Folding Forum

Hey guys I am new to this forum, new to the @home idea all together. I had a PS3 a few years ago and didn't know what the heck the @home project was and never involved myself with it. I recently got a new PS3 and decided to check it out. I've read a bit about the purpose and believe the cause is wonderful and if it's as easy as leaving an application running when I am not home or not using my PS3/PC, I will gladly run the program to support the cause.

Even though I work in the IT industry, I should know how to dedicate one of my four cores to run a specific application or program, but I will need to figure that out on my own. I enjoy looking at the stats page, I have created a team for myself, including my PS3 (which I run F@H at night when I go to sleep, and usually run during the day when I am at work and cannot play games. Basically the same for my PC. I will look into getting one of the older PC's downstairs hooked up with F@H and that'll be a 3rd machine for my team. I am spreading the word to my friends explaining to them what it is and what it does and they think it's a very cool idea. I can't promise they will run the program on a scheduled basis as I do, but the more the better right?

Only question really is, yes I can check my stats, and each computer/PS3's individually or as a team.. but how can I tell what progress I have contributed? Is there an way to? No sweat if not, I would just like to know what exactly I am helping with and if my donations/support are doing anything at all.

Thanks guys, my name is John, I am 27 and from Central NJ, USA. I love PC's and Consoles, I love gaming, and I love helping people who need help when they need it. Apologies for the lengthy post but that's what I've had on my mind today

Welcome to the forum and the project, John.

There's no way to check the overall progress of the individual projects. I believe that in many cases the researchers themselves may not know how long the project will run for, and I also think that some cases certain trajectories of a project may end a lot sooner than others, which would further muddle any estimate of when a project is finished. The stats used to keep track of how many WUs you'd completed for each project, but that was suspended a few years ago because the stats updates were taking a very long time.

As to what you're helping, you can enter the project numbers here to get a short description of what that project is studying. The descriptions can also be accessed more directly through the PS3 and v7 clients. I forget what exactly the steps are for the PS3 client since I haven't run it in a while, but there should be a link somewhere in the Information menu. v7 usually displays the information by default.

Rest assured that if your point total is increasing, you're doing something useful.

We sometimes caution people about getting old computers contributing since they may not earn many points while consuming about as much power as a much more modern PC. Your electric bill will likely increase noticeably from contributing, and if it gets too high, cutting out a low-producing but high-power-drawing client may make better financial sense. It's ultimately your call, though, and all contributions are welcomed.

Welcome to the forum.

Your PS3 doesn't do more than one thing at a time so it can be dedicated whenever you're not playing a game or watching a movie but that's not true for your computer. It supports multiprocessing and with rare exceptions you won't want to dedicate a single core to FAH. The SMP client will use all four of your cpu-cores at a very very low priority so that whenever you want to do anything else, FAH will politely move aside for a fraction of a second and continue processing as soon as you've finished. That's not true if you fold with a GPU or if you have a very, very demanding application like a video game, however.