TR Forums

My poor little laptop, he try so so hard. Unfortunately, the Man keeps giving him WUs that will take something like 200 hours to complete. Below is the output of the current run (after a restart). The laptop is a 1.6GHz Turion with 2GB of RAM.

Is this normal? My understanding was that 4 days was pretty much the limit - what can I do to speed this up?
----------------------------------------------------------

Note: Please read the license agreement (fah.exe -license). Further
use of this software requires that you have read and accepted this agreement.

If you see this twice, MPI is working
If you see this twice, MPI is working
2 cores detected
No directory settings found in registry. Using current directory...


--- Opening Log file [June 26 04:39:10]


# SMP Client ##################################################################
###############################################################################

Folding@Home Client Version 5.91beta6

http://folding.stanford.edu

###############################################################################
###############################################################################

Launch directory: C:\Program Files\fah
Executable: C:\Program Files\fah\fah.exe


[04:39:10] - Ask before connecting: No
[04:39:10] - User name: scottybo (Team 2630)
[04:39:10] - User ID: 77F7B0094D0B056D
[04:39:10] - Machine ID: 1
[04:39:10]
[04:39:10] Loaded queue successfully.
[04:39:10]
[04:39:10] + Processing work unit
[04:39:10] Core required: FahCore_a1.exe
[04:39:10] Core found.
[04:39:10] Working on Unit 01 [June 26 04:39:10]
[04:39:10] + Working ...
[04:39:11]
[04:39:11] *------------------------------*
[04:39:11] Folding@Home Gromacs SMP Core
[04:39:11] Version 1.74 (March 10, 2007)
[04:39:11]
[04:39:11] Preparing to commence simulation
[04:39:11] - Ensuring status. Please wait.
[04:39:28] - Looking at optimizations...
[04:39:28] - Working with standard loops on this execution.
[04:39:28] - Previous termination of core was improper.
[04:39:28] - Going to use standard loops.
[04:39:28] - Files status OK
[04:39:49] - Expanded 4810725 -> 24810145 (decompressed 515.7 percent)
[04:39:50]
[04:39:50] Project: 2665 (Run 2, Clone 390, Gen 16)
[04:39:50]
[04:39:58] Entering M.D.
[04:40:04] Calling FAH init
[04:40:07] Read topology
[04:40:08] s
[04:40:08] Writing local files
[04:40:08] int)
[04:40:08] Read checkpoint
[04:40:08] Protein: HGG with glycosylations
[04:40:08] Writing local files
[04:40:09] Completed 10000 out of 250000 steps (4 percent)
[04:40:24] Extra SSE boost OK.
[06:22:33] Writing local files
[06:22:34] Completed 12500 out of 250000 steps (5 percent)
[08:14:16] Writing local files
[08:14:17] Completed 15000 out of 250000 steps (6 percent)
[10:07:09] Writing local files
[10:07:10] Completed 17500 out of 250000 steps (7 percent)
[11:57:39] Writing local files
[11:57:40] Completed 20000 out of 250000 steps (8 percent)
[13:46:07] Writing local files
[13:46:08] Completed 22500 out of 250000 steps (9 percent)
[15:35:17] Writing local files
[15:35:18] Completed 25000 out of 250000 steps (10 percent)
[17:25:22] Writing local files
[17:25:22] Completed 27500 out of 250000 steps (11 percent)

Seems rather slow. The WU you're folding has a time limit of 6 days, but you still aren't going to make that. It wouldn't surprise me if the machine was slowing down the CPU purposely to keep from overheating, but you can verify that with cpu-z.

Project 2665 is a slow WU.

Thanks for the tips. I kicked that WU and loaded the single core client. I had no business trying to run SMP on that box - it was just the first try and I didn't know what I was doing, really . Anyway, thanks again, all better now.

I'd probably have tried running a CD with notfred's diskless ISO on it just to get an idea of the speed of the machine, hopefully avoiding any OS-related step-down in speed. But I'm generally in agreement. Laptops are best for short-term use, not running folding applications at maximum CPU speed and heat output.

One major reason I'm not too favorable toward using a laptop is that it makes the batteries go to crap after a while unless you remove them and... do whatever it is that would make them keep working over a long period w/o a charge. If that's even possible. Charge and drain cycles would be too much work to be worth it, from my perspective, and though I can't recall what the lithium ion specifics are, I think all previous technologies have a maximum number of cycles to them.