\o/ I'm in the top 40!

[BillytheImpaler]

Folding@home is a distributed computing project designed to perform computationally intensive simulations of protein folding. The project’s goal is to add greater understanding to protein folding, misfolding, aggregation, and related diseases. Such diseases include BSE (mad cow), Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, among others.

Folding@home does not rely on powerful supercomputers for its processing; instead, the primary contributors to the Folding@home project are many thousands of personal computer users who have installed a small client program. The client runs in the background, and makes use of the CPU when it is not busy. In most modern personal computers, the CPU is rarely used to its full capacity at all times; the Folding@home client takes advantage of this unused processing power.

Participants do it becasue they like the science. The other reason why they'd do it is that it's WICKED FUN. This is why, I think, most people in this forum particpate.

 

[Kmodo]

K cheers billy... I see the light so when doing essays and boring stuff... fold?

 

[BillytheImpaler]

K cheers billy... I see the light so when doing essays and boring stuff... fold?

Absolutely. Most people set it to start at boot and either never turn it off or just when doing something particularly intensive like gaming.

 

[Joe42]

Folding always gives priority to whatever else you're doing so you just install it and leave it, simple. It will fold when you are doing essays and won't fold when you're gaming, automatically.

 

[shadowscotland]

Folding always gives priority to whatever else you're doing so you just install it and leave it, simple. It will fold when you are doing essays and won't fold when you're gaming, automatically.

As long as you've got lots of Ram (min 1G) joe's right - for those with less stop the client before gaming.
That said you can force that client to only 'crunch' low ram intensive units - they score less but joe's 'never off' policy works well as a rule.

 

[SiriusB]

You can also use your graphics card to fold, if, and only if, it is an X1900 or X1950 series graphics card.

SiriusB

 

[rich99million]

You can also use your graphics card to fold, if, and only if, it is an X1900 or X1950 series graphics card.

SiriusB

or an X16xx or X18xx card as those have now been included in the beta test

 

[Mattus]

I warn you though, essays and the DC forum don't share time nicely

 

[Joe42]

I warn you though, essays and the DC forum don't share time nicely

You're telling me!

 

[Andr3w]

what happened to haly, i miss her =[

 

[Snapshot]

or an X16xx or X18xx card as those have now been included in the beta test

<Snapshot looks at X1650Pro in test PC and thinks GPU client might be more useful than Linux>

 

[oceaness]

SMP > GPU I think

 

[SiriusB]

SMP > GPU I think

GPU [@670MHz] gets me 800 ish PPD when running.

My SMP client is getting me around 1.2K PPD on my 4400+ @ 2.6GHz

SiriusB

 

[Snapshot]

SMP > GPU I think

Quite likely but the GPU client keeps the PC 'running' Windoze so doesn't leave me with a PC that's really only folding.

 

[rich99million]

Quite likely but the GPU client keeps the PC 'running' Windoze so doesn't leave me with a PC that's really only folding.

an X1650 will not get anything like 800PPD though - it only has 12 pixel shaders as opposed to the 48 of the X19xx cards
I would expect around 250PPD from an X16xx card plus whatever you get from the other CPU core

I've had to stop my X1900 XT folding for the time being as it seems to be running quite a bit hotter than before - also runs very loud with the fan at 50-60%

edit: of course if you have dual boot then you can give it a go and see how you fancy it - if linux doesn't serve your normal purposes I can understand why you'd prefer to have it running windows without the SMP client

 

[Andr3w]

*got told off*

 

[Pumpkinstew]

<Back on topic>