returning DCer needs some advice

[cytech]

A few years back I used to run Seti but stoped for many personal reasons and also the reason that in the end I decided it was a waste (if there is any intelligent life out there, one day im sure it will find us) of resources and power.

the other week I put F@H on my co-lo'd server and its chugging away quite happily, its not the fastet machine in the world (5600x2 linux machine) and seems to take a few days to spit wus out.

now after yet another blow to my personal life I think I should do more.

16 years ago my step-father (who had never been seriously ill, never been in hospital since birth) had an accident at work and was taken to hospital for a scan, there was no damage from the accident but they found a brain tumor, a year later he died. He was 42

2 years ago my biological-father was diagnosed with lung cancer, no not from smoking but due to working with aspest (spelling?) earlier in his life. he died last december. He was 62

this week my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, the truth is i don't know what to feel yet its confusing she lives over 1500km away in another country, she has my sister for support though.

Please, im not looking for sympathy. no "sorry to hear that" etc. Life is what it is and I learned to accept that a long time ago.

back to the topic.

the three main problems I have to over come are:
1.) my gf hates pcs being on all the time, it took me months to convince her to let me have a file server on 24/7 -.-
2.) although I don't mind leaving pc's on, the rigs that I could have DCing are not exactly "green" when running 100% and theres always this nagging in my head about how much power they eat.
3.) I gave my old rig to mf GF, i'm not sure how well she would react to it runnign 100% all the time. as she likes to play just as much as me.

why are these problems? well because I remember how much I got into seti. the competion in crunching packets, it was actually fun trying to get the tiniest bit of performance out of my boxen back then and work my way up the list. and my lack of self control would more than likely lead back to the same thing.

I don't want to dedicate a box just yet (my wallet, and its protector probably don't want to either) but what I have at the moment is hte following:

1) the 5600x2 currently chugging away.
2) the gf's rig. q6600@3.2Ghz and a 8800Gts (the original 2 slot version)
3) my rig E8600@4.05Ghz, OC'd GTX 260, and a 8800GT amp (not in the rig yet but lying arround gathering dust.)
4) a semperon 3100.

now i read somewhere you can't run the command line clients as services under Vista which makes things more difficult as the two main rigs.
I have no issues starting clients everytime, but i know my gf would probably not do it. solutions to this greatly accepted.

another thing is I saw there is a F@H client on teh PS3? is it possible to configure this to run all the time in the background whilst playing?

any tipps advice etc are greatly welcome.

sorry if this post just seems a mindless ramble, i'm a bit brain"@&/ed atm.

 

[Sunin]

You will most likely have performance issues if you try to mix the 88GT with the 260. Best to just leave teh 88GT maybe for the semperon rig if it has a pcie slot.

You can setup the systray client for the GPU and toss the shortcut in start-up.

The PS3 is only a foreground. It will need to be paused as you game.

Honestly set a rig and forget it. I don't touch my machines unless they are hung up, which happens once a month or so, usually due to a bad WU.

Fold [H]ard

 

[Wheresatom]

I am not sure what you mean by command line clients, but I run the SMP client on my sig rig as a service no problem. Actually, knock on wood, my SMP client has been running without any problems for months now, while it is my GPU that is giving me fits.

If you are really concerned with the power usage, about the only thing you can do is address it by making sure you have the most efficient power supplies possible in your machines. These can be expensive to swap out just for fun. It can be argued that the payback period might be a bit long on that also. Now, if you have some cheap off brand power supply, it might be a different story.

Good luck and welcome. You bring some nice hardware to the fight. If you left that on 24/7 you would be well above me in PPD that's for sure.


Here is your badge:

 

[Kendrak]

That 280 should do 6-8k (depending on the WU) of production on it's own.

Welcome, fold on, fold [H]ard!

 

[Zero82z]

due to working with aspest (spelling?)

Do you mean asbestos?

the three main problems I have to over come are:
1.) my gf hates pcs being on all the time, it took me months to convince her to let me have a file server on 24/7 -.-
2.) although I don't mind leaving pc's on, the rigs that I could have DCing are not exactly "green" when running 100% and theres always this nagging in my head about how much power they eat.
3.) I gave my old rig to mf GF, i'm not sure how well she would react to it runnign 100% all the time. as she likes to play just as much as me.

1. Can't really do anything about that. You'll just have to convince her .
2. It's a personal choice whether or not you're willing to deal with the extra power costs. It is a tradeoff, but it's going towards a good cause.
3. F@H does use 100% of available resources, but will give up anything needed by another program because it runs at minimum priority. This means that there is effectively no performance impact from running F@H. If she wants to run a game or use a CPU-intensive application, it will run just as fast as it would have if F@H was not running.

why are these problems? well because I remember how much I got into seti. the competion in crunching packets, it was actually fun trying to get the tiniest bit of performance out of my boxen back then and work my way up the list. and my lack of self control would more than likely lead back to the same thing.

And that's a bad thing how? I'm sure that most of the people here have that same sort of competitive attitude towards folding. That's what makes it fun, and the more motivated we are to put even more into it, the more good work that we do. I don't see a downside there .

I don't want to dedicate a box just yet (my wallet, and its protector probably don't want to either) but what I have at the moment is hte following:

1) the 5600x2 currently chugging away.
2) the gf's rig. q6600@3.2Ghz and a 8800Gts (the original 2 slot version)
3) my rig E8600@4.05Ghz, OC'd GTX 260, and a 8800GT amp (not in the rig yet but lying arround gathering dust.)
4) a semperon 3100.

My suggestions for setting up those machines:
1. Set this machine up to use the SMP client if it isn't already. You do need 64-bit Linux for that if you aren't already using it though. There is a guide on how to configure it in this forum if you need help.
2. I gather that you basically want this set up so that it's transparent to the user. In that case, the best course of action would be to use four uniprocessor clients set as services, and to get the GPU folding with the GPU client (which can also be set as a service).
3. Apparently there are some issues with running multiple nVidia cards with different amounts of shaders in the same system. I suggest you try and stick the 8800GT into a different system and run the GPU client on it. For this one, run one instance of the SMP client along with one GPU client on the GTX280.
4. Unfortunately, you probably won't get a whole lot of F@H performance out of this CPU. If it has a PCI-E slot, it would be a good idea to put the 8800GT in this machine and use it to run the GPU client. Otherwise, just run one instance of the uniprocessor client.

now i read somewhere you can't run the command line clients as services under Vista which makes things more difficult as the two main rigs.
I have no issues starting clients everytime, but i know my gf would probably not do it. solutions to this greatly accepted.

The console clients have no issues running as a service. However, the SMP client does, unfortunately. The SMP client does put out considerably more points than the standard uniprocessor client, but if you must go with uniprocessor clients, then it's still better than nothing. My suggestion is that you run SMP clients on as many machines as you can. Also, the Linux SMP client is much more efficient than the Windows version, so you might want to consider running Linux on your secondary machines for that.

another thing is I saw there is a F@H client on teh PS3? is it possible to configure this to run all the time in the background whilst playing?

IIRC, you can't run it while playing games. However, you can schedule it to start up at certain times. I'm not all that familiar with the PS3 F@H client, so I'll leave that to someone else.

 

[SazanEyes]

For the PS3, you can set the F@H application (Life with Playstation) to auto-start when the system is idle. Here are the instructions. In the F@H channel within Life with Playstation, you can enter your name and team. The PS3 client is good for about 900 PPD if you let it run 24/7. There's also an option to turn off the PS3 after the current WU finishes, if you want to save power.

 

[alan2308]

For the PS3, you can set the F@H application (Life with Playstation) to auto-start when the system is idle. Here are the instructions. In the F@H channel within Life with Playstation, you can enter your name and team. The PS3 client is good for about 900 PPD if you let it run 24/7. There's also an option to turn off the PS3 after the current WU finishes, if you want to save power.

It used to be 900, but I'm getting 1100PPD out of mine right now. The PS3 is the only thing I have on F@H right now.

 

[cytech]

Thanks for the tipps guys.