# Have you considered running Notfred's VM Appliance for SMP?



## BUCK NASTY (Dec 20, 2009)

I know that alot of us Folders also Crunch, but considering the current situation with HWC, we have to reevaluate our hardware allocations. Recently, I have been playing around with Notfred's VM Appliance and have *more than doubled the PPD from my HTPC*. The CPU is an unlocked 45nm Athlon X2 5000+ @ 3.2ghz which CPU-Z identifies as a Phenom II X4 FX-5000 (Smoking deal on Newegg for $65.00 shipped). SMP ppd was 1500+ in Vista64 on a 1920 pt WU and now I'm getting 3900+ running 2 VM's with the same WU's. Unfortunately,  you must have a 64bit OS to run the VM player and Vm's like 4gb+ of ram. If you guys are interested in giving it a shot, let me know and i will post a tutorial.


*EDIT: Works great in XP 32bit SP3*


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## hat (Dec 20, 2009)

I wouldn't mind giving it a shot. My processor can't be unlocked and my board won't let me anyway but 4 threads instead of 2 would be nice.


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## theonedub (Dec 20, 2009)

By all means create the tutorial. I would surely look at it, but Im not sure I would be willing to pull my quads off WCG


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## JrRacinFan (Dec 20, 2009)

Heya Buck, can you give us all a link to that cpu you mentioned?


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## theonedub (Dec 20, 2009)

Im pretty sure its this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ogle-_-Processors+-+Desktops-_-AMD-_-19103716


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## BUCK NASTY (Dec 20, 2009)

theonedub said:


> Im pretty sure its this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ogle-_-Processors+-+Desktops-_-AMD-_-19103716


Yep, theonedub nailed it!

BTW - no problems running it in XP 32 bit


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## hat (Dec 20, 2009)

What is it? An am2+ K8? Phenom 1? Phenom 2?


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## BUCK NASTY (Dec 20, 2009)

hat said:


> What is it? An am2+ K8? Phenom 1? Phenom 2?


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## dhoshaw (Dec 21, 2009)

I've put a hold on my Boinc client on my Athlon II 620 and installed a vm running on all 4 cores. Currently, it's running about 4600 PPD; with my 9800GX2 the box is churning out 16600 PPD. 

I'll install a vm on my main Q9550 tonight and see what that gets me.

This sure will put the hurts on my crunching PPD ; but unless I win the lottery, this is the only way I can help hold off those !@(&# Canucks (my former team - I'm still ranked #58 at HWC).


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## BUCK NASTY (Dec 21, 2009)

dhoshaw said:


> I've put a hold on my Boinc client on my Athlon II 620 and installed a vm running on all 4 cores. Currently, it's running about 4600 PPD; with my 9800GX2 the box is churning out 16600 PPD.
> 
> I'll install a vm on my main Q9550 tonight and see what that gets me.
> 
> This sure will put the hurts on my crunching PPD ; but unless I win the lottery, this is the only way I can help hold off those !@(&# Canucks (my former team - I'm still ranked #58 at HWC).



Very nice ppd on the 620. What clocks are you running it at? 

I now have VM's running on P II x4 FX-5000, Q9550, Phenom x4 9850, and Phenom x3 8650. I have netted 8K+ addt'l ppd just from running the VM's. My Q9550/780i rig would crash every day folding a single instance of SMP, but no problems running the VM's so far. Temps are up a little, but I have adequate cooling. I will update on stability tonight when I get home.


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## Error 404 (Dec 21, 2009)

I'm definitely interested, I'd love to double (or at least increase) my PPD with my CPU, as it is a bit slow (only around 1200 PPD with a 1920 point WU).
Is an E5200 capable of running the required VM software? I have 4 GB of RAM, but can stick another 2 GB stick in; at the penalty of losing dual channel, is it worth it?


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## dhoshaw (Dec 22, 2009)

BUCK NASTY said:


> Very nice ppd on the 620. What clocks are you running it at?
> 
> I now have VM's running on P II x4 FX-5000, Q9550, Phenom x4 9850, and Phenom x3 8650. I have netted 8K+ addt'l ppd just from running the VM's. My Q9550/780i rig would crash every day folding a single instance of SMP, but no problems running the VM's so far. Temps are up a little, but I have adequate cooling. I will update on stability tonight when I get home.



I'm running it at 3.2 GHz on the stock hsf.


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## Error 404 (Dec 22, 2009)

So is this just running two virtual quad core machines on a quad core? That defies logic of how it speeds up D:


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## BUCK NASTY (Dec 22, 2009)

Error 404 said:


> So is this just running two virtual quad core machines on a quad core? That defies logic of how it speeds up D:


The VM Player clients are a cut down Linux environment. Just simple folding simplicity and no windows services to get in the way of performance.


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## Error 404 (Dec 22, 2009)

That makes sense. When can we expect a tutorial on this? I'm really interested in getting even a slight performance boost from my E5200...


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## BUCK NASTY (Dec 22, 2009)

Error 404 said:


> That makes sense. When can we expect a tutorial on this? I'm really interested in getting even a slight performance boost from my E5200...



I am starting it now. Look for it in about an hour


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## dhoshaw (Dec 22, 2009)

Got a vm running on my Q9550; but found that it was too efficient. If I ran with all 4 cores, it sucked up all the cpu time; I couldn't even type on the keyboard without multi-second lags. It even throttled my gpu clients ; I had to cut it back to 3 cores so that I can actually use my computer for surfing, email etc. Boinc is a lot friendlier; I could run it at 100% of processors at 100% usage and still run games. I'm still getting 3+k PPD from the 3 cores. I should get a total of 8.5k tomorrow from the 2 vm's.


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## Error 404 (Dec 22, 2009)

Did you try using task manager or PriFinitty to set the VM's priority to Low? It shouldn't affect your computer that much unless its set to above Normal, in which case it WILL suck up all your CPU power.


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## dhoshaw (Dec 22, 2009)

Error 404 said:


> Did you try using task manager or PriFinitty to set the VM's priority to Low? It shouldn't affect your computer that much unless its set to above Normal, in which case it WILL suck up all your CPU power.



Thanks Error,

I thought that PriFinitty2 would not run properly on Win 7 x64; however, after some digging, I found instructions to get it set up. I've reset the vm to run on 4 cores and set the priority to low. I've also set the cpu affinities for fah and fah_cores and set the priorities to normal. The vm is now putting out >5500 PPD. The big test will be if I can run a game while the vm is still up.


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