Folding Forum

Hi all

I have a bunch of general questions related to setting up a machine for folding.

I'd sorta hoped that questions like these could be answered by looking at the FAQ's, but the FAQ's seem to be a) out of date and b) assume a certain level of knowledge that most newbies won't have.

Today I bought a Q6600 and motherboard and shoved them into an old PC to make a dedicated folding machine (running XP at the moment).
I downloaded the Windows single cpu client and installed (planning to install something else later, based on feedback).
After a couple of hours of status 503 messages, it finally got up and did something. However 'something' seems to stop at 25% system usage. Looking at the cpu usage graph it seems to max out one core for a while while the others are idle, then move to another core. I suppose that it is not all that surprising since I am running the vanilla 1CPU FAH client.
I read the FAQ regarding SMP, and it said that SMP is only supported for Linux/64, OSX/Intel, and beta for WinXP/32.
Now, when I booted knoppix, it wouldn't recognize my network port, and I believe that 64 bit Linux wil have even less drivers, so running Linux might be problematic. However, if there are really big performance gains, then I would stick at it.

So, questions
1: Is there a way of running the Windows client 4 times to take advantage of 4 cores, or would it be better if I ran the beta SMP client on my Q6600?
2: Would it better still installing some sort of 64 bit Linux and running the Linux client?

3: unrelated to the other questions, what is the best use of a G5 powermac. It has a dual core G5 at 2GHz and 2.5GB of Ram. Is it worth setting this up as a folding machine, or is it more useful as an anchor? If folding is worth it, would more RAM help?

3. The mac should get about 2 times 120 PPD when folding 24/7. It's got ample RAM for 2 console clients.

kevingolding2001 wrote:Hi all

I have a bunch of general questions related to setting up a machine for folding.

I'd sorta hoped that questions like these could be answered by looking at the FAQ's, but the FAQ's seem to be a) out of date and b) assume a certain level of knowledge that most newbies won't have.

Today I bought a Q6600 and motherboard and shoved them into an old PC to make a dedicated folding machine (running XP at the moment).
I downloaded the Windows single cpu client and installed (planning to install something else later, based on feedback).
After a couple of hours of status 503 messages, it finally got up and did something. However 'something' seems to stop at 25% system usage. Looking at the cpu usage graph it seems to max out one core for a while while the others are idle, then move to another core. I suppose that it is not all that surprising since I am running the vanilla 1CPU FAH client.
I read the FAQ regarding SMP, and it said that SMP is only supported for Linux/64, OSX/Intel, and beta for WinXP/32.
Now, when I booted knoppix, it wouldn't recognize my network port, and I believe that 64 bit Linux wil have even less drivers, so running Linux might be problematic. However, if there are really big performance gains, then I would stick at it.

So, questions
1: Is there a way of running the Windows client 4 times to take advantage of 4 cores, or would it be better if I ran the beta SMP client on my Q6600?
2: Would it better still installing some sort of 64 bit Linux and running the Linux client?

3: unrelated to the other questions, what is the best use of a G5 powermac. It has a dual core G5 at 2GHz and 2.5GB of Ram. Is it worth setting this up as a folding machine, or is it more useful as an anchor? If folding is worth it, would more RAM help?

I'm running 7 SMP clients all under Fedora 8; x86_64 you'll need the 32 bit library
compat-libstdc++-33
It's very stabile. And simple to get up and running

I started as a total noob, only been using it for about 18 months { still learning }

1) if you want to stick with windows then you can run 4 clients, just create four folders and put a copy of the Folding@home application in each folder. Then when configuring change the machine ID so that each client's ID is different (the maximum number is 16 so 4 clients is not a problem.)

With your quad core 6600, I think you'll be a lot happier with the points you get from using the SMP beta client, but it IS beta, so you might hit some bumps in the road. I'm running two SMP clients on the same q6600 and getting about 2400 points per day with a Windows Vista machine, and I think that's much better than I'd get from running four single-core clients.

An example of a bump in the road - One of the clients had finished a work unit just before I got home from work, and when it went to start a new work unit it got an early unit end (EUE), and 'hung' until I went to the computer, used Ctrl-C to close the not-hung client, and then hit the 'ok' button on a pop-up that said there was a problem and it was going to shut down. Then I tried to fix the problem with qfix, then fah - delete all, then qfix again. It didn't work, so I had to brute-force remove my work folder and my queue.dat file and start up the client again. It happened a second time - did the brute force remove of files again - started up again, but it worked that time. Then I could re-start my other client. Annoying, but no big deal for me - about 15 minutes of my time, but I've been folding with SMP for just over a year now. You'll spend more time on such problems, researching what other people recommend, etc - while you're on the learning curve.

With 4 single-core clients, you probably won't hit any bumps, but you'll also never get the satisfaction of saying "Oh, I've learned how to deal with that problem - you CAN teach an old dog new tricks!"

So do whichever one sound like it's going to be more satisfying in the long run. Personally, I like learning things about computers and becoming self-sufficient with them, but I have no desire whatsoever to learn about doing my own auto maintenance. Change my own oil and filter? No way! That's why God invented the concept of Jiffy-Lube!

If you are running your machine as a dedicated folder and doing nothing else, have you considered running a Diskless setup? The Notfred Diskless 64bit Linux OS, runs SMP 6.02 clients and only needs a motherboard, CPU, RAM and a USB key. With a Q6600 you will normally attain 2600~3000 PPD, but the main gain is on energy consumption, as you don't have a HDD, Optical Drive and VGA card eating up power unnecessarily?

http://reilly.homeip.net/folding/

It's simplicity itself to run, fill out the webform, generate a CD boot up and when running remove the Optical drive. You can monitor with FahMon. I run it from a bootable USB Flash Drive so I don't even need a CD-ROM. You can run 1 or 2 clients on a Q6600. 1 client uses a little less power.

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