Optimizing F@H

[Vigo]

Been doing some research and thought I'd share some important info for team 13761.

Optimizing performance (speed of completing projects) for the F@H client depends heavily upon whether your running an athlon xp or intel based chip (amd 64's don't seem to be effected much either way).

Intel

Intel chip users (ESPECIALLY those with HT technology) should be working on gromacs. The newer gromacs cores work better with SSE and SSE2 (double gromacs). In order to set your preference to download gromacs cores:

- Create a shortcut icon of the F@H client (works for gui or console) by rightclicking the F@H application icon and clicking "create shortcut"
- Right click the icon and click on "properties".
- Under the field titled "target" you'll see something similar to this,
"E:\Documents and Settings\User Name\Desktop\Folding at Home\FAH4Console.exe"
- After the last quoation mark in the field click your mouse to get a cursor. Hit the spacebar once
and type: -advmethods

Now your preference has been set to fetch gromacs cores. If you ever get a double gromacs and your on a HT ready machine you'll be amazed to find out it might finish faster than a regular gromacs worth less credit (I know I was).

Athlon XP (and other non-64 bit athlon chips)

If your using an athlon xp you should take advantage of the new tinker scoring system. Stanford recently raised the value of tinkers because intel based processors indeed take a while to complete them (my p3 866 has been working on one for 4 days). Athlon xp chips do process these cores a little bit quicker (won't do them in a few hours but faster is better than slower, right?)

If your running with advmethods flags and your using an amd system your not going to see very many tinkers. Removing the advmethods flag (if its there) and adding the flag:

-forceSSE

will boost your output a little for when you get a gromacs core. (Important: "rumors" Ive read claim forceSSE cause your processor to run hot. I guess thats technically true since the harder its working the hotter it gets, but I doubt it significantly increases heat. My athlon 550 doesn't seize or reboot.)

Remeber: Faster WU's don't only get you more credits for the team quicker; they get standford it's data faster.

A couple other tips:

GUI
- In the configuration menu (right click tasbar icon for configuration) under the "display" tab uncheck "logos enabled"
- Under the "advanced" tab in the configuration window make sure the cpu percentage bar is all the way to the right.
- (If you're using another distributing software like SETI or if you want to devote more res to F@H) Under the "advanced" tab in the configuration window change core priority to "slightly higher"

Both GUI and Console
- Add the flag: -verbosity 9
(the flag gives you a more detailed report in your F@H log)
- Copy the F@H you've created and paste it into the following directory: (in your local partition with windows)WINDOWS>Documents and Settings>All users>Start Menu>Programs>StartUp
Now F@H will start when you boot your machine. The client is small and you shouldn't notice any increase in your boot time.

[lil Jimmie]

A word of warning and just my experience here with the -advmethods flag, you are putting yourself at risk of running beta work units. Some of you as well as I have turned in many beta WU and never received credit for them. Also it will not keep you from getting tinkers and the less desirable work units.
Second I have removed all flags, but the -local (because of HT) and -verbosity9 on some rigs and I can't see a bit of difference in the work units I receive. Yes some of the double gromacs fold pretty quick but not all and with the new points scale I'll take tinkers just as I'll take double gromacs any day.

[Vigo]

Double gromacs fly much faster on this system for me. (especially compared to regular gromacs) And you don't need the -local flag. I have 2 separate folders folding two instances of the app and each ones working on a different core.

As far as I understand- you can't recieve beta projects. I've only been folding for a couple weeks, and not even that long here so I don't know how things worked in the past. I have not seen a "beta" project though and from what I'm gathering you need to be a beta tester to get access to servers with beta projects.

I should note since I forgot to earlier- a lot of the information was gathered from several forums/websites and corrobarated. Though, the only thing I didn't experience/test yet was the difference between a tinker and gromacs core on my amd machine. (If it folds faster I can't tell since the machine's so slow to begin with)

[lil Jimmie]

Nope using the -advmethods flag is a request to recive beta units and you are basiclly a public beta tester with no leg to stand on if you get no credit.

My info comes from a beta tester from my other team with over 300,000 points behind him.

Edit- Right now on my 4 Intel's with Hyperthreading (8 instances) 4 of the instances are double gromacs and no -advmethods flag.

We lost one team member because he was tired of not getting credit for WU's, I don't want to lose any more.