445 replies to this topic

[Crankymonky]

My explanation for not being on there:

Well, one of my computers is off semi-permanently for the time being at least.
The other machine's CPU is being used up by Dave's favorite online game-Knight Online.
And, my mom's machine would be more comfortable without it.

BUT!, I will get one CPU up on it once it arrives. That's a promise. I'll probably change my username to crankmyonky1 or something because machine ID 1-3 were taken and now not in use, or maybe I'll just start at 4. The machine is a sempron 3100+, and I hope to OC it to about 2.5 ghz from the stock 1.8.

EDIT: Hmm, I guess this should probably go into the poll thread. But I do hope to help you guys out once at least this thing arrives.

Edited by crankymonky, 15 July 2005 - 12:07 PM.

[cxwq]

The machine is a sempron 3100+, and I hope to OC it to about 2.5 ghz from the stock 1.8.

I'll be curious to see how that performs with F@H. AMD owns Intel on most of the cores because of the floating point requirements of typical scientific apps. I'm going to add two Athlon64 3000+ (venice) boxes to the team during the next week or so.

Most of my current 16 boxes are Athlon XP 1700+ to 2000+ so the performance is a little weak on a per CPU basis. Those old chips are a great value in business computing though so I have lots of them around!

[quasar]

They don't seem to be doing badly, Cx. We can't catch you, I've been trying with about 5-6 computers for a few days now and I'm not even close. I must bow down to your superior processing power and maybe put this on the back burner for now.

Btw, who is Baelnorn anyway?

[cxwq]

They don't seem to be doing badly, Cx. We can't catch you, I've been trying with about 5-6 computers for a few days now and I'm not even close. I must bow down to your superior processing power and maybe put this on the back burner for now.

Btw, who is Baelnorn anyway?

Only three of your machines have submitted WUs so far. If you have use of a machine for a limited time or if it's not on 24/7, you may want to keep large projects disabled (default) so that they submit within a reasonable time. Likewise for slower machines.

Don't give up on the project just cause you can't catch me! I'm going to restructure the contest to be more of a long-haul second place sort of thing rather than a catch C kind of thing. I didn't realize at first how many machines I would be able to put to work or I wouldn't have created it that way in the first place. Stay tuned...

baelnorn is... well, he's baelnorn I would guess. Mysterious lurker takes NH folding world by storm <g>

[IronRhino]

I gave in and signed up. I don't know if I did anything right, and I'm probably only going to use one computer. We'll see what happens.

[Pineapple]

Pissage.

I'm running a summer camp right now, and some of the leaders who are borrowing my office turned off my work comp (instead of leaving it on like I always do), and I lost my last work unit, all three days of it. I can't seem to recover it, and I picked up another (smaller) work unit. Hopefully as I learn more I can figure out how to save/ recover WUs, if it is possible.

My home machine is a slug, so that one should be done sometime this evening (that one was folding since Wednesday).

This is pretty neat.


-Piney-

[cxwq]

3652nd place. Smoking!

Welcome to earl_the_bunny.

You guys rock, keep on folding.

[Crankymonky]

C, you're gonna have to wait to see how the new sempron compares. Shipping was postponed! But guys, keep on keeping on! I did figure out why my machines were running two copies. After selecting it as a service, it loads up under "system" rather than "yourusernamehere" Then when I booted up, I probably started it again under my username. It runs under "system" for everyone once selected as a service and given a reboot, correct?

Crank'

Correction: It is still running under my Athlon XP 2000+ which I just got a powercable for.

Edited by crankymonky, 16 July 2005 - 07:19 AM.

[cxwq]

It runs under "system" for everyone once selected as a service and given a reboot, correct?

Correct.

Once installed as a service, you don't need to do anything. It will launch under system authority before anyone even logs in to the box.

[Devious]

im having problems, my comps done 5 WU's, but 4 of them are in the Queue and arent submitting, it just trys and trys and trys

and i have 2 computers going now, both having the same problems

[Hunter]

I'm almost finished a biggy.

[cxwq]

3342nd place today. We passed 310 teams in the last 24 hours.

When we break the top 2000 we get included in the stats rundowns by Extreme OC. Then I'll be able to post up some nifty graphs and such.


I'll look into the submission queue problem tomorrow, but it's probably caused by either a firewall or something haywire between your two installs. Do you have the windoze firewall turned on? Zonealarm? A firewall can easily block submissions if you don't tell it that F@H is allowed to make outbound connections.

[flamebo388]

Well, I signed up, and I'll get my moms comp on my account in the morning. And it would seem they gave me a huge ass WU, it won't finish till october 29th and my comps a P4 3.2 ghz.


Edit: Never mind, it just bumped the finish date up to the 18 of this month.


Double edit: Does the program work while the computer is shut down or no? I'm assuming not.


Triple edit: I have the sliding bar set all the way to the right for cpu usage but when I press ctrl+alt+delete it says it's only using 50%

Edited by flamebo388, 17 July 2005 - 03:35 AM.

[The Infinite Shindig]

Well, I signed up, and I'll get my moms comp on my account in the morning. And it would seem they gave me a huge ass WU, it won't finish till october 29th and my comps a P4 3.2 ghz.

Edit: Never mind, it just bumped the finish date up to the 18 of this month.

The finish time is not a definite figure. It actually changes with your CPU usage. If you are running no programs and the computer is idle, then the CPU runs through the work unit at its fastest rate. Likewise, when you are burning a CD, chatting online, and listening to music the spare CPU time is low. This would mean that a rather long estimate would be provided. Of each work unit, my computer varies between 10 and 25 minutes per individual packet, depending on what I am doing.

Double edit: Does the program work while the computer is shut down or no? I'm assuming not.

The program uses your processor to run. Processors need power to run, like any electronic device. Therefore, you need to have the computer on and running in order for the program to run.

[cxwq]

What version are you running that gives you an expected finish time? I assume either the screensaver or gui version?

The one I run (console version) has no user-oriented output so I just look at the log file and multiply the time it takes to finish 1% of a WU by 100.

[nerfspecialforces]

235/400... and 3 days running exclueding night time(turn off my cpu at night).

[cxwq]

New today: VACC
Top guy not named cxwq: quasar
Proof that 2 CPUs helps: the_trouble and rawray7 - both moving up fast.
Best with limited resources: Ompa - in 5th with only one CPU.

3189 of 39109, having passed 153 teams in the last 24 hours.

Keep those work units folding!

[The Infinite Shindig]

So the next week or so should be beat up Shinny week if I'm not mistaken. I enabled large work units, and up until recently, they have contained 250 packets to analyze. The latest one I just downloaded was 2000 packets! With any kind of luck, I'll be done with it before 2 weeks is up.

[cxwq]

So the next week or so should be beat up Shinny week if I'm not mistaken. I enabled large work units, and up until recently, they have contained 250 packets to analyze. The latest one I just downloaded was 2000 packets! With any kind of luck, I'll be done with it before 2 weeks is up.

The number of frames in the work unit doesn't affect the time to compute in a linear fashion because they're often on different cores. That said, I can vouch for the 600 point WUs taking a long time to finish. The reward at the end is nice though.

[Black Wrath]

I have joined the team, I think. In the config, I just typed in the team ID number, and clicked okay, and it automatically started working. I hope it also means that I'm part of the team now.

I'll wait until the first WU is done before I PM you, Cx, for help.

EDIT: They stuck me with a 400 frame WU, and it says it's not going to be done until Wednesday, so I guess I'll have to wait until then to find out if I'm on the team or not.

Edited by Black Wrath, 18 July 2005 - 12:14 PM.

[cxwq]

I have joined the team, I think. In the config, I just typed in the team ID number, and clicked okay, and it automatically started working. I hope it also means that I'm part of the team now.

If you typed the number correctly then you're on the team. Unfortunately there's no database check and confirmation so there's no way to find out if you typed it correctly until your results are sent in.

Glad to (probably) have you on board.

[Black Wrath]

If you typed the number correctly then you're on the team. Unfortunately there's no database check and confirmation so there's no way to find out if you typed it correctly until your results are sent in.

Glad to (probably) have you on board.

Thanks Cx.

I do have a quick question relating to the point system. Is each frame worth one point? Or is there some other way of measuring the points? If what I think is true, I'll jump to 6th place with my first WU finished, which is incredible considering others have been working for days now.

So before I get my hopes up, can we clarify? The F@H site's FAQ didn't hold the answers I was looking for as far as I could tell.

[cxwq]

I do have a quick question relating to the point system. Is each frame worth one point? Or is there some other way of measuring the points?

First, look in your log file for the project number you're working on. It displays differently for various cores but you should see something of the form p[number]_[name] where the number is either 3 or 4 digits.

Examples:

p887_p53peptide887

p1149_RIBO_semihelixfrom1140

Then go to this page and reference your project number. The "credit" column lists the point totals for each work unit of that project. It ranges from 10-600 on that list but some people have reported being given even lower point value WUs.

They calculate it based on the formula described here which is basically to run the WU on a specific P4 2.8 machine and see how long it takes, then multiply days x 110 to get the point value for that project. In practice, various work units for a single project will vary in the amount of CPU time they take to run so it can vary widely. I've had one machine do as little as 50 points and as many as 180 points in one day, just depending on the work units it happened to have been issued.

[Black Wrath]

Something that angers me is the fact that on XP systems, a user has to be logged on in order for the F@H to work. By logging on, I start 57 unique processes, using tonnes of CPU cycles, which isn't very good for F@H at all. I guess I misunderstood when I read Cx's post saying that F@H is system dependant. So gathering all of this, you can't really be "idle" and run this thing. Idle to me, is sitting at that welcome screen with everyone logged off. In this way, I'll be folding for days per WU, because my system is never really idle.

No big deal, I'm just bummed that I can't fold faster.

[cxwq]

Not if you get the Windows NT/2000/XP "No-nonsense" text-only console (with built-in Windows-service-install option) version and set it to run as a service. It will launch at boot time rather than at login time. It's more efficient than the GUI or screensaver versions too.