HT cpus and DC projects

[MTP]

I know HT processors are not the same as SMP, however should I set the affinity for the DF .exe to just one of the "logical" processors in task managers?

Does it matter??

[Angus]

I can answer this one!

If you want to run just one instance of DF, you don't need to do anything. Just start it and go.

BUT ! If you want to take advantage of all that extra P4 HT horsepower, run TWO instances of DF.

This will require installing it twice, in 2 different folders - distribfold, and distribfold2 or whatever you would like to call them.

Run the foldit.bat in each folder to configure the client, and you're off and running. No need to bother with affinity.

I'm running four instances each on a pile of dual HT P4 boxes. Works great!


Have fun and get out there and crunch.

[Dyyryath]

Hey Angus, have you tried benching a single client over say 12 hours vs two clients over the same time period? I'd love to know what the performance difference is with DF for one of those processors.

[Angus]

I did that for F@H.

I'll see if I can risk the drop in production to try it on one box.


DF is so hard to benchmark, I'm not sure I could get a definitive answer ....
It's a real crapshoot - of the 20 HT clients I have running, which all were started at the same time, there are wild variations on where they currently are. One is still on generation 150-something, and the next one is on the next WU ????

I haven't fooled with the -bench option - does that run until stopped, or is it a one-time fixed work test?

[Welnic]

The -bench takes about a minute to run. It just spits out how long it takes to do a sample of calculating the trajectory and the folding part. To run it in windows you need to type ".\foldtrajlite -bench".