[Windows 7] How to set up folding on a nVidia 6xx Series (Kepler) GPU

This is meant to be a simple guide. I am first going to set up a guide for folding via FAH GPU Tracker V2, as it is much easier. I got most of this information from this thread here, Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show) I do not intend to take credit for making up the information on my own. I am simply making a visual guide for OCN members to use, and to hopefully provide support to people having issues folding on Kepler GPU's.

I am not up for arguing whether or not its worth it, as ppd is currently not up to par with what people think it should be, if you want to dispute/argue/complain about this, take it to another thread, this thread is meant to show/help/learn together to get points out of what we have, and what we are willing to do with the hardware we have.

The guide is numbered, and has colors following the rainbow Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Purple to correspond to with the numbers, and will follow throughout the guide.

1. First thing you are going to want to do is head over to the FAH GPU Tracker V2 site here http://fahtracker.com/download.html and download the client.
2. You are going to want to click the "3.54 Final"
3. It is going to open up a box asking whether you want to open the client, save the client, or cancel. Save the client to whichever location you choose. I personally use my desktop, but you can choose to put it wherever you want to put it.


4. Once you have it downloaded to your desktop, uncompress it there.
5. After it has uncompressed, it should have another folder that reads FAH GPU Tracker V2, a readme.txt, and a liscence.txt.


6a. If everything is looking like this, you are on the right track. From this point, open up the FAH GPU Tracker V2 folder highlighted in Blue #5. It should give you a folding looking like this.


6b. Double click the application in the Purple box #6


7. It will then ask for permissions to change things, allow it. Then, again click on the yes in Red box #7 to download the clients for FAH GPU Tracker V2.

This here will pop up, it will download clients.


8. And now your FAH GPU Tracker V2 folder should look like this.
9. Your client will also be open, looking as such.


At this point, you can configure your client, but I will be covering that at the end of this post so keep reading if you do not already know how to configure, lets get folding first

So, moving onward. You are going to have to download a new, specific kepler folding core here.
http://fahtracker.com/trackerv3/core_15.zip

10. I again suggest download this to your desktop for ease of use, but put it wherever you choose to put it. Once you have downloaded the .zip file to your desktop.
11. Extract the folder to the "extract here" location.


12. Copy and paste, or move the "FahCore_15" file into the folder under the directory "FAH GPU Tracker V2>GPU0"


13. Open up the Setup/Configure within the FAH GPU Tracker V2 client.
14. Click the "Auto Detect Gpus" You will get an error, continue through that. Then you are going to get another prompt.
15. Click Yes, where it asked you if you want to use these settings.


16. At this point go ahead and make sure your configuration has these settings. If they match, at this point you can click the apply button at the bottom of the config screen, and then close.


17. From this point, there are only a few more things to do. First, you can go ahead and click on the button that says "Start GPU0" (or whatever slot your Kepler card may be assigned to)

18. The card will then start to fold. It will not be immediate, nor will it start to show ppd immediatly. If you open up whatever oc utility you may be using you will see it do a little bounce up and down thing for 30s-1m, and then it should up up to around 99-100% gpu usage.


All that is left to do is configure it to report points to you, and hopefully, OCN. (this is so that you get credit for your folding)

19. To do this, go back into the "Setup/Configure" Like you did a little bit earlier, but instead you are going to click on the "Tracker Settings" tab.


20. Fill in this space if the name you use to fold on.

21. Fill in this space with your folding team of choice (37726 WOOT!)

22. Passkey, put it here, if you do not have one, see this post here. http://www.overclock.net/t/977412/windows-7-complete-client-v7-guide#post_12918150 Its about 15 lines down. This is the link to get one if you do not already have one. http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/getpasskey.py

23. Again, enter your extreme overclock user id. If you do not know your extreme overclock user id. Go to this site. http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/ Go down to the name search, enter your folding name, click your actual folding name if you are given options. It should open up a screen showing you ultra super cool information on your stats. For this guide it is irrelevant except what is in the address bar. Click the adress bar and you should see the adress (obv.) The last set of numbers that are on thisadress string that come after the "=" is going to be your EOC id. Do not use the one in this picture, as it is mine, and will be completely irrelevant to your usage.


24. At this point, you are finished. Click the apply, and then close. And you are (hopefully) folding on your Kepler GPU via FAH GPU Tracker V2. You may have to stop the gpu folding, and completely exit the program, and then restart the program to get your tracker settings to take. It should not effect your ppd, you will just have to wait for it to pass another 3 points before it starts showing correct ppd again.

note: I will try to help/support as I can, I work many hours, and only have so much time. If you find anything incomplete, or conflicting with this guide feel free to post it in this thread. P.M.s are too often, and too many with threads like this. I will get to issues as I can, please be patient.
Edited by jesusboots - 9/27/12 at 6:47pm

EDIT/UPDATE: For this version, it works out of the box. After you download the v7 client, and install, there is nothing more that you have to do except enter your username/passcode/foldingteam.

This is going to be for the people wanting to use v7 instead of v6. This seems to be a much more tempermental process than just using the above method. With that being said, the making of this guide will be done from a clean install of windows 7 64bit. Problems with reg. files, drivers, or whatever may have been changed or edited on your specific machine, I cannot, or do not intend to know, or understand, and will most likely not be able to have a fix for. I will again be using the desktop to save all work to, and will be setting it up to work from the desktop. If you choose another place, and have issues with getting it up and running, I will do my best to find a way to help you to get it to work, but would rather suggest you follow the guide, instead of deciding a better place to get it running from, and the coming back to say it does not work, later to find out, your files are not where they are supposed to be.

With this guide, I will be using the same color/number sequince as I did in the guide above. That is following the rainbow. R.O.Y.G.B.P in that order throughout, which should help visually to follow the guide.

Starting off.

1. Go to the F@H page here
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/HomePage

Click on the "Windows All Versions" When asked to save, or open, save it to your desktop.

2. Once the .exe has downloaded to your desktop, right click on the icon, and then left click on "Run as Administrator"


3. Its going to pop up a few prompts, asking if you want to let it make changes on your hdd/ssd. Second prompt is the setup wizard. Then a license agreement, you want to click on the agree button. Another prompt, ask if you want to express install, or advanced install, you are going to click the advanced (for everyone on this computer)

Then click next.

4. Click next.
5. This is the part that some people were seeming to have issues with, they were installing to other parts of their computer, and then not putting files that we will go over later into the right spots. For this guide, and the sake of this working, please, DO NOT ADJUST THIS SPOT.


6. Same goes for this, Until you know it is up and running, let not fuss this up.
7. Click next again.


8. Again, keep going ahead with the setting it has, click next again.


9. At this point you will be confronted with this screen. In put your user name.
10. 37726
11. Your passkey, which you can get by following this information right here. http://www.overclock.net/t/977412/windows-7-complete-client-v7-guide#post_12918150
12. Then set this to either gpu, or gpu & smp depending on whether you intend to use v7 for just the gpu, or both the gpu and cpu.
13. Then click the install button.


14. It should now look like this on your screen. Its going tell you that windows blocked access, allow it.
15. You will either have something looking like mine does in this picture, or you will have two slots, if you set it up to have both gpu & smp at part 12.


16. From this point. You will stop whatever it may be doing, by clicking the pause button.
17. Then set this tab to expert mode.


18. At this point, you are going to go to this link here. http://folding.typepad.com/news/2012/04/support-for-new-gpus-such-as-kepler-in-the-v7-fah-client.html
19. Right click the down loadable link, then click save linked content as. To your desktop.


20. At this point, go back to your desk top, you should have it looking something like this. If it does, you are on the right track. Go ahead and open up your start menu, find where your FAHCLIENT folder is, and then click it to open it.


21. After you have clicked open the FAHCLIENT folder, open up the data directory.
22. Then you are going to drag the gpu.txt directly into the data directory folder.


23. At this point, close the FAHControl client, Then, go to the bottom right of your screen, and quit the program from there as well.


24. Open FAHControl back up from the desktop, it should at this point acknowledge that there is a video card there.


If at this point, it has acknowledge that you do infact have a video card there, we can move forward. If not, start back at 1. and try again, you have either deviated from this guide, or something is wrong with something with your drivers, your registry files, or something that I cannot even begin to start to understand how or why it is not detecting. A fresh windows install would be the first thing I would try from that point. If that is too inconvenient to you, then that is on you, not me, or this guide.

25. Cool, so, it has found your card, says its running, but is doing nothings. That exactly what we want at this point.
Click on Configure.
26. Then click the slots tab.
27. Make sure the gpu slot is the highlighted slot.
28. At that point, click edit.
29. Scroll down the configure folding slot screen to the bottom. Then click the add.
30. Under the edit options, under
Name: client-type
Value: beta
31. Click okay.


32. Then you will click, ok, ok, then save. The client itself will go into undating mode, and then show 0% again.
33. Completely shut down the program again, as you did before, make sure to shut it down inside of the tray in the bottom right of your desktop to completely shut down the client.
34. At this point, after making sure that the client is completely shut down. Navigat yourself to your c drive. Then to program data, then the folding at home client. Once you have that opened, you are going to completely delete the work folder.


35. At this point if you have fully followed each step, you will again open up FAHControl from the desktop. It will update again once opened. At this point, it will initialize your gpu, and start to fold.
36. It will not start up immediately, or start to show a % for a few minutes. If you open up your gpu monitoring (I use msi afterburner) You will notice a slight bounce for its usage before it makes a strong jump upwards to 99-100% usage.


And here it is starting to show some percentage.


A couple things here.
I do not wish to explain to you why the client is crashing for you, nor why you are failing work units. Generally speaking, it usually is a pretty strong indicator that your overclock is not stable, that includes cpu and ram o.c.'s. It may also mean that your case does not have well enough air flow, or that you may have a bad card. It may also mean your psu is not supplying enough power, that it is beginning to fail, or break.

Either way, all of those things, I have not covered, nor do I wish to cover in this thread/guide. Take them to the hardware forums, or the folding lounge and ask others what your issues may be.

I also, as mentioned before, I do not wish to discuss if it is worth it to fold on your kepler card/ fermi card/ or anything else. Whether or not the points are good or bad. There is already a thread to discuss ppd. So go there for that.

I DO NOT IN ANY WAY want to see people discouraging others from folding. If you do not see it fit to fold for whatever your reasons may be, thats your own business. Talking someone out of doing something they wish to do, is childish, cut it out.

I hope this thread works for many, and that it was not overly confusing any anyway.

I will help to keep it updated as time sees fit, and will help to support as I can. DO NOT P.M. me with issues, you are having, it will most likely get answered quicker via the thread, from other members, than I have time to get around to helping you.
Edited by jesusboots - 12/30/12 at 11:57am

Did you get it working?

This is a long shot, maybe it might be a driver issue, what driver are you using? And how many driver updates have you done since your last o.s. install?
Edited by jesusboots - 6/18/12 at 6:43pm

It may take a minute or two. If it still does not start folding, you may have to delete the files in the gpu0 folder.

Stop the client, go down to the system icons area on the bottom right of your screen, make sure the client is actually closed. Then you may even have to go into task manager and kill the FAHCORE_15.exe in there.

Then reopen the client, it will update, and then start it again. Outside of that, only thing I can think is that people have too many remnants of old drivers that are stopping the core from initializing the gpu to fold. I will think on this a little further, as I am pretty much out of options after this point.