Folding@Home: CF Official Discussion Thread

[dragon2309]

only 4 hours left til my first WU has finished, then another team member will be added to the list, woot woot.

dont forget people, add team #44358 fopr the computerforum team.

[tweaker]

Nice work you all.

Things would go alot quicker for me if I could run the good old Barton 24/7. But it's located in the bedroom and the gf wouldnt be able to sleep. =/

I might set up an instance on the other Intel core as well, havent decided yet.

It's pretty common knowledge that one instance of F@H can be run on each CPU core, either physical (dual core) or virtual (Hyperthreading). There are FAQs on how to accomplish this by Stainless and intelc4004.

What may not be as commonly known is how this affects the completion of work units and affects the project as a whole.

Hyperthreading CPUs

Running two instances of F@H will cause both WUs will be completed more slowly than running them one at a time, but this will generate approximately 15-30% more points than running a single instance. On the surface, this sounds great, but this is not as beneficial to the overall folding effort as it sounds on the surface. Projects are released in generations, and all of the WUs in one generation must be completed prior to the start of the next generation. By slowing down individual work units, it slows the completion of one generation and progression on to the next generation. Generations can number in the hundreds, so a delay of even a few hours can cause significant delays in the completion of a project. So, even though you're cranking out more points, you may actually be slowing things down.

Dual Core CPUs

Since each core is a physical entity, no slowdown is experienced by running multiple F@H instances.

Conclusion

Stanford's philosophy is that they are perfectly happy accepting any and all contributions to the overall effort. On hyperthreading CPUs, running either one instance or two are much more helpful to the cause than not folding at all, however, running only one instance will make the projects progress more quickly even if your points don't accumulate as quickly as running two instances.

For more information, please read this information on the Folding@Home Support Forum.

overclock.net

[apj101]

good point was made in tweakers thread about the use Hyper threading. Overall you should run one instance of the client on single core machine regardless of hyperthreading.

[4W4K3]

I'm hoping to get at least 128MB DDR to see if this old 1700+ rig will work. The mobo had some blown caps but it might just run stable, after a good cleaning the dead fan ports seem to have come back to life. Then there will be at least a 1.47GHz machine F@H night and day, it's quiet enough to run at night in my room

[dragon2309]

woo, finished my first WU, it was a fairly big one, 10,000 frames, the one im doing now is 5,000, a bit smaller, hopefully get it done a bit quicker, woo, im on the list...!!!

dragon

[4W4K3]

I feel like such a *******. I left my GF's house, and ~35 minutes later realized I forgot to get the DDR she had. Will have to test the computer tomorrow...ugh.

[jancz3rt]

Cool guys, I just came back from the weekend away from my PC and I see that there are more and more WUs being done and new guys on (Dragon and more ) Keep the work up. My second WU is gonna complete in 5 hrs

JAN

[ckfordy]

im doing a WU right now it should be done by the end of this week or sooner.

[dragon2309]

my 2nd WU will be fniished in just over a day, its samller than last time, so its all good

dragon

[Chris Chan]

>hopefully it will run fine on a pentium 3 with 128 mb of ram.
yeah, i'm folding on a few cellie 433s.