Folding@Home: RELOADED

[Rhenna]

We've experienced a bit of a resurgence in participation in the ATrip Folding@Home effort as of late:

http://www.atrip.net/forums/showpost.php?p=230448&postcount=25

This was a most welcome development because the number of forum members who had been contributing had dwindled down to just three of us. This isn't meant as criticism of anyone who was previously "folding" and, for whatever reason, elected to stop. Speaking solely for myself, I respect anyone who has contributed just a single Work Unit, (WU). That is, after all, a 100% greater involvement than not participating at all.

The ATrip Forums Folding@Home effort originally came to be in January of 2004. (I was surprised by that, for some reason, when I found the original thread. I thought it was somewhat earlier in time.) This was courtesy of future man, and over the life of that thread, (some 17 months), you can trace the ebb and flow of the participation:

http://www.atrip.net/forums/showthread.php?t=4262

You'll see a lot of the "old-timers" in there, as in any old thread I suppose, and the requisite AT arguing and flaming. (Thank Christ this Forum isn't a submarine. We'd have all killed each other ages ago.) Somewhere in that mess, REBEL_AU makes mention that the team ranking was at 685. As I write this, the ATF team ranking is at 1061. This was my second surprise this morning; I'm amazed we haven't slipped further than that.

Obviously, the Folding@Home project can best be explained by those who created it:

http://folding.stanford.edu/

My take on it is a bit simpler. If your PC is running, and it has any System Idle Process percentage being displayed in the Task Manager, why not allocate at least a bit of that to doing some good in the cause of medical research? Or, in a more AT-style explanation, if your rig is just sitting there picking it's nose and scratching it's ass, why not give it something useful to do?

I'm thinking at least a few of you leave your systems on quite a bit during a given day; some may run pretty much 24/7. If you could spare the cycles to complete just one or two Work Units a month, you'd be helping the ATF team, I would certainly appreciate it, and you might just be assigned a slightly cooler part of Hell after you die.

F@H won't make your rig explode, doesn't require a broadband connection to the Web, and in most cases won't impact any game or application that you run beyond minimizing it to the taskbar when first launched. And, there is a way to prevent even that from happening. The percentage of idle time devoted to F@H is adjustable, so even those with marginal cooling can participate. Aside from the classic CPU-based F@H client, there is a GPU client, (recently updated), that uses the ATI X1000-series GPUs as a means to fold, unleashing all those pixel-shaders to crunch numbers. There is also a client for the Sony PS3 game console, as well as for multi-core CPUs. Macs and Linux are supported, too. Something for everyone.

Linkage:

Client Downloads: http://folding.stanford.edu/download.html

(If you're running Windows2000/XP, I would recommend the V5.03 graphical client. No personal experience with F@H on Windows Vista, myself.)

General FAQ: http://folding.stanford.edu/faq.html

ATI X1000 GPU FAQ: http://folding.stanford.edu/FAQ-ATI.html

Sony PS3 FAQ: http://folding.stanford.edu/FAQ-PS3.html

Multi-core CPU FAQ: http://folding.stanford.edu/FAQ-SMP.html

I can provide some guidance based on personal experience with the Win9X & Win2k/XP clients, as well as the GPU client. I seemed to have hit a small break in my work schedule, and I'll likely be able to hang out here for awhile. My knowledge with F@H is completely empirical, but I'll do what I can to answer any questions. (Assuming there is any interest...) There is also a F@H Forum that can act as a source of information:

http://forum.folding-community.org/

Presumably, I won't be banned for linking to another forum, but one never knows.

I'd like to welcome MrBored, (who is absolutely kicking ass), Lynx and Spamarchist to the team, as well as thanking Phobo and Killer_Klown for keeping the faith all this time. (Hope I didn't miss anyone. I'll make amends, later, if so.) All are welcome.

[MrBored]

I'm just glad my kicking of ass is being appreciated ;) Actually, I'm also glad my CPU's now have something to do other than serve up webpages ;/ Nice post btw.

[burnart]

I was folding@home for some time, but does it really work.. isthere any results?
Just a waste of time if it doesn't mount to anything.

Edit: and its taking too long to load...
and its too much to read at the site, I don't want to read 3 pages of crap
gief easy quickness

Edit2:Date of last work unit 2004-07-18 04:06:36
thats a long time...

Why is it only "loading - benchmarking"? how long does it take? Im on step 13 on "waiting for cpu"

Edit2 : finally it started

[Killer Klown]

Just as an FYI, I'm running 5.03 grahpical on my home rig on Vista Ultimate, and it's not caused a single problem.

[MrBored]

not sure burnart, but when I had that problem it was because the client was being blocked by my firewall. Unblock port 8080.

[Rhenna]

Ack! It probably would have been bright to include the link to the ATF Team page at F@H:

http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=35166

The team number, as you can see, is 35166. That is the number you want to enter in the F@H Control Panel, on the "User" tab, in order to have your results posted here.

More coffee...

[burnart]

Team number tab you mean?

[RAY16]

If that "new computer" I always mention ever actually becomes a reality I'll be sure to start folding again, but until then I can't help out due to it still hating my current computer.

[Phobo]

I should update my client :)
Anyway I will soon run it on my PS3 aswell (which I haven't purchased yet!)

[burnart]

It doesn't want to change my team from my old to my new..

[psydude20]

Does it not display your name on the team page until you've completed a work unit?

[MrBored]

Correct

[wmgreer]

I don't understand. What exactly is this?

[burnart]

The unit Im on takes days.. dammit

[MrBored]

Upgrade ;)

I don't understand. What exactly is this?

Well, in a nutshell, its a distributed processing mathematical simulation of protein folding for research purposes so one day some diseases or disorders can be cured or understood.

[wmgreer]

Upgrade ;)



Well, in a nutshell, its a distributed processing mathematical simulation of protein folding for research purposes so one day some diseases or disorders can be cured or understood.


uh-huh...right

[tisl]

This thing has been going on for a few years. Has any useful research actually been made from the data collected or do you guys just do it to feel good about yourselves?

[MrBored]

There have been 50 peer reviewed scientific papers released that are viewable on their website, but I'm not sure if anything else has come of it. I don't care though, its not taking up any of my time or effort and I like making numbers go up. Any kind of number, as long as I'm making it go up, is a good one.

[burnart]

ahh.. the human quest of making numbers go up... I think all men love making numbers go up, dont know about the ladies

[psydude20]

ahh.. the human quest of making numbers go up... I think all men love making numbers go up, dont know about the ladies
I'm laughing my ass off right now because it's so true.

[Dark_Swordmaster]

ahh.. the human quest of making numbers go up... I think all men love making numbers go up, dont know about the ladies

Linked for truth (http://www.progressquest.com/).

[burnart]

dammit.. why wont it just add my points to the user I already have.. I dont want to start all over again

[LynX]

Welcome, happy to help.

[MrBored]

dammit.. why wont it just add my points to the user I already have.. I dont want to start all over again

I don't think you can move users from one team to another, so if your previous user was in another team you can't move the points over and start from there.

45nm Core 2 Extreme coming in the fourth quarter (http://www.techreport.com/onearticle.x/12897)

I want one, should help the folding quite nicely and reduce the time for one WU to just under 12 hours!

[Rhenna]

If anyone is so inclined, I can report that the GPU client, 5.91 beta5, is out and working nicely. Just finished off a WU on the OC'ed X1600. (Catalyst 7.3)

F@H Recommended CATs:

6.5, 6.10, 6.11, 7.2 through 7.6

Broken CATs:

6.8, 6.9, 6.12, 7.1

CATs not recommended for Folding@Home:

6.6, 6.7

Probably will swing the X1950GT over to a web-enabled rig this weekend and see what trouble I can get into.

There are a couple of "quirks" in the GPU Client:

You must start F@H without the 3D display open, or it'll never get underway.
On the X1600, (which is a pretty weak example of the hardware this client is intended for), it takes considerably longer for the process to settle down and start to fold compared to the CPU version; perhaps about 6-8 minutes on this card. You can open the window periodically to see the estimated run-time for the WU, but, with it open, the folding progress all but stops.
Any sort of 3D-related activity, even just changing a 3D option in the Catalyst Control Center, ATI Tray Tools, etc., will cause the client to terminate. (Which I think is perfectly understandable.) So, it's best to just save and close the client if you start itching for some fraggin'.
The "Pause when done" option doesn't seem to function reliably.

While all this may sound rather rickety, the client actually runs pretty damn good. I suspect the X1950GT, with 36 pixel shaders vs. the 12 in the X1600, will be pretty sporty.

EDIT: I see that psydude and burnart have come up on the radar. Thank you, gentlemen. And MrBored? I don't need radar to see him. Just my rearview mirror.

[Phobo]

I just use the terminal text client, saves power!

[Digital Limit]

Too lazy to save the planet. Sorry :(

[MrBored]

I'm going to try pick up a second hand X1900XT at some point, but I think which ever DX10 card gets the folding client first will determine my purchase decision.

Our team position has gone up 12 places, only 1052 more to go...

[Digital Limit]

Whoa, we have a team? Fuck, I should join just for that.

[MrBored]

Actually reading Rhenna's posts might help...

[Cheddar]

I'd join, but I'm already on the tweakguides.com team. Maybe I should jump ship, though. They sure as shit don't need my help.

You know, I hadn't even thought about the GPU client before. I have a X1950, so I could run that, too. Hmm.


And btw, whatever happened to future man? He always struck me as entertainingly amoral in his front-page postings.

[Digital Limit]

Actually reading Rhenna's posts might help...

Oh, I know! However, her large posts are rather intimidating.

[burnart]

I just read part of it, and then clicked the links.. it worked for me after some aggravation

[Digital Pimp]

what is the team's number so I can contribute my numbers to it.

[Rhenna]

what is the team's number so I can contribute my numbers to it.

That would be 35166. And thanks in advance!

[LittleChief]

And btw, whatever happened to future man? He always struck me as entertainingly amoral in his front-page postings.

In the Navy, methinks.

[Striker]

He can sail the seven seas?

[Lehesu]

The Village People? Huzzah what?

[Rhenna]

Well, trying out the X1950GT with the F@H GPU client was an eye-opener. While I can't say for certain that the assigned WUs are as complex as the WUs for the CPU clients, I must tell you that I haven't completed a pair of projects so quickly in quite some time. In terms of web access, I decided to move the computers rather than just the graphic cards, so it took me a bit of time to get the one rig to a point that it could visit the web without being at risk. (OK, without being completely at risk...)

Below is a screenie from the 2nd project just a few minutes prior to completion. This took well under 24 hours to go from start to finish. So, while the 12 pixel-shader X1600/X1650 (RV530-RV535) cards will certainly get the job done, it's clear the 24 shader X1650XT (RV560), and the 36/48 shader X1950GT, Pro and XT cards, (RV570) are a dramatic improvement. The older R520 X1800 and R580 X1900 jammies should be great, as well.

GPU temps were in the 52-56C° range in a rather warm room environment. The stock cooler on this Sapphire is adequate, but not by any means exceptional. I've seen it hit 67C° in gameplay, which is not the end of the world for a GPU, but not exactly chilly, either. When the "new" has completely worn off this, I may toss a Zalman on it. As you can see, the GPU client looks pretty much the same as the CPU graphical client.

Makes me wonder what the X1950XT would accomplish, but that rig is pretty well entrenched in a not-so-Web-friendly location. I'll need to think that one over a bit more. Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, the 5.91beta5 GPU client is the real deal.

http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/3674/foldgpu1rr0.jpg

It's positively wild to see seventeen active processors on the team roster. Been a long time since we had that happenin'. Thanks for helpin' out, Cheddar! And, MrBored? Details on just exactly what you have goin' on, hardware-wise, please! It is impressive!

[MrBored]

I just have an E6600, a 3800+, a Pentium M 740 laptop and a Celeron M something. My E6600 seems to be doing most the work though. It completes a WU in 24 hours, almost exactly. I never play games on any of those machines, so the folding client gets all the benefit of the constant uptime. My E6600 (main machine) has an uptime of 4 weeks. And they say XP has memory leaks/issues, pfft. I'm trying to source a second hand X1900XT though, to add to the effort.

I'm actually hoping my one laptop overheats and explodes, it has a 5 year extended warranty and its slow now, so I'm more than happy running it 24/7 ;)

[absolute_deviation]

wow i'm ashamed. folding@home is a stanford project and i didn't even know. fuck

[burnart]

why should you know ?
(why am I asking)

[RADiator]

Last time I tried folding it kept restarting me at random. Wasnt keen on it enough to look it up so I just dumped it. I might try the new client.

[MrBored]

Yeah, try the new client. Also don't leave the graphical thing open, just leave the program running in your tray and don't use the graphical screensaver. It had some problems and as soon as I did that, they all went away.

[MrBored]

We need more people/cpus/gpus. We seem to be stuck at position 1028 and we're not getting any higher!

[burnart]

no net any more.. fags

[tisl]

Stop calling every fag, fag.

[absolute_deviation]

why should you know ?
(why am I asking)

err..cuz i go to stanford?

[Rhenna]

I generally don't get too caught up in the numbers, but I have noticed we were mired at 1028 overall for quite awhile. I see that we're currently at 1019 as I write this. Would be great to get below a grand and stay there, at a minimum.

We're averaging a major power failure about every 48 hours over the last 10-12 days for some reason, probably T-Storms somewhere along the power grid. I'd probably have a good 3 or 4 additional WU completed, otherwise.

[MrBored]

Aw, that sucks. (woop woop, easier for me to catch up ;) ).

[MrBored]

nm

[RAY16]

I just did an upgrade on my system, I'll probably check out F@H again soon. I need to see what kind of overclock I can get out of this CPU first, though.

If you're wondering, I upgraded to an Athlon 64 X2 4000+ and 2GB of memory. And if I see even one mention of how I should have went for a Core 2 upgrade I'll set kittens on fire and throw them at war veterans. I had a very small budget to use for my upgrade and I did the best I could with it. So far, I'm happy with my upgrade.

[Dark_Swordmaster]

Yes, well, I got a Core2Quad.


How do I shot web and help teh cansurs?

[MrBored]

Download the SMP client

http://folding.stanford.edu/download.html

Follow the readme, set team as 35166.

[Rhenna]

A few notes for new or infrequent folders:

(in no particular order...)

If you're running some sort of screensaver, (as one example), that manages to upstage F@H priority-wise, you may come back to your rig after a day at work or class and find virtually nothing has been accomplished. So, you know what this means and you know what you have to do, so do it. As an alternative, there is a "Core Priority" option on the [ADVANCED] tab that *may* tame some application that is denying F@H the ability to fold.

If you're defragging the drive volume where F@H resides while it's running, you'll often find that it takes longer than it otherwise should, and you may get a less-than-desirable defrag result. (Although, that isn't unusual for Windows, IMO.) Pause F@H during your defrag. Win9X users, if there are any of those, besides myself, left in the World, will get the "Drive contents changed; restarting" message during a defrag if F@H is left active. Your defrag op will probably never finish.

On the [CONNECTION] tab in the F@H configuration gadget, there is an "ask before using network" checkbox. If you're hot-to-the-Web 24/7, you can leave this unchecked. F@H should download/upload unattended, as needed. If not, or, you just want to "keep informed" of what F@H is up to when trying to access the Web, then enable this option. F@H will prompt when it needs to speak to Stanford. Sometimes, F@H will not only need to DL a new Work Unit, (WU), but some additional files, as well, so you may see the "Ready to connect" dialog a few times in short intervals. F@H "pauses" until the "connect" dialog is dealt with.

Also within the [CONNECTION] page, there is an "allow receipt of work assignments and return of results greater than 5Mb in size" option. This is the For Adults Only area of F@H. If your rig is a lightweight, then you have no business here. A "Big Iron(tm)" CPU, 2Gb of RAM, and some serious patience are required. However, higher scores are rewarded. This option, plus selecting the "deadlineless" option in the "Deadlines" section under the [ADVANCED] tab, is the Major Leagues. With both of these selected, you're likely to receive some titanic, legendary beast of a WU that will seem to tie up your rig for decades. You've been warned.

Also on the [ADVANCED] page is the slider to set "CPU Usage Percent." You can fire up the Windows Task Manager, see what the current CPU utilization is, (by default, pretty much 100% if F@H can get it), and adjust as needed. You need to give the program a minute or so to react to whatever you set. So, if your concerned about heat, or overheating, you can back F@H's CPU usage down to something a bit less toasty. Obviously, this will lengthen the time it takes to complete a Work Unit. Or, if you have a Socket 478 Celeron, which is the most god-awful piece of silicon in the Universe, you can back your usage percentage down to something like 85%, so that it doesn't take the damn thing like six minutes to react to your keyboard/mouse input. ("Oh! I'm sorry! Are you talking to me?")

One final thing on the [ADVANCED] tab is a "Disable highly optimized assembly code" option. This is worth a shot if for some reason the program misbehaves on your rig. Yes, this will incur a performance penalty.

There is a screensaver option on the [DISPLAY] tab. Haven't used it, since I'm not a big screensaver fan. RAD had made the team a nice ATrip logo to use way back when for the Logo option, but I'm ashamed to admit that, while I'm sure I have it safely stored multiple times on various media, I can't lay my hands on it for the life of me. Maybe he'll hook us up again, or someone else will feel creative. I don't think it absolutely needs to be 128 X 32; just something in a 4:1 proprtion that will scale down cleanly.

The 3D display of F@H uses OpenGL. If your graphics card has OpenGL issues, then keep F@H minimized to the system tray. (Might be a good reason *not* to use the screensaver for those folks, too.) Actually, this is a good idea anyway for those who use cards that run at a higher speed in 3D mode, and therefore generate more heat and use more juice. I know about two years ago, the ATI OpenGL drivers were not terribly F@H friendly. It's kind of weird that now, it's ATI hardware that supports the GPU-based F@H effort.

Remember, you can right-click the F@H icon in the System Tray, and select STATUS > LOGFILE to observe what is taking place behind the curtain. Good place to check if you have an unexpected event.

If anybody has something to add or spots something amiss in here, please, speak up! We'll all learn something, then.

Down to... Let's see... 1006 overall. Sweet!

[MrBored]

Doesn't Rhenna make you all hot when she starts getting all technical n stuff?

Another WU done, 1002. Almost below 1K.

[RAY16]

Doesn't Rhenna make you all hot when she starts getting all technical n stuff?

Of course.

[MrBored]

Team Ranking (incl. aggregate) 999 of 80074

Its a pleasure.

[tisl]

Now to get in the double digits.

[Dark_Swordmaster]

Pretty sure if we rent one of Pixar's render farms for a week we can do that.

[Rhenna]

As of 3:30am, GMT:

Date of last work unit: 2007-09-10 19:14:36
Active CPUs within 50 days: 20
Team Id: 35166
Grand Score: 651294
Work Unit Count: 4519
Team Ranking (incl. aggregate): 997 of 80245
Home Page: http://www.atrip.net
Fast Teampage URL: http://fah-web.stanford.edu/teamstats/team35166.html


Excellent work, gentlemen! But, now for the kicker:

Is a sub-900 number out of the question? (Yes, we were in the high six-hundreds, once. But, the WUs have grown quite a bit since then.) Getting down into the 800-range would be a pretty remarkable accomplishment, but requires a bit of stamina.

[MrBored]

We'll be sub 900 soon enough! But to really get up there we're gonna need some quad cores.

[RAY16]

Rhenna, this is the logo that RAD made for Atrip Last.fm group a while back.

http://img25.imagevenue.com/loc676/th_94508_AtripLogo_122_676lo.jpg

[MrBored]

omw, the old sexy atrip logo that looked like a hot vag, I'm wet.

[tisl]

If one of you guys builds one of these, you'll be set. http://www.ohgizmo.com/2007/09/03/1256-microwulf-supercomputer-smaller-than-bread-box-runs-at-2625-gigaflops/

[MrBored]

Yeah, I saw that. Very cool.

In light of that uATX PC tisl posted, I thought I'd look around for the cheapest parts to build a machine to add to the fold. I've found an Asus mobo for R350 thats running a SiS 671 chipset, but it supports the C2D. I was thinking I could place my proc in that machine and get a Quad core for myself. Whole thing would set me back R3000, which is about $420, and would increase my WU score output by about 1500 per day. Any thoughts?

[RAY16]

Well, I just installed the SMP client. If my new hardware plays nice with F@H I guess I'll keep it on.

[MrBored]

Good stuff. Now where's Rhenna?

[Rhenna]

Rhenna? Why, she be right here.

I have zero hands-on with any flavor Intel Core, so filter the following accordingly. From my perspective, the best bang-for-the-buck folding method is the GPU client. I haven't been taking any real note of what sort of score is rewarded with a GPU WU, (after 600+ WUs, that fascination is long gone), but I can say that with the X1950GT @ 500/1200MHz, I haven't seen any WU take more than about 30 hours; most are in the 18-24 hour realm. This is like a $125 video card. (And, it's a pretty sweet as a graphics card, too.)

Again, I can't say how the CPU WUs match up in complexity with the GPU Work Units, but, on average, the S754 and S939 A64s, (2.2GHz & 2.4GHz, respectively), that I do the bulk of my CPU-type folding with, take considerably longer to finish the typical assignment. (These two are off the house LAN and on the Web router.) I haven't found the opportunity to transplant the X1950XT into the line-up yet, but I'll be experimenting with that soon. I'm anticipating a further improvement with that particular hardware. I'll be sure to post the results.

So, speaking for myself, before I would go with the cost of building yet another system, as well as the overhead of managing/maintaining another rig, I'd be more inclined to spend well under half as much and do the X1950 Pro/XT thing, instead. I'd love to see what a seriously juiced, water block-equipped XTX would do!

I can see your motivation, however, given the plan to upgrade your primary box with a 4-core processor.

[MrBored]

Only problem is that living in SA, I don't have the best access to PC components and I haven't been able to find an X1950XT for a good price. I'll give it another look though.

http://www.take2.co.za/product.php?id=2051562

Eek.

The X1950Pro is R1500, but I already have a 7950GX2, so I don't need it for gaming. Another PC on the other hand has near infinite uses. I think I'm going to stick with going the quad core route, I just could do with some advice on really cheap uATX boards. Is that SiS chipset ok or should I go for a more expensive Intel board?

[MrBored]

http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=35166

I like being on top of Rhenna :P

[karny]

Just trolled the forum for the first time in a while and came across this gem of a thread.

I just bought myself a Q6600 (quad core) based computer last week and this is a perfect way to use those often unused cpus :P

Just wondering if there is a way to gauge how fast it's doing the folding, and if there was a sort of benchmark i should be hitting so i can make sure it's doing the best it can.

I see it says 20s per frame on the render window, is this good or should i be trying to tweak it and get it up further?

Pitty there is no Nvidia GPU program wouldn't mind setting it going aswell.

[MrBored]

Don't use that client, download the SMP client.

[karny]

ah, i see. That explains the 25% cpu usage, it wasn't using multi core at all.

Probably should have spent more than 30 seconds looking for the right download... it was 2:30am so I can't be to hard on myself :P

[iha‏teyou]

How do I join the atrip team? And can I use 2 computers under my one handle? I've been running F@H for a few days now but I wanna see what stats i can get in the group since I leave my PC on all the time.

[MrBored]

All is explained in this thread, but once again, just set your team number to 35166. Yes, you can use as many computers as you like.

[MrBored]

The new SMP beta client is broken or something. Its SOOOO slow. I can't complete the work units in time and they keep expiring. I've tried using -forceasm but its still terribly slow. Maybe its cause I'm trying this shit operating system they call Vista... dunno.

[iha‏teyou]

Sorry if this has been asked before, but how do I have a higher score with 8 work units completed, than somone who has completed 40? Anyone care to elaborate how the points system works, or link me to the post and yell at me for being lazy?

[MrBored]

Some work units require more work, ergo, a higher score is received.

[iha‏teyou]

Also, has anyone else heard about this scientist who decoded his own genome? I thought that was the entire point of folding @ home.

[MrBored]

You really should check their website.