general q's...

[timbit]

ok, so i have installed f@h. i have a few questions.

is there anything i should do to make it run faster on different computers? i have my personal computer running it (athlon 64 3000) as well as my family computer (athlon xp 2100, the older core i think).

what are normal temps for running f@h? my athlon 64 is holding steady at 45 celsius, my xp is running at about 57 celsius... are these bad temps or no? i'm thinking 45 isn't too bad. but the case is wide open right now, cause i'm still putting it together a bit. and i'm a little worried about the 2100+. the mobo on it has a "cooler" program that runs off of windows. when it is enabled, she drops down under 40 celsius. but she seems to run quite a bit slower then, not just on f@h, but on everything else as well.

what are normal times? i have a 125 frame gromac running on both of them right now (actually exact same one on each). my athlon 64 is going to be taking around 12 hours i think. the 2100+ looks like its going to be taking about 3 - 4 days.

finally, are the frames supposed to be really different times from each other? i've had some frames get done in 30 seconds, and other frames (same protien) take about 12 minutes.

appreciate any help, hope i can boost the team a bit. not sure if i will be running 24/7 yet, will see how the temps are on my comp once everything gets closed up. but i was thinking about modding the case to improve cooling when i bought it anyway, so we'll see.

[Kov-Ice]

Hi, tim. Thanks for joining. I'm not an athlon person, but temp-wise I think under 60 is alright. My P4 hovers around 53 at full load most of the time. Maybe you'll come across another fan to throw in that box later. Performance-wise, you can read through the MaximumPC magazine article that lists tips and tricks. You'll find it if you follow the link in my sig.

Times for proteins vary from one to another. The times you mention are certainly within the acceptable realm. You can find some older threads in this area that discuss specific proteins and the times people post per frame.

Usually, the frames take the same amount. However, if you're doing something else on your computer, your Folding will slow down or pause. Also, a restart of the program may pick up in the middle of a frame.

Thanks again, glad to have ya!

[bigandy]

One other thing you might consider, if you aren't doing so already, is running F@H as a service in Windows. This seems to make things go a little faster than running the graphical or text clients. To find the info to do that, click the link in Kov-Ice's sig, or click my sig image, as they both go to Kov-Ice's "Info To Know" sticky thread here in the Distributed Computing forum.

[timbit]

ok, thanks for the replies guys.
i had the graphic client running, but started experiencing some serious difficulties with it and my vid card, so i started over and grabbed the text client. i also configured it as a service. i dl'ed electron microscope, just because i like seeing how far i am. i was also wondering if maybe cool and quiet would slow down my folding. does anyone know what the effect of c'n'q is on folding? i turned it off, and i'm not really sure that it has speeded up noticably, but the temps sure have gone up (from 45 to 58 degrees). i'm thinking it might be better to just leave cool and quiet on...

finally, does anyone know if the 64 bit version of windows is faster? if it is, then i'd like to try folding under that... (and maybe some gaming too lol.) i suppose i could just try it, but i don't want to have to dl and install and configure a dual boot if its not going to work... if no one knows, then i'll just do it, and i'll be sure to let all the other a64 users know.