F@H and Macs ...

A.N.Other

A.N.Other

A.N.Other

Soldato
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I noticed a thread by Berserker awhile ago about what he was going to do with his new Mac. It was said in there that you couldn't do F@H on a Mac and that the way to go was Rosetta.

Anyway, I'm getting a shiny new 15" MacBook Pro (2.16 GHz / 2G RAM / 256 gfx) and did some research for myself. On the F@H download site, there are 3 clients for Macs. What's wrong with these, or am I missing something?

On a different line, does anybody fold with an Intel Mac? What can I expect from it?
 
Those three clients for Macs on the site are all compiled for PowerPC processors. Intel Macs cannot run that code natively, they must run through emulation in the form of Rosetta. This makes it VERY slow and probably not worth it until an Intel-OS X native client comes out. The Pande group is very tight-lipped about new software releases so we don't know when that might be.
 
Just a quicky regarding this topic, ive got a MacPro with 2x Dual 2.66 Xeon processors, im running OSX and ive just installed the InCrease Folding App... going off whats been said above, do i need to switch to running folding under bootcamp/WinXPpro to get the best out of it?
 
Yes you would, Dreeder. there aren't any Intel OS X clients so what you're running now is running in Rosetta. You're probably only getting half the performance you could be getting folding-wise.

However, if you didn't want to run XP on your shiny new Mac I'd understand. ;)
 
Yer, I got my customised 15" MacBook Pro (2.16 GHz, 2G RAM, 256 gfx, glossy screen) about 2 weeks ago but at the moment it isn't folding. As you see above, I was going to put XP on it, but now I've used it a bit, I just think that it would be criminal! OSX is soo much nicer than XP to use and I can't bring myself to actually do it.

So, I'm going to just wait for a mactel client to come out - I'm on the beta team, so hopefully that shouldn't be that long :). Fingers crossed, anyway - it can't be that long now that all present macs are shipping with intel chips.

DreederOcUK said:
MacPro with 2x Dual 2.66 Xeon processors
Click to expand...
ENVY :(
 
Ive uninstalled the inCrease software and ill wait for a Mactel client then, when I bought the Macpro i had every intention of buying and installing XP-pro, but there doesnt seem much point.... OCX has everything I need.
 
Done, running nicely on all 4 cores, looks like my times/wu are in the parish of 3hours...dont know if thats bad or good...

My poor maths make that good for 32wu/day, that sounds a lot...
 
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What are you running, SETI? 2.5 hours is damn fast for a SETI WU, my xeon machine (@2.8) does 1 every 7 hours (each WU taking 7 hours)
 
As Seti isnt giving out any work at the moment ive switched over to folding under bootcamp, ive got XpPro-Sp2 installed, ive installed Folding as per the sticky and Fahmon also monitoring all 4 instances.

Im shocked how bad the results are... here are my early benchmark logs. It appears im looking at 600ppd from the machine total... thats pathetic isnt it?

4x 2.66 / 4gb RAM

Code: 
Project : 2124
Core    : Gromacs
Frames  : 100
Credit  : 396


 -- Core 3 --

Min. Time / Frame : 33mn 52s - 168.38 ppd
Avg. Time / Frame : 33mn 52s - 168.38 ppd


 -- Core 4 --

Min. Time / Frame : 35mn 35s - 160.25 ppd
Avg. Time / Frame : 35mn 35s - 160.25 ppd
Code: 
Project : 2130
Core    : Gromacs
Frames  : 100
Credit  : 359


 -- Core 1 --

Min. Time / Frame : 31mn 58s - 161.72 ppd
Avg. Time / Frame : 31mn 58s - 161.72 ppd
Code: 
Project : 2137
Core    : Gromacs
Frames  : 100
Credit  : 385


 -- Core 2 --

Min. Time / Frame : 35mn 59s - 154.07 ppd
Avg. Time / Frame : 35mn 59s - 154.07 ppd
 
DreederOcUK said:
... thats pathetic isnt it?
Click to expand...
No, no it isn't :) . If you could sustain 600 ppd you'd be the teams 21st biggest producer (http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_list.php?s=&srt=1&t=10)

For comparison (on an opty 148 at 2.85):

Code: 
Project : 2124  
Core    : Gromacs  
Frames  : 100  
Credit  : 396       

Min. Time / Frame : 33mn 37s - 169.63 ppd  
Avg. Time / Frame : 40mn 24s - 141.15 ppd

Different wus vary massively in terms of ppd. On my opty I've had as low as 150 ppd on project 76x, 135 ppd on 77x, and up to 370 ppd on the lovely 600 pointers (project 24xx) and 360 ppd on 99x.

Anyway, 600 ppd is very tasty indeed. For different wus you'll see higher and lower ppds.

Nice to have you on the team :)
 
Cheers, glad to know its not as bad as I thought, I must just be unlucky getting 4x bad woos to start with, they are all estimated at 2 days processing time, that made me think something was seriously wrong, just checked back at the log and they appear to be getting faster... all up to about 170-180 PPD each now.
 
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Yep it's a shame you've got 4 really quite dull WUs there - since they don't use lots of memory or are huge to send/receive then they don't have any bonus points unlike the 600 or 364 pointers that are hiding somewhere

Double Gromacs WUs would also be good as they use SSE2 but are benchmarked with SSE2 disabled so give very nice points on a machine with SSE2 :cool:
 
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