Colm - ten years - you are a superhero!

Colm, I bow with respect to your dedication to folding ! Congrats on that first decade !

Awesome dedication!

Congrats to SPCR for passing 2ch@ps3 earlier this week!
And a standing ovation to colm for 10 years with the project -- nearly as long as Dr. Pande himself.

Wow, colm -- I've been Folding almost 7 years (I started 1 Jan 04) and I thought that was a long time! keep on Foldin'!

can't quote all the replies, not smart enough.

I did walk away for some time...a couple of years at a time. It is indeed areason I found spcr.. the machines were crazy hot loud, even rang my ears.
There is a routine holds true today, but much slower:

what you just bought is outdone tomorrow.

today, as in the past 5 years, it is easy to stay where you are with 2004-5 stuff...

I was just looking at a 3.06 HT on a 533 bus cpu to keep an old dell going. Not much for folding, but a very nice backup. just gimme two threads.

Hey, congrats colm! 10 years is a strech!

And aspd, thanks for the news on the Asus 460, always good to hear what's working well.

I be backing out again for the time being. My purpose was to spark up an old one to life it never used...

2.5 weeks for 7564 points.

I always wanted to be a regular but it has outrun the machines I do not need to upgrade.

the 875pbz has not even come close to getting replicated... ecc for everybody died without it.

I did rewatch a vid about the purpose for folding, I still do not see it as all that much thought out serious theory.. but a great benchmark.
will join again when tinkering with unnecessary extra cores. Funny enough, even vjay pande mentioned one big cpu with one big thread would be more beneficial...they simply do not exist.

have fun, I hope to see spcr gaining ranks.

Hey, so I got a couple 460s, here's my impressions. First off, be sure to run these with -advmethods! That really boosts your ppd. Now the two I got, one is a cheap one, 768MB version, and the other is an evga FTW oc'd version. Currently, the cheap one is getting 12109ppd, and the FTW is getting 14800ppd. I still need to get some power figures, but I have to say that they're both pretty quiet. I got the cheap one to experiment with, and then my 295 started failing a bunch of WUs, so I figured it was time to replace it. And I'm really liking these things, the FTW is putting out roughly as much as the 295, and I think it's using at least 50W less, and it's quiet! I may get a 2nd one of these for my big machine. But anyway, just thought I'd give you my impressions, it's good stuff!

Yeah, those are really tempting ! I also really like the 450s... I might grab one of those if I find one : they seem to be decent folders and require just one power connector (less heat to get rid of, less noise ).

Looks like nanoalpha and coweater58 have got some sweet upgrades recenly. Early Christmas fellas?

Hrm... -advmethods on the gpu client? I gotta try that and see what happens. Hopefully it wont cook my 285, but if it does, thats an excuse to upgrade.

Well, times have changed since I posted that. Turns out they've graduated all the new cores from advmethods to normal, so it isn't really necessary anymore. And the latest gpu WUs, 6800 and 6811, are knocking the ppd down a bit. But that really only applied to the new fermi cores, so it wouldn't have mattered on a 285. Wouldn't hurt to try, I suppose....

nope no early xmas gifts. finally setup smp properly on my amd x4 620 oc @ 3ghz. its been working very well. i have been looking to upgrade my 9600 gso to a gtx 460 or gts 450 but low on funds. Every now and then i let my gtx 295 fold. happy folding

Will be adding a GTS 450 by the end of the week hopefully. I'll report back here to see how it's doing ! I already know I'm going to love it though (more ppd and less power usage than 9800gtx+) The only "unknown" is the noise.
Got this one for 120$ right before the price went up 10$ : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... _-14125341

I don't think noise will be a big issue with a 450, but watch the temperatures on it. Some of the bigger WUs (68XX series) that have been showing up for gpus have caused thermal shutdowns on some people's machines. Make sure to install whatever overclocking utility may come with the card, you may need it to downclock it. But however it goes, I'm sure it will be an improvement over a 9800gtx+. Oh, and be sure to get the latest gpu client, that will recognize the fermi card. Good luck!

Well, the 6040 project is a real humdinger! I'm almost 2 days (1d 21h 17mn) into it, and currently sitting at 62%.... 443.12 PPD isn't too bad, really because the bonus will be commensurate, I hope? ETA is 1d 4h 39mn...

Great... NOT !! First unit the 450 picks up is a 6811... after a few minutes, temps shot to 85°C and rising (from around 35° at idle). Then the fans started making more noise that I want them to so I stopped the test. I guess I'll work on my cooling later this week... Darn !
I ahve to say though, it's a nice little card Can't wait to see what kind of ppd it puts out.

Grats! And you'll see a lot more 6811's coming; I have the feeling i've been folding them alone more or less since i got my GTX 460's.
I was running two cards, but am now back to one GTX 460 alone. I can't maintain the noiselevel i crave from my computer with two of them folding project 6811...

With just the one, no problems. Running a Gigabyte GTX 460 SOC now, 900/1800/1000 @ 1.025 V - fans at auto, spinning now at 45% keeping the core ~62 degrees.

With the two running and folding, oh my, hair-dryer at auto... Too hot and noisy still at fans set around 55%.

So... Selling the ASUS GTX 460 cheap, i modded it so warranty is out the window.

Oh well, still fun.

Yeah, I have dual 460s in one machine, put them in the machine in my bedroom to use it as a space heater. Keeps the room warm, but there is definitely some noise coming out of it, temps on both seem to be just under 80C. It's tricky noise though, takes a while to ramp up. Beginning to wonder if the PSU is involved too. Eh well, it's an htpc so it's in the corner by the tv, far enough away from me that it isn't too bothersome. Definitely going to have to get a move on on a wooden version of my big brass box case.

Some good news. i am able to upgrade my 9600gso to a gtx 470 . all that upgrade for only $80, my friend had it laying around and he was going to sell it on ebay, but i offered to buy it now and i got it. now the problem is i wasn't expecting such a big upgrade. And i don't think my current psu can handle it. do you guys think i could run it on the computer listed below? or would i have to get a new psu?

AMD x4 620 @ 3ghz
MSI 785GM-E65
4gb ddr3
wd 2.5 blue 300gb
current xfx 9600gso 1gb 96sp
upgrade pny gtx 470
corsair vx450w

thanks

It might work, but you will be pushing the PSU close to the limit...
The GTX 470 needs 6-pin PEG's x2, your PSU has one PEG. That can be fixed with some adapters so not that big of a deal.
See if you can get them with the GFX card, they often get delivered with.

Your VX 450 can deliver 33 A on the 12 V rail, i've seen figures that says 35 A for the GTX 470; it's close.

And you don't have anything else in your computer that draws a lot of power really.'

Personally, I would have a go before spending more money on a new and more powerful PSU.
But it might get real noisy since it would be delivering close to its rated maximum at full GPU load; i.e. folding.

Total power will be fine, but the 12V line will be close !
Ask Santa for a new PSU

I dont understand CPU overclocking when it comes to folding.

I have an AMD 1090T (3.2Ghz 6 cores). Stock it produces ~11,000ppd on 60xx projects and ~7,300ppd on 67xx projects.

I right now I have it OCd up to 3.6Ghz and ppd is barely any better (12,000/7,700). OC with GPU folding seems to have a much bigger increase in ppd than does OC with CPU folding.

I wonder why? I also wonder why adding 2.4Ghz (.4OC x 6cores) of processing has such a small impact on ppd....

Maybe Cordis can confirm this, but I think it depends how you overclocked. I think I remember that overclocking the bus has a much bigger impact than just changing the multplier for example.

[EDIT : Also, you have only a ~13%~overclock, so your ppd numbers aren't that far off ]

Well, there's a few things going on there. First off, Frenchie is right, the percentage is what you have to look at. Since GPUs start off a lot slower, usually 600-700MHz, so a smaller MHz gain for a gpu gives you a bigger percentage gain. Second, you do see a bigger gain for higher core counts, and gpus are pretty scalable in that regard. The last issue is the bonus system for smp wus, it's not exactly linear. I'm not exactly sure how it works off the top of my head, but generally there's a non-linear payback for getting wus done faster. But it's all based on the base points for the wu, and as long as that is fairly low, then OCing will give you a percentage adjustment off that, so it may seem even smaller. In contrast, for the bigadv wus, because they have such a high base payoff, a small OC can payback a lot. So yeah, paybacks for OCing may not be as big as they seem, so whether or not you want to try it is up to you, ultimately.

Woohoo! I'm on page 1! SMP made a huge difference - more than double the PPD.

Good job ! 500k coming up in less than a month for you !

So, I finally got that GTS450 to fold at a decent temperature (60°C ). It's amazing what a slight change in fan position and a little duct can do !

I also overclocked it a bit above factory overclock to make things better (core/shader/memory : 830/1800/3600 to 900/1900/3800, no change in voltages).
And the best part is : no change in noise

The card itself it very quiet and the cooler with the 2 fans is very effective. I think this card is a very good candidate for effective folding : fast, quiet, only 1 extra power connector required, easy to overclock (my first GPU overclock MSI Afterburner is great).

Well, all I have presently is in my sig (2Ghz Celeron), now working its heart out for the SPCR team.
First time folding.