Computer Hope

I was wondering if anyone still does this?

I saw Boo catching up to me so I started again.. Now he is past me and I want to catch up,
but the P4 computers were using more power then points so I stopped them. I do have a Nvidia GT 520 that I use for folding and I was using my laptop GPU 330M for folding.

I have been deciding if I still want to continue since summer = ac = higher electric bill. Using folding in the winter with P4 Prescott computers = low cost heating system in room

I generally use folding Winters myself as for just as you said it creates heat when heat is beneficial. And Folding hopefully helps cure cancer etc some day  by protein testing etc.

I tried out Folding on a laptop 2 years ago and the problem was that it was keeping the CPU at 100% and causing the bottom of the laptop to roast and the cooling fan that is not really intended to run constantly would eventually burn out. So instead of killing a nice laptop through abuse of a 100% CPU load 24/7 for as many weeks or months I run it, I gave up using laptops with it. *In addition to this the laptop I have is a Athlon II 2.5Ghz with 3GB RAM running Windows 7 32-bit and so it wasn't super fast at completing units.

Also, a few years ago I wanted Folding to use more processing power and my CPU at the time Athlon II x4 620  2600Mhz in my desktop computer would fold at only around 40% CPU used. I tried messing with settings to get it to drive the CPU closer to 100% but couldnt find a way with the settings. What I ended up doing at the time was using my 3 extra Windows XP licenses for Virtual machines and so I had the Windows 7 system with 3 XP virtual systems all crunching Folding at home and this put the CPU to 93-100% for all 4 cores. I allocated 512MB RAM to each of the virtual XP systems leaving my physical machine with 1.5GB RAM for Windows 7 32-bit of the 3GB the desktop system was limited to due to Win 7 32-bit and I was completing units far faster to the count of 1 to 4 units per day completed on just this computer alone. I then fired up a few other computers since it was winter and I needed to heat my home anyways and had those other 3 systems running it off of their OS without virtual systems to multiply the processing load of Folding since they were the following systems:

Sempron 145 2.8Ghz single-core with Windows 7 home 32-bit with 2GB RAM
Sempron 140 2.7Ghz single-core with Windows 7 home 32-bit with 1.5GB RAM
Athlon x2 4850e 2.5Ghz dual-core with Windows 7 home 32-bit with 2GB RAM

And I also tried it out just to see how long it would take on an Intel Atom 1.66Ghz processor by setting my netbook up to run folding and it took about 3 days for 1 unit to complete, so I shut it down.

I ended up running my own team for a short while: http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=170830

And then I joined CH Folding team as Nixie PC : http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=userpage&teamnum=67290&username=Nixie%5FPC

Prior to joining F@H, I use to run SETI. I liked SETI better when it use to show the neat spectrum analysis info on the display as it was running. I ran SETI for about 10 years. Started running it on a 486 computer in the late 1990s. But when Folding came around I decided to join that effort instead as for I started to see that I was getting the same work units over and over again with SETI since I was keeping track of samples processed in which they displayed info date/time as to when they were captured with the dish and location etc.

We are more likely to find a cure for cancer before we are contacted by aliens so i switched to Folding instead.

*** So while I am not active now with Folding because its summer, I will be back this fall into this winter. My rank on CH Folding Team is just #37 with 79 units completed. Not sure how the samples processed are scored, but people with less processed units rank higher possibly because the units were larger processed chunks vs everyone given the same sized/complexity chunks.

As far as people catching up to me and me trying to earn higher rank on the list of 76 who have ever crunched, I use to want to be as close to #1 on the list, but its not the rank that matters .... its the cause that everyones combined efforts are for.

I figured that either a bunch of people are using the #1 name of Computerhope so there are way more than 76 people ever processing or the #1 name Computerhope is a team of mainframes in which there is no way without a serious team of systems to try to take #1.

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Lastly as far as F@H goes, I sent in a question to F@H asking them if they had a version for download that wasn't wasteful in processing, so that all processing power could be used in crunching since so much is wasted with when it is rendering the GUI display with whatever it is processing and never heard back. Are you running the regular F@H software or a better version that gets more crunch per second of processing?

The team seems to be quite dead at the minute.

QuoteI figured that either a bunch of people are using the #1 name of Computerhope so there are way more than 76 people ever processing or the #1 name Computerhope is a team of mainframes in which there is no way without a serious team of systems to try to take #1.

Say what?  "Computerhope" is the username of CH Admin, who hasn't posted up any new units since mid/late July.  When folding, he was doing it on an i7 and GPU, getting the expected performance.  It wouldn't be difficult to take #1 with a decent system, it'd just take some time as he has quite a head start on most.

QuoteLastly as far as F@H goes, I sent in a question to F@H asking them if they had a version for download that wasn't wasteful in processing, so that all processing power could be used in crunching since so much is wasted with when it is rendering the GUI display with whatever it is processing and never heard back.

Is the command line version now obsolete?  I haven't run F@H for a little while now so I'm unsure, but there used to be a CLI version which I found easier to manage.  The graphical display was always optional, there was a screensaver you could use and you could also choose to display the animation but it was always something you had to click and choose, rather than wasting CPU power by default.  I remember when the CUDA version was first released the graphical display was really intensive and caused a lot of problems, hence I ran that CLI as well.

QuoteAre you running the regular F@H software or a better version that gets more crunch per second of processing?

There is no better version really, it's all about the options you use.  I'm not too familiar with the v7 client but I believe it adjusts to use SMP if available whereas the older client had to be told to do so.  P4 CPUs, and the 330 and 530 GPUs won't do too much crunching whatever you do - not saying they're not worth running though if you can spare the power.

I ran F@H on and off from about 2004-2011 for various teams, I run BOINC projects nowadays but will probably do a little more folding when I have my desktop ready, mainly to re familiarise myself with it.