I left off in january, I am still at rank 328...
decided to light up the older 3.4 ghz prescott and ati 2600 on gpu.
Try out the ic7, and this is after fixing a house fuse box problem (my pc knows it now no doubt).
I am slow in comparison to the new stuff, but will leave it on at nights.

20k hours and climbing...old sir prescott doesn't want to quit.

That's great, welcome back.

after popping a ups breaker after several hours, and windows visata logs catching the vid card as a source of sudden reboot...I kept going. This is after I could not run the air conditioner and computer on the same circuit (the same error I repeated for several years now) and hot swapped a 15 amp breaker for a 20...the machine kept going.

I have no clue if I am way behind and making this worth while. Just last year and previous, the time to get things done was much much faster, in fact 1500 ppd was not abnormal. today it is real slow for me, this log shows way over 30 hours for a gpu2 chore, which is still light years faster than the cpu for more points. I can say I will not donate the energy as much as I used to. I am only assuming the machine is fading away from the fah software focus..it aint a prescott anymore.



I will let it run only if for two days without me at the computer...but can donate this little bit anyway.

Yikes man, don't overheat your wiring and endanger yourself to fold. A 20 am fuse belongs on 12 gauge wire. If anything move to a smaller AC unit, just a fan, slow your pc, or whatever combo works for you.

Stay safe.

Hey Colm, glad you're back with us. By the way, what's your name on folding@home? I didn't see a 'colm' on the list. But anyway, yeah, aristide1 is right, be sure to keep your wiring up to code, folding at nice but no need to start a fire over it. As far as the folding speed goes, it's odd, sometimes I'll get a WU that really books along, other times it just drags, doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason. For instance, I have an atom 330 running 64 bit linux, it seems to always get 1920 point WUs, but sometimes they run at 300ppd, sometimes 600ppd, and sometimes 900ppd. No idea why. But anyway, thanks and good luck!

I used to live in an apartment complex that had the same problem -- couldn't run the AC and any other kitchen implement (microwave, toaster, oven, etc) without blowing a fuse. Tried to change a fuse once in the basement and nearly electrocuted myself. Really be careful. Might want to just hold out for colder weather.

Don't ever run any of those bargain basement extension cords on your AC. Those things are 14, 16, or even 18 gauge. Super skinny wire meant for lamps and clocks, and not much else.

If you need an extension cord on an AC unit you should go to the hardware store and buy a 12 gauge unit. Your PC is in the 100-300 range, so 16 gauge is OK, 14 is better.

Your AC's motor on the compressor is putting noise on the line as well, so your PC (and your TV) should go through a filtering device.

WUs not only take different amounts of time, they tax CPUs and GPUs differently. I've seen some large temperature swings on GPUs from 1 WU to the next. On bad days a single 9600 GSO may not get 2000 points, and about a year ago I could get 3800 on some days. Oddly enough the 1800 pointers are actually efficient, I get good points with them. You need FAHMon to determine which WUs get big PPD and which don't.

I going to finally put my quad setup in a case, it's on my desk right now. The idea that 1 spark can go flying and ignite something is not good. At least in a metal case I get a little protection.

I decided to go for 30000 points and call it quits for the folding. The writers of the folding stuff are poster children for more threads and less power...it is rather phony.
When I do upgrade it is still quits for me. I hope donations actually do something someday. I personally know they do not conform enough in their software. I am doing more functions with a TCL script. This is the last time I say it.I just recently found some variables by other outraged folders with much "larger" equipment than I am running, and have stepped up performance by a smidgen.

roughly 800 points to go, and let it sit there for the record. I am not falling for lack of evolution. the consumption now more than ever for lack of disciplined in the clients is no excuse.

I don't follow, please elaborate.

I think it's a complaint about the code quality. And yeah, I hear you, the code they use seems pretty inefficient. Although I don't agree that threads are the problem, they actually don't use threads, they use MPI to set up multiple processes with inter-process communication. Going with MPI when the windows support was dubious was a pretty bad call. Multithreading would have been a much smarter way to go from the beginning, that would have given the two platforms parity. To be fair to the Pande group, though, it sounds like they're running the simulation as a mesh diffusion, and that usually requires more communication in the form of node updates, and that may be why they went with MPI. Now sure, you can set up a multithreaded updater for a shared memory mesh without a lot of trouble, but it's a little more tricky. Hell, I could probably rewrite the stuff in python (using some C++ numeric libraries for the back end) and get better throughput, and it would be more platform independent. Although the GPU clients would be a little more tricky. But colm, they do seem to have a plan in place to improve things:

http://folding.typepad.com/

So the next version will use threads, and it sounds like they have algorithmic improvements on the way too. Now whether they'll have it ready in 'a month or two' is questionable, but it's something to look forward to.

Of course the bigger problem you may be having is that they do seem to keep renormalizing the point system for newer processors, so the P4 now seems like it barely contributes, even though previously it used to make more points. I suspect that they're getting many more calculations per point than they used to. But, the more calcs they get, the more science they can do, so it's better in that way. Eh, I dunno, I've always been a computer geek, and upgrading and setting them up is a lot of fun for me, so I enjoy it, but if it's too frustrating for you, don't drive yourself crazy.

Although it's funny, a little upgrade to some of your equipment would give you a huge difference in ppd/watt, so that might be worth looking into in your case. If you're really blowing circuit breakers, that seems crazy for the number of ppd you're making. For instance, I have an Atom 330 box, it makes about 950ppd, and it burns about 60W. I have another Atom 330 system with a different motherboard, it has an ION on the board and it has a pci-e slot I put an nvidia gts 250 into, and it's currently doing 6400ppd, and burning about 160W. Although even with a little cheapo core 2 duo, you'd get to a much better ppd/watt point, and it would definitely get you back into the 1500ppd range you were previously at. And come to think of it, at some point I'll probably upgrade my little core 2 duo system, do you want a deal on my old motherboard? I can't guarantee I'll upgrade it anytime soon, and probably not this month, but at some point it'll definitely happen. Let me know if you're interested.

my purpose for pc more than anything narrows down to one gigantic thread to do one gigantic work, the two threads in the p4 still spoil me. EVERYTHING but folding has gotten faster. The avivo in the vid card has my mpeg2 spit back out in under a minute for almost 500 megs.

my folding console right now is showing four hours gone by, and its been an hour and a half. They are quite incorrect about something, and I know the prescott is gigantic for single thread functions...the biggest on earth if I dare say so. deep tunnel or not, it is a 130watt freakin giant. My own coding skills add to the frustration. don;t even bother telling me the newer cpus have a greater evolution, its like looking at a shattered window, precisely where they wanted it CRACKED. All my codes, fun or serious are bigger right where I am.
I just have to go with it, the way they have it. The benefit of this messup in the folding is ZERO slowdown all while the vid card reads 90s %. I can even play a game or watch HD. They are not doing something correctly, that is all there is to this...the card never backs down either, I get same time interval no matter what else I decide to do. Can anyone agree this is an error a bit too far? I have it set with priority, that is why it does not back down. Its as if to be playing with hardly anything.

I set SMP priority to the lowest possible, and GPU folding to the second lowest. That seems to work for me, but occasionally Bill's2 Process Manager shuffels them a bit. It still works.

I did manage to get a new card in, similar to my last, and strangely quite light..it looks like it has less stuff.

anyway, got my 2600pro agp on the way, and getting another old prescott running, simply because I have a HT cpu , psu, stuff sitting around, and an xp home. why not.

at its best the prescott 3.4e running smp (that is its fastest work) , and the vid card, it is about 800ppd a day from what I have figured...and I still browse the net watch movies etc..with four smp thiggamajiggers running. the program is hilariously so freakin wrong.

there is something way way off in the folding programming, but humor it.
so, I let it run once and awhile at 500ppd, if anyone is into the prescott sitting quiet to run this stuff...

I am curious about another older system, a dell670 with two sl8ma cpus. I would crap a brick and know without a doubt programmers have gone off the deep end, if that didn't keep up with today. That is one gigantic setup...even "old".