Folding@Home

Handruin

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My points dropped off for multiple reasons but should return soon. My rig with the 290Xs had some kind of weird issue with the drivers which took some time to resolve. Folding@home wouldn't start nor would the ControlCenter software. Turned out it needed all kinds of manual registry entry deletions and numbers re-installs. It seems to be running once again but I don't know what caused it. My GTX 780 was off due to power a outage while I was traveling but is back folding once again.
 

timwhit

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My points dropped off for multiple reasons but should return soon. My rig with the 290Xs had some kind of weird issue with the drivers which took some time to resolve. Folding@home wouldn't start nor would the ControlCenter software. Turned out it needed all kinds of manual registry entry deletions and numbers re-installs. It seems to be running once again but I don't know what caused it. My GTX 780 was off due to power a outage while I was traveling but is back folding once again.

I was getting worried there for a few days. Glad to see your PPD back to where it should be.
 

Handruin

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I forgot to restart the GTX 560 and 3770K in another computer. I'll do that tonight.
 

sedrosken

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I'm going to re-join now that our internet situation isn't as uncertain. Jacob_Turner is me, because I was a dummy and used my real name instead of my username. Bleh. Deal with it.

I'm going to start setting my phone alarm (on vibrate, under my pillow) for 2 am so I can get up and start the folding program (data is unltd. from 2-10) and then go back to sleep till 6. I'll let it keep going till just before I need to leave for classes (~7:30). Not optimum, but better than nothing. And on weekends, where I'm guaranteed to not wake up till 11 at least, I'll see about setting it to run during a specific timeframe. If I can't do that, I guess I'll just have to start waking up earlier.

If I can figure out how to schedule it, I may or may not end up setting up my GX270 as a dedicated folding box. Not like it's doing anything else useful. And if I can confirm that it doesn't drain data, I might leave it going 24/7.
 

sedrosken

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I've decided to come back to folding as our internet situation is better than before. If I can figure out how to schedule it to run from 2-6 AM, I will. Otherwise I'll have to manually start and stop it, as we still have a limit on our internet.

If I can schedule it, through the program or Windows scheduling service, I'll probably set up the GX270 as a dedicated folding machine. If I can prove to myself that it doesn't drain the data, I will run it 24/7 until the GX270 decides to croak.
 

sedrosken

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Figured out how to schedule it with task scheduler, that is, to start the client at 2:00 AM and stop it at 6:00 AM on weekdays and start it at 2:00 AM and stop it at 9:45AM (allowing for a buffer so it doesn't bleed into our data) on weekends. When I get home, I'll either figure out how to setup the Linux client for F@H on the GX270 or slap Win7 on it and schedule it to turn on and do that at 2 AM, and to stop and shut off at 9:45 AM. I'll see about logging my network activity during these timeframes so I can maybe justify leaving the GX270 on 24/7 for folding.

Now all I have to do is remember to leave the laptop on overnight, as I don't want to schedule it's startups and shutdowns.
 

sedrosken

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10GB/mo, after that they throttle us. Dad will get supremely pissed off if that happens, so like I said, I scheduled it to run from 2 to 6 AM (when it doesnt count against our limit, presumably they put that in place to allow people to update. apparently they're not as heartless as previously thought), and I plan to run it on the GX270 from 2 to 10. The GX270 will have to have an automated startup(at 2 AM, then start folding) and shutdown (at 10 AM, so it's not needlessly drawing power). I will figure out how to do that as I go along, it seems the task scheduler has seen massive overhauls since Win98SE (the last version I fooled with it on) and is much more powerful.

As I said previously, now all I have to do is remember to leave my laptop on overnight. :colors:
 

CougTek

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Don't run the FAH client on a laptop. While it will work, a laptop isn't designed to dissipate the heat of a CPU constantly running at 100%. Chances are you will significantly shorten the lifespan of your laptop, especially since it's an entry-level model. It is much more important for you to go easy on your laptop, since you won't be able to replace it if it dies, than to us and to the FAH project at large to add the modest contribution a single laptop CPU.

We thank you very much, but we would not be right if we did not tell you to refrain from contributing in your current situation.
 

timwhit

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I run it on my work laptop when it's at home and out of the bag. It's a Dell Precision with a quad core i7 (hyperthreaded) and 32GB of memory. Hasn't been a problem over the last 10 months or so. It also only needs to last 3 years when it will be replaced.
 

sedrosken

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I've been folding consistently for the past couple days (also, looked at the network meter while it was running, it uses less data than browsing even, so I'll be setting up the GX270 to do it round the clock as soon as I get the time) and I'm about 18% through my first project. One thing: why am I not showing up in the stats at all? I've only got ~300 points, but I should at least show up, shouldn't I? Or are the stats pages not updated?

I look at people who are running 100k+ points a day, and I can only ask: How?!

EDIT: Figured out how I'm not showing up on team 10047. For some reason I'm assigned to team 0, even though I'm specifying team 10047 when I log in.
 

Handruin

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I've been folding consistently for the past couple days (also, looked at the network meter while it was running, it uses less data than browsing even, so I'll be setting up the GX270 to do it round the clock as soon as I get the time) and I'm about 18% through my first project. One thing: why am I not showing up in the stats at all? I've only got ~300 points, but I should at least show up, shouldn't I? Or are the stats pages not updated?

I look at people who are running 100k+ points a day, and I can only ask: How?!

EDIT: Figured out how I'm not showing up on team 10047. For some reason I'm assigned to team 0, even though I'm specifying team 10047 when I log in.

Don't forget to register for a passkey. To get over 100k points you need a serious cpu setup or a decent graphics card.

I'm folding with:
1 gtx 780
1 gtx 560 ti 448 cores
2 x r9 290x
1 core i7 860
1 core i7 3770k
1 amd FX something
 

sedrosken

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Well, a Celeron N2830 w/ Intel HD GFX (not in GPU folding mode to boot) and Pentium 4 2.8 HT w/ Radeon 9550 blows that out of the water, no question! </s>

Currently I am figuring out how to make it run under Xubuntu 24/7. Right now I'm installing the x86 debs.

What do you mean by registering for a passkey? I'm using the right passkey for my username, all my points show up under my username, but it insists on showing up as team 0. Unless you meant that I have to register for a passkey for the team, too?

At this point, if I can't fix it I just won't bother trying to fix it. I'll contribute through team 0, I guess. I'm just happy to be contributing, period. My dad, as I'm sure you've seen me say at some time or another, has Parkinson's-Dystonia. It is speculated that I may or may not end up with it later in life, not that I particularly care unless it turns out to be progressive. While this is almost certainly not the kind of Parkinson's F@H is supporting research for, my grandpa has what is referred to as "Classic Parkinson's" so it all evens out in the end.
 

sedrosken

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Surprisingly, setting it up under Xubuntu was easier than it was under Windows. Hm.

It even corrected my team 0 issue.

Also, apparently, I was running an older version of the client on my laptop. Corrected.
 

CougTek

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If I had more free time, I'd tell you to install Teamviewer on your Linux box and I would configure it for you, but the only free time I have these days is during the week-end.

Regarding the passkey, please read this. Apply to get one and paste it in your client configuration. You'll need to compute ten units before the bonus kicks in.
 

Handruin

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Well, a Celeron N2830 w/ Intel HD GFX (not in GPU folding mode to boot) and Pentium 4 2.8 HT w/ Radeon 9550 blows that out of the water, no question! </s>

Currently I am figuring out how to make it run under Xubuntu 24/7. Right now I'm installing the x86 debs.

What do you mean by registering for a passkey? I'm using the right passkey for my username, all my points show up under my username, but it insists on showing up as team 0. Unless you meant that I have to register for a passkey for the team, too?

At this point, if I can't fix it I just won't bother trying to fix it. I'll contribute through team 0, I guess. I'm just happy to be contributing, period. My dad, as I'm sure you've seen me say at some time or another, has Parkinson's-Dystonia. It is speculated that I may or may not end up with it later in life, not that I particularly care unless it turns out to be progressive. While this is almost certainly not the kind of Parkinson's F@H is supporting research for, my grandpa has what is referred to as "Classic Parkinson's" so it all evens out in the end.

Coug's link will explain what the passkey is. It's not specific to any team, it's specific to your account. There should be a config file where you specify the team number and your username and passkey (once you register for one). If you get stuck, we can try to offer help. I had a difficult time with AMD GPUs under Xubuntu Linux and switched to windows 8.1. If you're doing CPU folding you should be fine under Linux. You should be able to run the equivalent of the following command to build you a config file.

Code:
./FAHClient --user=YourNameHere --team=10047 --passkey=yourpasskeyhere
 

sedrosken

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Thanks for the tip! I'm not sure if it's folding with the GPU or not, I'll have to check.

I'm shutting the GX270 down when I wake up to give it a break. Then, when I get home I turn it on again and let it run all night. Not sure if the laptop is folding with the (admittedly weak) GPU, I'll have to check it too. Not sure how to go about that though. The web control isn't saying anything about a GPU when checking on progress, so I'd wager it's not using the GPU at all. When I got up, the GX270 was at... 11%? I think? And the laptop was at 30%. Don't let the number fool you, I had 18% left over from when I wasn't on the team.

As soon as I installed the debs with GDebi, it asked me to configure F@H, including my username, team, and passkey, and also whether or not it should start at startup. I set it up to do all that.
 

sedrosken

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Just installed Xubuntu on the laptop. Didn't register at first that F@H would see it as an entirely different machine now. Oh well. Could be worse.

I'm keeping this short because I'm typing a 5-page paper for English. Due tomorrow. About halfway done. No procrastination.
 

CougTek

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Sedrosken appeared in the stats and Pradeep resumed his contribution after an almost two years hiatus (last unit came in October 2012).
 

Handruin

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It's nice to see new and former people back contributing. Now if we could only somehow persuade David to turn his system back on. :) I'm about to catch up to him in points in a couple weeks.
 

sedrosken

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It'll show up that I have three clients active this month, I figured out how to install 7 x64 on here and I took the opportunity. Thank God for backward-compatible hardware.
 

Bozo

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My FAH-GPU program has been trying download from the F@H server for two days now. Anyone else having problems?
 

CougTek

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If you look at the stats, both my production and Handruin's have been falling. My servers don't seem to get big units anymore. Something similar must happen to the GPU client since Handruinis affected too. I haven't been checking Stanford's forum, but there must be an answer there somewhere.
 

CougTek

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Thanks to all. It has been a great year for our team. I haven't compiled the stats yet (and I won't tonight as I'm quite tired), but we've more than doubled our total contribution from all the previous years. It's been a phenomenal global effort and we've finally climbed back into the top 100 teams thanks to that.

Let's hope 2015 will be as good as 2014 has been.
 

Handruin

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I agree with your sentiments and also share the same thanks to everyone who participates in the project and contributes to this team. I'm sad to see Mark has stopped and also hasn't visited us much in a while but he's certainly contributed a huge amount over the years to the project and the community and that can't be forgotten. It's never too late for anyone else to help contribute if you can, even if for a little while.

I've recently (last night) brought online two GTX 980s. Sadly there is a known software defect in the way Nvidia handles the calls specific to what F@H needs in their newer core so they're not running as optimized as they could be right now under Core 18. Hopefully Nvidia can address this sooner than later. I'll work on re-purposing my GTX 780 into another system to continue it folding but for the next few days it may be offline.
 

Handruin

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I'm finally getting some consistent Core 17 work units and it makes a huge difference compared to the Core 18. The Core 17 add considerably to my PPD. I still need to find a place to put my 780 to get that folding again and soon I'll be giving Coug a run for his money. ;-)
 

Handruin

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Unfortunately I can't control the distribution of work units so it's very possibly I'll get stuck working on core 18 again. I have to wait until nvidia works on the issue with F@H team to figure out what is needed to correct their drivers for that core. Until then, F@H has put in a software workaround for Maxwell GPUs which is very inefficient (75K PPD vs 340K PPD on Core 17).
 

sedrosken

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How is it that you guys are getting hundreds of thousands of points a day where I'm getting ~300 a day if I'm lucky?

Figured out F@H for Arch/Manjaro, by the way -- I could never get the AUR version to run right in straight Arch for some reason but in Manjaro it works without issue. I'm not going to question it.
 

sedrosken

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Good laugh, but seriously, does using GPU over CPU folding lead to that drastic of an increase? Or do you guys just have a bunch of machines running it at once? Because I can't compete with that -- I tried getting F@H running on my FreeNAS server to fill up its spare CPU cycles and gave up. I might just throw Debian on there if I can figure out how to set up a Samba server on it so it can hold my stuff. Won't bother with a GUI other than pure Xorg, as I'm not using the GUI for anything but a file manager and FAHControl. Might figure out how to remote into it to administrate it from my laptop.
 

Handruin

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How is it that you guys are getting hundreds of thousands of points a day where I'm getting ~300 a day if I'm lucky?

Figured out F@H for Arch/Manjaro, by the way -- I could never get the AUR version to run right in straight Arch for some reason but in Manjaro it works without issue. I'm not going to question it.


For me it's mostly GPU folding and some CPU folding.

GPU:
2 x R9 290X
2 x GTX 980 SC
1 x GTX 650 448 core
1 x GTX 780 (TBD soon)

CPU (low PPD):
Core i7 3770K (2 threads)
Core i7 4790K (2 threads)
Core i7 860 (TBD soon)
AMD FX-3850FX Black Edition (2 threads)
 

Handruin

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Good laugh, but seriously, does using GPU over CPU folding lead to that drastic of an increase? Or do you guys just have a bunch of machines running it at once? Because I can't compete with that -- I tried getting F@H running on my FreeNAS server to fill up its spare CPU cycles and gave up. I might just throw Debian on there if I can figure out how to set up a Samba server on it so it can hold my stuff. Won't bother with a GUI other than pure Xorg, as I'm not using the GUI for anything but a file manager and FAHControl. Might figure out how to remote into it to administrate it from my laptop.

For the average consumer, GPU folding will yield you good PPD (points per day). Coug is doing the higher-end CPU folding which needs multi-socket and high core counts to get the bonus points he's getting. Let me give you some rough numbers for GPU folding.

1 x R9 290X ~225,000 PPD
1 x GTX 980 SC ~325,000 PPD (Core 17 work units)
1 x GTX 780 SC ~ 140,000 PPD
1 x GTX 560 448 core ~ 25,000 PPD
 

sedrosken

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Well.

That's certainly something. At least I'm not getting laughed at here. The sad thing is that while using my Intel HD would certainly be faster than using my CPU, it doesn't recognize it as a GPU. Another thing that would really help would be if it used more than 50% of my CPU when at full. It sees two threads and I manually set it to use both but it still won't push my CPU usage over 50%.

I don't have the raw power to throw at this and I won't for quite some time yet, but I still intend to help in whatever miniscule way I can.
 
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