Folding@home Team 56895 and Life with PlayStation

[Nathan P]

Originally Posted by BrianTX

Yes still standard SMP, figure I'll leave the -bigadv for the guys with the serious rigs! I haven't received any more of the 10k point WU's and regret not writing the number down. I took the -advmethods flag off my GPU3 clients to stop receiving those 7200 point WU's since 1 in 3 were failing.

I finally sat my wife down and explained this folding project to her. So far she hasn't complained too much about the computer being on all the time, and our electric bill was much better this month. Who knew water cooling was so much more efficient that I would notice it in the electric bill! I too have a second computer that will be coming online in the next couple days. Trying to learn linux right now and then I'll get it going with SMP and GPU2.

-Bigadv is quite a handful, normal i7's can do them but it takes a hefty OC. At the end of the day its all science and it all needs doing so we fold what we can You might want to keep an eye out as i think that those 7200pt WU may make an appearance at sometime as a general release, the failures were possibly down to the overclock being applied to the cards, and you may need to do a bit of tweaking.

Even a single machine running folding on its own will use a couple of hundred watts when folding, adding GPU's just make the power consumption sky rocket. To put ito perspective my rig is costing £2 a day to run in electric, but i figure that its worth it.

[Nathan P]

All.

Over the last couple of weeks there has been a lot of discussion on the top 10 teams about some of the issues with F@H, mainly the lack of info that comes from PG, perceived lack of response to problems etc. To this end they have formed an F@H donor advisory board where issues/questions/ideas can be discussed and resolved quickly and quietly. The thread over at [H] is linked belwo and there are similar threads on some of the other forums. As you can see i've asked if i can represent any concerns that we have here and Tobit has agreed. If you want me to pass anything on please feel free either to post here or PM/Email me or if you want you can join [H]forum and post direct.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1564721

[BrianTX]

I appreciate the info Nathan. From what I've read, v7 should fix any shortcomings that I am experiencing.

[highdef monster]

is there any way to manualy download WU of your choise or that's decided by F@H program?

[BrianTX]

Originally Posted by highdef monster

is there any way to manualy download WU of your choise or that's decided by F@H program?

The servers decide what wu to give you based on your hardware and client type. There are ways of "chery picking" but it's against the rules and can lead to your points being cleared.

[Nathan P]

Originally Posted by BrianTX

The servers decide what wu to give you based on your hardware and client type. There are ways of "chery picking" but it's against the rules and can lead to your points being cleared.

Wecome back, its been lonely at the top for the last couple of months. I see you are back on the bigadv's again

[BrianTX]

Originally Posted by Nathan P

Wecome back, its been lonely at the top for the last couple of months. I see you are back on the bigadv's again

It's been a very frustrating couple of months. My house got hit by a power surge and took out everything plugged into a socket except our microwave and can opener! Been fighting with the insurance company to get equivalent replacements for everything. Luckily both of my gigabyte motherboards took the hit without frying any other components!

Finally worked out some driver/W7 issues and now the i7 cranks out the -bigadv's without any hick ups! Now I'll see if I can get this chip up to 4.5GHZ! That should hold me over until Ivy Bridge comes out later this year!

Looks like we lost the other 2 big folders, any word on that? I was hoping with the Sandy Bridge release, and the low price point, we'd have some more big time folders. Those things are very impressive, even with the defect!

Looks like you've been chugging away and opened the gap even further, back to almost a year before I catch up!

[Nathan P]

Originally Posted by BrianTX

It's been a very frustrating couple of months. My house got hit by a power surge and took out everything plugged into a socket except our microwave and can opener! Been fighting with the insurance company to get equivalent replacements for everything. Luckily both of my gigabyte motherboards took the hit without frying any other components!

Finally worked out some driver/W7 issues and now the i7 cranks out the -bigadv's without any hick ups! Now I'll see if I can get this chip up to 4.5GHZ! That should hold me over until Ivy Bridge comes out later this year!

Looks like we lost the other 2 big folders, any word on that? I was hoping with the Sandy Bridge release, and the low price point, we'd have some more big time folders. Those things are very impressive, even with the defect!

Looks like you've been chugging away and opened the gap even further, back to almost a year before I catch up!

Major bummer on the power surge, glad to hear everything is being sorted.

Eiodd and Kuma Kun haven't been around since the beginning of January in any major way. The rest of the active members have been chugging along but as a team we have lost a lot of places.

I've had my share of rig issues as well. My x6 is still running for us but at a lower rate as it is now my daily use rig but i need a bigger case to handle my Gfx cards. The current one can't cope with eitehr the size of my largest card or the heat from running more than one at a time. Not only that but out of my 3 cards (8800gt, GTS 250 and Evga 275/250 combo) only the 8800 will allow me to boot the machine. Looking at trying to sort that one out tomorrow and see what happens. If i can get the combo card running i will be happy. Its annoying coz all 3 cards fold just fine.
Looking at some new hardware later on this year as well. Probably just GPU upgrades as funding is tight but am waiting on both Ivy bridge and Bulldozer. Team upgrades would be good but most of them are running PS3's, AMD cards or single core clients. Hopefully v7 client upgrades later on will allow easier management and easy upgrades.

I was doing some background reading over at [H]ardforum and it looks like on 1st release of the PS3 we were looking to gain serious ground on them or even pass them. How times have changed in the last 3.5 years

[guitarist155]

my machine is back up and running, had a 3ghz p4 sitting unused so I powered it up and got the client running yesterday. I stopped doing folding with my ps3 as my laser went out and I had to have it repaired, I don't know if there was any correlation but I'm not taking a chance with it.

[Nathan P]

Originally Posted by guitarist155

my machine is back up and running, had a 3ghz p4 sitting unused so I powered it up and got the client running yesterday. I stopped doing folding with my ps3 as my laser went out and I had to have it repaired, I don't know if there was any correlation but I'm not taking a chance with it.

Nice one, welcome back on board

[BrianTX]

Originally Posted by Nathan P

Major bummer on the power surge, glad to hear everything is being sorted.

Eiodd and Kuma Kun haven't been around since the beginning of January in any major way. The rest of the active members have been chugging along but as a team we have lost a lot of places.

I've had my share of rig issues as well. My x6 is still running for us but at a lower rate as it is now my daily use rig but i need a bigger case to handle my Gfx cards. The current one can't cope with eitehr the size of my largest card or the heat from running more than one at a time. Not only that but out of my 3 cards (8800gt, GTS 250 and Evga 275/250 combo) only the 8800 will allow me to boot the machine. Looking at trying to sort that one out tomorrow and see what happens. If i can get the combo card running i will be happy. Its annoying coz all 3 cards fold just fine.
Looking at some new hardware later on this year as well. Probably just GPU upgrades as funding is tight but am waiting on both Ivy bridge and Bulldozer. Team upgrades would be good but most of them are running PS3's, AMD cards or single core clients. Hopefully v7 client upgrades later on will allow easier management and easy upgrades.

I was doing some background reading over at [H]ardforum and it looks like on 1st release of the PS3 we were looking to gain serious ground on them or even pass them. How times have changed in the last 3.5 years

Good luck getting those GPU's folding, hardware issues can be very frustrating!

I was taking some temperatures of different components in my rig, and there is no stress testing program that even comes close to folding for working all the components in the system. This gave me the idea of incorporating a stress test WU into the v7 client. Maybe include a WU of every type (smp, bigadv, gpu, etc) with the software so users can actually stress their systems with the type of abuse that folding puts on a rig. This way we could test an overclock, new driver, new component, etc, without wasting a good WU and causing Stanford to go through excessive failed WU's and reissue them.

In my mind, this is a pretty simple thing to do. What do y'all think?

We have some serious teams passing us in the coming weeks with a much higher ppd than us. Sadly for as much power the ps3 uses, it's ppd is terrible! I can see how it would have been able to compete with the single core cpu's that most people had back at the ps3 release, but it is way behind smp and even low end fermi gpu's. Unless we get more active folders using the latest cpu's and gpu's we will continue to drop in the standings faster and faster!

[Brandon.]

I just downloaded and connected mine to 56895

[BrianTX]

Originally Posted by Brandon.

I just downloaded and connected mine to 56895

Welcome aboard!

[Nathan P]

Originally Posted by Brandon.

I just downloaded and connected mine to 56895

A belated welcome, sorry my internet has been down for the last few days and before that was flat out at work.

[Nathan P]

Originally Posted by BrianTX

Good luck getting those GPU's folding, hardware issues can be very frustrating!

I was taking some temperatures of different components in my rig, and there is no stress testing program that even comes close to folding for working all the components in the system. This gave me the idea of incorporating a stress test WU into the v7 client. Maybe include a WU of every type (smp, bigadv, gpu, etc) with the software so users can actually stress their systems with the type of abuse that folding puts on a rig. This way we could test an overclock, new driver, new component, etc, without wasting a good WU and causing Stanford to go through excessive failed WU's and reissue them.

In my mind, this is a pretty simple thing to do. What do y'all think?

We have some serious teams passing us in the coming weeks with a much higher ppd than us. Sadly for as much power the ps3 uses, it's ppd is terrible! I can see how it would have been able to compete with the single core cpu's that most people had back at the ps3 release, but it is way behind smp and even low end fermi gpu's. Unless we get more active folders using the latest cpu's and gpu's we will continue to drop in the standings faster and faster!

Well i've managed to get my GTS 250 working, now i am hoping to be able to get a much larger case in the next 3-4 weeks so that I can get my combo card running. I have hopefully narrowed it down to a very borked winXP installation that should probably be removed and I start from sscratch. Should give us another 5-6k PPD.

PPD/w on the PS3 isn't great and probably won't change.

They have looked at benchmarking suites before but it hasn't come to anything. WU's that are returned as EUE's (trashed) are reissued fairly quickly so PG probably doesn't see the need. The guy's on the big teams find most hardware quirk's/gems and dogs pretty quickly as well which helps.

[Nathan P]

Originally Posted by BrianTX

We have some serious teams passing us in the coming weeks with a much higher ppd than us. Sadly for as much power the ps3 uses, it's ppd is terrible! I can see how it would have been able to compete with the single core cpu's that most people had back at the ps3 release, but it is way behind smp and even low end fermi gpu's. Unless we get more active folders using the latest cpu's and gpu's we will continue to drop in the standings faster and faster!

I have pondered how to go about trying to recruit more people, i see our biggest problem as being buried in the PS3 section which is now probably not the bext place to be. perhaps a post/link or even a sticky in the PC section might help. i don't think we are at the stage at the moment where we can have our own sub forum but it would be something to aim for.

What do you think??

[phlydude]

I'm back!!
Folding on my new iMac...We shall see how this new 3.4GHz i7 does

[shawz0311]

Just set up my ps3 to do folding @ home and joined the blu ray.com team

[Nathan P]

Originally Posted by phlydude

I'm back!!
Folding on my new iMac...We shall see how this new 3.4GHz i7 does

Welcome back, your doing well but having looked at your stats i am guessing that you do not have a passkey...

Passkey info

Fill in the form, await your passkey for PG, enter it into the client config and fold 10 WU - then watch the points

[Nathan P]

Originally Posted by shawz0311

Just set up my ps3 to do folding @ home and joined the blu ray.com team

Welcome aboard