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Some of the same (probably)

H

hiodie

Gawd
Joined
Aug 24, 2008
Messages
900
I am looking at joining F@H, and I have a few questions that I can hopefully get answered. The PCs (boxen) I have to use are as follows:

1) Q6600 @ 3.0Ghz (may be able to go a little higher, but temp limited), 4GB, GTX 460
2) AMD 635 (currently stock, need better cooling to OC), 4GB, onboard
3) E5200 (stock, could probably go to 3.0 or so), 4GB, onboard

Questions:
1) If I were to use (1) for 20-24 hrs/day and (2) for ~18 hrs/day, how noticeable would the increase to my electric bill be (estimate)? My wife wouldn't appreciate (read I would have to stop) anything that was noticeable from monthly fluctuations.

2) Do people get anything out of this other than a friendly competition? I think I am missing something when people have 15+ boxen running 24/7 for this, racking up $100s each month for it. Is it all charitable, or are there rewards/benefits for having a high ppd?

3) I am looking at starting now for the drawings, but I would need to be reaching about 17k ppd. Is that possible with just using PC (1) & (2)? Would I be close enough that if I used (3) occasionally too I could reach it? If I can't, I will probably wait until it cools down before starting.

Thanks!

EDIT: Up and running on PC (1) now...thanks for the help getting me off the ground
 
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1. Hard to say, but I would say maybe a $10 increase per month. That's a wild guess though since I don't know how much your KWh cost is.

2. We get the satisfaction of knowing we are helping our fellow man and the competition is good as well.

3. You could reach 17K PPD easily with all of your systems. System 1 should easily do 15K if you OC the 460.
 
1. If your systems are already on 24/7 anyway, it probably won't be noticed. The biggest power draw will be the GTX 460, but as DooKey said overall shouldn't be more than $10 or so.

2. It's all charitable, but it's also addictive. Personally I'm impatient so I like a high PPD. :D If you enjoy building PCs as a hobby like me, this is a good cause that gives all your PCs something to do.

3. Most of your points will come from the first system. Set up the clients on the first two machines and monitor with HFM.NET to see if you need (or want) more PPD.
 
1. its anywhere from 5-15 dollars depends on where you live.. for example i live in an apartment with bulk rate electricity in eastern washington.. phenom II 940 @ 3.4ghz, 2 8800GS's(heavily overclocked) my electricity bill went up 7 dollars folding 24/7.. your GTX 460 will be the most power hungry out of the entire setup but should use about the same amount of power as both my 8800GS's and make about 3k more PPD then both of my 8800GS's combined..

2. for most of us its about the science.. the points are a bonus.. gives us an idea of how our systems are performing and allows for a little competition between fellow folders..

3. with your setup you should easily do 20k PPD total with all those rigs.. the 460 with a decent overclock will do roughly 10-11k PPD, the q6600 should do between 5-6k PPD, the 635 if you can get it overclocked above 3.4ghz will do about 5.5-6.5k PPD, the E5200 will do about 2-3k PPD with a decent overclock..

at first your points wont match what you see in HFM(monitoring program) but once you finish your first 10 SMP WU's(make sure you have the passkey setup) then you will start seeing the bonus points added.. the amount of time your rig is folding has a huge effect on your bonus points.. for example turning your system off for 2-3 hours could mean you lose anywhere from 200-500 points for that WU..
 
Sounds good. Just so I am clear, I want to set up SMP (MPICH) on both quad cores (I'll wait on my E5200, its my main HTPC and don't feel like set it up there yet) and GPU2 on the GTX 460 (I think I read there was a GPU3 for 4xx series?) Let me know if anything needs changed and I will start installing tonight. Thanks for the info.
 
You don't need to install any of the MPICH stuff anymore, just the F@H SMP client. It's much simpler than it used to be.
 
hiodie said:
Sounds good. Just so I am clear, I want to set up SMP (MPICH) on both quad cores (I'll wait on my E5200, its my main HTPC and don't feel like set it up there yet) and GPU2 on the GTX 460 (I think I read there was a GPU3 for 4xx series?) Let me know if anything needs changed and I will start installing tonight. Thanks for the info.
Click to expand...


use zero82z's SMP client setup guide.. its at the top of the forum.. it has everything you need to set it up including the download link for the exact client you need.. and yes the 460 requires the gpu3 client.. which is easy to do.. just install setup the config on first start and let it do its thing..
 
Alright, so I have the SMP client up and running and I have what is probably a stupid question. I just got the GTX460 in today, and it isn't installed, so can I shutdown/restart the computer while folding? Does it just pause where its at or does it lose the information? Does it know automatically or do i need to let it know somehow? I apologize for the very beginner questions
 
Yes, it saves every few minutes, so just Ctrl-C in the command window to shut it down.
 
hiodie said:
Alright, so I have the SMP client up and running and I have what is probably a stupid question. I just got the GTX460 in today, and it isn't installed, so can I shutdown/restart the computer while folding? Does it just pause where its at or does it lose the information? Does it know automatically or do i need to let it know somehow? I apologize for the very beginner questions
Click to expand...


just press the X and close it.. same thing as the cntrl C sazaneye posted above..

when you open it again it will varify the information and start folding at the last checkpoint..

(rule of thumb in the advanced settings change the check point time to 5 minutes, default is 15 minutes)
 
Ok...another hopefully easy question to answer. When I check my name on hardfolding, it shows up, but says I am not active. However, both clients are still running (neither were stopped at any point). Is this something that matters?
 
I don't think it really means anything. Because you're a new member, you still have 0 as your average PPD on that page. If that's what it uses to determine active/inactive, then it won't flip to active until you've folded for a couple more days.
 
So its been about a week, and I've noticed my AMD 635 doesn't seem to be pulling its weight. Here are the current HFM.net #s, but they don't vary much (all running SMP):

Q6600 (@ 3.1GHz) - 5785 ppd, 6:23 TPF
635 (@ 3.1 GHz) - 2343 ppd, 11:37 TPF
9150e (@ 2.1 GHz) - 3278 ppd, 9:18 TPF

The 635 numbers are slightly lower due to live TV running on it all night, but it usually matches the 9150e. Is that right? I would think it should be able to beat an older cpu having a much higher clock (no L3 cache though).
 
Something is eating up cpu cycles. My 640 at 3.2ghz gets about 4k ppd. Plus some wu run like crap. It's just how it is. I wouldn't worry too much about it.
 
My 635 @ 3.2 GHz is currently pulling 4.6k PPD on the P6072 wu. There is a few wu's that I have seen 6k PPD @ current clock speeds.If you got it recording TV or something at night that will steal a good bit of cycles away and cause a lower PPD.
 
Yeah, if the 635 is currently running a P6701 or P6702, that would be why its output is lower. These are just terrible work units compared to every other SMP unit out there.
 
Its not just this work unit though (and the TV things was just last night, forgot to turn it off when I fell asleep). It is consistently right around 3k ppd...

EDIT: So I have noticed my ppd is higher than what HFM.net is typically reporting (by 1-2k). Is there a way to check on completed points per client using something other than HFM.net? Something that actually connects to Stanford's servers?
 
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