Folding Forum

I have been a contributor now for around 3 years, and have been steadily climbing in rank (and, of course, overall points) until about the last 10 days. Admittedly, that climb has been slowed the higher I climb--the steeper the slope becomes. The highest (lowest numerical) rank I've achieved was 7064, about 3 days ago. But that was after about having achieved 7067, only to fall for about 4 days to 7075, but then with the completion of one single job, I jumped "down" to 7064. From there the number has been climbing, and rank falling again for about 3 to 4 days again.

This state of affairs seems, to me, to mean that I'm either getting regularly passed by people, or my contributions are being completed, sent in, but not registered in the ranking, point and work unit system. Perhaps my two computers are being given jobs in a series of jobs that don't register until the whole series is completed. I don't know. I just know I'm getting some very large jobs, usually, on both computers, that run 24/7, and those large jobs always yield the lowest PPD rates that my CPUs can crank out. It makes sense that lower CPU rates will result in jobs taking longer; but the proportional differences in time between spent on a job are in no way indicative of the change in PPD rate.

For instance, my desktop might get a 3 hour job, and run at a rate of somewhere between 22.5k and 25k PPD. My laptop would run at a slower PPD rate, because it clocked slower. But if I get a 22 hour job, it's not because my PPD has fallen by a factor of 7.33. It will be more like 16-17k PPD. My PPD rates have been commensurate with past job sizes, going up with smaller jobs and down with larger ones, as usual.

I suppose I could answer this question for myself. To do that I'd have to start looking at the overall points and work units once each day, since it seems rank ought to be based on these. Of course, if I wanted to be really sure, I'd have to track each job, and check when it finishes, or in the next hour AFTER it finishes, for both computers. I know it seems petty to take pride in doing more than others have, since this is, in essence charity--my cpu's didn't come to me free, nor does the electricity they burn. The sense of accomplishing something is the only immediate satisfaction I get out of running FAH, at all.

Of course there's the long range benefit I believe will come to all. And, I must confess, that sense of pride helps me not to think about the fact that FAH (I have the newest version that no longer limits itself to a maximum of 25% of the cpu's capabilities) is costing me money in electricity and maybe in having to replace my computers sooner.

Any thoughts about this, pointers, or ways to find out what's up would be appreciated. I don't really want to have to monitor this stuff, myself, to be sure everything is functioning as it ought to and has in the past. Maybe some gang of people with really awesome computers joined and is passing me up now. If so, good for them. But, I know how steep this slope is now, and that seems unlikely. I'm not running ancient hardware or software: 2 I7's, one with 12GB memory, clocked at 3200GH, and the other with 16GB memory, clocked at 2300GH. The fact that I don't have to monitor it for it to work is one of the things I've always liked about FAH. AND, I liked watching rank rise, points and WU are what I thought drove that rise in rank.

RABishop

Have you considered using a 3rd party stat site to monitor your folding progress?

http://kakaostats.com/usum.php?u=1640405
http://kakaostats.com/pop_up_chart.php? ... art=ddaily

Looking at the daily history chart your contributions have recently been significantly dropping. I'd be checking logs to see what is going on. If you supply some Project( Run, Gen, Clone) numbers a moderator can look up how many points that a specific WU gave you. Also if you PM a moderator with your passkey and folding username we can look to see if your passkey has dropped below the 80% success rate required to get QRB.

As you said, the higher you climb, the harder the climb becomes. And at some point you will stop climbing at all. Post more info as requested, and they'll help sort it.

This is the first time I've had any apparent problems with FAH, or participated in any Forums. I have no idea to what logs you are referring, let alone how to access them. I have never established a passkey; and, as far as I know my username is the same as I signed on my forum post: RABishop. Although I've seen the thing to which you refer, I never wanted to do anything remotely; so I don't know if establishing a username would require something different from the RABishop. But, if there are logs, that would save me the time and effort of monitoring things myself. I'll poke around a little. As for a 3rd party stat site, I had no idea such a thing existed; but I now know of the possibility. But again, I'd be starting from scratch. As for supply "if you PM a moderator with your passkey and folding username we can look to see iif if your passkey has dropped below the 80% success rate required to get QRB," I wouldn't know how to "PM" anybody since I don't know for what "PM" is being used as a verb, nor to I know anything about an 80% success rate or what "QRB" might be.

P.S.

At least it does appear that, as I hoped, this quick reply went to both of you who responded to the question. Oh and thanks for taking the time. By the way 7im, love the hat. : )

Ok, well, I went to the "Identity" Tab in Configuration and looked into creating a passkey. I thought I was petty in just taking satisfaction from watching my rank climb. People actually steal credit from each other in this endeavor? Wow. I don't feel petty at all, anymore. And I found out to what QRB refers. : )

I got the passkey once I found it in junk mail. I created a rule for stuff from FAH to always go to my inbox. Also, on the "Advanced" tab under "Configure" there are two boxes near the bottom that I checked (but this was a few months ago, so it's doubtful that problems caused by them would only show up in the last 10 days or so), they involve locking the core to a specific cpu and disabling highly optimized assembly code. In general, do these help, hinder, or are they mostly neutral in running FAH for the fastest results?

Ah, ok, PM, private message.

OK. I got the passkey, entered it, and tried to PM it to the moderator who responded to my original message. I keep getting the message that the user I'm trying to add doesn't exist.

Ok, so I don't know if the Moderator is getting the private messages; because, even if so, they wouldn't show up here. I have another few questions. Under the "Advanced" tab on the configure button screen, there is a just above the bottom called "Optimizations." In general, does locking the client to a particular cpu quicken or slow down work? Same question for disabling "highly optimized assembly code." I have both those checked, but that's been true off and on. The last time I checked them both was a few months ago, so it's doubtful that change has only justs now resulted in a slowing during the last 10 or so days.

The other question I have is why so little of my physical memory is being used. It's 20% on my desktop that has 12GB of memory, and 19% on my laptop that has 16GB. Both say 100% of the cpu is being used. A friend of my tells me that's because the client doesn't take advantage of the hyper-streaming of which both the cpus are capable. Any way to tweak that?

The disable highly optimized assembly code should be unchecked. You have a newer cpu that actually uses the advanced instruction sets.

I know in linux they lock cores for the BIGADV projects. The problem with doing this is that if another program decides it wants to use a core that f@h has locked into, it will slow the entire project down

that's 2.4gb of RAM (physical memory) that is slotted to just one program. That's quite a lot.

Try unchecking those two boxes and see what that does.

Ok, thanks. As best I can recall, I checked them when a new job didn't seem to be starting, and it seemed as if that might help. Turns out that was one of the biggest if not THE biggest one I've ever run. So I don't know that checking the boxes helped at all--on that particular job. It was still a while before any progress showed. I shut down the whole process and restarted it, and it still took a while to register any progress. I didn't notice any particular drop in PPD, but anything that helps it run faster should help.

RABishop : )

RABishop wrote:Ok, thanks. As best I can recall, I checked them when a new job didn't seem to be starting, and it seemed as if that might help. Turns out that was one of the biggest if not THE biggest one I've ever run. So I don't know that checking the boxes helped at all--on that particular job. It was still a while before any progress showed. I shut down the whole process and restarted it, and it still took a while to register any progress. I didn't notice any particular drop in PPD, but anything that helps it run faster should help.

RABishop : )

For Work Units from projects that your computer hasn't seen before, progress isn't typically reported until 1% has been completed. If you've completed a WU from that project before, the V7 client does some interpolation and reports finer detail in the progress reports.

RABishop wrote:Ok, thanks. As best I can recall, I checked them when a new job didn't seem to be starting, and it seemed as if that might help. Turns out that was one of the biggest if not THE biggest one I've ever run. So I don't know that checking the boxes helped at all--on that particular job. It was still a while before any progress showed. I shut down the whole process and restarted it, and it still took a while to register any progress. I didn't notice any particular drop in PPD, but anything that helps it run faster should help.

RABishop : )

It's best not to toy with settings unless you know what each setting does.

To earn a QuickReturnBonus, you need each client to use a qualified passkey. (One Passkey for all clients is fine. Qualified means 10 or more QRB WUs completed and at least 80% of those downloaded successfully completed.)

The bonus is generally much more important than the baseline points you get if your passkey isn't entered or isn't qualified. Not all projects get bonuses though the probably will someday.

Sometimes the stats system has been known to award a bonus to someone who should have gotten only the baseline points. That's a server bug but if that has happened to you, consider yourself lucky. It may be fixed at any time. Getting a passkey is becoming more important all the time..

I got the passkey and entered it on both computers, since I'm RABishop on both, and team 0 on both too.