Anyone out there Folding@Home?

Actually, if you add my 3000+ points...I made the team get 2m roughly 1.9 hours faster than usual !

I'll be moving up the ladder rather quickly.

BTW the performance with an AMD dual cores and the SMP client :
3800+ a little over 30 minutes between % points
6400+ a little over 20 minutes " "

These are large WU's, as just these two machines and just two WU's got me 3283 pts.

Curious to know how the Quad Core is doing with SMP?

IOW, perhaps running 4 consoles with 4 different machine ID's, instead of one SMP, which is better?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mark Derail @ Aug 30 2007, 03:07 PM) [snapback]504535[/snapback]</div>

My thought is that the SMP is better because it can handle the larger WUs, which can only be done by the more powerful machines. The alternative is to run four smaller, easier WUs.

The real purpose of all this is to do scientific work, not to accumulate points. The SMP client gives the researchers more computing power.

...

As for me, my FAH client is dead in the water again. Partly my own fault: Taking the advice of someone on the Mac OS X FAH chat board, I changed a folder name, in an attempt to get InCrease to work, and it all died. I'm now back to square 1.

FAH5 will run, but I want the flexibility, control, and information InCrease gives me, and at present I cannot get InCrease to work.

What I'd really like is the control to tell FAH to use only 75% of available CPU cycles, so it would not run so hot. I want to support this effort, but not if it's going to fry my computer.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mark Derail @ Aug 30 2007, 06:07 PM) [snapback]504535[/snapback]</div>

The SMP can run more complex 'beta' work units; I've been running the 'standard' work units for several months - 205 WUs averaging a little over 300 points per work unit. So your SMP is definitely giving you more points and contributing more - stick with it.

Are you running the SMP on a quad core or a dual core? One of my three machines is a dual-core but I've been running two 'standard' console clients on it, because some of what I read seemed to indicate that the SMP is meant for quad core machines, not dual core. I'll switch that machine over to SMP if it's worth running SMP on a dual-core AMD 64x2 5000 machine,

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jeannie @ Aug 31 2007, 12:27 AM) [snapback]504734[/snapback]</div>

Run SMP Client on any CPU with more than 1 core. It might take a longer time to finish a WU, but overall, your computer will output more PPD.

 

Ya, two machines with AMD dual core.
Running SMP.

I really like that liquidninjas.com graphic, even though I'm only in 28th spot as of writing this, my DAILY AVG: 11312, means that the SMP is really worth it.

On the 3800+ it takes a bit more than two days for a WU, and the 6400+ takes just over one day.

What's strange is that both being dual core, I always thought the clock speed was the only difference between the 3800+ and the 6400+.
Obviously not.

It's funny how in just two years, 64 cores will be here, and one machine in a month will totally blow away years of folding with our current dinosaurs.

Rather than buying a whole new computer, if you have a PCI-E slot, getting a ATI X1900 series video card, and the GPU client.

Since chinalfr2/molanginaeda is using SLI GPU's and has a quad core, most likely he could run both the Multi-GPU as Machine ID=1, and the SMP console as Machine ID=2, at the same time in the same box.

It would be cool to see his daily avg double! Then I'd never catch up to him.

 

32,428 for the last 24 hours.

p.s. Mark, are you running a beta 64 Core CPU?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(chinalfr2 @ Aug 31 2007, 01:31 PM) [snapback]505002[/snapback]</div>

Looks like I have to beat that during the long weekend, many machines will be idle. Hehehe B)

Got to get the team back to the #425 spot, we're down to #427.

I sure wish. Just many machines, here & there.

I'll bring online for a few days six P4's just to see how fast they are, for a single large WU, but won't leave them on 24/7.

 

I saw the Priuschat points average for 24hrs made a big jump over night! What would cause such a spike? The addition of new folders and the continued efforts of current team members of course. It is good to have you on the team Mark Derail.

 

Well, I've started running the SMP client for Windows Vista. I hope I've set it up right, but time will tell.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Aug 31 2007, 02:25 PM) [snapback]505047[/snapback]</div>

Here's some additional instructions that I used setting it up:

http://fahwiki.net/index.php/How_do_I_inst...indows_Vista%3F

I had trouble trying to get the ADMINISTRATOR user set up following these instructions, but I finally managed to get it set up, with no idea what I was doing wrong (I thought I was following the instructions precisely, but I guess I wasn't.

Once I got the ADMINISTRATOR account set up, it said to switch to that user to run the install.bat. I did that, but when I gave it the user/password for my 'regular' user, it balked. I re-executed the install.bat but this time set up the user as ADMINISTRATOR, and then ran fah.exe under the ADMINISTRATOR user. So now it's working where I have both my 'regular' user and my 'administrator' user logged on and switch between the users.

I can tell it's running by looking in the directory where I installed the SMP client and looking at the file FAHlog.txt - it shows me it's progress for every 1% of the work unit it's processing. (I'm 5% through, taking 27-28 minutes for each one percent, so it looks like I'll be finished with my SMP work unit in about 40 more hours, racking up 1760 points for it.

(When I was running the 'regular' console, 2 copies as services, a workunit worth 206 points would take me about 40 hours elapsed time, and one worth 500 points would take me about 60 hours elapsed time on this same machine. with the two consoles, then, I could expect to get 1000 points in 60 hours if I lucked into getting two of the '500 point' work units at the same time. I've been folding since late 2006 - 200+ work units - and have only once had a workunit worth more than 500 points. So the SMP stuff looks like it will generate far more points for me, even if I've had to kludge things to get it to run.)

So, Evan, you can try to follow the instructions and maybe you'll get it to work properly the first time! But you can always fall back on running it through the ADMINISTRATOR user, as I've done.

If anyone knows how I can set it up better to run on my 'regular' user, please feel free to give me advice (which I'll try after I get my first SMP WU completed)!

When I look at the task manager and tell it to show me processes for all users, I can see it's running four 'core' .exe programs - I don't know why it's four when I actually only have 2 processors. But it's distributing nearly 100% of my cpu across those four processes, and I'm seeing progress in my FAHlog.txt, so I won't complain,

 

The SMP console - it always runs just four core .exe's. No more, no less.

With a dual core, two share the same CPU.
In a four core CPU, each EXE gets it own CPU.

In a eight or sixteen core, only four would still be used. However you can install multiple directories, with a different machine ID #, to use up the other CPU's.

My next computer upgrade I'm waiting for is the quad core AMD's that will blow Intel's quads. Plus the ATI X1900 series card in SLI - I need dual monitor setup.

Then I'll be able to run SMP under one machine ID, and the DUAL GPU on another machine ID.
I expect such a setup to be able to do at least 8k points per day. h34r:

My group of P4 computers I've put the standard WU's on them, with the standard console. Got to give those dinosaurs a chance to do at least 1 WU over the long weekend

From my research, a single "ordinary" computer with a single ATI X1900 series PCI-Express video card can crunch more points that an Intel Quad Core can.
Anyone care to comment on that?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mark Derail @ Aug 31 2007, 03:34 PM) [snapback]505089[/snapback]</div>

Me thinks that you don't like Intel.
I have a Dell XPS410;
Q6600 CPU
RAM 2GB 667MHz
Powercolor 1950Pro 512MB

On 1760 point WUs without the GPU running, it takes 19.2hrs for the SMP to finish. Running the SMP+GPU, a 1760 point SMP takes 22.2hrs and each GPU WU takes 13hrs for 330 points.

Are you one of them there OCers?

 

Don't know how many non-prius owners we have on team, but I just recruited one.... He has some fancy-pants machines that should help... [edit] Holy Smokes, who or what is MarkDerail?!?!?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mark Derail @ Aug 31 2007, 03:34 PM) [snapback]505089[/snapback]</div>

When folding with GPU, you have to disable ATI crossfire. But you can have as many as 3 ATI X1900 (if you MB support). You also need CPU cycle for GPU folding. Each GPU might take as much as 70% of the CPU Processing.

GPU folding will only net you 330 point. I don't think ATI GPU can crunch more points than SMP client.

 

My first 'smp' work unit finished in a little under 45 hours, so I guess I did something right <g>.

Have you had any luck gettting it to work with Vista, Evan?

How are things going with getting your problem resolved, Daniel?

And how's the moving going, Dave? I hope you get your new internet service running quickly!

 

I didn't interpret properly the stats graphic for GPU's.

It's that there are more WU's by far produced from GPU's than CPU's.

I was hoping that the GPU version would produce more points than even the SMP version, in the same amount of time, on the same computer.
I'll stick to what I'm doing!

There's lots of top 20 team members that are not producing, we can fall out of the top 500 team over time.

Time to overclock my AMD's, they are still running normal speed.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jeannie @ Sep 2 2007, 09:40 AM) [snapback]505876[/snapback]</div>

No reply as yet to my most recent post on the Team Mac OS X chat board. It might be on account of the holiday weekend. Tomorrow or the next day, if I've had no reply I'll bump my post.

I could not care less how many points I or our team makes. I want to contribute, but not if it means overheating my computer. I might wait for cooler weather to set in. It does not make sense, in my opinion, to run my home air conditioner overtime just so that I can run my computer at 100% duty cycle. Heat is what wears out electronics, and I don't think home computers were designed for 100% duty cycle 24/7.

I'd like to see them release a client that allows the user to tell it to use less than all available cpu cycles for cooler operation in hot weather. What would really be nice would be a client that would monitor core temperature, and cut back its operation at a temperature specified by the user.

 

Recent PC motherboards do this, right now, automatically.
They have an option in the BIOS to throttle the CPU according to temperature.

This design is for people that overclock their computers, turning this on, downclocks if the temperature reaches a critical temperature in Centigrade.
So reboot & check your menus for this - and if you have it, the BIOS will tell you the current temperature reading.

Perhaps Mac will keep this BIOS feature on their Intel Macs.