SPCR Folds Team Blog

A forum just for SPCR's folding team... by request.

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ryboto
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Re: Tell her folding is about ....

Post by ryboto » Fri Feb 29, 2008 7:40 am

Dutchmm wrote:slimming, or delaying ageing ... :lol:

That should make it seem important ...
well, her mother is a cancer survivor, so she might be gung-ho about it.

pixel_pimp
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Post by pixel_pimp » Fri Feb 29, 2008 6:12 pm

Current folders from me:

1 x Octomac (2 x 2.8Ghz quad core Macpro) folding during the day plus a wee while at night during scheduled backup.

1 x Sempron 3200 folding morning to midnight

Then there are some unknown machines in a lab somewhere that my friend has got folding under my ID no idea what they are or how many hours they fold per day but they're there!

Plan to upgrade the Sempron to an X2 in the next 6 months so that should boost things somewhat.

If I can get permission to run it on the work x-serve as well, I will. It's only a G5 but it runs 24/7. Suspect that might be out the question though.

Plissken
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Post by Plissken » Wed Mar 05, 2008 9:00 pm

Just an update of my folding machines...
The dual quad-xeon at work is going offline, so I'll lose around 2000 ppd. Yes, arrested1, you can catch me now 8) Unfortunately I never got all 8 cores to fold, and I can no longer justify "testing it for stability". Maybe if I add some new hardware? :) I'm not sure there's any place to add.

On the bright side I'll be adding my kids' wimpy Althon XP 2600 to the mix at home, running the standard Win client. What will it add, 400 ppd? But at least it's something.

KansaKilla
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Post by KansaKilla » Thu Mar 06, 2008 8:05 am

My folding update (it ain't pretty)...

Moving (again) so I had to disconnect the cable and now no folding on the apt computers. Now I'm down to my laptop (CD T2400), my work comp (e6300, soon to be lost along with my current job), and my wife's comp (A64 3200). Hopefully I'll get something more substantial going over the next few weeks. The downside is that it's going to be a few weeks. :evil:

floffe
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Post by floffe » Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:45 am

Plissken wrote:On the bright side I'll be adding my kids' wimpy Althon XP 2600 to the mix at home, running the standard Win client. What will it add, 400 ppd? But at least it's something.
400? More like 100... Depending on usage and the WU my XP2500+ varies between 60 and 120ppd.

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Post by aristide1 » Fri Mar 07, 2008 3:26 pm

What is going on?

As a group we used to average like 800+ ppd each, now we're down to 736. Our top 20 has thinned out a lot.

I wanted to get in front of Bolek, like anyone else, but not this way.

pixel_pimp
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Post by pixel_pimp » Sat Mar 08, 2008 7:21 am

Disappointing when the team stats show only threats and no conquests :(

pixel_pimp
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Post by pixel_pimp » Sat Mar 08, 2008 8:05 am

Hmm - just realised I could be running a second client on the octomac. Will get to that next week.

Got my eyes on the top 100 :twisted:

Plissken
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Post by Plissken » Sat Mar 08, 2008 12:01 pm

floffe wrote:400? More like 100... Depending on usage and the WU my XP2500+ varies between 60 and 120ppd.
Ouch! For 100ppd, leaving an Athlon pegged at 100% 24-7 sounds like a waste of time and energy. :(

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Post by aristide1 » Sat Mar 08, 2008 12:10 pm

Plissken wrote:
floffe wrote:400? More like 100... Depending on usage and the WU my XP2500+ varies between 60 and 120ppd.
Ouch! For 100ppd, leaving an Athlon pegged at 100% 24-7 sounds like a waste of time and energy. :(
Why I turned off both a PIII and a P4D.

iganu
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Post by iganu » Sat Mar 08, 2008 3:00 pm

Same story here. I have a 2.8 GHz P4 that's no longer in use. It was producing about 100 points per day and consuming just over 100 watts.

In contrast, my most efficient folding box is a Q6600 that is producing about 3600 points per day and uses only 80 watts.

aristide1
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Post by aristide1 » Sat Mar 08, 2008 3:08 pm

iganu wrote:In contrast, my most efficient folding box is a Q6600 that is producing about 3600 points per day and uses only 80 watts.
That's triple the score my X2 was doing at 95 watts. :shock:

You make a good case for not overclocking.

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Post by VanWaGuy » Sat Mar 08, 2008 5:19 pm

Point-wise, that's not bad for an X2. My X2 gets about half what my E6700 gets, which in turn is about half the Q6600.

Power-wise, Iganu's X2's use a bit less power than yours, but then they are set up specifically for folding and low power.

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Post by aristide1 » Sun Mar 09, 2008 10:52 am

Another way to look at it is Iganu's Q6600 is using half the electricity of my OCd E6400 that earns about 2000 ppd, if that.

iganu
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Post by iganu » Sun Mar 09, 2008 5:34 pm

There's a real trade off between maximizing performance of the hardware through overclocking and minimizing power consumption through undervolting.

Since power consumption of the CPU is proportional to the square of voltage, a little voltage change makes a big difference power consumption.

My machines are all optimized for low power consumption i.e. they're all undervolted and running at stock speeds. I could generate some more points per day by overclocking, but at the cost of quite a lot of additional power consumption. And they'd be a lot harder to cool quietly too, which is a concern when folding 24/7.

KansaKilla
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Post by KansaKilla » Sun Mar 09, 2008 6:39 pm

So what, exactly, is your setup? I am now very curious.

iganu
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Post by iganu » Sun Mar 09, 2008 8:49 pm

Other than being diskless, there's nothing special about my systems.

For example, the Q6600 system has the following:

Motherboard: GA-G33M-DS2R (uATX with BIOS support for undervolting)
Processor: Q6600 (G0 stepping)
RAM: 2x1GB DDR2-800 (OCZ-Gold I think)
Case: Antec 3480
Power Supply: Earthwatts 380 (included with the 3480 case)
Heatsink: Stock Intel sink with BIOS fan control

That's it, the system boots from the network, so there's no hard drive and no optical drive.

I think the CPU voltage is set to about 1.08 (stock for this chip was about 1.3). I think it could go a little lower, but this is the lowest voltage I've tried. It's up time is 57 days, which is when I last lowered the CPU voltage, and it's been folding the whole time, so it's pretty stable.

This system normally runs two instances of folding and completes each in one in just a fraction of an hour less than a day (the 1760 point ones, which is all it's ever gotten). Power draw from the wall varies between 79 and 80 watts as measured by the seasonic power angel. The two instances of folding are staggered a bit, and when one completes, and is waiting for the next work unit, power draw drops to about 73 watts while just one instance of folding is running.

It's not my quietest system, but the stock intel fan isn't too bad when using BIOS fan control on this undervolted system (but without fan control it's pretty noisy). And since it's not my main system (and runs headless), it can be tucked away where it's not so noticeable.

KansaKilla
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Post by KansaKilla » Mon Mar 10, 2008 6:09 am

mind if i ask how you got two smp instances to work? native linux, i assume? i only have windows on my current hdd, so do you know if i would have to run vmware or some such, or would it perhaps be better to run a separate hdd and install a linux distro?

pixel_pimp
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Post by pixel_pimp » Mon Mar 10, 2008 6:36 am

After reading discussions on here about cost per point, I'm going to stop leaving the sempron running all day but have got a second instance of FAH running on the MacPro so I guess I should still see an upturn in production. Will probably reinstate the home machine once it's upgraded to multicore and I'll get more yield for the power.

On the face of it, it looks like I should be getting somewhere in the area of 4000 points in any given 24hrs from the Octomac. Although, with that said, I've not really been stressing the machine much today since I set this up so progress is probably artificially inflated.

Anyone think it'd be worth running on a Dual G4? If so, can it be run invisibly?

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Post by VanWaGuy » Mon Mar 10, 2008 8:36 am

(the 1760 point ones, which is all it's ever gotten)
Wow, Iganu, that is amazing. :shock: How ever do you get only the 1760s? When I was running Linux on my Q6600, I was getting those 25xx point units that took a long time to run and lowered my PPD. :)

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Post by VanWaGuy » Mon Mar 10, 2008 8:39 am

Pixel_pimp,

Is the "Octomac" dual quad cores? What is your clock rate? I was just wondering if it is dual Q6600's why you could not go way over 4000PPD.

pixel_pimp
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Post by pixel_pimp » Mon Mar 10, 2008 9:40 am

VanWaGuy wrote:Pixel_pimp,

Is the "Octomac" dual quad cores? What is your clock rate? I was just wondering if it is dual Q6600's why you could not go way over 4000PPD.
It's 2 Quad Xeons at 2.8Ghz according to System Profiler

I'm more than prepared to consider the possibility that it's not configured optimally. I'm still a little hazy about how things should go.

I've got InCrease running which, although it lists 2 WUs in progress, claims to have 3 Clients on the go so there's clearly something I'm not quite getting!

iganu
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Post by iganu » Mon Mar 10, 2008 3:57 pm

To answer KansaKilla's question, I'm running linux and it's very easy to run two instances of folding under linux. Just make a directory for each client, and start each client in it's own directory. Nothing more to it than that.

To answer VanWaGuy's question, yes, there is an issue with quad only linux work units. As far as I can tell you will get them if you run linux on a quad, and they are not good from a points per day standpoint. Not good at all.

Since I built my linux from sources, I had more flexibility than most in dealing with this problem. What I did was to modify the kernel sources to make my Q6600 look more or less like two E6600's to the folding clients.

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Post by aristide1 » Mon Mar 10, 2008 6:51 pm

VanWaGuy wrote:Point-wise, that's not bad for an X2. My X2 gets about half what my E6700 gets, which in turn is about half the Q6600.

Power-wise, Iganu's X2's use a bit less power than yours, but then they are set up specifically for folding and low power.
I should have taken the hint from Toms Hardware and some other overclocking websites. The X2 requires quite a bit of power to get passed 3GHz. There's no way around that. Wether one decides to OC a 4000+ to 280 MHz FSB or take a Black Edition and set the multiplier to 16 the X2 is going to require more voltage. My BE did 2.8 at stock but not 3GHz, let alone 3.2 I suppose I could go for broke and see what it uses at 3.6GHz, but could the picture be pretty?

Here's another PITA with the X2. It doesn't report temps correctly, they are always reported way too high. Well since I leave my machines running some weekends all alone I set to the BIOS to shut down if it reaches the highest temp setting, which on one motherboard is 70C. Now in reality this cpu isn't even warm but thing reports 60C at idle, so damn if the BE didn't shut off on me several times without every really getting hot. So I disabled the shutoff, with any real concerns, since it has a substantial cooler on it that doesn't have much to do.

I don't see my integrated video using more than a watt or two. I'd be gald to build folders without a hard drive. Still Iganu didn't mention how he monitors his folders (Are they running? Did they stop for some reason?).

Plissken
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Post by Plissken » Mon Mar 10, 2008 8:40 pm

aristide1 wrote:
Plissken wrote:
floffe wrote:400? More like 100... Depending on usage and the WU my XP2500+ varies between 60 and 120ppd.
Ouch! For 100ppd, leaving an Athlon pegged at 100% 24-7 sounds like a waste of time and energy. :(
Why I turned off both a PIII and a P4D.
Perhaps it was divine intervention that when assembling the AthlonXP the old motherboard (apparently) took a complete dump. So I will be starting over, building a nice, quiet, efficient system for the kids based on my E6300. I'll probably bump up the P5B-D CPU to E6750, and have (2) Core2Duos folding for SPCR. Plus my mom's, which makes 3, if she'll leave the damn thing turned on! ;)

If we're keeping track, all I ever get (99% of the time) is project# 2653, the 1760 pointers, running Windows SMP on all machines.

pixel_pimp
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Post by pixel_pimp » Wed Mar 12, 2008 12:38 am

VanWaGuy wrote:Pixel_pimp,

Is the "Octomac" dual quad cores? What is your clock rate? I was just wondering if it is dual Q6600's why you could not go way over 4000PPD.
The verdict is in - 3464 points yesterday

I have noticed, that although most applications were fine, Dreamweaver did not seem happy about running with InCrease on the go. No crashes but mighty slow indeed. I have seen remarks on the f@h forums about things not working so smoothly under Leopard, though so I'll have to keep an eye on that.

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Post by aristide1 » Thu Mar 13, 2008 6:11 pm

My Seasonic S12-430 died, less than 2 years old. :evil:

Lucky for me I had an Antec EA-500 laying around. Thank God for NewEgg specials. 8)

Those Yate Loon 120 fans may not spin so fast, but they move a lot of dust around anyways. My Tuniq was clogging up.

I can't believe than PS died, with just a constant 150 watt load on it. :(

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Post by VanWaGuy » Sat Mar 15, 2008 6:26 am

Aristide1,

A lot of the Seasonic products have a 3-5 year warantee. If it was a retail sale, and it has not been modified, it looks like they have an easy to use RMA form process on their web page. (www.seasonicusa.com)

aristide1
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Post by aristide1 » Sun Mar 16, 2008 5:23 pm

VanWaGuy wrote:Aristide1,

A lot of the Seasonic products have a 3-5 year warantee. If it was a retail sale, and it has not been modified, it looks like they have an easy to use RMA form process on their web page. (www.seasonicusa.com)
Hopefully my invoice history goes that far back on NewEgg because my paper receipts are either gone or in the black hole known as my filing system. :shock:

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Post by aristide1 » Mon Mar 17, 2008 4:03 pm

I have a question for Iganu.

You boosted your number of points per kilowatt by leaving the CPU speed stock and lowering the voltage.

Did you calculate the alternative? Could you have left the voltage at the stock setting and boosted your speed? It seems this would also give you more points per kilowatt, the amount you can OC without increasing the voltage.

E8400's are going from 333 to 400FSB at stock volts. The only problem with them lately is their prices are rising, instead of falling.

NewEgg has a new one, the E8200, but it's slower not faster, multiplier is 8X instead of 9X. If I wanted to go in the wrong direction I would have followed Microsoft.

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