Mad Max Plotter, some test results, some general info

Correct, after reboot, it went back to a much quicker speed.

plot1 - 2535
plot2 - 2575
plot3 - 2622
plot4 - in progress but i’m presuming it will probably be about 2705 seconds

pattern would seem to match the degradation I saw last night after it had been plotting all day then I went to test U/V values late at night.

i created the ramdisk initially like this (ignore the size values as it’s proper at 111GB):
mount -t tmpfs -o size=1024m myramdisk /tmp/ramdisk
/etc/fstab (myramdisk /tmp/ramdisk tmpfs defaults,noatime,size=111G,x-gvfs-show 0 0)

will try another way after plot4 finishes re-mount it:
nodev,nosuid,noexec,nodiratime,size=1024M 0 0

odd indeed.
I’m very new to Linux, but my experience so far is not that different form Windows. Weird shit happens and then you need to reboot to fix it :sweat_smile:

I installed standard Ubuntu 20.04, mounted the ramdisk by copying the line in the madmax github guide and mounted nvme by pressing the button that says “mount” in the disk manager.
Plotted a full 12 TB disk and didn’t see any slowdown. Times vary a bit but in the long run they are pretty consistent.

looking at my syslog, I noticed my usb drives were constantly dismounting and mounting (as the harvester was requesting read). in my /etc/fstab, I had some options that were disconnect on idle/etc that I had used from a site. Took those out and it stopped then.

ended up changing the tmpfs to a ramdisk with different mount options. prior to reboot, noticed the ramdisk was not properly being allocated memory or something because chia_plot kept getting into like 2-5 minutes into phase 1 by linux low memory management (some critical error). rebooted and it’s all been fine since … getting about 2450s per plot. going to change the xfs back to f2fs this weekend and see if I remain stable.

there is a setting in Ubuntu for USB drives (like sleep timers or standby thing…) you can disable.

How much faster will be the plotting process with a ramdisk as tmp2 instead of 2x970 pro?
Currently getting 36 min on 5800x and 2x970 pro

The best and the easiest way is crontab.

With cori 7 10700
16gb 3600
And 970 evo plus 500 gb

I cant get it under 75 min

I know there is something wrong

I know someone who can get 60 min with 14 thread
With 0.0.6 madmax

I think it doesn’t use my ram correctly
It use 5 gb of 16 gb

Can anyone help me?

Guys can you tell how parallel plotting on mad max works? If i put -n 3 for exp does it wait for plot one to finish and then start the second plot or what ?
Thankyou

-n is just the total number of plots it will do 1by1.

If you want to run parallel, you need to run each in separate console/terminal

1 Like

How are you using 30 or even 24 threads on a 10 core / 20 thread CPU?

I was just trying out settings. Right now I’m using -r 20 and the plot time is exactly the same as when using 24 or 30. Meanwhile I changed to 128GB RAM 2666MHz mounted as tmpfs for temp2 and the plot time reduced to 29.6 minutes (30.5 min when copying the previous plot in background). Also tried with both 2 NVMe RAID-0 and a single NVMe and no difference.
In any case CPU is at 80% at most so most likely my bottleneck now is not the CPU or the disk (because RAID-0 makes no difference, I’m assuming the bottleneck may be the RAM speed or the motherboard bus).

If you only have 20 threads then you could put that number at 24, 30, or 3000 and it won’t make a difference. Just trying to say it’s not worth your time testing anything over 20 because your cpu only has 20 threads.

I was not spending time testing, just changing configurations everytime I started plotting to a new disk.
Regarding the ‘r’ parameter and the number of cores/threads, I don’t know if that’s so linear, because according to the documentation, that number is more like a multiplier, thus maybe even a lower number could lead to a similar result, although I haven’t tried.

Quick Q about xmp if someone in the know could answer I’d appreciate it.
If my mobo / cpu only supports 2133,.and I bought 2133, is there any point in enabling xmp?
Or is it just for ram that is a higher speed, to take advantage of that higher speed.
TIA.

Ah, nevermind, thought I’d just try it.
46 min down to 36 min, hoorah.

Hello, guys. I have i9-10850K 10C 20TH, 32GB DDR4, Micron 7300 Max U2 1.92TB and Samsung 970 Evo 2TB. Using Mad Max plotter i have 60 minutes. Bad result i think.I use only 1 disk.

My log:

Final Directory: p:
Number of Plots: 1
Crafting plot 1 out of 1
Process ID: 1168
Number of Threads: 16
Number of Buckets P1: 2^8 (256)
Number of Buckets P3+P4: 2^8 (256)
Working Directory: p:
Working Directory 2: p:
Plot Name: plot-k32-2021-07-06-21-32-2c43d0b860461348620608210a4d2a5e767a23573419b66aca3898356c04badd
[P1] Table 1 took 27.0144 sec
[P1] Table 2 took 186.483 sec, found 4294865369 matches
[P1] Table 3 took 297.075 sec, found 4294739167 matches
[P1] Table 4 took 352.932 sec, found 4294475469 matches
[P1] Table 5 took 355.905 sec, found 4293914248 matches
[P1] Table 6 took 327.575 sec, found 4292928118 matches
[P1] Table 7 took 227.662 sec, found 4290665257 matches
Phase 1 took 1774.87 sec
[P2] max_table_size = 4294967296
[P2] Table 7 scan took 16.1005 sec
[P2] Table 7 rewrite took 42.8584 sec, dropped 0 entries (0 %)
[P2] Table 6 scan took 76.7238 sec
[P2] Table 6 rewrite took 116.553 sec, dropped 581601759 entries (13.5479 %)
[P2] Table 5 scan took 61.5318 sec
[P2] Table 5 rewrite took 95.3363 sec, dropped 762291915 entries (17.7528 %)
[P2] Table 4 scan took 72.3943 sec
[P2] Table 4 rewrite took 112.862 sec, dropped 829088088 entries (19.3059 %)
[P2] Table 3 scan took 67.99 sec
[P2] Table 3 rewrite took 105.758 sec, dropped 855234158 entries (19.9135 %)
[P2] Table 2 scan took 86.6581 sec
[P2] Table 2 rewrite took 120.774 sec, dropped 865695938 entries (20.1565 %)
Phase 2 took 981.019 sec
Wrote plot header with 268 bytes
[P3-1] Table 2 took 78.5047 sec, wrote 3429169431 right entries
[P3-2] Table 2 took 65.5422 sec, wrote 3429169431 left entries, 3429169431 final
[P3-1] Table 3 took 105.49 sec, wrote 3439505009 right entries
[P3-2] Table 3 took 66.7394 sec, wrote 3439505009 left entries, 3439505009 final
[P3-1] Table 4 took 80.5635 sec, wrote 3465387381 right entries
[P3-2] Table 4 took 97.0116 sec, wrote 3465387381 left entries, 3465387381 final
[P3-1] Table 5 took 93.1583 sec, wrote 3531622333 right entries
[P3-2] Table 5 took 67.0325 sec, wrote 3531622333 left entries, 3531622333 final
[P3-1] Table 6 took 89.58 sec, wrote 3711326359 right entries
[P3-2] Table 6 took 69.2851 sec, wrote 3711326359 left entries, 3711326359 final
[P3-1] Table 7 took 88.8933 sec, wrote 4290665257 right entries
[P3-2] Table 7 took 95.0749 sec, wrote 4290665257 left entries, 4290665257 final
Phase 3 took 998.767 sec, wrote 21867675770 entries to final plot
[P4] Starting to write C1 and C3 tables
[P4] Finished writing C1 and C3 tables
[P4] Writing C2 table
[P4] Finished writing C2 table
Phase 4 took 91.4316 sec, final plot size is 108777914987 bytes
Total plot creation time was 3846.15 sec (64.1025 min)

Whats wrong? Thank you!

Linux or Windows? Which SSD are you using of the two mentioned? Have you tried different bucket sizes?

Windows. In log i use only 1 ssd Micron with write speed 1900MB/s. I haven’t tried diff bucket.

The SSD obviously the bottleneck. Try RAID0

Or probably try the 970 Evo as single temp drive first…

Thanks. I have 2 Micron 7300 Max, will try in RAID0. But i want to try ramdrive in Windows. What will be better: ramdrive or raid 0?

P.S. I think what i can’t create raid0 using 2 micron in pci-e ports. Right?