Folding Forum

I've been a contribute to FAH for years, but I'm ending it today. Signed up here just to say goodbye. My new graduate-student roommate is outraged that he has to pay half the electric bill when I'm the one running it up by using the computer 24x7. The utility company estimate is that computer use is 1/3 of my electric bill, so I suppose he has a point. All the same, I'm feeling sad that he has so little sensitivity or generosity.

I should perhaps add that I live in Hawai'i, which has the highest electric rates in the US. All but a tiny fraction of island electricity comes from burning oil, and oil prices have been skyrocketing. My electric bill has doubled in the last few years, even though I've invested a fair bit of $$$ in switching all my lighting to compact fluorescents.

Y'all are doing great things. Hope I'll be back some day.

Sorry to see you go, Zora. It sounds like things are tightening up in the islands. Hopefully, there will be a correction and you can return to Folding..

Thanks for your contributions to our project!

You could always offer to pay for 66.666% of the bill. Take 33% of the bill right off top, say that is yours to pay for your computer, and then split the rest in half, which effectively means you pay for two thirds of the bill. That would seem fair to me, and should seem fair to your room mate.

If that isn't an option, then still, thank you for the hard work you put in up until this point. Come back soon!

Fear Not, the addition will resurface when the means allow it.

Blessing to you for your efforts and your graceful resignation.

Sorry to see you go Zora. I'm curious to know what version you were running.

Unfortunately the F@H developers seem to have lost the plot on this issue. With graphic interfaces that now use twice the power or much much more than CPUs, I suspect many users will be rethinking their commitment to the project.

I know as a parent I wouldn't allow my kids to use the graphical interface as I can't afford the electric bill either. EG: I upgraded their systems to E8400 and OC'ed them to 3.8GHz. The system uses about 10 watts more with the CPU overclocked and at full load than it does idling at stock speed. It actually uses less at full load than their last CPU at stock speed and at idle. I also upgraded to 8800GT so they could play the occasional games. The system uses 200 watts more when the 8800GT is at full load, and 70 watts more at idle than their old 6600GT did.

The solution seems simple to me, quit making graphical interfaces for F@H. Seems hypocritical to me to be so involved in helping with diseases while making a huge carbon footprint in the process.

dark41 wrote:The solution seems simple to me, quit making graphical interfaces for F@H. Seems hypocritical to me to be so involved in helping with diseases while making a huge carbon footprint in the process.

It's not necessary for the Pande Group to quit making the GPU client for FAH. If you wish to limit your electric costs to what they were a few years ago, you can still run the uniprocessor client and still contribute at the same rate that you were contributing then. Electrical costs are, in fact, a growing portion of what people may choose to donate, but they can also choose to limit their donations to a lesser value. In this regard, it does make sense to upgrade P4 class processors with Core2 class processors and/or to fold with laptops rather than desktop machines.

Remember, all donations are appreciated and I'm sure the Pande Group understands if you don't choose to pay for the electricity to run a PS3 or a GPU.

@Zora:
Thanks for your contributions and perhaps we'll see you again in a few years.

What hardware are you running ??
How much did the power company estimate your box to uses ??
By knowing your hardware, we can see how acurate the power companies estimate is.

Thanks for your time done.

Luck .........

200 watts, for one 8800 GT?
Full load running a game, or running f@h?

I have a system with 2 x 8800 GTS 512 (g92), that while running 1 x uniprocessor client,
plus 2 x GPU2 clients, uses only 286 watts, according to Mr. Kill-A-Watt.

There is no estimate involved. I have a MS6115 voltage meter. We plug our box into it and it tells how much voltage is passing through it. It is quite accurate up to 2000 watts. This is the reading for the entire box, not single components. However using the graphics version of F@H also increases the CPU, memory and hard drive usage.

Flathead74, Full load is full load, no matter what the application. Your results sound about right, but I don't consider 286 watts "only". That's roughly 3x what my system uses with the CPU version alone (105w). Consider that we have 8 sytsems currently in house, and maybe you can understand why the graphic versions are not an affordable option. Considering the amount of folding with the GPU vs the CPU, and there is no justification for the large carbon footprint. We're not solving anything 3x faster by wasting 3x more electricity.

Using the CPU version alone uses much less power. No one can argue that.

I guess it's great for kids who want bragging rights and have their parents paying the bills, but then don't complain about gas prices because you contributed heavily to the situation.

Here's a decent chart on GPU power consumption for anyone interested. Keep in mind this is only the GPU, not the entire system:

http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/forums.asp?s=2&c=7&t=9354

dark41 wrote: ... I don't consider 286 watts "only". That's roughly 3x what my system uses with the CPU version alone (105w). Consider that we have 8 sytsems currently in house, and maybe you can understand why the graphic versions are not an affordable option. Considering the amount of folding with the GPU vs the CPU, and there is no justification for the large carbon footprint. We're not solving anything 3x faster by wasting 3x more electricity.

Using the CPU version alone uses much less power. No one can argue that.

I guess it's great for kids who want bragging rights and have their parents paying the bills, but then don't complain about gas prices because you contributed heavily to the situation.

This is probably a waste of time but here goes..

You keep talking about GPU folding like it is a visual enhancement. Quite simply, it is a way of doing more work using a GPU in addition to CPU resources.

You're right, it isn't doing three times the science, it is more like 30 times (4500 vs 150 ppd) for roughly three times the power.

It is also ironic to see you complain both about carbon footprints and the price of gas (which you are the only person I have seen complain about). If one is concerned about carbon footprints then one wants the price of gas to be above 4 dollars a gallon. I assure you our European friends are laughing at us as they are already paying about twice that.

Look, contribute what you can afford to. Nobody will think less of you if you only run the uniprocessor client. Many here are trying to enhance the capabilities of the Pande Group so that they can get results in less than years to difficult simulations that will hopefully impact science and medicine in our lifetimes.

The people with the biggest power bills are the ones that are figuring out how to get the most folding done for the buck in both power and equipment costs. And, I don't think the majority of us have had our daddy's pay our power bills in decades. Certainly mine hasn't.

If it makes you feel any better, I am responding to you on a computer that uses less than 35 watts including the display.

Peace,

You're right, it is a waste of time because you have no clue as to what you're talking about. I get 2000+ PPD with a single E8400 @ 3.8GHz and it uses 105 watts all day every day. I get 7000 PPD with 4 systems ranging from Pent D 3.0 to E6750 to E8400. Occasionally I run a couple more E6750s and have seen 11,000 PPD. Every system other than mine (E8400 with 7900GTX 512) and my son's (E8400 with 8800GT 512) is under 100 watts. That's a long ways from 150 PPD or 30:1. In fact my WUs would time out at that rate. I also have yet to see 4500 PPD on any single system, but even at that rate it would only be 2:1 folding for 3:1 energy consumption. The guys I've seen folding with GTX280s in SLI and Q9750 are getting roughly 3500-4000 PPD. And that's my point; you get roughly 1.5x the folding for 3x the energy consumption.

We must travel in different circles as everywhere I go I see or read people complaining about the price of gas, food, and carbon footprints. And for the record, I'm one of your American friends who lives in Australia and who has little sympathy for Americans paying $4/gallon since we've been paying more than that for the 6 years that I've been here. We're currently paying over $7/gallon or $1.80/liter. But trust me on this, no one is laughing.

Glad your system is so conservative.

At this time, fah uses only 50MB or so of vRAM.
Is this "full load" the same as a game's "full load" that uses all 512MB of vRAM?

Regarding fuel prices; yes, folks in other countries have been paying more for their fuel for quite some time.
What most people conveniently leave out of the discussion is that, in those countries,
a great deal of that money paid for fuel is taxes, and goes toward public health programs.
In the USA, the money paid above actual cost goes instead straight into either speculators pockets,
or into the pockets of the fat-cat oil company executives.

If someone with "GTX280s in SLI and Q9750 are getting roughly 3500-4000 PPD",
then they do not have their systems configured correctly. (they need to not run in "SLI" while folding)

I also have a single 8800 GTS 512 (g92) that makes 5760 ppd, consistently.
It also runs one uni-processor client, coupled with an AMD dual-core CPU.

Lets not get in a flame war here ............

You can look at it two ways.
Either you minimize the power used when folding or you maximize the Points per Day per Watt used figure.
I go the second route.
My big pure GPU folding rig uses 900 watts but will put out 40,000 Points per Day.
Now to get that number of points off pure SMP computers means you'd be needing to run around ten Q6600's and you'd be useing around 1,750 Watts.
Now the numbers get silly if you start talking of the classic client.
If each client can do 250 PpD and use 45 Watts you would need 160 clients useing 7,200 Watts ......

So if the points reflect the scientific value of the work done, the GPU client has the best return for the power put in, with the SMP client second and the classic client a distant third.

Luck ...............

Tigerbiten wrote:Lets not get in a flame war here ............

Stating true facts is not flaming.
I am not flaming anybody.
I don't understand why you would even have to post something like that.