What is the best operating system for the highest GPU utilization? I'm on Windows 10 right now and I have to stack two WU per gpu to get the utilization high enough. If the answer is windows xp, I don't own that, but is linux still just as good?

From the postings, it seems that Windows 7 - 10 suffer from time lags caused by WDDM and require some intervention in order to get a somewhat good utilization. Running 2 WU per GPU is a good idea, amongst other things. See the posting

https://www.gpugrid.net/forum_thread.php?id=4413&nowrap=true#45224

Zoltan has many installations and also one Linux System online, so he can probably answer that question firsthand.

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I would love to see HCF1 protein folding and interaction simulations to help my little boy... someday.

The WDDM overhead is the biggest OS choice concern; it's impact is over 10% but closer to 20% for many. XP & Linux are the best operating systems as they don't have the WDDM overhead (which is larger with larger cards); the bigger your cards the more important to avoid the WDDM overhead.

The other main OS consideration is the generation of GPU you are using:
Your 1060 won't work on XP, so it's Linux or the 10%+ WDDM performance hit.
Note that the Pascal's wont work on Vista either.

Because SWAN_SYNC is enabled in the Windows app, XP is probably the fastest overall (for non Pascal cards), though running two tasks at a time on Linux might yield the same overall throughput.

As Linux is free and comes with Long Term Support (updates) it would be my first choice for crunching here. Others might prefer the familiarity of XP or want to dual boot.

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