Folding on a HD 7850

I have been folding for years, but I just recently found out that adding a couple configuration options have doubled my PPD on my HD7850.


Enable Core17 beta units. Add the two following gpu extra slot options:

1.  First
•  Name: client-type
•  Value: beta
2. Second
• Name: extra-core-args
• Value: -gpu-vendor=ati

I found out about the options on this forum post: http://www.overclock.net/t/1367557/core-17-beta-wu


This took my HD7850 from 6-7k PPD to 12-13k PPD!

This is using the 12.8 drivers. I am letting it stabilize before trying 13.3 Beta drivers, because I had problems folding on 13.1 drivers. I will update this post when I try the new drivers.


4/20/2013 Update: I installed the 13.3 Beta 3 drivers (including the new APP SDK) and my cpu usage went from ~25% to ~2%. I am also seeing about a 40 second reduction in TPF resulting in about 3k more PPD. I have also seen some Bad work units that lower my PPD.

5/3/2013 Update: Folding has put the beta units back into a closed beta and I am only seeing Core16 units. So to maximize my PPD, I have gone back to 12.8 drivers and AMD APP SDK 2.7.

 Process:

• Disable Folding and make sure it does not restart automatically on reboot
• Download 64bit DRIVERS or 32bit DRIVERS 
• Download APP SDK 2.7
• Uninstall all AMD software/drivers using control panel
• Reboot
• Use Driver Fusion to remove all remnants of the AMD drivers
• Reboot
• Install drivers using custom install and uncheck AMD APP SDK runtime
• Install AMD APP SDK
• Reboot
• Restart Folding

5/7/2013 Update: They have released the Core17 work units again and now I am getting 18-20K PPD with them now.

6/14/2013 Update: With the release of the 8900 work units, I have moved to the 13.4 drivers and am now getting 28-30K PPD now.

Darksiders and Thrustmaster Dual Power

So when trying to use my Thrustmaster Dual Power with Darksiders in Steam, it would just spin me in a circle.

After some googling I found XBOX 360 Controller Emulator.

I simply downloaded the App from: http://code.google.com/p/x360ce/downloads/list

I placed it in the Apps directory: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Darksiders\"

Run it and it will ask you if it should create:

1. xinput1_3.dll
2. x360ce.ini

Allow it to create both.

I use the following configuration:

• Left
• Trigger: Button 6
• Bumper: Button 5
• Back: Button 9
• Start: Button 10
• D-Pad: DPad 1
• Stick Axis X: Axis 1
• Stick Axis Y: Inverted Axis 2
• Stick Button: Button 11
• Right
• Trigger: Button 8
• Bumper: Button 7
• Y Button: Button 4
• X Button: Button 2
• B Button: Button 3
• A Button: Button 1
• Stick Axis X: Axis 6
• Stick Axis Y: Inverted Slider1
• Stick Button: Button 13

If it says that it cannot find msvcp110.dll, download and install the trial: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/downloads

Windows 8 ABIT IP35 Pro

When installing Windows 8 64bit on my IP35 Pro, everything worked out of the box except raid monitoring and I wanted the sound software. However, since ABIT is now out of business, I had to find them on the vendors website.

Intel Matrix Storage Console:

• Intel - IATA89ENU.exe

Realtek Sound Driver:

• Realtek - 64bit Vista, Windows7, Windows8 Driver only (Executable file)

Hope this helps someone out there looking for it.

Update 2016-06-28:

Apparently Windows 8.1 update broke the Intel Raid utility. I was getting the following errors when trying to use it:

The Raid Plug in failed to load because the driver is not installed correctly

The serial ATA plug-in failed to load because the driver is not installed correctly

The solution was to simply install the updated utility. Intel

Eliminating UAC prompt for individual programs

Here is how I was able to stop the annoying UAC prompt in Windows 7 everytime I started Fraps without disabling it completely.

1. Download the Windows Compatibility Toolkit from: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=7352
• ApplicationCompatibilityToolkitSetup.exe
• And install it
2. Open the Compatibility Administrator (use 32 bit for 32 bit programs and 64 for 64)
3.  Click the Fix Button which will bring up a wizard
• Type the name of the program (eg. Fraps)
• Click the browse button and select the program
• Check the RunAsInvoker box and nothing else
• Click Next twice and then Finish
4. Click Save
• Type in a name for the database, I used Fraps
• Select a location/name for the save, I used the same directory as the program and fraps.sdb
5. Exit Windows Compatibility Toolkit
6. Start an elevated command prompt
• Click the start button
• Type: cmd
• Right click on the cmd result and select "Run as administrator"
7. Navigate to the directory you saved the sdb file to
8. Type: sdbinst Fraps.sdb
9. You should see the following result:
• Installation of Fraps complete.
10. All done! Enjoy your starting of the program without UAC prompts!

Source: http://pcsplace.com/windows-vista/how-to-turn-off-user-account-control-for-individual-programs-in-vista/

Windows X11

To install a X11 window manager in windows, I used Cygwin and made sure to check the X11 options when installing.

To start the X11 window manger open a cygwin terminal and type:

xwin -multiwindow

You can then use X forwarding in PuTTy to open Linux Guis on windows! Each window will have windows native minimize, maximize, and close buttons.

Upgrade from Xubuntu 10.04 LTS to 12.04 LTS

Here are the couple things that I found that I had to fix when upgrading from Xubuntu 10.04 LTS to 12.04 LTS:

1. I was not getting DNS resolution

• sudo vi /etc/resolv.conf

• add:

  nameserver 192.168.1.1 

• UPDATE: the above does not last you should instead:

• sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces

• add:

  dns-nameserver 192.168.1.1

2. My VNC session was not loading a window manage (giving a failure to load gnome message -- I also got a trash not supported error and application crashes when starting xfce4-session)
• vi ~/.vnc/xstartup
• make sure it has:

  startxfce4 &

3. When running synaptic from the application menu, it would ask for a password then fail to load 

• xhost +localhost

4. noip2 was removed and not in the package list

• cd /usr/local/src

• sudo wget http://www.no-ip.com/client/linux/noip-duc-linux.tar.gz

• sudo tar xf noip-duc-linux.tar.gz

• cd noip2-2.1.9-1/

• sudo make install

• sudo /usr/local/bin/noip2 -C

• sudo vi /etc/init.d/noip2

• change:

  DAEMON=/usr/local/bin/$NAME

  CONFFILE=/usr/local/etc/noip2.conf

• sudo /etc/init.d/noip2 start

Creating/Mounting/Burning ISOs in Linux

Creating an ISO:

1. First make sure everything using the cd/dvd drive is closed
2. Unmount the cd/dvd drive:

• sudo umount /dev/dvd1

3. Create the copy:

• readom dev=/dev/dvd1 f=disk1.iso

4. Verify the copy:

• md5sum /dev/dvd1

• md5sum disk1.iso

If you are getting read errors, you can use safecopy:

• safecopy /dev/dvd1 disk1.iso

Mounting an ISO:

• sudo mount -o loop -t iso9660 disk1.iso /mnt/iso

Burning an ISO:

• wodim dev=/dev/cdrw -v -data disk1.iso