I just want to point out a couple of things. I've been trying to set up an office machine to do some folding. The machine in question is an Athlon 900 with enough RAM (256+128) and a Matrox dual-head, running Windows 2000 pro.
The thing is, I've been running F@H there since the "request for help" at the forum (that's 3-4 days I can't remember very well - too much partying in-between ). It had a 1% of a single WU this morning - and that's not of much help to the team.
I downloaded the screen-saver version and was wondering why was it so slow. I tried to tweak the configuration yesterday but it didn't change anything. I set up the console version just an hour ago and I've done in an hour more than it had done in more than 2 days - so it has to be the graphical layout or something like that what kept the performance so low.
To make it worse, the screen-saver version turned my computer quite irresponsive so it took minutes to get control back (it didn't quite stop when I started to work). This was very annoying.
I actually prefer the console version, with more statistical information in text rather than the 3D representation. I'm too geeky .
After the inial downloading stuff, it comes with something like this:
...
[09:32:06] - Frames Completed: 0, Remaining: 400
[09:32:06] - Dynamic steps required: 5000000
...
[09:32:07] TINKER: Software Tools for Molecular Design
[09:32:07] Version 3.8 October 2000
[09:32:07] Copyright (c) Jay William Ponder 1990-2000
[09:32:07] portions Copyright (c) Michael Shirts 2001
[09:32:07] portions Copyright (c) Vijay S Pande 2001
[09:34:44] Finished a frame (1)
[09:37:20] Finished a frame (2)
[09:39:55] Finished a frame (3)
[09:42:31] Finished a frame (4)
[09:45:04] Finished a frame (5)
[09:47:43] Finished a frame (6)
[09:50:21] Finished a frame (7)
[09:52:59] Finished a frame (8)
[09:55:40] Finished a frame (9)
[09:58:15] Finished a frame (10)
[10:00:48] Finished a frame (11)
[10:03:29] Finished a frame (12)
[10:06:18] Finished a frame (13)
[10:09:05] Finished a frame (14)
[10:11:44] Finished a frame (15)
...
I guess it will be faster when I'm not working at the PC.
I was wondering how many people had similar problems and gave out. Try the console mode
I guess an Athlon 900 is enough machine to help a bit. I do mainly programming stuff in it so I don't need an upgrade here. I have some friends at the desing dept. running XP1800+ and the like. I'll see if I can't trick them into F@TR My 2600+ at home runs linux so that will be a different story.
Another thing to point out is the minimum CPU required to help about anything. Anything under 600Mhz shouldn't waste electricity because my guess is it won't help anything noticeable. I'd spare all the fuss if I was to do in a month what the other guys are doing in a couple of hours. What do you think?