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[AlanH]

Iview Media Pro, I'm not sure how to check which font it uses.. I'll have a chance to peek tomorrow (it's not my computer)..

I'm not an expert in fonts. I do seem to recall reading somewhere that Tiger can get confused if you have multiple copies of a font - maybe one installed by an application and another provided by the OS itself. The Apple Fontbook application is the key to sorting these things out, I believe.

 

[ironduck]

Ok, I'll see if I can figure something out tomorrow..

 

[Sahkuhnder]

Extreme Overclocking says I'm the 14th overall contributor to the team? And team rank of 41? And Folding@Home had 51? Oh, I give up trying to understand these things ...

The Extreme Overclocking 14th ranking must be in the last 24 hours, I'm not even listed in that even though I'm still folding (back again from a trip)..

The Team Summary "Top Twenty Producers" is based on WUs submitted in the last seven days, so it is more accurately labeled "Top Twenty Current Producers" and your individual "24hr Avg" will be 1/7 of your current weeks points.

The Team Users List also only counts users as 'current' if they have submitted a WU in the last seven days. Not everyone finishes a WU/week, so we actually have many more users contributing than show up at any given time as active users on the Users List.


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Anyone know if there are any stats on which client works the fastest? I have the graphical one, which runs in hidden mode. Is it worth it switching to console or screensaver?

From the official Stanford University F@H homepage you can click on the forum links and it leads to a mind-numbing amount of discussions about folding.

This thread is for Windows but says basically it doesn't make any difference between the graphical and console clients because they both run the same core. The screensaver-only client will be much slower as it will only run when the screensaver is actively on and will not utilize the unused CPU cycles when the screensaver isn't on.

More info:
Folding@Home Wiki



And a welcome to the new team-mates!

 

[Abaddon]

wee, i can smell a new thread soon... and suggestions for the title?

 

[JonnyB]

Something that will encourage more people to join up.
Like "Team CFC needs your help"

or

"You gotta know when to hold them, know when to fold them."

 

[ironduck]

Team CFC needs YOU to join the cyborg army!

 

[Kan' Sharuminar]

wee, i can smell a new thread soon

So that's how you do it

 

[bhsup]

Holy horned Moses! I haven't folded for Team Mozillazine for over a year and I'm still #20 on their list. Not bad... #20 on the 57th ranked team and #2 on the 376th ranked team.

I think I'll toot my horn a smidge today.

http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=userpage&username=VRWCAgent

 

[Blazer6]

I was not aware of a 5 point WU? Are there any others smaller than that?

 

[AlanH]

I'm starting to see the real impact of using the SMP client on my system. If it continues at the level of production it has run for the last two days, my system is going to be turning in about 10K points per week. At this rate it is outperforming IglooDude's cluster of 12 CPUs by about 150%, single handed.

I'm not bragging, as this is not my doing, it's a significant achievement by the FaH development team. The reason for this post is to strongly advise anyone who can to switch to a GPU or SMP client. This will generate far faster results for the Folding project, and teams that exploit these options are going to be in a different league from the rest.

 

[DvD-IT]

strongly advise anyone who can to switch to a GPU or SMP client.

It just supports three Radeon cards (x1600, X1800, X1900) though.

 

[ironduck]

If anyone wants to donate any of those cards to me I promise to put them to good use

 

[AlanH]

It just supports three Radeon cards (x1600, X1800, X1900) though.

... or multi-core CPUs. I am running the SMP version on a four-core system.

 

[Sahkuhnder]

... or multi-core CPUs. I am running the SMP version on a four-core system.

I was thinking of adding the SMP client to a system and am curious as to how well it performs. Could you share with us the specs and output of the system(s) you are running the SMP on? I'm a bit concerned that the old system I want to put it on won't be up to the task of meeting the SMP work unit deadlines for finishing and reporting back to Stanford.


Our team's output is really starting to rise. Good job everyone.

 

[bhsup]

If I read the FAQ correctly, it only supports multi-core on Linux and Mac systems, right? They're still working on a port for Windows, aren't they? I'm just running two instances of the old console client with different machine IDs.

 

[AlanH]

I was thinking of adding the SMP client to a system and am curious as to how well it performs. Could you share with us the specs and output of the system(s) you are running the SMP on?

It's a Mac Pro with two dual-core 'Woodcrest' Xeon CPUs, running at 2.66 GHz. I have 2 GBytes of RAM. Although it's not relevant for Folding, my GPU is an Nvidia GeForce 7300GT with 256 MBytes.

Since I installed the SMP client it's run seven work units in three days for Projects 3024, 3025, 3026. Each unit has taken about 10 hours and they are worth over 600 points each. These work units are set up specifically for high availability 2 or 4 core systems, and their preferred completion is 1 day, with a deadline of 2 days. My system's productivity, measured using the points values, has gone up by a factor of about 20 compared with its previous level using the normal single CPU console client.

While it is running, if my system is just doing normal office-type work, the four cores are utilised about 50-60% by FaH. One runs a bit higher, presumably doing traffic cop overhead work.

The SMP software frightened the life out of me when I first started to run it, as I was monitoring system activity and noticed that the network traffic was off the scale. I thought I would be kicked off the Internet by my ISP. However, it turns out this is just loopback traffic between the cores, and never leaves my system.

I'm a bit concerned that the old system I want to put it on won't be up to the task of meeting the SMP work unit deadlines for finishing and reporting back to Stanford.

There's been some discussion in the FaH forum about whether lower availability, or lower spec, machines can deliver the tight deadlines that are set for the SMP work units. I get the impression that you really need to have a fairly current rig to do it, using Intel's Core-2 Duo (or the new quads that are emerging).

I apologise that I didn't realise the SMP client is not available for Windows yet. I'm so used to Mac stuff trailing Windows that it never occurred to me that I might actually be ahead of the curve

 

[Sahkuhnder]

There's been some discussion in the FaH forum about whether lower availability, or lower spec, machines can deliver the tight deadlines that are set for the SMP work units. I get the impression that you really need to have a fairly current rig to do it, using Intel's Core-2 Duo (or the new quads that are emerging).

We just installed some shiny new systems where I work, so this one is old and 'kind of' surplus. I'm the night boss so I was considering loading it up with a 64 version of Linux and the Linux SMP client and see if anyone complained or even noticed.

The machine I'm contemplating is an Athlon 64 X2 3800, which sounds OK at first, until I mention it only has 512MB of slow DDR, and onboard graphics. I'm still not sure that it's up to the task but I'll see if some night when things are slow if I can get Linux and the SMP up and running on it, and see how it performs.

 

[AlanH]

That should do nicely All you seem to need is multiple cores at a good clock rate.

It doesn't seem to use a lot of RAM. Each core is currently running 8 MBytes of real memory and 40 MBytes virtual on my system. The GPU is not involved if you run the SMP client.

 

[AlanH]

As it looks like the new Intel Macs may be able to contribute to this effort, I've posted a reminder in the Mac Civ4 forum. Maybe we'll get a few more SMP Mac contributions to help boost the production rate.

 

[Abaddon]

Good stuff Thanks Alan.