A couple quick noobie questions

U

Untitledone

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - April 2012
Joined
Feb 28, 2011
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Hi guys, I just set up my main computer to fold today. I was just wondering what I need to do to sign up on [H]ardfolding. I assume that since I have just started and have no stats yet that I will not show up on it yet since I need a Stats ID # to be able to register. My first thing will be done by around 1am tonight so I wont know until tomorrow whats up.

I am also running F@H on my laptop that I am typing this on. I know a lot of people use bare computers to run folding efficiently(no video card), and video card rigs to put out more points. I haven't seen too much information on laptops though, it would seem like they would be ok. They may have less performance but they also take less power. This one I have uses a 65w powerblock for it. It seems like they would be decent since by comparison the chipsets, and other hardware take less power than their desktop counterparts. It would seem if you got multiple laptops pulling the same power as a desktop with similar hardware that the laptops would put out more PPD than the desktop using the same amount of power from the wall.

Its probably my relative newness to this that I would come to that conclusion, but I would like to hear what others with more experience think.
 
as far as hardfolding goes. you really don't need to sign up. once you turn in a few WU's you can look up your stats that way. having the account really doesn't make it any easier.

as far as laptops go, desktop's will still out produce any laptop PPD per watt so the difference in power usage really depends on the end user whether power usage or points are more important. laptops also are not built for high loads over a long period of time. they are built to sit idle 99% of their life so components, more specifically the motherboard will usually give up pretty quickly in most newer laptops.
 
Thanks for the reply, I will see what kind of PPD output I get by tomorrow then.

I am beginning to see that with this laptop, it is working hard. I have it elevated to allow airflow under it. Although it seems that the fan isnt always rev'd up, most of the time it is fairly quiet, and doesnt get extremely hot.
 
As monkey says, be very careful when you decide to fold on a laptop. This would be a good time to download and load up CoreTemp so that you can monitor your cpu temps. Laptops don't exactly have the best cooling in the world, and you want to keep those temps reasonable so that you don't drastically shorten the life of everything in there. Due to the way cooling works on a laptop, chances are that an excessively hot processor is also cooking more than just itself.
 
make sure you get your passkey. Then put it in your configuration. Once you fold 10 WU using your passkey, you will be eligable for bonuses and your PPD will go way up with no additional power draw.
 
amdgamer said:
As monkey says, be very careful when you decide to fold on a laptop. This would be a good time to download and load up CoreTemp so that you can monitor your cpu temps. Laptops don't exactly have the best cooling in the world, and you want to keep those temps reasonable so that you don't drastically shorten the life of everything in there. Due to the way cooling works on a laptop, chances are that an excessively hot processor is also cooking more than just itself.
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How accurate is coretemp? Ouch I hit a peak of 84C thats pretty brutal. I am going to put this computer in the coolest room in the house, and put it on power saver setting so it downclocks for the rest of this WU. I will probably do that until I get my 10WU done.

Well at least I havent gone out of spec, it says Tj max 100C.

jfb9301 said:
make sure you get your passkey. Then put it in your configuration. Once you fold 10 WU using your passkey, you will be eligable for bonuses and your PPD will go way up with no additional power draw.
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I made sure that both machines had my passkey in, thats the first thing I got before I even downloaded or started folding.

Thanks for the responses. I just set my laptop to power saver, and I already saw it drop from 80C to 60C within a few seconds. I am using fahspy to help me keep track of stuff. I am using -smp on small packets and getting 13.35mins(per percent) on full power settings, and it will drop to 24mins(per percent) when on power saver.

EDIT: I guess that what I refer to as per percent is refered to as per step in fahspy. I will find out when I go home tomorrow what my Phenom 9600BE Quad Core has for me, and how many points my laptop got me (both without bonuses of course).
 
Coretemp is very accurate, and is all that I use whether it is my gaming rig, the 2 folding rigs, or my daily use laptop with an AMD Turion 64 X2 [email protected]. A lot of people here also like RealTemp, but I really enjoy how simplistic CoreTemp's display is as RealTemp just looks too cluttered for my taste.

If you are hitting 84C, that is definately way too hot. What is your laptop running? Back before I stopped folding on my laptop, one of the things I did to keep temps in check was to change the CPU utilization percent in the configuration for the client. I had to reduce CPU utilization from 100% down to 65% in order to keep the CPU from exceeding 72 degrees. I have it set back upto 100% right now since I only run a single uniprocessor work unit once in a while as I feel like it. The problem is that even though your Intel processor might handle the temps, you don't want it cooking anything else due to the way laptop cooling works. The hardware in laptops are not as robust as they once were, and durability is a HUGE issue unless you happen to have an old laptop you don't care about.

Untitledone said:
How accurate is coretemp? Ouch I hit a peak of 84C thats pretty brutal. I am going to put this computer in the coolest room in the house, and put it on power saver setting so it downclocks for the rest of this WU. I will probably do that until I get my 10WU done.

Well at least I havent gone out of spec, it says Tj max 100C.



I made sure that both machines had my passkey in, thats the first thing I got before I even downloaded or started folding.

Thanks for the responses. I just set my laptop to power saver, and I already saw it drop from 80C to 60C within a few seconds. I am using fahspy to help me keep track of stuff. I am using -smp on small packets and getting 13.35mins(per percent) on full power settings, and it will drop to 24mins(per percent) when on power saver.

EDIT: I guess that what I refer to as per percent is refered to as per step in fahspy. I will find out when I go home tomorrow what my Phenom 9600BE Quad Core has for me, and how many points my laptop got me (both without bonuses of course).
Click to expand...
 
Zero82z said:
Eh, for a laptop, 84C is alright.
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I think 84 is okay for shorter bursts, but i'm not convinced that is safe for running days at a time like when folding. Keep in mind that i'm also a risk adverse person.

My laptop does hit upper 70's when I decide to fire up some games on it(just replayed DN3D in preparation for DNF coming out soon), but I never let it exceed 72 back when I was using it to fold.
 
I just got up this morning and checked it. Core temp recorded a low of 51C last night so I think I got thermals in check. I am just going to leave it down clocked. Its normally a 1.83ghz core 2 duo, but its running at 993mhz to throttle back. I am just going to leave it that way until this WU completes.

Also, for the 10 WU, does it matter which one it is? I was thinking of dropping the size on my main computer to pound them out faster so I can get to the bonus, and then switch them back.
 
yes and no.

The 10 WU must be from the SMP pool, but it does not matter if they are bigadv or normal SMP.

So this also means that GPU WU and uniprocessor WU will not count toward bonus.

they use 10 as an entry measure to see if you can make deadlines. The full requirement is 10WU with 80% completion within deadline, and after that you must continue to maintain your 80% average or the bonus goes away.

For reference, I think I had a 9600BE last year. It did fine on A3 SMP WU. As a quad, I would keep your client setup fairly basic.

-smp 4 -verbosity 9 -forceasm

should be about it, possibly a mild overclock on the CPU, as a BE you have an unlocked multi, so simple OCing is available.
 
Thanks. What I meant by size was, In the folding at home smp config it asks for small, normal,big. When played I with that on my laptop the small one was about twice as fast as the large one. I was just wondering, because it was part of the SMP client, and uses both cores so I though it might count for the 80% 10WU.

As for the 9600BE, I have it oveclocked to 2.47ghz up from 2.3 on stock voltages. It seems to be doing alright. Though thats because its the most power computer I have access to right now.

The "-smp 4 -verbosity 9 -forceasm" settings are input on the end of the target on the shortcut correct? What do those do for me?

EDIT: Just got home for a bit, Phenom 9600 is chugging away, it sent a WU last night, and is 52% done with another one. Just installed coretemp and the processor is sitting solid between 37C-38C under full load accross all 4 cores with a slight overclock.
 
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SMP 4
tells the client how many threads to use (should be equal to number of cores, unless reserving a core for GPU folding)

verbosity 9
tells the client how much detail to include in the log file, 1 being simple and 9 being the most information. If you have some kind of problem, we will be able to provide more help if your log file is more detailed

forceasm
tells the client to ignore crashes if your WU fails. with out it and you crash a WU you will download a standard uniprocessor WU.

you can put them on the end of the shortcut or include them in the client config. I usually put all but the -smp in the client config because no matter the number of cores I am running I always use the others. I put the -smp in the shortcut so I can change from smp 10 to smp 12 by running different short cuts. I use smp 10 when GPU folding and when encoding video.

small, normal, big usually has no impact on the WU, so I am surprised you saw a difference.
 
That was what bothered me too. I am using FahSpy to help calculate what I could be getting in PPD. When my laptop was on the large size it estimated like 400PPD, and on the small size it hit a peak of 8k PPD estimate. I still dont know how my 1.83Ghz dual core laptop at 75% is estimating higher PPD than my Quad core desktop running full bore with almost a 700Mhz clock speed advantage, and twice the cores. I will just have to see what happens when the laptop finishes today. The desktop is estimating 260 PPD right now.

EDIT: I am just going to say that the differences are because of the wierd nature of the laptop.
 
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