Folding@Home - #96276

I'm running it too now. I will keep using it if it won't slow down my games :)
 
My PS3 is in the shop so I hope no one outranks me any time soon. Also I miss my PS3 :(
 
I've never done this folding@home thing before. I don't know a whole lot about it other than it's folding proteins to help the scientific world.
 
Raziaar said:
I've never done this folding@home thing before. I don't know a whole lot about it other than it's folding proteins to help the scientific world.
Click to expand...

You should give it a go Raz, we need more people on the team we are almost about to break into the top 600 teams in the world (though the competition is stiff). Pretty good really given there's not many of us folding these days.
 
How terrible is doing something like this on power consumption and money paid for energy as a result?

I am going to get my new computer as per the thread I made below, so maybe I'll be able to contribute something.

But I don't think I can become as die hard about it as I see some people get. :eek:
 
In order to know the power cost for folding you will need to know exactly how many watts your PC uses when folding. Not at idle or full load. Not playing games etc. Folding. A kill-a-watt meter is nice to have (or a battery backup that you can read via software).

Watts / 1000= Kilowatts
Kilowatts * Hours per day = kWh (Kilowatt Hours)
kWh * cost ($.10 per kWh?) = Cost per day
* 30 for monthly
* 365 for yearly

While folding power used from the wall...
PS3 80GB: 200w
PS3 40GB: 115w
My old setup (Q9300/8800GTS)
GPU folding: 194w
SMP folding: 170w
GPU and SMP folding at the same time: 216w
(w/520watt PSU that was 80-85% efficient)

So a 40GB PS3 folding 24/7 (@ $.10/kWh) would cost $8.28 extra on my monthly power bill. PS3 does 800 PPD (points per day).
My old PC setup would cost an extra $15.55 each month to fold on both my GPU and all my CPU cores 24/7. Did 8000 PPD.
The PPD value represents a combination of the amount of calculations that are done with that kind of performance hardware and also the scientific value of the units running on that hardware has on the project.

FYI your system can use more or less power from the wall based on the power supply that you have (with the hardware the exact same).
Some will need to pull more power from the wall than others to feed a specific amount to your hardware. Say it pulls 325 watts from the wall to feed your hardware which is asking the PSU for 300 watts. There is some wasted power as your PSU converts it. Others do it better. That is what the efficiency rating on the PSU is for. A lot of PSUs advertise they are 80% efficient now. Some 85%. But those are somewhat generic labels. If you look at reviews they will actually show you which PSU advertising 80% efficiency does better than a flat 80%. Some may stay close to 80% but others are doing 81-86%.
 
My dad had actually purchased a kilowatt meter recently.

I will be able to use that.

But it seems to me that it's fairly expensive at least for somebody like me who is trying to keep his footprint low to help reduce costs for the family.

Unless folding doesn't use much more energy than idling or gaming.
 
It depends what combination of GPU and CPU folding you do. If you do both then it is just a little lower than power used than what you use while gaming. It isn't as intense since it doesn't stress the FSB/memory. It keeps all the data on the CPU's cache or all in the GPU's memory.
CPU folding (even on all 4 cores of a quad) is the least power used of course.
 
Woohoo over a million points now :) and we are balls achingly close to breaking into the top 600 :thumbs:

Downside is however I'm going to have to cut back on folding 24/7 as my rig certainly chews through the juice (the elect bill is a tad up this time) and just fold when I'm home from now on (though I've my mac at working folding for me on the sly ;) ) However I'd lay the blame squarely at the feet of my insatiable appetite for DLing American TV shows rather than blame folding. :LOL:
 
Kadayi said:
Downside is however I'm going to have to cut back on folding 24/7 as my rig certainly chews through the juice (the elect bill is a tad up this time) and just fold when I'm home from now on (though I've my mac at working folding for me on the sly ;) ) However I'd lay the blame squarely at the feet of my insatiable appetite for DLing American TV shows rather than blame folding. :LOL:
Click to expand...

Well it is called Folding@Home, not Folding@SomePlaceOtherThanHome.
 
Cooler weather has arrived. My 2nd PC has been down as I'm getting it set for fall. In a day or so I'll have it up and folding 24/7 with 2x 8800GTs.
 
Asus said:
Cooler weather has arrived. My 2nd PC has been down as I'm getting it set for fall. In a day or so I'll have it up and folding 24/7 with 2x 8800GTs.
Click to expand...

i will do that same, but its texas, so it could be 90s one day and 60s the next.
 
I dont exactly understand what this whole thing is. Even after having it explained to me and after reading about it...i STILL dont get it.

Basically tons of ppl are using their own computer power to...to what? to get a high score on some list? Why? Why wear out your hardware 24/7 and waste energy?

Is there something im missing?
 
Ravioli said:
Basically tons of ppl are using their own computer power to...to what? to get a high score on some list? Why? Why wear out your hardware 24/7 and waste energy?
Click to expand...

Everyone involved is contributing towards scientific research to help determine what causes certain diseases on a genetic level (such a Hodgkinsons) by examining the process of protein folding. People install the client, then the client contacts the server, downloads a data file (which are updated regularly) and then their computer/graphics card runs though a simulation, dependant upon the power of which might take a couple of hours or a day. Doing this doesn't really put much of a strain on your PC or graphics card tbh, its effectively a background service. You can play games whilst folding and you'll only notice a bit of frame rate drop (though you can always pause the folding when you are gaming and resume when your finished if it is noticeable).

The lifespan of most PC parts like motherboard, processors & graphics cards is generally 15 - 25 years, and given most people change up probably every few years, wear & tear is not really that much of an issue tbh.

My systems folding right now, whilst I'm listening to Itunes, torrenting, doing some Photoshop and typing this without a problem. That's how undemanding Folding in on your system.
 
It's a different way to donate. Feels more involved and up to date than just giving money. We don't fold for the points just like most people post on the forum to talk rather than purely for the post count generally...sometimes...
giant384 said:
i will do that same, but its texas, so it could be 90s one day and 60s the next.
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haha yeah.
I can't stand it when it gets too hot because the AC can't keep up with the sun coming in the window and a space-heater PC in the room. It's about 70-75F outside right now. Down from 80 two weeks ago.
 
I'll be doing more of the Folding when my room gets colder which is real soon. my PS3 warms up my room and I fold all night long!!
 
Warped said:
I'll be doing more of the Folding when my room gets colder which is real soon. my PS3 warms up my room and I fold all night long!!
Click to expand...

Heh my PC doubles as a heater as well ;)
 
Asus said:
Cooler weather has arrived. My 2nd PC has been down as I'm getting it set for fall. In a day or so I'll have it up and folding 24/7 with 2x 8800GTs.
Click to expand...
Same here - we got our first rain of the season today, and my average temps are much lower (my radiator is actually outside).

We can't tell right now because we're in the middle of it, but take the example of chemistry. There was a point in time where people were just beginning to understand the nature of elements and how they fit together, which was (I imagine) pretty exciting to identify a new one. Someday in the future, we'll have a working library of our own molecular physiology that biology students will take for granted the same way we take the periodic table of the elements for granted now. I'm pretty excited to be a part of the building of this library that likely all future molecular biology and related fields will be using.
 
Good. The more people we can get involved the more chance we have of breaking into the top 500 by the end of the year.
 
I don't suppose they came out with a new SMP client lately?
 
I finally reinstalled and joined the hl2.net team under my old username SL87 (although it hasn't updated yet). I used to fold for my university's team a few years ago. I had accumulated a decent number of points (>10,000)... not sure if they'll transfer over the old points.

I'm little bit worried about running this on my new laptop though, so I set the CPU usage to only 50%.
 
Welcome to the team.
They don't transfer points to your name while folding for a different team. The 10k+ points stay under your name and team they were folded for. The points you fold under HL2.net will start new. You'll just have to add them up if you wanna say (example) "I have folded a total of 15000 points".
Adabiviak said:
I don't suppose they came out with a new SMP client lately?
Click to expand...
I'm using the v6.24 SMP beta with Windows Vista.
Not sure if that is new though...
 
One of the folding projects I was on dealt with the proteins that defined the channel structure for the mRNA to pass through on the ribosomes, which is apparently now the intellectual property of a recent nobel laureate (?). No cure, but someone's gettin' rich!

(I doubt they're related though).
 
I'm in, going to run it on my other computer when I get around to it aswell.
Is there anyway to make the display feature more interesting, I think it would be cool to have going in the background when my comps not running but theres no info on it like I have seen in previous versions of the client??

I'm using version 6.23
 
Stupid question: How do you get the program to start running when Windows starts?
 
I have a copy of a shortcut in the startup menu. (start-programs-startup)

I know with the GPU clients you really don't want to run the display. It slows things down. Your fine running the display with the other FAH types.
 
Ah, clever, thanks. Now I also know how to stop this crap that Dell put on my laptop from starting up. Awesome.
 
Shamrock said:
Any cures yet?
Click to expand...

Not for a looooong looooooong time.
Only very tiny, very fast folding proteins have been solved yet. As the protein grows bigger the computational power needed increases exponentially, so it'll be quite a while before we can figure out misfolding of disease causing/related proteins such as amyloid beta.
 
I don't think cures will be found directly by running F@H since we are, by way of simulation, finding what they may want to actually test in the lab. And what they do in the lab is very basic research way before cures are found or we even know what we are looking for. But without F@H their work would be much longer since they would be in the dark picking a starting point for each experiment.
 
...started folding on the GPU client. SMP client (the new 6.24 drop in) has been failing miserably to find the work server. I'll let it sit for a few hours to see if it connects before installing a non-beta version.

edit - good to go!

2nd edit - firing on all cylinders. What's with the 84 point work unit assigned to the C2D that's apparently going to take longer than higher value work units assigned to 'weaker' CPUs? :bonce:

 
We are staying about 25k PPD. Lets stay above that as there are a few teams below and above us about 24k PPD which we want to make sure we pass and stay that way.
Adabiviak said:
...started folding on the GPU client. SMP client (the new 6.24 drop in) has been failing miserably to find the work server. I'll let it sit for a few hours to see if it connects before installing a non-beta version.
Click to expand...
My SMP this morning also was not finding new WUs. But that happens sometimes. You can run both GPU and SMP at the same time if you are under Vista or use certain drivers with WinXP (CPU utilization 0% w/GPU client).

Adabiviak said:
2nd edit - firing on all cylinders. What's with the 84 point work unit assigned to the C2D that's apparently going to take longer than higher value work units assigned to 'weaker' CPUs? :bonce:

Click to expand...
Looks like the CPU clients say 1 DAY to complete while the SMP says 3 HOURS. So it is shorter time still. You can always look at the PPD which shows a higher rate of points. 300 points per day for the SMP WU and 100 PPD for the WUs on the regular client.

I know in the past there were some WUs that just sucked but they would only show up on certain systems. Like quad core or if you had advanced methods enabled or they just showed up on Windows SMP but not the linux version. I got around a lot of them by setting up the Linux SMP under VMWare.
 
Asus said:
We are staying about 25k PPD. Lets stay above that as there are a few teams below and above us about 24k PPD which we want to make sure we pass and stay that way.
Click to expand...

Heh we are on 29K PPD at present. Hopefully if we keep that pace up we will easily break into the top 500 before the year is out. :)

However more Folders are always appreciated/encouraged.

I'm wondering whether we might run a news report to see if we can garner a few more people to the cause, because alien as the concept is to me, apparently some people (even regulars) don't ever visit the hardware forums (I guess years of using the New Posts button has conditioned me to these things..) :O
 
Kadayi said:
Heh we are on 29K PPD at present. Hopefully if we keep that pace up we will easily break into the top 500 before the year is out. :)

However more Folders are always appreciated/encouraged.

I'm wondering whether we might run a news report to see if we can garner a few more people to the cause, because alien as the concept is to me, apparently some people (even regulars) don't ever visit the hardware forums (I guess years of using the New Posts button has conditioned me to these things..) :O
Click to expand...
Came here via your signature :p

Simple as I am, I've started out by using the client bundled in ATI's catalyst suite. Did I do a bad?
 
The GPU F@H client for ATI cards? That's one of the best ones to install! :)
If you have Vista or Win7 it should not use 100% CPU and you should be free to install yet another F@H client if you want.
Either the regular or SMP (best for quad core or high-clocked dual core CPUs).

Feel free to pause the GPU client when you play games. Usually it goes to idle anyway but sometimes it might get jittery.
 
Asus said:
The GPU F@H client for ATI cards? That's one of the best ones to install! :)
If you have Vista or Win7 it should not use 100% CPU and you should be free to install yet another F@H client if you want.
Either the regular or SMP (best for quad core or high-clocked dual core CPUs).

Feel free to pause the GPU client when you play games. Usually it goes to idle anyway but sometimes it might get jittery.
Click to expand...
Reading from the beginning of the thread (which I suppose really is ancient history in computing terms), I just got the impression that I probably should have been running the Multicore CPU version. That and that you guys can almost sound a little too competitive :p

As for adding a second one in there, after having run my PC for several hours straight, my CPU utilisation seems pretty high for some reason. Started off mostly unaffected. I may grab the multicore version to run alongside the GPU one sometime, but the power consumption thing does worry me a little. Haven't had a job for several months now!

Anyway, very close to my first completed task :) (less than an hour left).
 
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