about it:"it doesn't seem like it's necessary which was the whole point of the move from Windows to Ubuntu. The increased performance of the GPU due to excluding the CPU from the folding process is a side effect of the move because I accidentally came across some articles that hinted in that direction when I was researching the Ubuntu operation.

I have installed HFM and the .net 6.0 client on my windows machine but I have not fully figured out it's added value over FAHControl yet.
So thank you for that link, that'll keep me reading over the weekend.

For now, I'm happy as a pig in the mud with the Ubuntu machine delivering one WU and 200K points every 8 hours. Under W10 and with the CPU active too, I got 3 or 4 WU but only around 300K every 24 hours. Shame I didn't take the time to figure that whole Ubuntu stuff out earlier. The machine has been folding uninterrupted since the start of the pandemic. I could have folded twice the amount of points but never too late to learn.
Neil-B
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Hardware configuration: 1: 2x Xeon E5-2697v3@2.60GHz, 512GB DDR4 LRDIMM, SSD Raid, Win10 Ent 20H2, Quadro K420 1GB, FAH 7.6.21
2: Xeon E3-1505Mv5@2.80GHz, 32GB DDR4, NVME, Win10 Pro 20H2, Quadro M1000M 2GB, FAH 7.6.21 (actually have two of these)
3: i7-960@3.20GHz, 12GB DDR3, SSD, Win10 Pro 20H2, GTX 750Ti 2GB, GTX 1080Ti 11GB, FAH 7.6.21
Location: UK

Re: Q9450 and RX480

Post by Neil-B »

Your biggest performance boost will have been dropping the cpu as the increase you mention far exceeds the increased performance from win to linux so it looks like your win setup was not supporting the gpu as well as it could due to the cpu being too loaded ... it has been a well worth exercise from two counts - improvements from win to ubuntu - resolving the cpu impact on the gpu :)
2x Xeon E5-2697v3, 512GB DDR4 LRDIMM, SSD Raid, W10-Ent, Quadro K420
Xeon E3-1505Mv5, 32GB DDR4, NVME, W10-Pro, Quadro M1000M
i7-960, 12GB DDR3, SSD, W10-Pro, GTX1080Ti
i9-10850K, 64GB DDR4, NVME, W11-Pro, RTX3070

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Joe_dela_Hiti
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Re: Q9450 and RX480

Post by Joe_dela_Hiti »

Third week of GPU folding alone and not really happy with the results even though it's still significantly better than the 2,000,000 or so average per week under W10 with the CPU and GPU both folding. First week "harvested" 3,362,379 points from 20 WU's, second week 3,058,610 from 16 WU's and last week "only" 2,773,527 points from 14 WU's. So the trend is not good. I logged on to the machine to see if any updates were pending but nothing evidently visible. Based on earlier feedback that the points are rather an indication of how close you deliver to expectation, I don't really understand the result.
Neil-B
Posts: 2027
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2020 5:52 pm
Hardware configuration: 1: 2x Xeon E5-2697v3@2.60GHz, 512GB DDR4 LRDIMM, SSD Raid, Win10 Ent 20H2, Quadro K420 1GB, FAH 7.6.21
2: Xeon E3-1505Mv5@2.80GHz, 32GB DDR4, NVME, Win10 Pro 20H2, Quadro M1000M 2GB, FAH 7.6.21 (actually have two of these)
3: i7-960@3.20GHz, 12GB DDR3, SSD, Win10 Pro 20H2, GTX 750Ti 2GB, GTX 1080Ti 11GB, FAH 7.6.21
Location: UK

Re: Q9450 and RX480

Post by Neil-B »

Tbh you really need to be looking at the projects the wus are from .. if the first week you were mainly getting were from a project the suits your kit well and the last week were mainly from a different project which less suits your then the drop you ard seeing may simply be down to variation in projects ... if all the weeks was are from the same project them you may have a bigger issue ... I can see variances from 4.7m ppd down to sub 3m ppd dependant on whatvprojects are running through my kit
2x Xeon E5-2697v3, 512GB DDR4 LRDIMM, SSD Raid, W10-Ent, Quadro K420
Xeon E3-1505Mv5, 32GB DDR4, NVME, W10-Pro, Quadro M1000M
i7-960, 12GB DDR3, SSD, W10-Pro, GTX1080Ti
i9-10850K, 64GB DDR4, NVME, W11-Pro, RTX3070

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Neil-B
Posts: 2027
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2020 5:52 pm
Hardware configuration: 1: 2x Xeon E5-2697v3@2.60GHz, 512GB DDR4 LRDIMM, SSD Raid, Win10 Ent 20H2, Quadro K420 1GB, FAH 7.6.21
2: Xeon E3-1505Mv5@2.80GHz, 32GB DDR4, NVME, Win10 Pro 20H2, Quadro M1000M 2GB, FAH 7.6.21 (actually have two of these)
3: i7-960@3.20GHz, 12GB DDR3, SSD, Win10 Pro 20H2, GTX 750Ti 2GB, GTX 1080Ti 11GB, FAH 7.6.21
Location: UK

Re: Q9450 and RX480

Post by Neil-B »

Check your logs and see if you can find wus from the same project in each week then compare the time it took to fold each ... for most projects wus within the project will have similar performance (the benchmarking projects don't follow this and have wide variance).
2x Xeon E5-2697v3, 512GB DDR4 LRDIMM, SSD Raid, W10-Ent, Quadro K420
Xeon E3-1505Mv5, 32GB DDR4, NVME, W10-Pro, Quadro M1000M
i7-960, 12GB DDR3, SSD, W10-Pro, GTX1080Ti
i9-10850K, 64GB DDR4, NVME, W11-Pro, RTX3070

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Joe_dela_Hiti
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Joined: Tue Jan 18, 2022 9:48 am

Re: Q9450 and RX480

Post by Joe_dela_Hiti »

System's been running as good as uninterrupted since I started this thread and the yield has roughly been 20% better than under Windows. So for me, case closed as far as the W10 / Ubuntu comparison goes.

I have had another thought though that I would like to share with the audience. I've recently gotten an energy certificate for my house and as we were monitoring the electric power use, the Q9450 machine was showing a constant use between 180 and 190 Watt which translates into a monthly cost just over €10. I was wondering, since I seem to be willing to pay €10/month to support science, if it wouldn't be smarter to rent a VPS for the folding instead. Surely a VPS is running on more current hardware, so I'd expect even a single core to perform better than the Q9450. Anybody has any thought on / experience with that ?
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