Folding Forum

Learn all that you can about the client(s) which you are running, and how your machines perform, and go from there. The Stanford website, the FAH WIKI and fahinfo.org are great sources of information, as are forum threads, and so are individual team forums.
The folding-community forum ("down" for some time) holds the answer to just about any question. We all miss it as a resource.
Much of what is published on the project's website is beyond a layman's grasp, but if you read the given info and links, you will learn about much more than just molecular biology and computer science. One thing leads to another, and soon, doors will be opening for you into new worlds of knowledge. It just keeps getting better.

Considering you can put together a Q6600 system for around $500 to $550 vs the PS3 at $400 I would go with the Q6600.

I don't know if points are a good indication of the importance of the contribution, but I would think it should be. A PS3 gets around 900 ppd while a oc'ed quad can generate 2800 ppd.

sYnAnjin wrote:I don't know if points are a good indication of the importance of the contribution, but I would think it should be.

No they aren't yet ... but it's going to change. Not date has been announced, but the points system is being updated

well guys, it's great going back and forth with you all- i'm rethinking some things- I was just going to buy another PS3 or two but, now that I am hearing about the performance possibilities of the new ATI cards I might just hold a bit until the new GPU client comes out- any guess, is it weeks or months or years? I didn't want to go with a 6600 as I was trying to hold myself off from a new PC until the nehalem comes out but one of you guys did have a good idea given that I could throw a machine together for $400-500 if I go on the cheap with a few things and I do have a lot of parts hanging around anyway. I've never studied the cheaper mobos, i know the high end ones well but, I'm not really into a high end mobo for this project. do any of you guys know what a reasonably priced mobo (100-150) would be for a q6600 that will oc well?? also, I know the high end cooling well (I'm running swiftech 3x120 on my amd) but, I don't know the low end stuff, the air cooling stuff, what would be a good cooler? I could pull a q6600 for $266, a mobo for 150 or so, 2gig of 800 for 50 or so and all the rest of the parts I have anyway- that's right at $500 or so and it would be much more capabale than one of the $400 PS3's (although I love the look of the PS3's, a rack of them would be cool). chime in guys- im just rambling- render your comments, advice, etc

I think I can recommend what I'm currently using: mainboard abit IP35 Pro with Quad/B3 and the CPU cooler Thermalright SI-128 SE. With slightly OC'ed to 2880 MHz I've got core temperatures of 52/50/49/52 Celsius degrees (19.5 ambient temp.). For SMP client and p2653 this takes about 16 hours for a WU (about 2650 PPD).

If you buy Quad/G0 stepping you should get better possibilities of overclocking, ensuring reasonably low temperatures.

zorzyk> your temperatures are still low ... you should go higher (I have one B3, but it sucks ... only 2.9 GHz and already at 75°C)

P.S : use CoreTemp for accurate readings ...

@ toTow: current FSB of 320 MHz (effective 2880 MHz) is now fah rock stable by stocks voltages. CPU cores temperatures vary (measured with CoreTemp) but do not exceed 52 centigrade (temporary 54).

I tested previously with higher FSB up to 356 MHz (CPU 3204 MHz) but with heighten voltages (ie. VCore 1.4050V). Although all standard tests passed well (Prime95 4 cores, OCCT) while folding I get accidental PC restarts, freezes or BSOD's . With SMP client CPU core tempretatures were rather below 60, but I think that local over heating was the reason of unstable work. SMP was run as service, and tis is maybe a second cause. So I decided to run with lower speed and SMP as console, with full system stability up now (I use non dedicated PC).

The best stress test for a machine aimed at folding is : http://www.gromacs.org/component/option ... Itemid,26/

My B3 has difficulties to go higher thant 3GHz ... it's quite hot at stock speed, so I don't have enough margin to push the voltage