Personal computing discussed

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pikaporeon
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Personal Milestone initiative

Fri Jan 16, 2009 11:57 pm

I think this is just one of those little tweaks that can make us a bit better.

Basically look at your current folding output, and try to discover a way reach a target threshold within your reach.

Me I make about 2k ppd, so I could say I'm going for 20 000 ppweek. Not a huge gap, but an extra 600 points per week has to come from somewhere and even the smaller clients have value to stanford, and some (even if small) to the team.

You could say "I want to perform at least as much as a guy x weeks away on my threat list"



Biggest thing though is talking about how to make it work. Show the small little tweaks you'll do just to get that last little bit, because putting things down is a lot better than speculatively saying "Oh yea i'll make it happen:)"


my plan:
Laptop folding (C2D 2.0 ghz)
Gaming on my PS3 less / folding on it more.
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HurgyMcGurgyGurg
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Re: Personal Milestone initiative

Sat Jan 17, 2009 12:31 am

Averaging about 2k ppd right now, although my rig should be worth 4-5k, HD 4870-C2D 84000.

It's simple for me though, when I leave the house for long periods I always shut it off and at night I turn it off, however I have been experimenting with temps and fan speeds and have finally gotten the computer quiet enough that I can sleep with it on (Same room). I got two or three 5k days in so far and hopefully it will continue.

Besides that I have two laptops that don't really fold (One has a serivce console but its only on a few hours a day so it does around 50 ppd...)
The other is a recent 1.83 GHz dual core Turion and it gets close to 500 PPD, I just have to keep folding on it when I'm not using it, (I can't fold while using it because of poor fan design, it can't take 100% without being propped up on its side to get more air)

On the tweaking side, if your running an ATI GPU client, you can set a flush interval value (0-1024) that will reduce GPU overhead 50% so you can get back 200 or so extra ppd for cpu clients.

This is quoted from the ATI Specific Issue's folding forum:

"In your environment, you can set FLUSH_INTERVAL to a value between 2 and 1024. This flag sets the maximum command packet size sent to the GPU. The default in the core is 16 which seems to solve the lag problems for most people, but at some added CPU overhead. People with higher-end boards can manually adjust this value until we deprecate this flag in later cores. The higher the value this flag is, the less driver overhead and lower CPU usage you will have, but there is still CPU optimization work going into later CAL releases and F@H cores. Setting this value to high will cause UI lag and potentially VPU recover and is designed more for advanced users. The lower the value, the smaller the command packet which translates into other graphics apps being able to play nice."

"This is an environment variable you can set via System properties->Advanced->Environment Variables which you can get to via the control panel or described above in P5-133XL's post above. You'll want to set a system variable 'FLUSH_INTERVAL' (without the quotes) and set it to an integer value described above. If you have having lag issues set it to a value less than 16. Note that different size proteins will have a little bit different behavior here. We are working on getting this value set automatically in the future."

All HD 4870 should be fine at 512, mine is running at that and I haven't had a single issue, less powerful graphics cards need a lower setting though. Some people with 4870's can even set 1024 which drops CPU usage 75%, but that starts having errors. Play around and enjoy that little extra PPD!

Also, if you have problems sleeping at night due to noise from an ATI GPU, try reducing the memory clocks, my 4870 is running at 500 MHz Mem, when normal is 950 MHz, but folding only drops around 100-200 ppd. This drops temps about 5 C so you can turn down the fan speed and make it quieter. I don't know how well this works on other cards though, GDDR5 is probably the reason the clocks can be set so low.

Well I hope to get up to 3.5k-4k ppd (My computer is still going to be off for at least a few hours a day) enjoy the little "Tweaks" as well.
 
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Re: Personal Milestone initiative

Sat Jan 17, 2009 10:51 am

I've been working on upgrading my primary home desktop and server infrastructure to more modern hardware and software. This is a much-needed upgrade regardless of F@h (file server is currently an 800MHz Athlon with a pile of whiny, 8 year old hard drives in it; web server is still running Redhat Linux 8; and I want to migrate to Linux as my primary desktop OS while still retaining a Windows box for things that require it). I've brought up an Athlon X2 4800 and a Phenom X4 9550 in the past month; I've also got a couple of older X2s that will continue to run as well.

I may also try to bring back my "crate farm" (bare motherboards zip-tied into milk crates). USB flash drives have gotten cheap enough now that I may go that route, instead of setting them up for network boot.

Near-term goal is to maintain at least 5K PPD... hopefully I continue to get enough of the GROCVS WUs, instead of the lower-PPD GRO-SMP ones. Longer term, I'd like to get back into the TR top 20 producers (which is gonna require 8K PPD or more).
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Momento Mori
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Re: Personal Milestone initiative

Sun Jan 18, 2009 1:10 am

I am alright at 8kPPD right now between the GTX 280 SSC GPU, i7 SMP and PS3 all folding under my name but in the furture I would like to get another GPU or two folding and get my PPD closer to 20k PPD.
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pikaporeon
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Re: Personal Milestone initiative

Sun Jan 18, 2009 5:07 am

Momento Mori wrote:
I am alright at 8kPPD right now between the GTX 280 SSC GPU, i7 SMP and PS3 all folding under my name but in the furture I would like to get another GPU or two folding and get my PPD closer to 20k PPD.

aha ive been waiting for you to pass me for a while

Three weeks, at current pace. lol
Hey girl you want a bad boy? I overclock my backup servers.
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mentaldrano
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Re: Personal Milestone initiative

Sun Jan 18, 2009 5:51 pm

Momento Mori wrote:
I am alright at 8kPPD right now between the GTX 280 SSC GPU, i7 SMP and PS3 all folding under my name but in the furture I would like to get another GPU or two folding and get my PPD closer to 20k PPD.


Yes, you blew by me so fast is isn't funny! I need to get my laptop folding (probably another 1kppd), but even then I'm still 5kppd behind you!
(I fold under the name 'RageAgainstHeaven'). I've given the laptop a rest the last few months because the CPU fan is acting up (hard to fix those if they get stuffed full of hair or the thermal compound dries out).
 
Momento Mori
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Re: Personal Milestone initiative

Mon Jan 19, 2009 9:01 am

I guess I am moving up the charts pretty fast but not near as fast as Shinare; I watched Shinare blow past me a few days ago even at my pace. I would like to get my PPD closer to what they have 20k-22k PPD. I don't see my self getting a big boost like I am looking for all that soon though. I am tossing around the idea of building a dedicated folding rig composed of a few GTX 295 cards that just sits in the basement and does its thing, but that would be quite the expensive endeavor, especially if I decided to put it on the x58 platform run linux for a better i7 production and wine the two GPU clients.
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mentaldrano
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Re: Personal Milestone initiative

Mon Jan 19, 2009 10:42 am

Momento Mori wrote:
I guess I am moving up the charts pretty fast but not near as fast as Shinare; I watched Shinare blow past me a few days ago even at my pace. I would like to get my PPD closer to what they have 20k-22k PPD.


Let us not speak of Shinare; my shame is total.
 
Shinare
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Re: Personal Milestone initiative

Tue Jan 20, 2009 10:34 pm

Aww shucks, ya guys, we're all on the same team. :) I just happen to have some spare equipment that needed something to do. I think I will try and commit to 3 million points for Team TR in 2009. It may or may not happen depending on if the equipment that's being used for folding gets wrangled in for other things. But if not I'm committed to using them for the team.

I too would love to get a multi-GPU setup going with the latest nvidia hardware. But that would be a tough sell to the wife. I'm lucky she's as understanding with my "hobby" as it is.
For with what measure you measure it will be measured to you.
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Momento Mori
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Re: Personal Milestone initiative

Wed Jan 21, 2009 8:09 am

You are going to be a hard one to catch up to one day Shinare, but a little friendly competition (even though I can't put up much yet) is good for the team and for the research as a whole. If anything we need a lot more friendly folding competition around here. I understand you on selling the idea of building a folding rig to your wife being a hard thing; I have a girlfriend who lives with me and for all intensive purposes is just as involved in such matters as a wife would be. I am considering throwing another 280 in this box though since the market price is dropping rapidly on them and it would be a lot less expensive than the dedicated folding rig I am thinking of for the time being. What are you running right now anyways?
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Shinare
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Re: Personal Milestone initiative

Wed Jan 21, 2009 1:21 pm

I've got 8 c2d's dedicated in a farm using notfred's diskless PXE. They are good for ~15-18k ppd. Then I have a few other c2d's that do it in the background in windows but are used most of the time. Thats another 2-3k PPD. Then I have my 8800GTX doing it as well for another ~4k PPD. I'm getting around 22-24k PPD. The amount of c2d's in the farm will probably decrease as time goes on as they are needed elsewhere, but hopefully I can get us some points for the team anyway before then.
For with what measure you measure it will be measured to you.
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Momento Mori
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Re: Personal Milestone initiative

Sat Jan 31, 2009 5:31 pm

My points are going to drop off almost completely for a bit, this system has a failing GTX280... will have to wait for replacement card to return to folding.
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Momento Mori
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Re: Personal Milestone initiative

Thu Feb 05, 2009 12:48 am

Going live again... GTX285 installed and running; not just to fix the expired SMP client.
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Shinare
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Re: Personal Milestone initiative

Thu Feb 05, 2009 2:29 pm

Sweet, wish I could get my hands on one of those.

I'm still waiting for that "killer deal" on some mid-range puppies.
For with what measure you measure it will be measured to you.
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Momento Mori
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Re: Personal Milestone initiative

Thu Feb 05, 2009 11:38 pm

I am trying to do a RMA/stepup on the 280 SSC I have that is dead; if it all works out I should end up with a second 285 I might put in this box, I probably will not SLI it though.
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Momento Mori
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Re: Personal Milestone initiative

Fri Mar 06, 2009 12:09 pm

I finally have my second GTX285 online... so far it looks like it is going to push my total PPD to around 17-18k PPD. :D
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