Folding@Home

[LiamC]

That, and I've been on holidays for two weeks so everything got shut down.
:santa:

Got back home last night and it was about 37.5 C (close to 100 F) at 7:45PM! Heat is going to be an issue for the next three months. Thanks all.

 

[ddrueding]

It is actually starting to warm up here as well; 70 degrees at 10:30PM. I'll take some more of that...

 

[timwhit]

It is actually starting to warm up here as well; 70 degrees at 10:30PM. I'll take some more of that...

Low tonight -9° F. Tomorrow's high -1° F.

 

[CougTek]

Currently -7°F, low tonight -18°F.

I beat you.

I admit I wouldn't walk outside in t-shirt right now. I would at least put a sweater.

 

[ddrueding]

No, I think that means I win. Unless you are doing the Russian "who can suffer more" thing.

 

[Fushigi]

Weatherman said this morning it was colder in Elgin, IL (a Chicago 'burb) than at the South Pole (base temp; doesn't include wind chill). In my 'burb it's been as low as -14F today. That's what I've seen, at least. -10F right now.

 

[timwhit]

Wind Chill is bullshit anyways.

 

[Fushigi]

Real temp is -26F at the moment. Last night's wind chill was reported at -45 to -50; I wouldn't know how realistic that is as we stayed inside. But our dog was certainly feeling it every time she went out to potty.

The heat wave is already underway, though; today's high can get all the way up to 7F.

 

[Fushigi]

Milestones celebrations will be rarer. Both Fushi and LiamC have considerably slowed down their productions. I suspect LiamC's reason is because it's the middle of Summer down there and he tries to limit the heat production made by his computers. Fushi, I haven no idea. I hope it's not something bad like a dead computer.

Not dead as in broken, but I have taken part of the farm off-line. Our electric bills are just too high and my wife pays them; I don't. So it's hard to justify her paying for my frivolous efforts.

I did fire up the machines yesterday, though, to add a little heat to the basement while I'm waiting for temps to get back above 10F or so.

But in the long run I thing my efforts to be a Folding contributor will slacken more and more. Every time I've made a significant spend to accomodate the current Folding clients, within a few months Stanford has either stopped supporting the hardware (ATI 19xx GPUs) or come out with other clients (nVidia GPUs) that spank the point possibilities of what I spent on (ATI 3870s).

I'm tired of it. I'm tired of spending money & effort to implement Stanford's latest solutions only to have sand kicked in my face. I'd like to say I'm in it purely for the scientific contribution, but the point rewards are the only acknowledgement I can reasonably look forward to and that's not going to be manageable without the constant investment.

 

[CougTek]

The heat wave is already underway, though; today's high can get all the way up to 7F.

I imagine the face Paugie must do when reading that we call 7F a "heat wave".

 

[LiamC]

I have been trying out SMP on a Windows 7 32-bit box (Q6600), that is also used quite as a normal machine. Under XP, it used to average about 3 000~3 100 ppd for 2665 units. Under Windows 7, it's averaging about 2 800 ppd.

The flip side is an Athlon X2 5000+ using Windows 7 64-bit. With unit 2653, under XP it used to average 785 ppd. Under Windows 7 64-bit, it's doing 985 ppd

 

[LiamC]

There is a new FAH executable out, 6.24r3 or something. The 6.23 release will stop working 'round about now... Time to update

 

[P5-133XL]

Congrats to LiamC for reaching the 5,000,000 mark!

 

[Pradeep]

Looks like some may have stopped for the summer.

Anyone capable of running the 8 + core units?

 

[CougTek]

Yes, I am. But the first I've got is quite heavy. Under Centos 5.4, my Core i7 860 (unoverclocked) is taking one hour per frame. That will be 100 hours to complete the unit. I don't know what's the deadline, but if it's three days, I'm toasted. I've checked the system monitoring application and all eight cores (4 virtual) are utilised in the 90's percent.

 

[CougTek]

Now I know why the unit takes so much time to complete. It's worth 25403 points alone (project 2681, 2682 and 2683). I'm not even sure I'll be able to complete it within the prefered delay (4 days).

 

[Pradeep]

Just started running 6.29 beta, with -SMP on a Q6600.

http://folding.stanford.edu/English/DownloadWinOther

I believe there was a FAH forum post that mentioned that 8 cores at 2.8GHz could finish a unit in about 3 days.

 

[Pradeep]

I'm looking forward to the forthcoming 6 and 12 core Magny-Cours AMD chips, looks like the chipsets will be all set to go with USB 3 and SATA 600.

 

[CougTek]

I believe there was a FAH forum post that mentioned that 8 cores at 2.8GHz could finish a unit in about 3 days.

Yep, that's about what it takes. I found the reason why it took so much time to complete the first unit (project 2683) : the CPU was operating at 2GHz instead of 2.8GHz. I didn't verified the frequency in the BIOS when I finished assembling the system. I thought the Gigabyte motherboard with the latest BIOS version would be wise enough to set the processor's frequency correctly automatically. I was wrong.

Now everything's fine. Each frame completes in a little less than 40 minutes so the entire unit should be done in a less than three days.

 

[CougTek]

Sorry for my abysmal contribution during the last two days. There was an electrical black out during a wind storm and my faithful Dell FPW2005 didn't like it. I'm now using a Mitsubishi Diamond Scan 20H with a blurry screen that I dig in my old stuff. It was quite hard to restart the folding client without a monitor.

I don't know what monitor to get to replace the 20 inch LCD that just died. I won't be able to stand the Mitsubishi for long. If only there was affordable good LED screens to buy. The most interesting I've seen are TVs, not monitors. There's a 24 inches Acer with LED backlight on my price lists, but it's a TN panel. I don't want to spend close to 300$ for a TN panel. I don't know what to buy.

 

[LunarMist]

Bummer. Was that on a UPS?

 

[CougTek]

No, an IBM power bar. I don't think it was the bar that was in fault because all my other equipment is ok (three computers, speakers, cable modem). It just didn't like the brutal shutdown.

 

[LiamC]

Sorry for my abysmal contribution during the last two days. There was an electrical black out during a wind storm and my faithful Dell FPW2005 didn't like it. I'm now using a Mitsubishi Diamond Scan 20H with a blurry screen that I dig in my old stuff. It was quite hard to restart the folding client without a monitor.

I don't know what monitor to get to replace the 20 inch LCD that just died. I won't be able to stand the Mitsubishi for long. If only there was affordable good LED screens to buy. The most interesting I've seen are TVs, not monitors. There's a 24 inches Acer with LED backlight on my price lists, but it's a TN panel. I don't want to spend close to 300$ for a TN panel. I don't know what to buy.

I'm very happy with my Dell 2209WA E-IPS panel. If you don't mind 1680 x 1050. When it's on special it's good.

 

[Handruin]

I haven't yet seen any of those huge work units. Is there something else I need to do to get them? I have a pass phrase, I've complete more than 10 WUs, I have enough system resources, I have SMP and -bigadv flags set...is there something else I'm missing?

 

[CougTek]

...is there something else I'm missing?

You're missing Linux. That's why I told you to install it in a VM. AFAIK, the big units are only available for the Linux client.

 

[CougTek]

http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=13648

 

[CougTek]

Well, forget the VM with Linux. In order to get big units, you need to have eight recognized cores in your OS. This means a dedicated Linux box (as I do).

You won't process big units.

 

[Handruin]

I saw that you originally said Linux but I took that as a suggestion not a requirement (thanks for the link confirming it)...plus the only way to have 8 virtual CPUs is with the latest vSphere and an enterprise license which is very expensive.

I won't be running Linux on my i7 system so I guess I won't be able to get them...oh well.

 

[CougTek]

I had to reboot all my systems for maintenance. Now I forgot what username/password I put in my Linux box (by far my most productive one). Of course, I haven't written it anywhere. Expect a major point drop from me in the upcoming hours/days.

 

[Pradeep]

So it looks like a 12 core Magny Cours (2*6 core dies on same package) at 2.4 GHz @ 80W will be around $800: http://www.provantage.com/~7AAMD2ET.htm

using socket G34.

 

[CougTek]

My Linux box is back online after a complete reinstallation. I won't lose the password this time.

I managed to install the ATI graphic driver (I didn't bother the first time), so I can use a higher resolution than 800x600. However, the mouse cursor is gone, which is awfully annoying. There's something not working between Gnome, CentOS 5.4 64bits and the latest ATI driver for a Radeon HD 5750.

 

[CougTek]

So it looks like a 12 core Magny Cours (2*6 core dies on same package) at 2.4 GHz @ 80W will be around $800: http://www.provantage.com/~7AAMD2ET.htm

using socket G34.

I would be curious to know how it fares against the 12 virtual cores of the upcoming Core i7 980X, at least for running the FAH smp client.

 

[timwhit]

mouse cursor is gone

...

Gnome

There's your problem.

 

[CougTek]

So moving to KDE would fix the issue? I assume it's a known bug to Linux users.

Or was your comment only a sarcastic punch at a windows environment you simply don't like (I prefer KDE and Xfce myself)?

 

[timwhit]

So moving to KDE would fix the issue? I assume it's a known bug to Linux users.

Or was your comment only a sarcastic punch at a windows environment you simply don't like (I prefer KDE and Xfce myself)?

It was sarcastic. I doubt moving to KDE would have any effect. You could try using a distro that is more up to date. I prefer Fedora with KDE right now.

 

[CougTek]

In the past, I prefered Xubuntu when I had to use Linux, but I've had so many problems with it with the last two releases (9.4 and 9.10) that I've given up. I read others here using CentOS, so I tried it. I simply need to run the FAH client on it and CentOS 5.4 has done the job. The mouse cursor only disappeared after I installed the proprietary video driver (which wasn't necessary for the task the system is meant to).

I would have liked to use it as a casual desktop, but with the invisible cursor, it won't happen. As long as the FAH points pile up, I won't drop a tear over it.

 

[timwhit]

CentOS is great for a server OS. I just prefer more up-to-date packages, which is why I use Fedora. Other distros that I have heard good things about recently are OpenSuse and Mandriva, both use KDE by default as well.

 

[CougTek]

Who's Vulneratum? Whoever you are, thank you for your contribution.

 

[LiamC]

It's getting colder so I might have to start up again. Anybody want to give me a run down on the latest clients? Tricks, traps? I was using notFreds VM distro, plus the SMP client on a couple of Windows machines. Only have Core 2 Quads, and soon a Phenom X6

 

[CougTek]

On Windows, each Core 2 Quad should give you between 5000 and 8000 points per day. The Phenom X6 won't be able to run the bigadv units under Linux because you need to have eight cores to get those (or at least eight virtual cores). So you'll just be able to run the standard clients and compute standard units on all your machines. Assuming the systems will run 24x7 and that you'll have three computers (2 C2Q and 1 Phenom X6), you should still be able to contribute at a daily rate of at least 15000 points, maybe closer to 20000 points. That would help us a lot. That would put you toe to toe with P5_133XL. For reference, this month (excluding today), Mark average 17692ppd while I did 23 876ppd.

What operating systems will you use? Windows XP 32bits, Windows 7 64 bits, some Linux flavor on one system?