question from a noob

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noj

noj

noj

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Hey guys, I've read and read a lot of the threads here for a while thinking I'd like to get in on F@H but I have some questions which I hope you would be able help with.

Rig wise I have my main gaming rig:

i5 2500k @4.5ghz 8gb ram and a 6950 Gfx card

spare parts rig:

q6600 @stock 4gb ram and a 8800gts card

so questions:

1) would my spare parts rig be worth doing anything with in terms of F@H or would I just be wasting time with it?
2) on my main rig can I just turn on F@H when I'm not using it or do I really need to be doing X hours at a time?
3) can the machines be used for anything else whilst folding or should that be the only task they do at once?

I doubt I'll ever be a big player in the area but every little bit helps right?
 
1 , from google, a q6600 should be getting 5-7k ppd some lower, some higher, depends on overclock

2. there isnt any set time you have to leave your pc on, remember it was designed to run in the background when ever your pc is turned on, but by having a passkey and leaving it on for longer to complete more work units will earn you bonus points, which is what the passkey is for, once you complete 10 work units, you start getting bonus points.

3. you could leave F at H running all the time if you wanted as it is suppose to back down when other programs need the power, and when the pc is at idle it will them ramp up and use what is available.

yes , every little does help, your pc is just as good as any of our pcs. biffa and loudbob are the 2 with big set ups, theres also another guy called kerreg who has an SR2 and is building a second SR2 soon aswell.

some say AMD gpus arnt worth it, but what they mean is NVIDIA will get more points over a 24 hour period than AMD gpus would, if i had an amd gpu id still fold on it or use it for boinc,another distribuited program.

if you folded on both q6600 and 2500k but not the gpu, i dont think it would add much / if anything noticeable to the electric either. Unless you folded 24/7

EDIT - gt 8800 fetch around 5k ppd i think . that lot could fetch decent amounts of completed work.
 
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i'm getting an error when I try to download the clients from the FAH Tracker setup:

Fatal Error: could not download clients
check your internet connection then try setup _> Download

my connection is ok and if i turn the firewall off it makes no difference, any suggestions?
 
thanks...got it working, but that causes more questions :)

so i downloaded and ran the software and it immediately started running and using 100% of my cpu. I tried changing this in configure -> advanced -> % cpu but it still maxes out my cpu. I'd be ok with that if i wasnt also playing games at the same time.

How can i set it up so that it only goes to a max % of cpu use? this would then let me keep folding whilst using the rig to game on during the evenings.

oh my folding username is: nojjer
 
what do you have working, the tracker or the folding@home client ?

did you enter your team number and passkey also.

if you go to configure then a new windowd will open, now go to advanced you can see wer it shows how to adjust it, as you can see myns on 97%.

are you folding with cpu only or gpu aswell?


 
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I got the V7 folding@home client so the screenshot you posted is what I could see. I was only running on the CPU last night, i just wanted to check I'd got it all set up ok, I did add the team number and passkey in.

When I went to the configure options I changed the CPU usage but it didnt seem to make a difference, all 4 cores were still maxing out on 100% usage even when I put the slider all the way down to 10%.

I'll give it another go when I get in tonight.
 
is it slowing your pc down been at 100%, if its not affecting you doing other things and the temps are good then its fine, but if you really want to you could try to get tracker v2 working as you can select how many core you want to use

do you have it set to folding core priority > lowest possable?
 
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ozaudio said:
is it slowing your pc down been at 100%, if its not affecting you doing other things and the temps are good then its fine, but if you really want to you could try to get tracker v2 working as you can select how many core you want to use

do you have it set to folding core priority > lowest possable?
Click to expand...

Yeah I checked that setting.

So basically last night I was mucking around whilst waiting on PVP in SWTOR, the CPU's were all maxing out at 100% which would make gaming a bit juddery (sp) not much of a surprise there...

I was hoping to find a way to tone down the core usage so I could keep it folding whilst gaming rather than doing one or the other but the slider change didnt seem to have any effect, the only thing I didnt do was a reboot after the install.

I'll give it a go tonight and get to work on my spares machine as well, just need to put the PSU back in it and could leave that one going a lot longer anyway.
 
when your gaming, just turn F@H of, dont ruin your game play over it :) just turn it back on when you've finished


the only other thing is get tracker working so you can leave 1 or 2 cores free for gaming.
 
I find that for gaming I pause folding. Folding tries to use every spare bit of the processor power. Whilst it prioritises other stuff there still has to be minuscule delay whilst it releases capacity to the gaming need and swallows that up only to release it again as the gaming needs change. When many games need the fastest possible responsiveness (why else did you buy that superchip and high end graphics in the first place), even that minuscule delay isn't satisfactory. If you have the v7 client running it's a simple task to pause stuff.

Many day to day apps doing interfere with folding, or clash such as your normal browsing, wordprocessing and such like. Few of those need real power anyway. Gaming is one of those functions that wants everything it can get. Setting a couple of CPU cores to not fold may not give the expected results. Better to fold all at 100% for most of the time, and manually pause when you use the PC for something interesting.
 
thanks guys, all up an folding now :)

I'm going to pause the folding when i'm doing interesting stuff, i think even if I only do 50% of what you guys do thats 50% more than I was doing this time last week.

Defiantely going to get my old rig back up and running though and turn that into a dedicated folder
 
ozaudio said:
So hows it going now? is the 8800gt folding to or just cpu? is the heat ok.
Click to expand...

not got the old machine up and running yet. Its a weekend project :)

Folding on my main rig is going well though. Temps not an issue as I'm hitting max 44 degrees on the cores at 100% load. Also folding on the 6950 I have installed and dont have any issues with temps on that either.

Only thing holding me back is I'm only a part time folder atm :)

According to the stats my ave PPD should be around 12k with my main rig which I'll be happy with. I'm only expecting half of that on my spares rig - but every bit helps!
 
i got my spares machine back and running, its an 8800gts and a Q9400 running at stock speed. Just got the folding client going and its suggesting i'll only get 2.5k PPD which seems pathetically small :D

Is it worth running on this machine?

edit: hmm since posting this all of 2 mins ago its now gone up to 7kppd that seems more worth it and what I thought I'd get. I'll look at putting in an overclock on the CPU at the weekend.
 
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had a successful weekend, got my rigs running nicely, the parts machine isnt particularly great at 6kPPD but the temps are fine on the CPU - high of 47 degrees under 100% load.

I doubt i'll be up there with the big boys but doing my bit and getting a kick watching the projects complete :) as an added bonus my "office" is a bit warmer now with two pc's running!
 
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