SPCR

I may be able to get a used P3 866MHz system for not a lot of money, would it be worth the time/money/electricity to run it as a dedicated folder? About how many PPD do you think I could get from it? Or would it be too slow for most work units?

It's probably not worth the electric. The power per W factor wouldn't be great. However how cheep is cheep? Maybe you could also use it as a backup server as well?

I've comendeared a few PCs at work for folding. The 450s only churn out about 30credits at best and the 1.5Ghz machine here churns out about...70-80 credit, so at a rough guess you'll looking at 50credits max.

If it's your electric bill I wouldn't bother


HTH,
Dan

Hello,

The choice is yours; try it and see how it goes. I have an Athlon 700 and a K6/III 400 folding along with four modern machines.

Okay, I'll probably forgo it. I'd rather save electricity than fold a few extra points.

Looks like I'll need 3 more modern machines first if I'm ever going to catch up to Neil...

Looks like I'll need 3 more modern machines first if I'm ever going to catch up to Neil...

Or one machine with a X1900XT....

http://folding.stanford.edu/FAQ-ATI.html

Folding@home has developed a new streaming processor core to utilize another new generation of hardware: GPU’s with programmable floating-point capability. By writing highly optimized, hand tuned code to run on ATI X1900 class GPU’s, the science of Folding@home will see another 20x to 30x speed increase over its previous software (Gromacs)

is it only x1900's the software runs on? do you think it'll run on slower fan-less models?

So far only X1900's are supported, and I think the X1950 as well.

disphenoidal wrote:So far only X1900's are supported, and I think the X1950 as well.

Could've sworn it works on the x1800 series. But not as fast as the x1900s.

iam folding on a presscot, that isnt considered too old now is it?
some have told me its inneficent and i would be better off not folding at all.
i dont feel like stopping, mostly because its not my electric bill, but should i?

A prescott-core pentium 4 is a lot newer and faster than the machine I had in mind. They have a reputation for using a lot of energy, but I personally don't think the difference is big enough to stop folding. In the end, I guess you have to decide whether you'd rather fold or save energy. I chose not to fold because of how slow the machine was, i didn't think it would be worth it. But if it was a P4, it would be folding.

Sorry for taking so long to jump in but I'll give you some feedback on whether it's worth it on older hardware.

I've got it installed on a total of 4 systems, two of them being relatively new turion ML 32's the others being athlons and I have little trouble folding. Sure I'm not throwing out 20-30 WU's per day like the few running the X1900's are but I do manage to throw out a respectable 30+ WU's per week most times.

Note that with F@H, it's not a matter of how many work units you can throw out but a combination of how many work units overall can be presented to the server as completed that makes the difference. So if you want to run it on something like a K6-233 and am able to throw out a WU or better each week, it adds up.

What you really need to look at is can that cheap system be upgraded with enough memory and drive capacity to serve as a home server? If so, you'll probably be leaving it on all the time as I do with my desktops and in that case, you're already spending for the power so why not have it at least do something useful while it's not doing anything else?

mike961734 wrote:iam folding on a presscot, that isnt considered too old now is it?
some have told me its inneficent and i would be better off not folding at all.
i dont feel like stopping, mostly because its not my electric bill, but should i?

Motivation for folding is supposed to be that it's for the common good, but wasting electricity is not, so it's a tradeoff. Upgrading would spend the most resources of all.

Upgrading would spend the most resources of all.

What, more than Folding on a Prescott for the next X years? Upgrading to Core 2 Duo is a no-brainer, it uses less power w/ more performance.

Have you ever wondered why a CPU costs $200? It's not that easy to make.

Anyways, let's see, C2D = $200 + more than likely new 775 motherboard = $150. The pessimistic Ontario electricity price seems to be 7 cents/kWh, which gives us a nice round number of 5000 kWh for $350. 5000 kWh can give you 114 W for five years, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

In terms of non-monetary impact on energy use, if you don't run a farm, a difference between a Prescott and a C2D will drown in what your fridge or, if you have one, electric clothesdryer uses.

But yes, it will be harder to make quiet

Motivation for folding is supposed to be that it's for the common good, but wasting electricity is not, so it's a tradeoff.

Factor in that someone with Alzheimers will consumer far more and be unable to contribute or live a meaningful life, and you see where the waste really is.

I'm already saying so long to any tax refund I get in the next few months.