Folding Forum

"ETA" means the time remaining before the end of the WU, if you setting the client v7 in "advanced" or "expert" then you will see also the "timeout" and "expiration" are the maximum time to return a WU.

The processing time of a WU depends on the power of your CPU if you are using a slot "uniprocessor" or "SMP" and varies with the type of WU...

Firstly, I don't think I am on a v7 client, I think I am on the v6 because I can't seen any of the advanced or expert or timeout and expiration or anything. You saw my cpu type in an earlier post, it is 2.2GHz. I am using a single core at the moment. Also, if I select pause when done does that mean it won't start another WU when this one is finished?

Pause means stop processing for now. That allows someone to use their entire system to play a game (or whatever) and resume FAH processing later. FAH is supposed to run at a low priority so it backs off when something else runs, but that process is not perfect and some games are very sensitive to any kind if interference.

V6 has a pause-when-done option or a -oneunit option and V7 has a Finish option, both of which will complete the current WU before pausing.

Thank you very much.

Right, have completed my first wu! got 107 points from it Which isn't bad I don't think. Now, the v7 client, I realise that is in beta, do you know when it will come out of beta? Will there be an update then or not?

Also, where do I find the software download for the v7 smp client?

Music Guy123 wrote:Right, have completed my first wu! got 107 points from it Which isn't bad I don't think. Now, the v7 client, I realise that is in beta, do you know when it will come out of beta? Will there be an update then or not?

Also, where do I find the software download for the v7 smp client?

Do not worry about the beta version. Works well. Many people here used V7 permanently.

fahclient-installer_7.1.43_x86.exe - https://fah-web.stanford.edu/projects/F ... etaRelease

Windows (FAH V7) Install Guide - http://folding.stanford.edu/English/WinGuide

Thank you very much! Will complete my current wu, (Will be my second!) and then will upgrade.

Music Guy123 wrote:...Another question would be, if I wanted to turn my pc off, would i just click pause work then turn it off?...

Since it is a v6 client, you shouldn't pause the client and then turn off the system. You should simply exit/quit the client and then turn off the system or simply turn off the system. The reason is that if you pause the client, data is still loaded in the system ready to resume the work so when you turn off the system, it might corrupt the data which will cause you to lose the WU.

With V7, you can pause the client and turn off the system if you want since the bug that was present in v6 is not longer present in V7 as it was written from the ground up.

Oh right, I have just paused it and put my pc in hibernate. We will see how it turns out! Will download v7 as soon as this wu is finished. Thanks for the help!

Pause work is fine before shutting down. Pause work will only pause it, it will still download and start another when done. On the GPU client there's a "pause when done" which finishes the current WU then doesn't download and start another. Not sure if that's on the CPU client or not, cause I always run the console version. If you want it to stop when done, you can always manually use a "-oneunit" flag. As for when the WUs expire, it depends largely on the WU #. Generally the Uni-processor client is a very long time, you can look up everything here to see all the info you need. http://vspx27.stanford.edu/psummary.html

As for those servers, if they're dodeca's (12 core), then they'll pound some serious points on SMP. On Windows they will run 15-20% slower than linux, but still do a lot of PPD. Would depend a lot on the number of processors in each machine though. The way F@H works is with a "quick return bonus". The faster you finish a WU, the more points you get, plus the more time you'll have to be working on another WU cause you finished the last one so fast. A good number of folders, myself included, run 4 processor dodecas. Regardless of the hardware, folding is the same. It's all for conquering disease, and F@H is the pioneer program that dwarfed all other scientific endeavors of it's kind because of the enormous numbers of people lending thier computers for the cause.

Hope you don't live in my area cause power cost went up 25% to schools and up to 40% to businesses overnight! I had almost talked my town's highschool into doing this but thier budget is strapped now as you can imagine. Hopefully someone sues the power company and wins. Scary part is the regulatory agency allowed this to happen. Very sad.

v7 is really nice and makes running F@h pretty simple. However, until this bug is fixed I always make sure to point out that v7 has a few small issues here and there, but works fairly well. One of the most notable bugs is that the ETA/PPD calculations are currently inaccurate, so don't be mislead by them. It's well known to the developers, and hopefully should be fixed in the next release. I just wanted to let you know about it. v7 should detect your hardware and should create a default setup (easily changeable of course) that should be the most productive, so it should set up a GPU client and a multi-threaded client (SMP) to get the most use out of your CPU. Let us know how it goes!

Thanks for the support chaps. The headmaster is all for it but I need to talk to the head of IT and I can't do that until Monday. I know the CPUs are intel xeon 5660 I thought they were 6 core but 12 threads. I am not sure though. Also, what do you mean by 4 processor dodeca? Do you mean you run 4 12 core processors? Anyway, thanks for all the help and support, will keep you guys updated.

When you give your presentation to your superiors be sure to tell them that the electricity bill will increase. You may want to measure wattage/voltage usage on the servers with and without the client over a couple of day period. At night when the server load is usually very low F@H will take full advantage of the cpu cycles and your electric meter will show it.

Brazos wrote:When you give your presentation to your superiors be sure to tell them that the electricity bill will increase. You may want to measure wattage/voltage usage on the servers with and without the client over a couple of day period. At night when the server load is usually very low F@H will take full advantage of the cpu cycles and your electric meter will show it.

Right, and it's an excellent idea to check the wattage draw. But I wouldn't advise just saying "your electrical bill will increase", which all though true could be better said in other ways such as "So I did some experiments and it looks like this program will make the server draw an extra ____ watts, which should turn out to _____ much more in your electrical bill." I think doing the calculations and delivering the facts like that will increase your chances of success. If necessary, you can throw in something about how F@h runs at a very low processing priority, so it should back off fairly well for other applications.

And in that same message, think about what you can do to offset those costs. Turn off the lights when rooms are not in use. Replacing standard light bulbs with CFLs. Using the extra heat to help warm up other rooms if living in a cooler climate, things like that. Then they are more likely to accept it.