Team CFC: Folding@Home project

[Genocidicbunny]

Those guys rock. They have the top folding team as number one contributor. Nobody on our team would even make it into their Top 20 Producers.

No kidding. Then again, they have a lot deeper pockets and a lot more dedication to this.
Either that, or a lot more borg's to fold on. I on the other hand, am a high school student making 9.70$/hr, I cant even begin to afford some of these guy's hardware >.<

 

[IglooDame]

Those guys rock. They have the top folding team as number one contributor. Nobody on our team would even make it into their Top 20 Producers.

The freakiest thing is their current top producer went from below a thousand points per day to over a million in about three days, only a couple weeks ago.

 

[plarq]

The freakiest thing is their current top producer went from below a thousand points per day to over a million in about three days, only a couple weeks ago.

They used thousands of cores to fold under that user name.

 

[IglooDame]

They used thousands of cores to fold under that user name.

No doubt, but getting them all spooled up in three days? That's a metric buttload of work no matter how you slice it.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

The freakiest thing is their current top producer went from below a thousand points per day to over a million in about three days, only a couple weeks ago.

Chimp Challenge. They, along with several other teams are competing to see which team can reach a certain number of points first. So in essence, a lot of the team is folding under a single username.

 

[Sahkuhnder]

No kidding. Then again, they have a lot deeper pockets and a lot more dedication to this.
Either that, or a lot more borg's to fold on. I on the other hand, am a high school student making 9.70$/hr, I cant even begin to afford some of these guy's hardware >.<

Many of us with higher PPDs don't pay out of our pockets either. Most of my points for example come from our company computers.

Perhaps try to get friends and relatives to let you put F@H on their systems too?


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They used thousands of cores to fold under that user name.

And they have over a thousand active users!


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... That's a metric buttload of work no matter how you slice it.

I still get that confused with the old Imperial buttload. The slices never come out even.

 

[LucyDuke]

You certainly want to upgrade your Forceware version, 176 is pretty old.

I just bought the stupid thing new a few months ago.

Your hardware should be fine to run either F@H client with. If you are uncomfortable running the gpu client then just run the uniprocessor cpu client alone. You won't produce as many points, but will not have to worry about monitoring the gpu temperature.

You are running RivaTuner correctly, there should be more icons in that row. As plarq suggested new/current drivers may solve the problem and give you full features.

You can use the temperature numbers to make sure F@H is running OK too. If the numbers go low and stay there then the client may be hung or be paused trying to communicate with the Stanford servers. As long as the temps are steady and warm then you can see that the F@H client is happily folding as it should be.

The core(s) are what generate almost all of your laptop's heat. As long as they are being cooled and stay within the safe range then everything else should be cool enough as well.

I honestly wouldn't suggest running the gpu client if I didn't believe it was safe to do so. That I run it myself on two laptops also supports my point.

Here are some links to threads about laptop folding from the Folding Forum:

SMP on a Laptop
Can I use folding@home on a laptop
Laptop Cooling
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That card may be too new. RivaTuner says Dec. 08 and GPU-Z says Jan. 09, so your card may not be supported yet. I wouldn't think MSI would cause either program to not work correctly, but proprietary stuff can get weird so I could be wrong.

I tried to update, I went to their website and downloaded and installed what they gave me, but I'm still not getting the right stuff out of RivaTuner. I'm going to not worry about it and just use mostly the desktops for folding, and the laptop as long as it stays cool.

Thanks for all the help.

(While we're at it, what's the safe range? I've seen some numbers in the mid-upper seventies and I'm getting nervous again.)

 

[Sahkuhnder]

I just bought the stupid thing new a few months ago.

But the drivers that came with it may be many months old. Going to the manufactures website to look for security and driver updates is a good idea. That may help prevent a problem before it happens.

I tried to update, I went to their website and downloaded and installed what they gave me, but I'm still not getting the right stuff out of RivaTuner. I'm going to not worry about it and just use mostly the desktops for folding, and the laptop as long as it stays cool.

If RivaTuner isn't working you can try the much simpler GPU-Z. You really should know your gpu core temp.

(While we're at it, what's the safe range? I've seen some numbers in the mid-upper seventies and I'm getting nervous again.)

Sorry, I forgot to include that.

Your mobile Sempron has a critical temperature of 95C, but I wouldn't want to go much above 75C for very long.

Nvidia gpus are supposed to max at 120C, but I start to worry at near 90C or so. If I see a temp near that level I listen to see if the fans are still running, check the cooling vents for blockage, etc.

 

[fezzic181]

Trying to find more systems and more PPD out of my own rigs atm. We have hovered just shy of 200 for to long.

 

[Quintillus]

Congrats on running a SMP client.

Don't worry - that warning can be ignored. Here is the answer from the Folding Forum (FahCore_a1 is Windows, FahCore_a2 is only available for non-Windows as of yet):

"It refers to the ability to spawn differing numbers of FahCores: using the -smp x flag with FahCore_a2 will allow it to spawn any number of threads so long as its an even number (I think) and bigger than or equal to 4. FahCore_a1 can only spawn four threads regardless so it is "not eligible for variable [numbers of] processors".

Great! Figured that since it hadn't crashed all night it probably wasn't too important of a warning. CPU only ever went up to 77ºC over night with the lid closed, 4ºC more than with just the single core running, so I'm happy temperature-wise. And I'm up to just about a thousand PPD from the CPU, from about 600 with the single core version before.

You certainly are quite the source of knowledge on F@H!

 

[IglooDame]

Oh thats not fair, I want a dedicated machine too.

EDIT -- How much power would 4 9600GSO's need?I doubt it would be over 750W

I finally got a kill-a-watt on the foldgarden, it's drawing roughly 350W. I think I could have gone with a 550W PSU rather than a 750W one.

Chimp Challenge. They, along with several other teams are competing to see which team can reach a certain number of points first. So in essence, a lot of the team is folding under a single username.

Ahhh, that makes a lot more sense. Too bad Team CFC doesn't have that kind of horsepower, Radioactive_Monkey would feel right at home there.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

I finally got a kill-a-watt on the foldgarden, it's drawing roughly 350W. I think I could have gone with a 550W PSU rather than a 750W one.

Thats a lot less than I thought it would be.
Still quite a bit on the electric bill.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

IglooDude, what kind of 9600GSO's do you have? The 48sp or the 96sp ones? If the 96, where did you find 4 of them? All I see are 64sp ones on newegg now, save for that one XFX one.

 

[IglooDame]

IglooDude, what kind of 9600GSO's do you have? The 48sp or the 96sp ones? If the 96, where did you find 4 of them? All I see are 64sp ones on newegg now, save for that one XFX one.

The 96sp ones - the ones with "even" amounts of onboard RAM (512MB, 1GB) are the 'newer' 48 shaders, the ones with "odd" RAM (384MB like mine, 768MB) are the 96 shader ones.

And they were all Ebay, three from one seller (albeit in two separate lots) and one from another. Looking there now, I don't see any 384MB ones at all. I aimed for the 384MB ones mostly because they were cheaper off the bat for the same performance (the amount of RAM doesn't matter for folding), but also because apparently in XP the OS allocates system RAM to match the video card RAM and so 4x768MB would have maxed out my 2GB of system RAM unless I made some adjustments that I didn't want to get into.

In retrospect I might have considered going with 9800GX2 cards so as to have some upward mobility, but they were/are more expensive on a "per shader" basis (256sp for ~$270 rather than my 96sp for ~$70) so if I went down that path I'd probably be sitting at maybe 12K PPD for the foldgarden right now instead of 16K for the same money spent. Also, at the time I wasn't clear on whether my PSU would even handle the four 9600GSOs from a wattage standpoint, plus it has "only" two 6/8 pin and two 6 pin plugs natively, so I wouldn't be able to plug in more than two 9800GX2 cards (which take an 8 pin and a 6 pin each, whereas the 9600GSOs take a single 6 pin each) anyway as currently configured.

The folding forum's hardware subforum is chock full of this particular flavor of geekiness...

 

[Agent327]

Not following any of this, I'm afraid. But after checking the OP, I've downloaded the approp program.

 

[Abaddon]

This thread has 20,000 views

 

[fezzic181]

Have the smp client fired on a laptop now. Having issues getting smp to play nice on my big rig with the dual 9800gtxs though.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Well, I wanted to get new 9600GSO's from EVGA to allow for step up, buy buying them off Ebay would ruin that plan.
By the looks of it though, a pair of GTS 250's on a celeron-powered board is probably the most energy efficient design now. 240 watts for roughly 13000 PPD.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Dammit, MSI has a GTX 260+ for like 150$ on sale right now, and its really tempting. Id love to throw it into my pc and just fold on both GPU's
Question would be though, can I use two of the GPU's to fold on Vista...

 

[Sahkuhnder]

This thread has 20,000 views

Look what you started.

Have the smp client fired on a laptop now. Having issues getting smp to play nice on my big rig with the dual 9800gtxs though.

That should be a nice addition. Maybe the team will finally be able to break into the top 200 as you mentioned.

Dammit, MSI has a GTX 260+ for like 150$ on sale right now, and its really tempting. Id love to throw it into my pc and just fold on both GPU's
Question would be though, can I use two of the GPU's to fold on Vista...

That is a good deal. I've kind of been watching the Nvidia dual-gpu cards for folding myself and they do fold on Vista, but unlike on XP it looks like you will need a second monitor you can plug in temporarily or rig up a dummy plug to use.

forcegpu flag for gtx 260 (secondary, no monitor)



And welcome JEELEN