Newbie needs help :)

Lowe · 15 Jan 2007 at 16:27

Right - sat in front of me I've got 7x 2.0ghz Intel Core Duo iMacs.

Now the catch is, I can only run them in a screensaver type mode since they're used for realtime audio/video work as their main task which does require the CPU time. It's only when they're not being used that they can Fold, and I haven't got the time to manually turn stuff on/off.

So, is there an Intel chip GUI screensaver available yet?

divine` · 15 Jan 2007 at 16:32

Not knowing exactly how the macs operate, why can you not just run it normally at 100% usage?

You do know that it will only use spare cycles, if other apps are using 100% CPU time, then Folding will use none...

edit - assuming that Beta issue gets sorted, make sure you get the SMP client on those

VeNT · 15 Jan 2007 at 17:11

can't you just set them to Idle like the windows ones, so they only use the idle stuff?

A.N.Other · 15 Jan 2007 at 17:17

VeNT said:
can't you just set them to Idle like the windows ones, so they only use the idle stuff?

It does do that automatically but, as with Windows, there is still a perfomance drop. People have commented on fps drops in games in XP, and I'm sure apps encoding video and audio would probably show this too.

As for SMP, depending on how much of the day the Macs are used for (are they switched off at night?) and on just how processor intensive the tasks are, you might not have enough CPU time to actually complete the SMP work units (they have very short deadlines at the moment).

At the moment, there are no old-style clients for the intel macs, only SMP. I would imagine that, in time, Stanford will be releasing different clients for the macs (I heard mention of timeless WUs etc on the F@H forums somewhere) and when / if these come out, you could use these.

Hope that clears some things up for you, even if it means you can't justify getting them going

// EDIT // You could just run a test of the SMP client on one of the computers. See if people are experiencing performance drops and if the WUs will finish. You can go from there.

divine` · 15 Jan 2007 at 17:25

A.N.Other said:
It does do that automatically but, as with Windows, there is still a perfomance drop.

...it must be incredibly tiny because i've never noticed it. Even games I have which are pushing my rig to it's limits don't show any signs of running worse since I installed Folding :/

A.N.Other · 15 Jan 2007 at 17:28

divine_madness said:
...it must be incredibly tiny because i've never noticed it. Even games I have which are pushing my rig to it's limits don't show any signs of running worse since I installed Folding :/

Neither have I really, but it was posted in the Beta F@H forum a while back. The guy did have screenshots and stuff, but tbh he was obsessing over nothing (iirc, his fps was insane anyway :rolleyes:

!).

I was just making the point that in a work environment, if the difference is more noticable in media apps, then it might not be appreciated.

VeNT · 15 Jan 2007 at 17:30

divine_madness said:
...it must be incredibly tiny because i've never noticed it. Even games I have which are pushing my rig to it's limits don't show any signs of running worse since I installed Folding :/

same

do you have it set to low or idle?

shadowscotland · 15 Jan 2007 at 17:35

It's defernatly noticable here at work AutoCad, PS, 3Dstudio - but that more a ram issue

divine` · 15 Jan 2007 at 17:39

VeNT said:
same

do you have it set to low or idle?

Mine is set at idle.

Only time I notice any negative effect is if i'm abusing photoshop CS2 but thats always a RAM issue and usually when that happens it would have done anyway due to my only having 1GB of RAM.

oceaness · 15 Jan 2007 at 18:41

I notice it with large WU's on this machine cause it only has 512mb of memory.

If your running memory intensive applications you may see an ever so slight performance decrease.

You can turn off large WU's if you want to.

Does the SMP client only work on one WU? Thereby only using one lot of memory rather than two clients using 100mb each like I get sometimes?

A.N.Other · 15 Jan 2007 at 19:12

oceaness said:
Does the SMP client only work on one WU? Thereby only using one lot of memory rather than two clients using 100mb each like I get sometimes?

Unfortunately not. The SMP clients are pretty RAM hungry. There are no small work units for it, either.

Another bad thing about the SMP client (imo) is that you can't control the processor usage, as you can with other F@H clients. It just runs at 100% all of the time (obviously stopping for your apps), which can get things pretty hot. This may not be the same on linux, but it certainly counts for the mactel client.

oceaness · 15 Jan 2007 at 22:05

A.N.Other said:
Unfortunately not. The SMP clients are pretty RAM hungry. There are no small work units for it, either.

Another bad thing about the SMP client (imo) is that you can't control the processor usage, as you can with other F@H clients. It just runs at 100% all of the time (obviously stopping for your apps), which can get things pretty hot. This may not be the same on linux, but it certainly counts for the mactel client.

That is interesting I wonder wether they'll re-implement the CPU usage control in the release client. It seems a bit of a backward step to remove that.

Lowe · 16 Jan 2007 at 10:02

Sounds like I'll have to wait then. The machines aren't running vast amounts of RAM for the job they do so it would be noticed I imagine. Ah well, potential for the future then.

shadowscotland · 16 Jan 2007 at 10:59

oceaness said:
That is interesting I wonder wether they'll re-implement the CPU usage control in the release client. It seems a bit of a backward step to remove that.

As the WU have such short deadlines I'm sure that any significant drop (say 20%) may affect the timing enough to miss its deadline, especially is the WU was collected at 11pm and expired midnight the following day - that only 25h later :eek:

oceaness · 16 Jan 2007 at 11:00

I see, that does make sense, I just hope that in the release client they'll lighten the deadlines and put that feature back in

Lowe said:
Sounds like I'll have to wait then. The machines aren't running vast amounts of RAM for the job they do so it would be noticed I imagine. Ah well, potential for the future then.

Are there small WU's available for the normal client?
Whats to stop you running 2 normal clients with large WU disabled.
Large WU disabled would limit it to about 5mb yes?

shadowscotland · 16 Jan 2007 at 11:38

oceaness said:
Are there small WU's available for the normal client?
Whats to stop you running 2 normal clients with large WU disabled.
Large WU disabled would limit it to about 5mb yes?

Yes - all the 212* WU are less that 5mb and there's loads of these about, got two running on my machine now - Ram used = 5948kb and 4524kb.
Can have upto a <10mb upload though

>.5mb download though

Lowe · 16 Jan 2007 at 15:53

Normal GUI client is just single processor and is PPC based if I'm not mistaken, and will take a severe performance hit running on an Intel based Mac.

Aint worth it tbh I guess

A.N.Other · 16 Jan 2007 at 17:25

Lowe said:
Aint worth it tbh I guess

I wouldn't think so. There is no native mactel client apart from the SMP out already, so there is no option to run anything else (although a fair bit of fiddling can get the machines folding with the PPC clinet, I think - someone might want to confirm this?!?).

BillytheImpaler · 16 Jan 2007 at 18:08

A.N.Other said:
I wouldn't think so. There is no native mactel client apart from the SMP out already, so there is no option to run anything else (although a fair bit of fiddling can get the machines folding with the PPC clinet, I think - someone might want to confirm this?!?).

There's no fiddling involved. When the OS sees PPC code it immediately starts to run it in Rosetta emulation.

It'll take about a 50% performance hit as it attempts to convert Altivec instructions into SSE ones.

Newbie needs help :)

Man of Honour