I tried HFM.net for monitoring, but it had its own problems. For instance, if I increased the frequency at which it would check the logs, it would think the SMP client had stalled because the logs hadn't changed, w/o taking the average time between percentages into consideration. If I decreased the frequency, GPU progress would jump in huge percentages, making the monitoring less useful. FahSpy doesn't seem to suffer from these problems.

I also tried FahMon, and the only part I don't like about it compared to FahSpy is the user interface when multiple clients are folding. However, as I may soon go GPU folding only, I might switch back to it.

Edit: Looking at my log, the time between the last two percent was huge.

That's over 10 hours a percent! Seeing as this is due < 70 hours from the time of the last percent, I probably will not make the deadline for the SMP client, which is a shame.

I was visiting family for a week, and I turn the power off at the house when we leave for more than a few days I'm back now

Can't wait to see what kind of quad you've got ! (Q9550 would be ideal)

Sorry Frenchie, it will probably wind up being a Q9300, think that runs at 2.5GHz. Not sure what that will get ppd wise these days, I think somewhere between 1k-2k ppd, but I'm not sure I've run it since the bonus system went into effect. But anyway, I probably won't have time to pull it out until the weekend, so if you're still interested at that point, let me know!

Q9300... It's the last quad on my list to be honest... Don't you feel like upgrading that old rusty q9550 ? (i just realized you had one, my previous post was just a supposition )

Ah, you want the 2.83Ghz one, well, that'll cost you a little more...

(also has a better multiplier for OC and twice the cache)
Well if anytime soon you plan to get rid of it, let me know !

The other good thing is that within a week the price at microcenter has dropped 20$ to 149.99$ so I'll wait a little bit longer and see how further down it goes.
Also my Minja might not be the best cooler for that... darn !! I'll try it with a 92mm fan, see what happens. Otherwise I'll have to wait a little bit longer and get another heatsink too... That Xigmatech direct touch cooler looks good... oh god oh god... so tempting, yet so broke !!

Hoi, i'm back!

It's getting colder outside and the computer is up and running F@H for SPCR again.

Hey aspd !!
Welcome back !!!!!!

My brother Nathan is now Folding with a 21.5" iMac -- the base model, which is a 3.06gHz i3, and 4GB of RAM. It looks to be a flier -- he got 2200+ points in under 16 hours.

Hey, welcome back aspd!!! Look forward to seeing you in the production list! And great news about Nathan, sounds like he's whipping along! Woo hoo!

Hello,
I folded for another team for a while, but that seems to have gone away, so I'm back to SPCR. I think SPCR was the #19 team when I left.

Do new PS3s have the capability to fold, or is just the old ones?

Yeah, you should be able to fold on the new ps3s, although the platform is getting a little dated for folding, from what I've read you can get 900ppd or so with one, so the ppd/watt rating winds up being a little low. But by all means, keep on folding however you can, and thanks for coming back to the team!!!

Well, now, I can't run the GPU client either--if I accidentally leave it running while playing games, chances are I'll get a BSoD with DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE. So frustrating...right when I finally get my system otherwise stable, F@H starts causing instability. Maybe the GPU3 client will be better, but right now, I can't risk forgetting to turn off the GPU2 client when gaming. Too much time lost encoding, and 2+ days of RAID array reconstruction makes every BSoD very painful.

Now that's frustrating. I suppose you can try all the usual suspects, driver updates, gpu memory test and so on, but it could just be one of those things. And the raid reconstruction, damn, that sucks, I used to have a raid setup like that and just had to shut it off after a while, too frustrating. The only other option would probably be to just upgrade the card, that might help, how many ppd were you getting out of it?

Hey, looks like our team ranking has dropped again, down to 52. And over the next few months, we'll probably drop a few more places. Hope we can stay out of the 60s, that would be nice. But anyway, fold away!

starting from scratch (no hardware to start with) - whats the cheapest way to produce 10k ppd?

seems to me you can build a 6-core AMD for about $500 which gets 12k ppd? about right?

Hi dereksbelanger, glad to have you on the team !!
There are 2 ways to do things : CPU (like you want to do) or GPU.
If you go CPU, find PPD (Points per day) comparaison tables on the web and get whatever CPU fits your ppd needs.
I'm more a GPU fan so I'd say, cheap mobo/CPU/RAM combo and as much as you can afford on an nvidia GPU. That should get you something very decent.
Keep us posted !
And if you have any questions on folding, don't hesitate to ask !

Thanks frenchie! Yeah, looks like a minimal system with two 460GTX cards (18,000ppd) or one 470GTX (13,000ppd) can also be built for about $500

So its a pretty close call between GPU/CPU folding as far as hardware cost per ppd goes. Do you have any advice or experience that would swing the decision one way or or the other?

Yeah, it depends on which way you want to go. You could get a cheap processor and add a gtx 460, those are supposed to get around 10k, or get an i7-860 and OC it a little, that should also get around 10k, or split the difference, get a gtx 450 and an mid to high end i5, the combo should get close to 10k. If the system is going to get used often, that can help with the decision. If it's going to be a gaming system, might as well get the good gpu, but if you're doing more cpu intensive stuff might as well get a good cpu. Not sure about the 6 core AMD cpu, if you've heard it gets 12k it might be a good way to go, I typically stick with Intel because the hyperthreded 4 core cpus, with an 1156 or 1366 board you can upgrade to doing bigadvs, not sure if AMD has the upgrade path in mind. But from what I can find on foldingforum.org it sounds like the 6 core AMD can do 10-12kppd. It also matters if you want 10k average or 10k minimum. The worst case WUs can knock you down a peg or two, I have an i7-860 that goes between 9k-12k depending on the WU. Think it averages out to a little over 10k. The other thing to worry about is that for new clients, the ppd tends to drop, so over time any system will generally get slower. For something with an upgrade path, I'd probably get the cheapest 1366 i7 board/cpu combo I could find. An i7 930 would get 10k ppd with no trouble, but motherboard+memory would probably take you above $500.

There's also the question of how quiet you might want it to be. If noise is an issue, it's a lot easier keeping a high end cpu quiet than it is to keep a high end gpu quiet. I'd suspect that a cheap processor + a 460 would get you under $500, but it wouldn't be as quiet as a faster cpu. Something to think about.

No problem


I think cordis did all the work on that one !!!
1- The upgradable system would be the CPU system (more money in mobo/CPU/RAM), and it would be easier to keep quiet. You can always add a GPU later and upgrade the CPU.
2- If you're aiming for more ppd right away, and don't really care about the long run, go the cheap mobo/CPU/RAM way, and add the biggest GPU you can afford.

Thanks guys. The plan is to replace my P4 farm (six of them + one HD3850) and will be used only for folding.

One idea I have is to start with a six-core AMD and a motherboard that has three PCI-e slots. I can start folding CPU only. If in the future there is a big PPD drop, GPU folding can be added...so the lifecycle would be

1. CPU only - until upgrade is needed
2. Add GPU1 - fold CPU+GPU1 until upgrade is needed
3. Add GPU2 - fold CPU+GPU1+GPU2 until upgrade is needed
4. Add GPU3 - fold CPU+GPU1+GPU2+GPU3 until upgrade is needed
5. end of life

Electricity is no concern because the computer will live at my office. Price out of my pocket (hardware cost) is what I want to control - while managing reasonable PPD over a 5 year span.

Do you think this plan will achieve these goals?

Thanks again!

Sounds great to me !! Can't wait to see your numbers pop up

Yeah, that seems pretty reasonable, although I'd be vaguely worried about the upgrade path for the cpu. In cpu revisions, 5 years is a pretty long time. If you're really planning on using the same motherboard for 5 years, and do cpu upgrades, you really want to get something that has a good high end now, so if they stop making cpus for it tomorrow, you can still get the high end cpu when it's price comes down. It seems like the 6 core AMD cpu is the highest end cpu they have now, so I'm not sure what kind of upgrade path you get there. It probably wouldn't hurt to do some research, and see what kind of plans AMD and Intel have for their sockets. If I was only looking at the state of the art today, I'd get an i7 930, it gives you 10k today, but later upgrade to an i7 980x, and mine is currently running at 51k ppd on a bigadv job. I could see the AMD on a dual socket board, but I tried that a few years back on an old dual athlon board, and it was basically upgraded to the top after 2 years. Dual socket boards are also a little trickier, you have to pick your cpu coolers well if you want them to fit and be quiet. And dual socket boards are also more expensive, so the cost becomes the same each way. Pros and cons either way, but it might make sense to spend a little more now and have it really last for 5 years. Just my 2 cents though, ymmv.

I added an older p4 dell to the folding..

I think it is less than 200ppd

no keyboard, mouse, sitting in a corner. last I checked it, it was at 15min intervals.
2.4ghz, I added some old ddr sticks I was using for testing.. now 1.2gb

the 845 likes anyhting in the two slots.. as long as there is two.

If I had more cpu.. it sure would not be folding. FWIW...

the "little" dell don't use much.
I also noticed a usb connect to modem is way conservative compared to lan card... hmmm.

SMP!

I finally upgraded from two single clients to one SMP, and just passed the 10 WU mark. 450 ppd ----> 1800 ppd!

It's a Dell laptop, P8800 Core2 Duo 2.66, 8gb ram, Win7 64.

Nice upgrade PaleMelanesian!

Parts for my new folding rig should arrive tomorrow!

Hey, great news PaleMelanesian! Always good to get multiple cores all pulling together.

Glad to hear that your new parts will be coming in soon, dereksbelanger.

I recently did a little upgrade too, I swapped a 260 for a 460. It wasn't all worry free, I installed it on my old 32 bit windows xp htpc, and it had some strange timeouts that kept the ppd under 1000. I upgraded to windows 7 over the weekend, and now it seems to be running stable at around 9.7kppd+. And it's quiet too. I'm thinking of pulling my 295 out of the big brass box and putting a 460 in. Maybe 2. All in all, seems like with lots of people upgrading we'll be seeing some higher production soon!

edit: Oh hey, it looks like cd8uk has roared back into the #2 production slot by doing bigadvs! Awesome!

Oh the GTX 460 is a Beaut'! I'm back on air-cooling (my pictures in signature are misleading now) Asus DirectCU-cooler; fan running at 1500 rpm at the moment gpu util=99%
Clocks in at 800/1600/1000, could probably do more but i see no need to push it. Lovely chip and card! ~13500 ppd atm. I want another!

Nice !!!

fahmon has an update if anyone uses it.

I seem to be levelling off at 600ppd, takin it easy.

no record breakers for me.

this month marks ten years of folding. if an original nick list existed, I am in the first couple of hundred ever to fold at home.
bd something. bd1973? cannot remember. it was significant as I had an athlon hitting 1ghz at the edge of the curve of the world had never seen a ghz before.

time flies.

dereksbelanger upgrade and he will leave me behind. I thought I had a teammate in equal strength for awhile.

upon a yearly check for upgrades. I want an i7 with ecc..this means xeon,and well that is a crazy price for wht I do. I lurk in the backshelf...getting older and patient, no need to be at the edge of somthing slowing down anyway. It is not about that for folding...if anyone has forgotten its humble purpose. I got one pc at 99ppd this moment... the other is a vid card, and prescott.