mfaktc - optimizing for silent, cool and efficient running

[KaBo]

Hey all!

I know bigger and stronger is better and in the spirit of Tim "The Toolman" Tailor also: "More power!"

But since I'm running prime95 and mfaktc on my gaming computer sitting in the living room I also like it to be as quiet as I intended it to be.

My setup:
i7-7700 with 16GB RAM running Windows 10 64bit
Gigabyte GTX 1080 Windforce with latest NVIDIA drivers 417.35
mfaktc 0.21
prime95 v29.4, build 8
MSI afterburner to control GPU and monitor system temperatures

This is running in a tower case with all the fans that are pulling air into it having a dust filter on them. Three software controlled fans and one PSU fan pulling in. And one software controlled fan blowing it out. Room temperature 21C.

  GHz-d/day    GHz-d/day    Power  Temp    Fan   GHz-d/day
mfaktc TF only   +prime95    (W)    (C)   (RPM)      /W
     1030          1008      216     75    2500     4.67
     1022          1000      200     75    2370     5.00
      990           975      175     70    2170     5.57
      950           930      150     67    1920     6.20
      889           869      125     62    1670     6.95
      800           792      100     57    1410     7.92

So as you can see, if I throw 100% more power to the GPU, it only produces 23% more GHz-d/day. GPU usage was above 90% all the time. 200W is 100% on my GPU, and 108% is the maximum I can power it. Fans running at 1410RPM are at 37%, which is not heavy on the room - where as 2500RPM is a jet!

You can control the GPU power via software, like MSI afterburner. Really recommend it. Gives you also some nice graphs to watch - import other data from HWinfo as well to show on the history graphs!

But if you do not want to install anything else or are bothered by manually adjusting things you can do a batch script to do it using nvidia-smi (NVIDIA System Management Interface) which is available also under linux.

Create this .bat in your mfaktc folder:

@ECHO OFF
pushd "%~dp0"
"C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\NVSMI\nvidia-smi.exe" -i 0 -pl 100
"mfaktc-win64.exe"
"C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\NVSMI\nvidia-smi.exe" -i 0 -pl 200

Then create a shortcut to the desktop (or anywhere for it) and adjust the advanced properties of the shortcut to always Run as Administrator, nvidia-smi needs that for changing configurations.
You should also run "nvidia-smi" (without options) from command prompt. This will printout current status of your GPU including the default power setting - adjust my "200" in the script to your default. Also test what is the lowest / most optimal for you to set it to. 100W is the lowest allowed for me. This way when the TF testing is done, the settings revert back to original and no need to fiddle with sliders. If you stop mfaktc using Ctrl+C, reply No when asked if you would like to terminate batch. This way the last line will still be executed.

Observation #1: Running mfaktc and then starting LL in prime95, before CPU goes to 100% load and for about 5 seconds after, the GHz-d/day in mfaktc rises for about 10 points.
Observation #2: Changing GPU from full power (216W) to lowest 100W, the power adjustment took the system less than 2 seconds. The mfaktc was showing 745 GHz-d/day for about 30 seconds until going back up to 792 (with prime95 running). GPU temperature dropped from 75 to 60 in about 1 minute. GPU was not hitting any other limits - apart from power.

Also, does this mean mfaktc could be better optimized? Is it doing too much of something when let loose?

I did this to curb the fans, extend the lifetime of my hardware and be somewhat eco friendly. You won't believe, but my electricity bill is paid within rent. The only thing really limiting is the main power fuse - but no - not even that

I hope this helps someone else as well.

[kriesel]

Great post! Useful, clear, detailed, well organized, good tone, etc.

[Xyzzy]

https://www.mersenneforum.org/showpo...1&postcount=15

[ET_]

Originally Posted by KaBo

Hey all!

I know bigger and stronger is better and in the spirit of Tim "The Toolman" Tailor also: "More power!"

But since I'm running prime95 and mfaktc on my gaming computer sitting in the living room I also like it to be as quiet as I intended it to be.

My setup:
i7-7700 with 16GB RAM running Windows 10 64bit
Gigabyte GTX 1080 Windforce with latest NVIDIA drivers 417.35
mfaktc 0.21
prime95 v29.4, build 8
MSI afterburner to control GPU and monitor system temperatures

This is running in a tower case with all the fans that are pulling air into it having a dust filter on them. Three software controlled fans and one PSU fan pulling in. And one software controlled fan blowing it out. Room temperature 21C.

  GHz-d/day    GHz-d/day    Power  Temp    Fan   GHz-d/day
mfaktc TF only   +prime95    (W)    (C)   (RPM)      /W
     1030          1008      216     75    2500     4.67
     1022          1000      200     75    2370     5.00
      990           975      175     70    2170     5.57
      950           930      150     67    1920     6.20
      889           869      125     62    1670     6.95
      800           792      100     57    1410     7.92

So as you can see, if I throw 100% more power to the GPU, it only produces 23% more GHz-d/day. GPU usage was above 90% all the time. 200W is 100% on my GPU, and 108% is the maximum I can power it. Fans running at 1410RPM are at 37%, which is not heavy on the room - where as 2500RPM is a jet!

You can control the GPU power via software, like MSI afterburner. Really recommend it. Gives you also some nice graphs to watch - import other data from HWinfo as well to show on the history graphs!

But if you do not want to install anything else or are bothered by manually adjusting things you can do a batch script to do it using nvidia-smi (NVIDIA System Management Interface) which is available also under linux.

Create this .bat in your mfaktc folder:

@ECHO OFF
pushd "%~dp0"
"C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\NVSMI\nvidia-smi.exe" -i 0 -pl 100
"mfaktc-win64.exe"
"C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\NVSMI\nvidia-smi.exe" -i 0 -pl 200

Then create a shortcut to the desktop (or anywhere for it) and adjust the advanced properties of the shortcut to always Run as Administrator, nvidia-smi needs that for changing configurations.
You should also run "nvidia-smi" (without options) from command prompt. This will printout current status of your GPU including the default power setting - adjust my "200" in the script to your default. Also test what is the lowest / most optimal for you to set it to. 100W is the lowest allowed for me. This way when the TF testing is done, the settings revert back to original and no need to fiddle with sliders. If you stop mfaktc using Ctrl+C, reply No when asked if you would like to terminate batch. This way the last line will still be executed.

Observation #1: Running mfaktc and then starting LL in prime95, before CPU goes to 100% load and for about 5 seconds after, the GHz-d/day in mfaktc rises for about 10 points.
Observation #2: Changing GPU from full power (216W) to lowest 100W, the power adjustment took the system less than 2 seconds. The mfaktc was showing 745 GHz-d/day for about 30 seconds until going back up to 792 (with prime95 running). GPU temperature dropped from 75 to 60 in about 1 minute. GPU was not hitting any other limits - apart from power.

Also, does this mean mfaktc could be better optimized? Is it doing too much of something when let loose?

I did this to curb the fans, extend the lifetime of my hardware and be somewhat eco friendly. You won't believe, but my electricity bill is paid within rent. The only thing really limiting is the main power fuse - but no - not even that

I hope this helps someone else as well.

Interesting for us people running on Linux.

Would you please explain the meaning of the pushd "%~dp0" instruction? Is the parameter -i defining the port (as -i 1 if I have 2 devices)?

[Neutron3529]

Originally Posted by ET_

Interesting for us people running on Linux.

Would you please explain the meaning of the pushd "%~dp0" instruction? Is the parameter -i defining the port (as -i 1 if I have 2 devices)?

As far as I know, pushd "%~dp0" could be deleted since there is no "cd" command after such command
A common patten is:

pushd "%~dp0"
cd ...
popd

type `pushd/?` could get more detailed informations:

C:\Windows\System32>pushd/?
Stores the current directory for use by the POPD command, then
changes to the specified directory.

PUSHD [path | ..]

  path        Specifies the directory to make the current directory.

If Command Extensions are enabled the PUSHD command accepts
network paths in addition to the normal drive letter and path.
If a network path is specified, PUSHD will create a temporary
drive letter that points to that specified network resource and
then change the current drive and directory, using the newly
defined drive letter.  Temporary drive letters are allocated from
Z: on down, using the first unused drive letter found.

[ET_]

Originally Posted by Neutron3529

As far as I know, pushd "%~dp0" could be deleted since there is no "cd" command after such command

[KaBo]

Originally Posted by ET_

Would you please explain the meaning of the pushd "%~dp0" instruction? Is the parameter -i defining the port (as -i 1 if I have 2 devices)?

The pushd "%~dp0" command will execute the batch commands inside the directory where the batch file itself is located. I have the command there, because I am using the shortcut trick to always run it as admin (because the nvidia-smi requires it). If you will right click the .bat file in the mkaftc folder and "Run as Administrator" then you can drop that line (but it does not hurt being there either).


-i 0 is the identifier, if you have multiple GPU's, they count up
-pl 100 is limiting power to 100W


Run nvidia-smi to get a list of GPU's and nvidia-smi -h to see other available commands.

[GP2]

pushd is a shell builtin command under the standard bash shell (under Linux or similar OS), and possibly other shells.

The first thing it does is change directories, just like the more familiar cd command.

But it also automatically stores and remembers the current (old) directory, so you can switch back to that directory with a popd command. Even if you do several more cd commands in the meantime.

In fact, there is a stack data structure for directories, hence the "push" and "pop" terminology. You can use the dirs command to examine the directory stack, and you can even permute the directories on the stack, and so forth.

• pushd
• popd
• dirs

[AJ Alon]

This thread is timely. I was just myself looking at underclocking my GPUs for similar reasons. Learning about nvidia-smi will save me some time. Thanks, OP.

[LaurV]

@OP: