We need more dedicated folders for folding@home

[Kadayi]

In short a small but dedicated group of HL2.netters (mainly Asus) have managed to push the HL2.net folding@home team into higher reaches of the folding league (at the time of writing we are 1004 out of 6000 listed teams WooHoo!!). However we could really do with a few more people to help us push further up the table, as the competition is much stiffer, and we've only 5-6 active folders at present.

Basically if you've a decent gaming rig with a good graphics card and it's on most of the time even when you're not gaming then you're an ideal candidate for doing some protein folding on the side. It's not going to slow your system down noticeably or cause it to crash or anything and it's super darn easy to do (Install, run, create user name, sign up to team (96276) and voila you are folding with impunity).

Original thread with signup details etc is here:-

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=136203

If you've an Nvidia 8200+ or ATi HD 2000 + and up to date drivers you should look at running one of the high performance GPU clients:-

http://folding.stanford.edu/English/DownloadWinOther

Any prizes? Nope, but it's all for a good cause and in these times of worldwide doom and gloom that is no small thing.

Kadayi

 

[Darkside55]

Get off my case, Kadayi. I'll fold in my own time. I already fold like twice a week; what are you, my mother? And where else am I supposed to fold, if not at home?


God these clothes aren't even hurting anybody and I'm just going to throw them on later anyway.

 

[Sainku]

Can't do any gaming on this machine right now anyway due to an old and overheating graphics card so I'll run the SMP client until I get it fixed/buy a new one. Basically until Empire: Total War comes out.

 

[Escaep]

I am currently folding proteins.

 

[Raziaar]

I am currently folding proteins.

Perv!

 

[Escaep]

Perv!

Especially at home. :naughty:

 

[Higlac]

I would, dual core, 3 gigs of ram... but my nvidia 7150 isn't up to par.

 

[Krynn72]

What the hell is folding?

 

[Kadayi]

What the hell is folding?

http://folding.stanford.edu/

What is protein folding and how is folding linked to disease?
Proteins are biology's workhorses -- its "nanomachines." Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or "fold." The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery.
Moreover, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.

You can help by simply running a piece of software.
Folding@home is a distributed computing project -- people from throughout the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every computer takes the project closer to our goals. Folding@home uses novel computational methods coupled to distributed computing, to simulate problems millions of times more challenging than previously achieved.

Basically helping scientists understand how things can go wrong and therefore come up with solutions using peoples spare computational capacity Krynn.

@Sainku

excellent

@OTCEscape

good man

@Higlac

you could always run the SMP client

 

[Higlac]

Well, I installed it and I think it's running.

EDIT: This is overheating my computer like you wouldn't believe, I have to shut it down. Sorry, I can't stand having my laptop running at a constant 70C.

 

[Jintor]

Why the hell not. Downloading now.

I turn off my rig most of the time but I'll definitely leave it on while I do stuff or am downloading things.

 

[Kadayi]

Well, I installed it and I think it's running.

EDIT: This is overheating my computer like you wouldn't believe, I have to shut it down. Sorry, I can't stand having my laptop running at a constant 70C.

That sucks. Maybe best for Desktops instead. I have a SMP and GPU client running together and temperatures aren't really effected.

Why the hell not. Downloading now.

I turn off my rig most of the time but I'll definitely leave it on while I do stuff or am downloading things.

Cool.

*hands Jintor cookie :thumbs:

 

[Kyorisu]

Team Rankings Top 100
1 33 [H]ardOCP 1428208109 7981427
2 24 Overclockers Australia 1154961765 6687327

No one will ever manage to knock these two off the top.

 

[Kadayi]

Team Rankings Top 100
1 33 [H]ardOCP 1428208109 7981427
2 24 Overclockers Australia 1154961765 6687327

No one will ever manage to knock these two off the top.

We aren't aiming to become number 1 quite yet. But if we can break into say the top 500 by next year, that would be an excellent achievement esp for a small team such as ours.

 

[ThunderDawg]

My team is ranked #97

 

[Ennui]

Once I'm back at school I'll set this up. I've got plenty of GPU and processor power and I leave my PC on most of the time.

 

[Kadayi]

Once I'm back at school I'll set this up. I've got plenty of GPU and processor power and I leave my PC on most of the time.

Sweet, the more the merrier. :thumbs:

 

[Kyorisu]

We aren't aiming to become number 1 quite yet. But if we can break into say the top 500 by next year, that would be an excellent achievement esp for a small team such as ours.

Meh it's all about the science in the end, but I'll always fold for Team 24.

 

[Sir Phoenixx]

I'll try this out. I have two decent gaming PCs, and a PS3. I'll try it on my PC and then the others if I feel like it.

My PC: AMD Athlon 64 x2 5000+ @ 3.0ghz, 4gb DDR2 1066 RAM, Geforce 9600GT 512mb, Windows Vista Premium 64bit.
My brother's PC: AMD Athlon 64 x2 3800+, 2gb DDR 400 RAM, Geforce 9600GSO 768mb, Windows XP Home 32bit.

Are there any 64bit F@H clients?

 

[Kadayi]

I'll try this out. I have two decent gaming PCs, and a PS3. I'll try it on my PC and then the others if I feel like it.

My PC: AMD Athlon 64 x2 5000+ @ 3.0ghz, 4gb DDR2 1066 RAM, Geforce 9600GT 512mb, Windows Vista Premium 64bit.
My brother's PC: AMD Athlon 64 x2 3800+, 2gb DDR 400 RAM, Geforce 9600GSO 768mb, Windows XP Home 32bit.

Are there any 64bit F@H clients?

Not yet apparently, though they are working on it. You should find the GPU client works pretty well on both either machines I'd say.

I run a GPU client and a CPU client on the same machine (Dual core 3GHZ Intel and 9800 GTX) and I haven't encountered any problems. Effectively it's priority is lower when you're doing other things and with gaming you can always just pause the GPU until you've finished, then resume.

 

[giant384]

fine.....ill continue folding

also higlac you can only use the smp client.

 

[Asus]

When the team first started folding we were ranked higher than 6,000. Now we are 900 something.
But as we get closer to the big boys the more our increase in rank will slow because we will have to clear a lot more points to jump a team.

 

[Qonfused]

Oh I guess I'll join up you guise.

 

[Sir Phoenixx]

I have the standard F@H cpu client setup on both PCs, the GPU client running on this PC when I'm not playing a game (will set up the GPU client on the other PC later), and I'll set it up on my PS3 later.

With the standard cpu client running in the background, I ran the Crysis benchmark and it was only about 2 FPS less then without it.

 

[Nitre]

Team Rankings Top 100
1 33 [H]ardOCP 1428208109 7981427
2 24 Overclockers Australia 1154961765 6687327

No one will ever manage to knock these two off the top.

Most of that lot are probably the people who have overclocked quad/eight core processors with stupid GPUs.

 

[giant384]

standard cpu client is really a waste imo, it only gets about 100points

 

[Sir Phoenixx]

Are there any other clients that I can run in the background that would have little to no affect on game performance?

 

[Kadayi]

Are there any other clients that I can run in the background that would have little to no affect on game performance?

Asus is probably the expert on that tbh. If you're running the GPU client you can pause it in the console tray when you play though.

 

[Sanada]

I did use to run Folding@Home but it was causing problems in some of my games, namely CSS. It caused these annoying, tiny screen freezes ever few seconds. I had to keep killing the process in Task Manager until I just uninstalled it.

I might try it again as ATI just released it with their latest drivers and see how it goes.

 

[Jintor]

...just right click and exit it before you start up games.

It's causing what you're talking about in L4D so I just kill it before I start playing.

 

[Sir Phoenixx]

Are there any system tray versions of the multi-core (SMP) clients? I can only see console versions on their website.

 

[Sliver]

Would my Radeon X1650 be alright for the high end client? I keep my computer on all the time, and it would be no hassle.

 

[Kadayi]

Are there any system tray versions of the multi-core (SMP) clients? I can only see console versions on their website.

So far not it seems. Initially I tried running the system tray GPU client and the system tray CPU client together (as I've a dual core processor) but the CPU one kept crapping out when trying to download the core I found. However the console version hasn't caused any problems running in tandem. I just have a desktop shortcut that I use to activate it as and when (iy remembers where it left off). The CPU client takes a lot longer to process a module than the GPU I find, so it's kind of supplementary.

Would my Radeon X1650 be alright for the high end client? I keep my computer on all the time, and it would be no hassle.

Give it a go. I'd say it would probably do the trick fine and dandy.



Oh yeah don't forget to add the team number 96276 most important, otherwise all your points go to Anonymous

 

[Asus]

If there is not a system tray version of the SMP then use the console client and don't run it as a service (which would make it run in the background without a window). Just kill the window when you want to play a game and start it up via a shortcut once you are done. No different really than clicking and unclicking a system tray icon.

Would my Radeon X1650 be alright for the high end client? I keep my computer on all the time, and it would be no hassle.

Unfortunately those cards no longer work. They used to but they changed the client to work with the newer GPUs (2000,3000,4000) and the old ones (1600,1900) dont' work now.

 

[Sir Phoenixx]

I got the SMP client running, but it's running 4 instances as if it's trying to run on a quad core, is there a way to get it to run just 2 instances?

 

[CyberPitz]

I guess I'll start folding again. After I formatted my machine, I was just too lazy to reinstall.

 

[Sedako]

With finishing up college, I completely forgot about this. Since I last folded I got a PS3 and a capable gpu. I guess I'll join in again.

 

[jverne]

you know, the irony would be that you spend all this time folding and then all the scientific data would go to big corporations who couldn't give a shit about anyone unable to pay for their services.

 

[Eejit]

Well it is an american university

Nah but really they've already published some of the findings in journals.

 

[Kadayi]

I got the SMP client running, but it's running 4 instances as if it's trying to run on a quad core, is there a way to get it to run just 2 instances?

Can't say I've run into that Phoenix. Perhaps try the FAO and searching the folding forums:-

http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ

http://foldingforum.org/

I'm sure one or other will have the solution to the problem.

I guess I'll start folding again. After I formatted my machine, I was just too lazy to reinstall.

I bet you weren't too lazy to downloads the porn though

With finishing up college, I completely forgot about this. Since I last folded I got a PS3 and a capable gpu. I guess I'll join in again.

Sweet.

you know, the irony would be that you spend all this time folding and then all the scientific data would go to big corporations who couldn't give a shit about anyone unable to pay for their services.

I'm pretty sure it's used exclusively by academics and researchers.


On a side note. It's good to see a few more names old and new active in the lists, we've already leapfrogged from 1000 to 992 in the rankings now with the extra people power in the last few days, and should move up a few more probably by the end of the day.