Folding Forum

Hello, first off I'd just like to say this is an amazing project. On to the questions!

I have the following computers at my disposal:
Home Server on 24/7
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3500+
RAM: 4GB
HDD: 2.6TB ZFS pool
Network connection: 100Mb/s to ASUS RT-N16 Router (Being upgraded to Gb in the near future)
OS: FreeNAS 8.3 (probably changing to FreeBSD 9.0)

Desktop NOT on 24/7
CPU: i3-540
RAM: 16 GB
HDD: Intel 330 180GB SSD (OS Drive), 160GB (Programs and Storage), 200GB (For VM's), 4GB RAMDisk (Temp folders)
GPU: GTS 450
Network connection: 1Gb/s to ASUS RT-N16 Router
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate

HTPC NOT on 24/7
CPU: Intel Core2Duo E8400
RAM: 4 GB
HDD: Intel 330 60GB SSD
GPU: ATI 5450
Network connection: 1Gb/s to ASUS RT-N16 Router
OS: Windows 7 Professional

My ideal situation would be to use the home server because it's on 24/7 but is it possible to use the other two on a part time basis? As in, will a WU pick back up after being shut down for the night (as an example)? I'm not concerned about "points" but don't want to cause issues either by installing on the other two.
How much Upload/Download bandwidth does this take up? I only have 60GB of download and I'm sure a good chunk of that gets taken up by the HTPC streaming.
How well does the client run on FreeBSD 9.0? I did a forum search but the most current info that came up was for 7.0 if I remember correctly.
How much RAM usage can I expect? Given that ZFS is quite memory hungry... and I only have 4GB on the server (FreeNAS recommends 6-8GB but I've seen other recommendations as low as 1GB), could there be some issues?
Given that the server only has fast ethernet, could there be any issues uploading or downloading while the HTPC is playing a movie or music (all media is on the server)?

Anyway, thanks for any input!

FreeBSD is not listed as one of the distros supported by FAH's official installers. Nevertheless others have made it work so a lot is going to depend on your linux background and whatever adaptations they had to figure out.

The Windows machines can work part-time. FAH writes checkpoints at regular intervals and it's pretty good about backing up to the previous checkpoint when it has to resume work. The i3 and GTS 450 should set up quite nicely with a SMP and a GPU client running two WUs. The E8400 with the HD 5450 will be more problematic. I'd recommend you try it without using the GPU ... just SMP.

All FAH WUs have critical deadlines. If your "NOT 24x7" means only a few hours per week, you'll have trouble meeting the deadlines. If it means many hours every day, that shouldn't be a problem. Since the 3500+ will be running 24x7, it won't have deadline problems either.

Thanks for the info!

The windows boxes are definitey on more than a few hours a day. Thinking I'll try things on my desktop first, get a feel for it, then look at the HTPC and go with that until I get the 3500+ switched to FreeBSD and have time to look into what it'll take to install the client.

Still a little concerned about bandwidth and memory usage, but I'll keep an eye on it with the desktop.

The bandwidth shouldn't be an issue. If you weren't aware, FAH only uses the internet to download WUs and upload the results, but does not use it when a WU is in process. You should actually be a bit more concerned about your upload cap if that's a separate figure. Looking back at my logs, most SMP WUs seem to have results files on the order of 2 MB, with a few on the order of 15 MB. The download sizes appeared to be an order of magnitude smaller than the upload sizes; the closest I saw was a 500 kB download for a 1.5 MB upload, but I also saw 130 kB downloads for 16 MB uploads. Note that the larger upload sizes tend to correlate to longer WUs; those WUs with the 16 MB upload files took around 12 hours on an overclocked i7-3770k. On your hardware you'll be finishing them a lot slower, hence less bandwidth used. My GPUs usually had ~130 kB downloads for 350 kB uploads, but those WUs tended to take around 12 hours on my GTX 460s.

I think at worst you'd be looking at around 1 GB total upload among all 3 machines, and more like 500 MB download. The i3's likely to use the most since it's the fastest processor you have, but considering a 3770k will probably upload around 1 GB a month, a 540 should be a lot less, especially if it's running part time. The 3500+ is rather slow by today's standards, so even if it's running 24/7 it's not going to be returning work all that often.

As to memory usage, FAH doesn't use that much. I think at most I've seen it use 200 MB, and it's usually more like 50-100 MB for CPU slots. GPUs can use a fair bit more, and since there still isn't any good scheduling software for video cards, I wouldn't recommend GPU folding while running another graphically-intense program such as gaming or rendering.

Re the download limit, well I ran 2 fermi GPUs 24/7 on a 6G (yes six) limit, and it was OK until I added the SMP that pushed me over the limit, but this is a tiny limit and the system was also used for browsing and skype and everything. Unless your current usage is getting towards the 60G I think you will barely notice the hit.

Thanks to you all! that's exactly the type of info I was looking for.

Downloaded and installed less than an hour ago on my desktop. Definitely have some reading to do to figure out the interface.

I have a couple ideas I'd like to try, but thinking I'm going to try on my own first, how better to learn ?