Folding@home Beyond3D_Team - Summer 2023 Call for NVidia RTX users

[Albuquerque]

Lol! I have two of the dual-slot Zotac 4070 Super cards in my Newegg shopping cart right now for $579/ea... Just need to click the button!

The pair should exceed the folding rate of my singular 4090 at about the same power draw, if not just slightly less (with some undervolt luck.) Bonus points: they are a dual-slot design so my 3080Ti should still fit into the triple PCIe slots of my x79 motherboard.

So, ~60MPPD should be within my grasp shortly.

 

[DmitryKo]

While it was tempting to post the news on April 1st... it's no joke, we're now at #250 with 9.53 billion points, almost 2 months earlier than my estimate - so at our current rate of ~65M points per day, it's exactly 2 months before we enter the Top 200!

Rank Project	Team Name	Points 24hr Avg	Points Total	Points Diff	Gain Daily	Date Overtake
100​	Team MacOS X	12,347,564​	29,503,695,723​	-19,974,022,245​	52,492,109​	04.13.25, 7pm / 1 Year​
200​	Open Science Grid	0​	13,495,200,110​	-3,965,526,632​	64,839,673​	05.29.24, 10am / 2 Months​
250​	Beyond3D_Team	64,839,673​	9,529,673,478​	0​	0​	--​

We're still not overtaking GamersNexus, Reddit, or Ars Technica in the foreseeable future, unless we manage to make at least 100 million points per day:

Rank Project​	Team Name​	Points 24hr Avg	Points Total​	Points Diff​	Gain Daily​	Date Overtake​
20​	Tom's Hardware	176,421,897​	225,564,794,993​	-216,035,121,515​	-111,582,224​	--​
30​	GamersNexus	86,076,843​	137,320,977,469​	-127,791,303,991​	-21,237,170​	--​
52​	Reddit	75,777,661​	70,195,476,521​	-60,665,803,043​	-10,937,988​	--​
55​	Ars Technica Team Egg Roll	61,074,722​	68,735,642,438​	-59,205,968,960​	3,764,951​	--​
77​	Redline @ OC3D.net	18,546,088​	41,262,885,346​	-31,733,211,868​	46,293,585​	02.12.26, 6pm / 1.9 Years​
93​	guru3d	37,748,339​	33,047,550,209​	-23,517,876,731​	27,091,334​	08.14.26, 9am / 2.4 Years​
134​	Bjorn3D.Com	126,801​	21,782,480,046​	-12,252,806,568​	64,712,872​	10.04.24, 3pm / 6.3 Months​
216​	Wccftech	2,681,369​	12,031,243,664​	-2,501,570,186​	62,158,304​	05.08.24, 12pm / 1.3 Months​

So please join Beyond3D_Team and help us increase our daily output - and for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere, also heat up your bedroom in winter!

 

[Albuquerque]

Just ordered two 4070 Super cards, which are the record holders for most Folding PPD per kWh in the desktop world. They'll go into the Linux rig, replacing the current 2060, so we should add another ~25MPPD to our tally shortly.

 

[Albuquerque]

Pulled down the Fedora rig last night and yeeted the MSI Ventus 2060. It is now replaced with an MSI Ventus 4070 Super, Zotac Twin Edge 4070 Super, with the EVGA 3080 Ti FTW3 moved to the last slot. Now it all looks like this:



As any experienced PC person might guess, there is a bit of thermal overload happening here Also, I didn't realize each 4070S needs a pair of PCIe power cables even though theyre rated for 220W (75 from the connector and 150 from a single cable should suffice...) My Kingwin 1000W PSU is one PCIe power cable short, although it has the capacity for more. I've ordered the extra cable and it will be here tomorrow. In the meantime I'm running just the pair of 4070 cards at their minimum voltage (925mV) and 2640MHz. The card nearest the CPU has a hard time staying consistently below 93°C so the clocks on that one wobble around between about 1900 and 2640.

Regardless, the folding performance doubled, from about 11MPPD to now about 23MPPD, despite the 3080Ti being temporarily offline. And all the better, the doubling of folding perf came with a 10% power drop:


The extra PSU cable arrives tomorrow and I'll have the 3080 back in the running. Then the whole rig should generate over 30MPPD reliably...

Edit: I bought both of the 4070 Super cards on Amazon as "used - like new condition" which is why I have two seemingly random models. I wanted dual-slot cards so I could pack three cards onto the three PCIe slots of this x79 board. Getting them used meant I saved about fifteen percent on the purchase price, and both cards arrived in their original boxes, with their original accessories and paperwork, and with no discernable flaws.

 

[Albuquerque]

Good news: the extra 9-pin (PSU) to 8-pin (PCIe) cables arrived today, as expected. I was able to get my 3080Ti plugged in and powered up, and after only fighting Fedora for a handful of minutes, got Coolbits working on all three cards.

Bad news: so it turns out having 520 watts of video card oomph all crammed into three adjaced PCIe slots makes for a TON of noise (I don't really care) and a metric BUTT-TON of heat (this sucks.) The two 4070 Super cards cant deal, which should be expected since they have basically no room to move air even at 100%.

Worst news: With all three cards running, my PPD seems to have actually sunk to ~20MPPD from the previous ~23MPPD. I was hoping for more along the lines of >30MPPD with the 3080 Ti pulling its weight. I've left the side of the case open, along with leaving the whole box laying on its side so the hot air can rise up and away. I'm not sure it's going to help though...

I'm going to let it all run overnight and see how the points stack up. If it all is just too much heat to be useful, I'm going to pull the 3080 Ti out of that rig and I'll have to find some other place to run it. The pair of 4070 Supers produce far to well by themselves to let the 3080 Ti get in their way...

 

[Albuquerque]

Oof, woke up this morning to the Fedora rig still running at ~20MPPD. The 3080 is cranking out around 8M, the cooler of the two 4070's is only rolling out about 7M, and the hotter of the 4070's is crawling at 4M. Ugh. Just the two 4070's with normal temps can crank out more than 25MPPD by themselves with ~200W less power, so I'm yanking the 3080 and will find another home for it.

Edit: Yeah, pulled the 3080 Ti, separated the two 4070's to the 1st and 3rd PCIe slots leaving a nice air gap in the middle. Lo and behold, box is cranking out 24MPPD on the very first work set. Box was chewing through nearly 700W overnight, it's now back down to 475W and performing 25% faster. Yay, heat.

 

[Albuquerque]

Today I hit "leet" status! Thought I'd share the goofy screencap...