#12 folding on the home network

[Panama Red]

Just finished rebuilding a 2.6GHz Celeron eMachines that I took in trade cuz it wasn't worth fixing for the customer. Bought a new mobo for $32 and a Sparkle 250w psu for $20, added Win2K on a 10Gb partiton of the 80Gb WD hdd, threw in a wireless nic and hooked it up to an open kvm connection. That makes 12 in the house folding along w/1 at work and 1 at my son's house.

[TwoRails]

Dang, PR, you are smokin' on the folding! -- that's a nice trade in, too.

[Panama Red]

Yea, I just added up the processors. If I figure the AMD's as 2.5 for a 2500+ and 3.0 for a 3000+, I figure to have just under 28GHz running in the house!!

[enhanced08]

wow, 28Ghz just in your house so thats around 30Ghz in total? If I don't watch myself, I might be in second place again! lol I havn't added anything new in a good while now. The place Im staying at has been talking about getting a new computer and if they get it I'll have 1 more machine. Other than that I'm not seeing any new machines in my near future

Just a thought, but if you have some dedicated folder hooked up to that kvm switch I would and set a static IP on each and install VNC to monitor them, this would free up your switch for other machines.

Keep up the good work!

[Panama Red]

Originally Posted by enhanced08 Just a thought, but if you have some dedicated folder hooked up to that kvm switch I would and set a static IP on each and install VNC to monitor them, this would free up your switch for other machines.

Actually, I have 3 kvm's. A 4 port has the PII 266, PIII 850, P4 1.4 and my OC toy 2500+M. One 2 port has a 2800+ Sempron and the new 2.6 Cely. Another 2 port has a 900 Athlon with one port open for customer repairs. Now I need to figure out how to use that monitoring software or work with you on your beta stuff.

[enhanced08]

EMIII or FahMon are good to use and easy to setup, if you secide to use EMIII you might want to put it on one of the decidated machines as it seems to use a lot of resources while its running and it needs to stay running 24/7 to get the best results.

As for my beta stuff, it looks like its gonna take much longer than I had hoped. I don't even have a "yes or no" from the programmer of FahMon as to if he is willing to help or not. Right now is a busy time for most people with the holidays comming up and all so I figure I'll get an answer after the first of the year. I would really like to get this project into a beta stage, I think I got the website pretty well to my liking last night with the help of Stryker so thats one step forward...

Fold till your blue in the face, or red in the stats.... then fold some more!

[bigandy]

Dayum. That's a lot of folding. Thanks PR.

[Jaggannath]

PR, I think you need a bit of help for this addiction of yours

[Panama Red]

Originally Posted by Jaggannath PR, I think you need a bit of help for this addiction of yours

Shhhhh!! My wife will hear ya!

[Kov-Ice]

Originally Posted by Jaggannath PR, I think you need a bit of help for this addiction of yours

All the same, a good addiction to have.
Way to go, PR!

[Louds3]

Hey PR are you on the pcmech folding team? Are u listed under a different name than panama red on the folding site or are u on a different team/no team? I was goin through the pcmech team list and didn't see you but saw most of the other familiar names on here. i just finished my first work unit and realized how long it took for those points (p4 1.5ghz) and just can't believe how many WU's some people have, pretty awesome

steve

[enhanced08]

Oh he folds for us by name of mystery_folder, it was a big guessing game awhile back when he first started folding. No one knew who he was.

As far as points go, it does take a long time to get them. Most people have become spoiled because of the QMD cores, you can get 400ppd or more folding these on a deacent P4!! Other than these you get about 40pts per Ghz per day you have folding 24/7.

I got lucky and got my high school to allow me to install folding on some of their computers which gives me a huge boost!

[Panama Red]

Originally Posted by Louds3 Hey PR are you on the pcmech folding team?

Yup. As Ehanced has idicated, that Mystery_Folder fella would be me.

[Louds3]

ahhhhhhh, not such a mystery anymore i guess. now i need to convince my parents to let me put it on their computer, should be able to since its for a good cause, i guess i will just do the screen saver part if i can just get my mom to ditch her "butterly picture" screen saver.

steve

[Kov-Ice]

enhanced made a nice PowerPoint presentation that might be cool to show your folks. It explains everything quite nicely. You can find the link in THIS thread. Good luck.

[Louds3]

good stuff, thanks for the heads up on the PP link. and thanks for makin it enhanced

[enhanced08]

No problem, I hope it helps ya! Use it anyway you can to get more people to fold.

btw, PR, can that 2.66 celly fold QMDs? It would put out pretty good ppd if it can.

[Panama Red]

Originally Posted by enhanced08 btw, PR, can that 2.66 celly fold QMDs? It would put out pretty good ppd if it can.

Wasn't sure what a QMD was until I just looked on the Stanford site. Now that I know what they are I still don't know how to make my machines available for them. According to the QMD explanation,

"How can I get QMD Work units? You must have two settings to get QMD's. You must have both the "big WU" flag (allowing for large work units) and the advanced methods flag on."

I have the box checked to receive Wu's over 5MB but I don't understand what is meant by "advanced methods flag". Under the Advanced tab in the configuration panel I have "Lowest possible" checked under "core priority" but nothing else on that page is checked nor does anythig else seem to pertain to the "advanced methods". What am I missing?

edit: Just did some googling and found a setup tutorial on another site. I now see the -advanced methods is a flag set in the registry. Got some more work to do.

[Panama Red]

Ok, looks like I'm on top of the QMD story now. I uninstalled the GUI client on my P4 HT 2.4c and went to the Console client instead. And while I was at it, I set it up for both processors. Also added all the registry flags to open the QMD door. That should add one more cpu to the mix and give me a running total of 15! The real plus is the added stability with the Console version. The GUI would crash my P4 on start up 9 times out of 10.

Once the 2.6 Cely completes it's current wu, I'll switch it over too and see if it picks up any QMD's. Same for the 1.4 P4 running in the old Dell 8100. Maybe a couple tweaks can up the ppd. Thanx for the idea Eric.

[enhanced08]

I think that you are like most other pcmecher's in that you don't know about the awesome power the QMDs can bring to a P4. I have to admit that I didnt know about them for a long time after they came out.

With a deacent P4 set to fold QMDs you can get 400+ ppd just from that machine! To run QMDs you need a P4 (I think a celly can run them, but not sure), 512mb+ of RAM, 5mb+, and -adv methods flag.

I would say that if you want to run QMDs on an HT machine, or even a dually, only run 1 client. QMDs take a lot of RAM (200mb or so), hence the need for 512mb+ and in doing this they use a lot of the memory bandwidth. 1QMD on a system is fine, but 2 and they will slow each other down a lot plus use up all your 512mb. If you want to run 2 clients then run QMDs and gromatics, this will not hurt your RAM as much but the 2 will still slow each other down a bit. I found that I get higher ppd folding QMDs only than I do running 2 clients on my HT P4.

For all you guys with P4s and 512mb+ of ram, if you want a bost in production switch to QMDs! I have heard that there will be some for AMDs as soon as Stanford can get AMDs compiler.

[Panama Red]

Well, my P4 has 1Gb of PDP running 2-2-2-6. You think that's enuf?

[enhanced08]

Thats plenty for a QMD but I don't know if I would run 2 or not. Try it and see which is better. There wasn't a whole lot of difference in my system but since its my personal system and it was a little faster I decided to go with 1 instance.

[Louds3]

Think I could run a QMD on a P4 that's only 1.5 ghz? I have 512mb of RDRAM. If I decided to run one, is there anyway I could do it overnight while I sleep and a less intense one during the day when I am using this computer (i assume my computer will drag a little while doing a QMD?) thanks

steve

[enhanced08]

Yes, that P4 should run a QMD just fine. I doubt you will get 400ppd doing it tho, maybe 200 but thats still very good! There is no easy way to run 2 units. You could setup 2 clients and have one run at night and one durring the day but that would be a pain to do and slow both units down. With 512mb of RAM and only 1 QMD you should not notice much difference unless your doing a lot of RAM intensive applications.

EDIT: I just checked EMIII and on this system (3.2 @ 3.87GHz, 1GB RAM, WinXP) I'm folding a QMD at just over 12min per frame which gives me 528ppd from this machine. The unit will only take about 21hrs to finish. Not bad...

[David M]

Panama...just curious...how is your electric bill? I did not know you were Mystery Folder until now. I had figured it was someone with access to a computer lab at school running 30 or so computers. But you have created your own computer lab! Eventually you are going to have to dedicate an entire air conditioned room to your little obsession.

[Panama Red]

Originally Posted by David M Panama...just curious...how is your electric bill?

We've talked about this a couple times before but things appear to have changed so here's an update. My last three bills were quite confusing and I'm not sure I have a handle on it yet. The bill in Oct for an unseasonal hot period in Sep included the central air running quite a bit. Hot outside + 11 pc's running inside = lotsa A/C! That one was $$172. Then I got the Nov bill and I was all excited. It was only $58! No a/c running and only 6$ more than last year for the same period. What I didn't know was the info that is missing (or not obvious) on the online billing - estimated usage. It seems that $58 bill was an estimated one cuz the next one made up for it. The latest one was $187! If I average the last two months and compare that to the same two months last year, it's about $67 per month more. That'll probably increase a little more with the 12th machine online and now that I have the HT P4 running two Consoles.

[David M]

All those computers running does not seem significant then. Thats great! I wonder how many watts they typically draw? Maybe 100 to 200 watts each?..Looks like that would be for the older computers without the powerful graphics cards and fans.

If you ever get too many computers then let me know. I would be happy to host a few dedicated to FAH.

[Kov-Ice]

You could do a search of the forums and find a half dozen threads where people debate the amount of energy used. The consensus seems to agree it's not a great deal. With the monitor on standby, it's probably less than a 60-75W light bulb.

[Panama Red]

Looks like the cpu must be a P4 and not a Celeron in order to attract QMD wu's. The Dell 8100 with a 1.4GHz P4 shows QMD's in the log but so far none show in the log for the 2.6 Celeron. Both processors of my 2.4C have been running QMD's on a regular basis too.

[TwoRails]

Originally Posted by Panama Red We've talked about this a couple times before but things appear to have changed so here's an update. My last three bills were quite confusing and I'm not sure I have a handle on it yet. The bill in Oct for an unseasonal hot period in Sep included the central air running quite a bit. Hot outside + 11 pc's running inside = lotsa A/C! That one was $$172. Then I got the Nov bill and I was all excited. It was only $58! No a/c running and only 6$ more than last year for the same period. What I didn't know was the info that is missing (or not obvious) on the online billing - estimated usage. It seems that $58 bill was an estimated one cuz the next one made up for it. The latest one was $187! If I average the last two months and compare that to the same two months last year, it's about $67 per month more. That'll probably increase a little more with the 12th machine online and now that I have the HT P4 running two Consoles.

Using the formula I found here:

http://www-ed.fnal.gov/ntep/f98/proj...asurement.html

and assuming a system (with monitor) uses 500W and runs 24/7 at a cost of $0.076 per KWH, I come up with a cost of about $332.88 per year or $27.74 per month.

Using 300W, I came up with $145 / yr, $12.08 / mo.

I didn't even want to multiply either figure by 12 machinces !