I need more folding in my life

[iHardware Shelden]

So I just hit 100,000 points and way to many WUs (because i'm using the chrome client) Anyways, it took about 2 weeks to hit this many points so idk if that is good or not.

I had my Q6600 system and Athlon x2 240 system running for 4 days straight possibly more folding, I shut them off cause I felt the outcome was not worth it in terms of power usage and finishing full WUs. I also ran it on my FX 6300 and 650 ti for a while and at night but still felt like were i'm at is not to good. What do you guys think?

 

So I also wanted to know is; I have 3 Core 2 Duo E6750 systems, the core 2 quad q6600 and my main rig. What would I be looking at with the Core 2 Duos? They have higher clock speeds and are newer than the Q6600 so would I see similar results to the Q6600 in terms of PPD?

 

I can run the systems 24/7 but I just don't want to run them for nothing, what should I do and what do you guys recommend?

 

 

 

[Guest]

Fold paper airplanes

[matjojo]

anything is better then nothing, just keep folding if you want. but if the electricity bill is way to high, dont do it.

[Me1z]

Folding tends to prefer more cores over faster cores, so your Q6600 will likely run laps around the core 2 duos. The extra clock speed won't do much. While anything is better than nothing, ideally you only want to fold on GPUs at this point. In terms of power usage there is no CPU that even comes close to the efficiency of GPUs. My suggestion? If you have some money to spare, grab something like a used GTX 970 or even a 750 ti off ebay and put it in one of the 'dual core' rigs you have. You can configure F@H to ignore the CPU and you will have some pretty nice performance per watt. If you don't have the budget for a GPU then just do what you can. You could try only folding during off-peak hours to lower the power bill if it gets to be too much.

[EnticingZephyr]

As i live in the southern hemisphere and it's winter here my pc is folding in my room 24/7 and is keeping the room warm. (Watt for Watt they are the same as a heater) so if you need some justification and your using a heater turn it off and fold instead .

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Gaming-PC-vs-Space-Heater-Efficiency-511/

[PudgyAstronaut]

Folding tends to prefer more cores over faster cores, so your Q6600 will likely run laps around the core 2 duos. The extra clock speed won't do much. While anything is better than nothing, ideally you only want to fold on GPUs at this point. In terms of power usage there is no CPU that even comes close to the efficiency of GPUs. My suggestion? If you have some money to spare, grab something like a used GTX 970 or even a 750 ti off ebay and put it in one of the 'dual core' rigs you have. You can configure F@H to ignore the CPU and you will have some pretty nice performance per watt. If you don't have the budget for a GPU then just do what you can. You could try only folding during off-peak hours to lower the power bill if it gets to be too much.

 

hmm interesting, in my anecdotal experience it seems to scale almost perfectly with core count and frequency. My i7-4790k (4 cores, 8 threads, 4.5GHz) gets about 4X the PPD of my i5-4200U (2 cores, 4 threads, 2.2 (?) GHz Turbo)... but maybe that was a coincidence and it was mostly due to the extra threads.

[iHardware Shelden]

So I think ill pick up a GTX 670 or something along those lines later this year, as for power consumption I might just run the systems at school since they leave the computer labs all on 24/7 I don't think they will care

[Imakuni]

So I think ill pick up a GTX 670 or something along those lines later this year, as for power consumption I might just run the systems at school since they leave the computer labs all on 24/7 I don't think they will care

Yes they will. While they leave the PCs on all the time, I suppose they run on standby or another low power state. Folding would increase power consumption in the order of 10 ~ 20 times the usual number. Multiply that by the number of PCs, as well as the hours spent, and I'm pretty sure the cost starts to add up. Not to mention that they'll most likely not even bother to hear your proposal, let alone allow you to install a piece of software that they don't know.

 

Trust me, I tried. It won't be easy, and you are very likely to get heartbroken. But hey, at least give it a shot. I was able to snag a few PCs, though I had to resort to portable apps and manually starting the client. Lot's of downtime, but least there's lots of uptime as well.

[iHardware Shelden]

Yes they will. While they leave the PCs on all the time, I suppose they run on standby or another low power state. Folding would increase power consumption in the order of 10 ~ 20 times the usual number. Multiply that by the number of PCs, as well as the hours spent, and I'm pretty sure the cost starts to add up. Not to mention that they'll most likely not even bother to hear your proposal, let alone allow you to install a piece of software that they don't know.

 

Trust me, I tried. It won't be easy, and you are very likely to get heartbroken. But hey, at least give it a shot. I was able to snag a few PCs, though I had to resort to portable apps and manually starting the client. Lot's of downtime, but least there's lots of uptime as well.

Oh no I might have said it wrong but that's good to know I'm in charge of our computer club and for a project next school season I think folding would be perfect. We have a bunch of systems that came from computer labs being upgraded so I would plan on using those. As for power consumption the IT guy was talking to me about tax write offs depending on certain projects (our school use to have a bitcoin mining club). I guess I will see but if I can work something out, even if it is just 10 Q6600 systems running the folding client during the week I think that could be quite good, even the 3 i5 4460 systems our classroom has.

[Commander Llama]

Even then you may only want to have F@H run at Light or Medium, depending on what gets done on those PCs. Running them on full will make using them very sluggish. Hope that lab room has aircon....

[iHardware Shelden]

Even then you may only want to have F@H run at Light or Medium, depending on what gets done on those PCs. Running them on full will make using them very sluggish. Hope that lab room has aircon....

It's not a lab, just a normal classroom. For the i5 systems, definitely yes only medium. As for the Q6600 systems we have some we don't use for anything at all so those we could run any time possible. It really all depends on how stuff gets set up this year and what the school would be fine with. Also our school feels like Antarctica during the school season :blink: