While I am at it, I’d like to thank everyone who contributes to this team effort by donating their unused processor cycles and as well as posting and helping out in this very thread.
So what's the actual purpose of the folding team? Well it's not about folding laundry! Stanford University runs a distributed computing program called Folding@home and its goal is to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases. That last part, related diseases, is what this is really all about; it's what nearly 3,000,000 processors are doing and that is helping to find cures to various forms of cancer.
How does the Phandroid Folding team work? Basically you download a small program or client that once installed will utilize your processor’s ‘unused’ cycles to work on folding. Unused cycles? Simply put, it is the portion of you processor that isn’t doing any work, so if it’s running at 80% while you game, the other 20% goes to folding. It does this on the fly and will not interfere with your gaming or other computer usage. You can download clients that run either in the background or clients that run as screen savers.
What are the requirements to run it? Whatever processor you use needs to be able to complete the work units on time which can usually be done on a processor running at 1GHz or faster. The faster your machine is, the better. You will score more points and help our team climb up to the top ranks. You can download the client here:
Now up and running on my new HD 5850. I've lowered the CPU usage nicely, and once I'm satisfied that it's still stable I may add another client to make use of the Phenom X4.
The Following User Says Thank You to Slug For This Useful Post:
Now up and running on my new HD 5850. I've lowered the CPU usage nicely, and once I'm satisfied that it's still stable I may add another client to make use of the Phenom X4.
Nice! I hear that card will get you nearly 5,000 PPD (points per day)! So far, you are the most powerful member on the team. Welcome aboard.
Not me, the GPU is doing all the work. I might tinker with the SMP client this evening and see if I can get it doing something useful too.
Waaaaay back in the mists of time (when a 400MHz Pentium II was cutting-edge!) I was part of a team doing something similar to crack RC5 encryption. No GPU cleints back then - it was all done on single-core CPUs, apart from a few guys who co-opted SMP servers at their work for illicit overnight runs.
I installed and configured the SMP client this evening and it's currently running through its first data set. With all four CPU cores @ 100% utilisation the system is still perfectly usable and CPU temp has only risen 7C above idle level. I'll run the GPU client alongside it overnight and look at the logs in the morning to see how they play together... may have to back off the "CPU Usage" slightly on the SMP client to avoid throttling the GPU one.
Already thinking about resurrecting my old Athlon X2 purely as a folding rig. We might get a few weeks work out of my 8800GT GPU before it finally croaks (and I can contact BFG about a warranty replacement!)
The Following User Says Thank You to Slug For This Useful Post:
I installed and configured the SMP client this evening and it's currently running through its first data set. With all four CPU cores @ 100% utilisation the system is still perfectly usable and CPU temp has only risen 7C above idle level. I'll run the GPU client alongside it overnight and look at the logs in the morning to see how they play together... may have to back off the "CPU Usage" slightly on the SMP client to avoid throttling the GPU one.
Already thinking about resurrecting my old Athlon X2 purely as a folding rig. We might get a few weeks work out of my 8800GT GPU before it finally croaks (and I can contact BFG about a warranty replacement!)
Haha, nice! I'm actually using a factory overclocked version of the 8800 GTS-512. Nvidia cards seem to do better at folding because of CUDA. That 8800 would be a great addition to the team.
I might fire up an SMP client as well. I have a Q6600 overclocked @ 3.4Ghz.
I'm actually using a factory overclocked version of the 8800 GTS-512.
Those puppies were built for clocking - mine is an OC2 variant from BFG.
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Nvidia cards seem to do better at folding because of CUDA.
I think the latest ATI client uses DirectCompute but that little 8800 was a cracking video transcoder using CUDA routines in MediaCoder.
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I might fire up an SMP client as well. I have a Q6600 overclocked @ 3.4Ghz.
It's a blast-from-the-past.... CLI config etc but a cinch to install thanks to the clear guide available on the F@H site. Be aware though that it uses "big" WUs as the default and mine is currently churning through 500k steps!
1h20m in and it's at 14% completion.....
It's a blast-from-the-past.... CLI config etc but a cinch to install thanks to the clear guide available on the F@H site. Be aware though that it uses "big" WUs as the default and mine is currently churning through 500k steps!
1h20m in and it's at 14% completion.....
Yeah.. I have another old 8800 GTS 320.. Might stick that in one of my older builds and use it just purely for folding.
What the.... You jumped from 8 to 132 WUs overnight?! How did you do that? That's insane!
It's bogus - notice how the points didn't increase much?
Each run with the SMP client aborted with an EUE and took the core with it, which also messed up the GPU client. So I installed the uniprocessor CPU client hoping that would be more reliable. Guess what....? Every run (on a single CPU core) also threw up EUEs but some sort of data was returned each time. I think that's what has inflated the WU count.
p.s. found the ideal folding rig last night. Check this bad boy out!
It's bogus - notice how the points didn't increase much?
Each run with the SMP client aborted with an EUE and took the core with it, which also messed up the GPU client. So I installed the uniprocessor CPU client hoping that would be more reliable. Guess what....? Every run (on a single CPU core) also threw up EUEs but some sort of data was returned each time. I think that's what has inflated the WU count.
p.s. found the ideal folding rig last night. Check this bad boy out!
Oh, lol.
Also, the link you gave me doesn't work.
"The product you have selected is not currently available for online purchase in the segment you have selected."
In addition to the GPU client I had three standard systray clients running overnight, two on the GROMACS core (one using >10MB work assignments and one not) and another on the ProtoMol core (using -advmethods). One of the GROMACS projects involved very unstable models and most were EUE'd within a few seconds of the simulation starting. Not very productive points-wise but hopefully will assist the boffins with their work.
In addition to the GPU client I had three standard systray clients running overnight, two on the GROMACS core (one using >10MB work assignments and one not) and another on the ProtoMol core (using -advmethods). One of the GROMACS projects involved very unstable models and most were EUE'd within a few seconds of the simulation starting. Not very productive points-wise but hopefully will assist the boffins with their work.
Nice! Keep it up. You're doing great. Our team moved up 10 positions in the last 7 days. Let's break into the top 1,000!
The 8800GT is a no-goer I'm afraid. It isn't able to run any projects for more than a few minutes before the client shuts down with "NANs detected" errors. Furmark and OCCT's DirectX stabilty test don't show any artifacts or failures and F@H doesn't stress it anything like those two, and it's even behaving from a cold boot, which is a bit annoying as I need it to be consistently failing to RMA it. Plus it would have added another few thousand points to the team.
The 8800GT is a no-goer I'm afraid. It isn't able to run any projects for more than a few minutes before the client shuts down with "NANs detected" errors. Furmark and OCCT's DirectX stabilty test don't show any artifacts or failures and F@H doesn't stress it anything like those two, and it's even behaving from a cold boot, which is a bit annoying as I need it to be consistently failing to RMA it. Plus it would have added another few thousand points to the team.
Is it the same work unit failing over and over? If so, delete the queue.dat, work folder, unitinfo.txt and that should make it download a different WU.
Nope, I think there's simply a minor problem that only becomes major when folding. Maybe failing VRAM, maybe shaders on the way out, maybe it just hates me.... I'll maybe leave it on the bench rig running Furmark overnight and see if I can kill it.
Nope, I think there's simply a minor problem that only becomes major when folding. Maybe failing VRAM, maybe shaders on the way out, maybe it just hates me.... I'll maybe leave it on the bench rig running Furmark overnight and see if I can kill it.
I'll maybe leave it on the bench rig running Furmark overnight and see if I can kill it.
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Originally Posted by PaulMcCartney
Lol. Good luck.
Hmm, Lady Luck is a fickle mistress....
The cursed card survived 7.5hrs of Furmark unscathed, and is currently 52% through a GROGPU2 wu. If it's developed the 'bad solder' problem that plagued the 8xxx-series then perhaps keeping it working hard will stop the joints cracking?
Some bad news: the a3 core crashed ("program has stopped working" msg from Win7) just after I woke up this morning and I lost a 2500pt wu - checkpoint didn't work for some reason.
Some bad news: the a3 core crashed ("program has stopped working" msg from Win7) just after I woke up this morning and I lost a 2500pt wu - checkpoint didn't work for some reason.
update: woohoo, I think it's finally died!
Aw, that sucks.
On the bright side, out team is moving up quite nicely. We should push hard to break into the top 1,000!
It's a crapshoot what actually arrives back, and won't be helped by BFG's announcement that they're ceasing graphics card production completely. I might be 'unlucky' and get a borked 8800GT back if they find one in a dusty cupboard, of course. A friend played GPU ping-pong with them for three months until he got a working replacement for his 9800GTX.
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