Folding Forum

Greetings to all here @ Folding @Home,

I am posting this topic in an effort to see if the computer I am able to dedicate to folding is powerful enough to be helpful to this effort. Here are the spec's.

This was originally a Gateway E6850 full tower built in approximately 2002. I have made some upgrades to the original.


Mobo: Intel D850MV

Northbridge: Intel i850 revision A3
Southbridge: Intel 8280 l BA (ICH2) revision A3

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 CPU 2.00 GHz 32 bit system

Socket: Socket 478 m PGA

System Slots: 5PCI, 1 AGP

2048 Mbs of Rhambus RDRAM PC-800-40 in 4 slots. 512 Mbs per slot. This is the maximum amount of memory this machine can use.

Error correction: none

Original Clock: 2000 MHz
System clock: 100MHz
CPU clock: 1994 MHz
System Clock: 99.7 MHz
Front Side Bus: 398.8 MHz
Cores:1

Video Card: ATI Radeon 9500/9700 AGP – 128 Megabytes of memory

Western Digital 320 Gbs hard drive which only has the listed OS installed currently-No Other Data

Network Connection: Fairpoint DSL 15 Megabytes per second Download speed. 1 Megabyte per second upload speed.

The current Operating System is LinuxMint- 17.1-Rebecca - Cinnamon-32Bit and is running stable with all current updates in place.

I have not downloaded/installed your software application yet as I wanted to check with one of you knowledgable folks to see if this system will be helpful to you in this endeavor and will be powerful enough to handle the the load.

I am willing to run this computer 24/7/365 with Folding @ Home being its only task if you feel it is powerful enough to be helpful to the cause.

Thank you in advance
,
ranger72

According to the wiki (http://fahwiki.net/index.php/Minimum_CPU_needed) the minimum CPU needed is a 500MHz Pentium III, but that article was last edited over 6 years ago. According to the FAQ (http://folding.stanford.edu/home/faq/#ntoc10) a Pentium 4 with SSE should be able to complete CPU work units before they expire if it is running 24/7, and that was lasted edited at the end of 2013. I say give it try but keep and eye on it over the first few days because the estimated completion time will fluctuate for the first few percent of each work unit. It's possible you will not get any WU's assigned with out special configuration flags because it is a single core system. As far as GPU folding goes I would guess that AGP GPU's are no longer supported.

EDIT: If the v7 client can't fold for you or is otherwise too troublesome you can try the web based Google Chrome client: viewtopic.php?f=95&t=26171

Someone please correct me if this information is wrong.

E

The GPU is NOT supported for FAH. I don't think it could even be upgraded, since it's AGP; all the supported GPUs that I know about are PCIe.

My (very) old laptop running Vista contains a T2060 CPU @ 1.6 GHz with 1MB RAM. Running 24x7, it is able to return the assigned WUs slightly before the Preferred Deadline so it earns a small Bonus. It has 2 independent CPUs.

Your 2GHz P4 is faster than my laptop but with only one CPU plus hyperthreading, the net difference would favor my CPU, but only slightly. Windows vs. Linux accounts for a relatively small difference in speed. At the present time, that probably favors Linux so overall, they'll probably produce very similar quantities of work. Bottom line: Both exceed FAH's minimums but only by a small amount.

With a qualified passkey, it typically earns ~700 points per day.

Thank you both for the replies. I appreciate it.

So I wonder if the net results would be worth the electricity bill I would need to pay for running this machine 7/24/365. I suppose the best way to find out is to start doing it and see what the results are. No? I am not interested in how many points I can amass; I simply felt that I would like to help out with this machine if it were viable

Thanks again,
ranger72

Good question. Certainly my laptop consumes less power than your P4 system.

In earlier discussions of a similar nature, people said that applying the cost of electricity toward a more power-efficient system would soon pay for the newer system. I'm not sure if that hunch was backed up by facts, but it's certainly worth considering.

At 100% CPU utilization my laptop draws only ~25W. Running 24x365/12 that works out about 18 kWh per month. Electric rates depend on your location as well as which billing tier you typically use. The purists add some costs associated with air conditioning if you have to pump the extra heat generated outside your house or subtract some costs if you need to heat the room.

ranger72 wrote:I wonder if the net results would be worth the electricity bill I would need to pay for running this machine 7/24/365. I suppose the best way to find out is to start doing it and see what the results are. No? I am not interested in how many points I can amass; I simply felt that I would like to help out with this machine if it were viable

The reality is that it is not "viable" in any true sense. You might make some points, but at a relatively high cost of electricity. The CPU is rated at 50 Watts or so, and the system will thus burn 85-90 Watts (plus monitor, when working) when the CPU is at full load. There are relatively few work units that will be finished on time by a slower, single-core CPU. Remember that the P4 was probably at the bottom of Intel's productivity/Watt scale, and a 2 GHz P4 might do about 1/4 the work (or less) of a 2 GHz i5...

The machine would be better as a file server or backup machine.

Please explain how burning watts as a file server is okay, but not okay for fah? Turn it off, or run fah and let it be a file server or anything else you want.

Or donate it to a person or group in need and upgrade to something more efficient. Your choice, but yes, this is very near the bottom of viable to run fah.

Hello all,

I wish to thank all of you for your input. The general consensus is that the machine in question is not going to be able to cut the mustard for Folding @ Home. I am not in a position to upgrade or purchase a newer computer which has the technology to be useful.

Thank you all very much for your generous help. We can consider this post as closed/solved.

ranger72

ranger72 wrote:The general consensus is that the machine in question is not going to be able to cut the mustard for Folding @ Home.

That's certainly NOT what I said, especially if it's going to be running 24x7 as a file server anyway.

A P4 3.2ghz Northwood with HT will produce ~2000~ points per day in linux running NACL on the chrome browser, undisturbed. There is more than one on ebay for under $7, shipped (SL6WG or SL6WE). I ran one 24/7 for about 5 months recently until the power supply died. Didn't have the money to mess with high-end P4's back in the day so was curious about them. Whether the ppd/w are worth it to you or is certainly up to you.....but the up front capitol cost should be low enough to justify the trial. With a good enough video card, it also made a unexpectedly good basic general purpose PC.

7im wrote:Please explain how burning watts as a file server is okay, but not okay for fah?
. . .

Your choice, but yes, this is very near the bottom of viable to run fah.

Don't twist my words. I NEVER said that "burning watts is. . . not okay for fah."

Using a significant amount of electricity to run that CPU for a POSSIBLE, MINIMAL contribution to F@H does not make a lot of sense. OTOH, running a machine as a file server or backup PC, either part-time or full-time, MAY make sense for some people. Depending on his usage pattern, multi-purpose use of the machine may well bring the Folding time to under the threshold for meeting deadlines -- IF he can get one of the relatively scarce WUs that support that rig in the first place.