General advice for newbie

[macabdul]

I'm running Windows XP Professional Version 2002 Service Pack 3 32 bit on a self built computer with an Intel i5 750 2.67 overclocked to 3.2 and a nVidia GTX285 with 2GB of memory.

At the moment I'm not sure which client version I have installed. Clicking on 'about' on the icon in the system tray brings up the following, if it helps; Folding@Home Windows Client Version 6.30r2, Built May 20, 2010 and the folder name in program files is Folding@Home-gpu.

I have looked at all I can on the FAQ ect but due to lack of experience don't really know the best general set-up to run so any advice would be appreciated.

Which is better, would give more points as points seem to put you higher up the list than work units? In my group there are people with 4 work units and 1709 points whereas I have 8 WU and only 1710, 1 point ahead. There's even another person with the same 7 WU but 2321 points and 1 person with 326 WU but no points!!

I'd be running about 4-5 hours a day.

(Also, would overclocking the GPU give a better overall work rate than overclocking the CPU?)

Thanks

[Zagen30]

Welcome to the forum, macabdul.

For the most points, you should go with one additional copy of the SMP client, which is found at the bottom of the High-Performance Clients page. Make sure to follow the link there to obtain a passkey and enter it when configuring the advanced parameters of the client. Your GPU should be outputting a lot of points as well.

Don't be concerned about the relative ratio of WUs to points. Different projects have different point values- SMP WUs can take a while to finish but give a lot of points as a result, while GPU WUs tend to be shorter and give fewer points per WU. The overall number of points is the best indicator of how much science you're contributing, and as a result the statistic that almost everyone uses to gauge their contribution is Points Per Day (PPD) since it isn't affected too much by WU length.

I would be concerned about the person who has 326 WUs but no points. It sounds like that person's hardware is overclocked too much and is erroring out on everything, which is bad for the project. If you know who this person is, ask him/her if they've OC'ed and to reduce the OC.

EDIT

I must have missed the 4-5 hours a day part. As PantherX says below, if you're only going to run that long, then 4 copies of the classic client would probably be better.

[PantherX]

I would suggest that you also read this post which gives you a brief overview of F@H and available Clients.

Now you have stated that you plan to run the system for 4 to 5 hours per day so based on that, you can run a Classic Client. However, if you choose to run the system 24/7 or close to it, then it would be advised to run the SMP2 Client like Zagen30 suggested.

Regarding your situation of GPU OC VS CPU OC, based on the fact that you will run the F@H Client for 4 to 5 hours, OCing the GPU might yield a higher PPD since you will be running a Classic Client.

[macabdul]

Thanks for the advice. I might consider leaving it running longer once I'm used to things but at the moment will only run it when not at work (or sleeping).

Will definitely have a word with the person with no points and might point it out to the moderator of that group, if he doesn't already know.

Will post and let you know how I get on. Again, thanks

[macabdul]

Thanks for all info. I'm now running 4 instances of the console version but I want to make sure they are all working on different stuff.

If I right click on each in turn and choose Status and then Queue Info all the information under Project is exactly the same but for the Run number. Thats the only difference.

Am I folding Ok or are they all working on the same stuff?

[John_Weatherman]

The run clone and gen numbers should not be the same for each client - it does happen that the same work is downloaded twice but it's rare. The project number might well be the same.

[macabdul]

So I have a problem then? Any ideas on how to sort it? Each client is running on a different ID and I did follow all instruction for the 'Installation for a multi-CPU system (Console version)'?

[7im]

And you did this part of the guide...

Note: Please delete the work folder and queue.dat file in the newly copied FAH-x client folder to prevent the new client from duplicating the work unit from the original client folder.

http://folding.stanford.edu/English/WinUNIGuide#ntoc4 <- paragraph 6

[macabdul]

Yep, I certainly did And thanks for this help.

[bruce]

If I right click on each in turn and choose Status and then Queue Info all the information under Project is exactly the same but for the Run number. Thats the only difference.

Am I folding Ok or are they all working on the same stuff?

You only have a problem if all four numbers match. If any of the Project/Run/Clone/Gen numbers are different, you're fine.

[PantherX]

...If I right click on each in turn and choose Status and then Queue Info all the information under Project is exactly the same but for the Run number...

You mean like this:
Client 1 -> [01:38:05] Project: A (Run 1, Clone B, Gen C)
Client 2 -> [01:38:05] Project: A (Run 2, Clone B, Gen C)
Client 3 -> [01:38:05] Project: A (Run 3, Clone B, Gen C)
Client 4 -> [01:38:05] Project: A (Run 4, Clone B, Gen C)

If yes, then you were working on different WUs.

[macabdul]

From what people say above I thought I was ok.

As I say, I have 4 instances running on different ID's from 1-4. Here's the project info from 2 of them.

Project: 10412 (Run 35819, Clone 0, Gen 0), Core: a4
Project: 10412 (Run 35818, Clone 0, Gen 0), Core: a4

The other 2 are the same (except the Run number, they are all different)

I came in tonight and turned on the computer and started up the clients. I also started up FahMon 2.3.99.1 and that was registering the progress of them all at about 12% on each but number 3. That was showing as 0% where it had been about 11% when I'd stopped them this morning to go to work.

I quit all other instances but this one to see what would happen.

I came back after an hour and it had moved to 18%. Great but FahMon shows the other 3 still working!!!! They had all moved from about the 12% and are now all on about the 18%.

Surely that can't be right as I have quit 3 of them.

(Maybe I should just go back to the single GPU client, I didn't have any problems with that)

(Slight update . . . after closing everything down I opened the Task Manager and found 4 instances of the FahCore_a4 running and 4 instances of Folding@Home.exe running so that would account for FahMon showing them as still running but after I right click on the icon's in my task bar and quit why do they keep running and as the Run numbers are all different can anyone tell me, am I actually working on different parts of the protein?

[PantherX]

If you are using the Systray Version, you can quit it from the taskbar without any problems. I don't know that much about Systray since I use Console.
You are working on different WUs so everything is fine.

[bruce]

Is there any chance that you configured a console client to run as a service and then also restarted the console client interactively. That would account for extra instances of FAH and is a sure way to corrupt your files.

[macabdul]

I checked and I was running them as system tray version. What I hadn't realised is that they started up automatically when I booted up the computer but didn't show the icon in the task bar. I then went and manually started all 4 so had, apparently, 8 instances running in task manager

It actually got worse. I suddenly couldn't run any of them, kept getting a serious error report and they would all close.

I've given up and gone back to the GPU 3 System Tray edition. It's folding with no problems and actually gives me a massive bump in points.

According to FahMon, when they were running, each instance was giving about 237 points each for an average of 948 points. But they were very slow and I never managed to get any WU's finished. I calculated, at the speed it was going, that it would take over a week to finish the 4 WU's, so not very productive all round.

The GPU 3 edition has folded 2 WU's in 2 days at about 4 hours each. (I don't yet leave my computer on 24/7 - maybe in the future once I know a little more about the clients and how to get them to run and configure them). The 1st returned 1358 points and the 2nd 1352 and FahMon reports the current one as; and ETA of 19.27 which is 4 and 3 quarters of an hour, the PPD is 6525.8* and the credit as 1352. This will get better when and if I over-clock my GPU. I have already over-clocked my CPU from 2.66 up to 3.2

As you can see, this is way more productive in terms of WU's and points.

The only problem, and not really a problem, is that FaMon reports both the Client Type and Core as Unknown.

Thanks to all and anyone for the advice and help. I'm just annoyed that I had to lose the partial WU's I'd completed when I changed back. They were at about 7% each.

(p.s. just for my information, and in case I need it in the future, when I was looking at other clients and in particular the newer beta client, the instructions kept on saying things like add -config and -smp. Where and exactly how was I supposed to add them. I could never find out.)

Thanks