Folding @ Home F.A.Q.

[pscout]

Originally Posted by Jordan

Just installed Folding@Home SMP on one of my C2D machines, I should appear on the team list as "JordanE" soon :).

Welcome to the HCF fold Jordan !!!

Originally Posted by DurkaDurka

I installed F@H on my core 2 pc, under the name DurkaDurka. Entered the team# as well

Welcome DurkaDurka


More folding powah for our push to hit the top 800 team rankings ... and beyond

Post away if you have any questions or problems

[Gav]

Excellent. I'll give you guys a folding tag as soon as you show up on the list.

[DurkaDurka]

almost fnished 2 WU's... woot

[Gav]

Originally Posted by DurkaDurka

almost fnished 2 WU's... woot

Fixed, welcome to the team.

[MacJunky]

I would be doing more folding right now but a combination of the heat and lack of a case atm as well as a POS temp PSU is causing my G4 to not be amazingly stable under load for extended periods of time.
[offtopic]I think I am in line for new higher airflow 80mm fans as well, these seemingly pathetic 2500RPM 32.5CFM ones are apparently not good enough.[/offtopic]

[pscout]

Originally Posted by MacJunky

I would be doing more folding right now but a combination of the heat and lack of a case atm as well as a POS temp PSU is causing my G4 to not be amazingly stable under load for extended periods of time.
[offtopic]I think I am in line for new higher airflow 80mm fans as well, these seemingly pathetic 2500RPM 32.5CFM ones are apparently not good enough.[/offtopic]

I know what you mean ... summer is hard on us folders .... I looks like this week is gonna 30C + here

[MacJunky]

Well, if my board was in a case and I had a better PSU I would be better off than I am now ( http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/6864/00000332up9.jpg heh, random camera flash strikes again ).
Thing is, I can't finish my case modifications until I get a new PSU.
And the problem with that is the PSU money will have to come out of the "whole new computer" money.

[Gav]

Got you your folding tag MacJunky.

[pscout]

Originally Posted by MacJunky

Well, if my board was in a case and I had a better PSU I would be better off than I am now ( http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/6864/00000332up9.jpg heh, random camera flash strikes again ).
Thing is, I can't finish my case modifications until I get a new PSU.
And the problem with that is the PSU money will have to come out of the "whole new computer" money.

I think you would be much better off saving the $ for a "whole new computer" since it will likely fold a whole lot better than the g4 will.

I am certainly no mac expert, in fact not even a noob! ... but from what i have read of others folding on the g4's, any low end c2d based rig, either mac osx or windows, is going to produce a ton more since a dual core will let you run smp. There are smp clients for osx, windows and 64-bit linux too.

In the meantime, don't worry about not running the folding client on the g4 ... if most of your wu's are error'ing (eg Early Unit End errors - EUE in folding jargon) then you will will do the scientific effort a favour by not folding on it.

Every time a wu is returned as an EUE, it is reassigned to several other computers .. which means that more than 1 other computer will rerun the same wu just to prove your hardware was most likely at fault. Which wastes their time cuz they could have been crunching other wu's.
Furthermore, each wu is part of a sequence, so the next one cannot be assigned until the previous one is successfully completed. So a hardware caused eue can add many days to how long it takes to complete a project.

Some eue's are normal just because of the way the simulations are set up but these are pretty uncommon since they are usually beta tested before release. The researchers use the reassignment success/failure to determine if the eue was due to hardware instability, or the simulation itself.

Hope this helps

[MacJunky]

Originally Posted by pscout

I think you would be much better off saving the $ for a "whole new computer" since it will likely fold a whole lot better than the g4 will.

Yes, I am thinking of getting a low-end MacPro and tossing some better off the shelf Xenons and a couple FB-DIMM sticks in it later as I can afford them.(that is not to say the MacPro's CPUs are all crap.. just the low-end ones that I would be ordering it with.)

Originally Posted by pscout

I am certainly no mac expert, in fact not even a noob! ... but from what i have read of others folding on the g4's, any low end c2d based rig, either mac osx or windows, is going to produce a ton more since a dual core will let you run smp. There are smp clients for osx, windows and 64-bit linux too.

Yes, in fact my lobo shipped with 350-500Mhz G4 CPUs and I can get single 2Ghz or dual 1.8Ghz G4 upgrades for it. But, the price tag on those is high and I still have the same bus speed and RAM so a new system is better unless you have old specialized hardware that requires a board like mine. So, I am just going to save for a new computer... Unless you want to pay for this c2d rig you mention I can't just go out and get a c2d setup at the moment as my job is less than even part time as nobody around here has any Macs for me to fix.

Originally Posted by pscout

In the meantime, don't worry about not running the folding client on the g4 ... if most of your wu's are error'ing (eg Early Unit End errors - EUE in folding jargon) then you will will do the scientific effort a favour by not folding on it.

Would it actually say I was having EUE issues? Because I was getting no errors at all. If it does keep track of errors, would there be a way to check past WUs?