Folding@home catchall

[Ikxeru]

nìlun ngar tìyawr ma bommel...

but monthly production increased sevenfold from 0.5M points per month to 3.5M points per month within the last year. I wonder if we could ever reach the top 100...

Talking about the inactive users... Meh, I can understand them.

And, to be honest, if a machine turns out to be too wimpy to fold 24/7 and receives minimal points, this is far from beeing energy efficent to run the folding client on it.

If I look at the machines at my hands: One additional i7 machine running 24/7 could bring in more computational power then 10 of my wimpy network clients, which would consume 3,500 Wph in total. That's 1.278 MWph per year which is an enourmous waste of energy that has to considered of and not to be ignored. We cannot try to make the world a better place by wasting energy, can we?

On the other hand: I know some of the inactive users and I know that they have performance-capable graphics cards.
So, ma smuk, just put the GPU client into your autostart-folders and let it run! These WUs rush thru very quick and every WU counts!

EDIT: I second bommel's opinion (in "the excuse thread"): If you have any machine with a dual Pentium III or single Pentium IV or better at hand it is quite allright to start folding again. Again: Every WU counts!

[bommel]

True, we have a few users with pretty decent systems. And I'm pretty happy about our great progress (among the ~420 best teams in the world!)

I wouldn't recommend people with lower-end hardware to fold 24/7 anyway (though I had an Intel Atom D510 folding SMP 24/7 ^^) but the regular uniprocessor client has very long deadlines so you could fold everytime you use your PC. Even my crappy Pentium 3 @ 733MHz could complete those WUs

[Swoka Ikran]

My main folding PC (the AMD quad with the 450) is now carrying a small (3-4 players) minecraft server as well, so output might be reduced. The GPU is still producing normally, but SMP is a bit slower with my 4th core missing.

Not sure if this will be temporary...the system it was on had trouble handling it, so it may be stuck here.

[bommel]

I'm using my old GTX 260 as a secondary (dedicated) folding@home GPU now. The error with display power management exists here, too. Everytime I turn display power save on, I receive tons of UNSTABLE_MACHINE errors when not using my PC (i. e. when the display is shut off automatically and it tries to start a new WU). When I turn DPM off and switch the display on/off as I need it, everything is fine. So this issue is definitely not limited to Fermi-class GPUs.

[bommel]

It seems like the v7 client has reached a somewhat stable state (though still beta). The guys at Stanford have redesigned the folding@home website (I like it) and the new v7 client is offered as the default client download. I already used one of the earlier betas without much trouble. I will give the new release a try during the weekend. Esepcially the owners of AMD GPUs should see a significant performance boost with the new client, at least that's what I've seen around the net. Maybe I write a short post about the new client, don't know yet ^^

[Ftiafpi]

Yes please, I would love a short post on your take of the new client, especially performance upgrades.

[bommel]

Yes please, I would love a short post on your take of the new client, especially performance upgrades.

Okay, I'll write about it on the weekend. However, I can't provide any first hand experience regarding the performance improvements on AMD GPUs cause I don't own any. But I'll see what I can find on the Net

[Tanri]

I have just started to test v7 client, especially from the point of getting it to behave and work exactly like previous console clients - standalone executables, no dependencies, controlled only through cmdline and config files.
At this moment it looks promising, first v7 SMP and GPU WUs are on the way...

[Ftiafpi]

Hey! We're about to break 400! WOU!!!!!

[Tanri]

Great!
Although we are not "first prize hunters", the effort of our pieces of silicon inevitably pulls us up.

Update about v7: works exactly like console versions 6.x. None of fancy GUI controls are required to work, I tested three cores - SMP 2core, SMP 8core, GPU Fermi, all these work perfectly.
I am still having problems with new core_16 on HD5770, probably caused by combination of my WinXP and drivers (now I know that GTX5xx and HD6xxx are latest cards I can currently use, newer generations are off limits).

[bommel]

Unfortunately v7 doesn't work for me. The SMP core runs and is actually running, but both GPU cores do nothing (although they show up as "running"). The log files don't contain anything useful. I guess I'll have to stick to the v6 client.

[Tanri]

I finally managed v7 GPU client to work on Radeon 5770 (new core 16 for Ati/AMD cards).
The key was to use Catalyst drivers version 11.12, latest (and unfortunately last ones) with OpenCL support on 32bit Windows XP.

With old drivers I have similar problem with you, ma bommel, GPU client just fired up core, the core started computing, but actually jumped into some kind of deadlock, because it was consuming all cores on i7-860 (which is not easy task ), continuously showing 0% progress. It was exactly like it should be, but all horsepower ended in some black hole.
So in my case I had to blame some old drivers, and I am finally working on my first core 16 WU.

[bommel]

Like I mentioned before, I already have issues with the new Nvidia drivers when display power saving is enabled. I don't know yet if I switch to the v7, currently the v6 works better for me (maybe I should try using the straight cores and not the FahControl GUI). I'll test it again during the weekend...

By the way, I had a tour through some of the server rooms at my work place yesterday. This was quite impressive (and sometimes so loud you can't hold a conversation anymore), lots of powerful machines. I'd really like to use them for folding@home ;-)

[bommel]

Good news: We're among the 400 best teams now

[Niwantaw]

I need to get the SMP client running again.

Got a six core processor that generally has 3-4 cores sitting idle :s

won't be rigging up the GPU client because I kinda need my graphics card. (and it's already a little sulky due to running multiple screens)


Edit: Got the SMP client running. Seeing if the CPU running flat out causes heat issues :s
(On the plus side it reckon's it will get the first 90 pointer done in a little over an hour ^^)

[Swoka Ikran]

Glad to see we're in the top 400

[Tanri]

Seysonìltsan ma eylan!
Skxakep ayeltumì lefngap awngeyä pxiset 'ongokx tìomumvi a tsun srung sivi fte wivem wä säspxino akawng.

[bommel]

Tanri, you're going to catch up with me in a couple of days. And we're close to rank 390!

[Tanri]

I almost forgot that there are individual points...

[bommel]

I almost forgot that there are individual points...

every contribution counts and maybe we can help to cure cancer or Alzheimer's one day. Who knows ^^