Folding@Home Weekly Team News - 14th September 2006

[rich99million]

yes it won't change until after you submit a completed WU and then it should show after the next hourly update (hourly update generally isn't finished till 15 or 20 past the hour)


welcome back - that rig should see you putting out way over you current total each day!

 

[Duke]

Ok thanks. I'm out this afternoon but will check it later

I've got it setup on a XP1800 and P4 1.8 as well. Although they are only on during the day and are a bit old, it should help keep things ticking over

 

[FreeStream]

Come on mate, you can invest in a new cooler

And whats this about a dvd drive rich?

Yea yea, It will be early Oct before I get one. I tried 400x8 again with 1.425V and it crashed at 69C so Im staying at 2800 @ 1.25V

As for the drive:

PC on the floor + me not watching + tray open =

 

[Stan_Lite]

Down to 10 cores now - they're dropping like flies

Stan

 

[VeNT]

39 . vent - 2,733

oh the shame!

 

[sculptor]

Down to 10 cores now - they're dropping like flies

Stan

Just a thought Bigstan, maybe Windows Update has restarted your PCs and only one client has restarted on your dual core machines.
I dont know how many duals you have but it might be the case.

I know what you mean about getting stressed over your farm.
I tried a few times to leave 3 PCs running when Ive been away for a week but if my work over-runs by a day I come home to a dark, silent flat with water dribbling out of the bottom of the fridge/freezer.
Now I only leave one PC running if Im away for upto 2 weeks and 2 PCs if its 1 week.
My problem is the £1.00 coin lecky meter now if I could figure out how too fill it whilst Im away?
I hope the problem isnt serious Stan as I gather you are away from home for much longer periods than I am.
sculptor

 

[VeNT]

EEK! £2000 over my leccy bill!

 

[oceaness]

Just a thought Bigstan, maybe Windows Update has restarted your PCs and only one client has restarted on your dual core machines.
I dont know how many duals you have but it might be the case.

Why would they start one core and not the other

And vent WHAT!?

 

[rich99million]

Why would they start one core and not the other

And vent WHAT!?

because sometimes when you have two clients on the same machine they get confused and think that the same one has been started twice
it doesn't happen often (and would be very freakish in this case) but i guess anything's possible

 

[oceaness]

Ah I see.

Yes I had it a couple of times when I was setting up my girlfriends 3800 X2 but never since, the machine starts perfectly everytime. Though it does take a very long time due to loading 200mb odd everytime Fah starts

 

[rich99million]

yeah mine's a little sluggish too - though that's even when just logging into windows from the login screen when the clients have already been running all night

it's got worse since I put Nero and a few other tools on so I don't think it's completely down to FAH

 

[oceaness]

No your right.

Everything you install nowadays has something-or-other that runs in the background. I multitask on my MCE at home and have an average of 60 processes running most of the time. Most of them are Windows but Nero, Antivirus and UPS management software all add to the long list.

Fah is the worst thing simply because some of the WU's are LAAARRRGE!

 

[VeNT]

Why would they start one core and not the other

And vent WHAT!?

50p a day? per machine? thats 365/2=£
times by what? 6,7? 8 PCs?
eleccy board didn't read the meter (and infact we asked them to recheck the amount we where paying, they said it was fine and infact lowered the monthly amount!!!!!!) so we get a nice big bill this time around when they FINALY DO take a reading (I dunno how its all supposted to work, mum does all that stuff)
looks like they should have been charging us more a month for a while now.......

btw, 8 PCs at aprox 50p a day (iirc that figures been quoted round here a few times now) is £1460, add to that your normal bill of about £500 or so (mums got a big ass kiln she uses for glass, we've worked out that the rest of it is probably that) and you've got yourself a big bill!

any output that comes after today will be from other rigs I've borged, as all my PCs have stopped folding and are being turned not on when they are not in use.

 

[sculptor]

because sometimes when you have two clients on the same machine they get confused and think that the same one has been started twice
it doesn't happen often (and would be very freakish in this case) but i guess anything's possible

The strange thing is it nearly always happens to my PCs after Windows Update restarts them, dont know why.

It happened one time I was away from home and the PC oonly managed one day of folding before Windows Update restarted it, only this time both clients thought they had a conflict and niether started. 12 days of a PC running doing absolutely nothing.

Since then I have disabled Windows Update on all my PCs except my server and graphics workstation.
Hope Vista isnt going to "restart PCs" whenever it feels like it.

 

[kinnison]

50p a day? per machine? thats 365/2=£
times by what? 6,7? 8 PCs?
eleccy board didn't read the meter (and infact we asked them to recheck the amount we where paying, they said it was fine and infact lowered the monthly amount!!!!!!) so we get a nice big bill this time around when they FINALY DO take a reading (I dunno how its all supposted to work, mum does all that stuff)
looks like they should have been charging us more a month for a while now.......

btw, 8 PCs at aprox 50p a day (iirc that figures been quoted round here a few times now) is £1460, add to that your normal bill of about £500 or so (mums got a big ass kiln she uses for glass, we've worked out that the rest of it is probably that) and you've got yourself a big bill!

any output that comes after today will be from other rigs I've borged, as all my PCs have stopped folding and are being turned not on when they are not in use.

Who's said 50p per day??? That's ridiculous. I've got 7 pc's in my flat - ok 1 just recently, but my last leccy bill for 3months was about £150. Even at 6 pc's, on 50p per day that would work out at £270 for a quarter without all the other electricity I'm using!
I would guess my electricity bill has gone up by maybe 70 pounds a quarter with my pc's, so that's about 13p per pc per day. One quarter of your suggestion.
Most of my pc's are bare motherboards, but I don't think that would change the power requirements much.. except obviously they don't have a monitor and probably little power goes to the video card.

EDIT: I just thought.. actually in the winter it's even better than that, because the heat these things put out, I prolly won't have to turn my heater on So saving me lots of money, or at least off-setting the cost!

Kinnison.

 

[rich99million]

Still gonna be a big bill though I guess

 

[Stan_Lite]

because sometimes when you have two clients on the same machine they get confused and think that the same one has been started twice
it doesn't happen often (and would be very freakish in this case) but i guess anything's possible

I know at least two of my X2s do that after a reboot.

It's quite possible that, if all the dual core rigs are doing that, that could be a big factor. I have 6 dual core rigs at home so if they all did that the that would account for 6 cores not working and if some of them got ultra confused like Sculptor suggests, that could account for some more - it's highly unlikely - but possible.

There could be a problem with a few of the rigs though. I know the rig I connect to with Logmein is not on (it's happened before) as I cannot connect, that accounts for 2 cores, the oc on the XP1700 was not entirely stable before I left so that could have died, the RAM in the C2D rig is highly suspect which could have knocked that out.

There could be any number of reasons and I won't know for sure until I return (I might not even get to the bottom of it then). It's high time to rethink my strategy as far as Folding is concerned, it's just too much stress whilst I'm away.

Three possibilities:
1) Run all rigs at stock, or with low, sensible overclocks.
2) Switch all rigs at home "not on" whilst away, thus removing any worry about what's happening.
3) Sell off most of the farm and just keep a few rigs.

I may well be going with option 3) as I am seriously considering moving house and getting my own place. If I do this, I will be paying my own leccy bill. Also, I could use the cash generated from the sale to get myself a kickass home entertainment system.
There is also the fact that this obsession is getting out of hand and I really should be spending my hard earned cash on something a little less geeky

Stan

 

[shadowscotland]

Who's said 50p per day??? That's ridiculous. ...I would guess my electricity bill has gone up by maybe 70 pounds a quarter with my pc's, so that's about 13p per pc per day. .....except obviously they don't have a monitor and probably little power goes to the video card.

I worked out that our office pc's use 7-10p per working day (9-5)
Inc 19" screen and onboard graphic (Geforce FX 5200 ) a 450w PSU is powering both. Over night screen is off so running 100% on these P4's is about 20p per day (if we paid the bill ).
An AMD would uses less power but how many of people's folding rigs have a proper GPU (with own power supply) and are OC'ed this will increase the power usage significantly.

Was going to remove my 850xt last night (to reduce power consumption when not gaming) then remembered that my mobo has no onboard graphics and I had just given three low spec graphic cards away

 

[oceaness]

I have two PC's setup to use XP's inbuilt Remote Desktop, so I think I can take the graphics card's out.

I've considered getting rid of all my old PC's and getting a couple of Core 2 Duo Conroes. Aside from the fact that one Conroe @ 3 Ghz would just about equal all 6 of my PC's, they use less power. I've already bought one for £190 delivered should be here tomorrow or thursday. Now I just need to get motherboard, memory, graphics card and PSU for it. It's going to be a Media Center using the silver one of these (standard ATX motherboard and PSU):

I'm also thinking about buying some of the "green" PSU's like the FSP Sparkle FSP400-60GLN Green PS 400W ATX2.0 PSU - £52.86 for some of my older PC's which are currently using a lot of unbranded PSU's because there ex-office.

 

[shadowscotland]

Nearly got myself one of those (better layout and fans that others in that range) as they don't need riser cards and will take full high heatsinks, but got a Coolermaster 620c of the bay for peanuts instead
Anyway back on topic. Sell off the old and get yourself a new (in process of doing this myself) tualatin gone, server's gone, most of bit box is gone, just got an old case, two psu's and some cd-roms left.

I was also going for one of those high efficiency PSU - was recomended the Seasonic S12 500W or the cheaper 430w (but it has a few missing plugs that the 500) as its the retail version of their 80plus complient OEM version.

it's quite spooky actually - look like we have simular tastes.