Completely lost: Screensaver?

[ButMadNNW]

Hello,

I was recruited to this project by Leda1974. I visited the home page, clicked the button that said, "Download Folding@home Mac OS X Intel 10.6", unzipped the ZIP file, installed, and started FAHControl running. Within minutes, my laptop was too uncomfortably hot to stay on my lap and things slowed down some.

So I'd like to set the program to only run/fold when I'm not actively using my computer. The Main FAQ indicates there's a "screen saver only" version, but after poking around buttons, settings, the F@h website, and this forum for the last couple of hours, I'm completely lost and have a headache. The only thing I think I've perhaps figured out is that there isn't actually a screen saver version right now? Is that right?

If that's not right, can someone please tell me how to set it up? Or give me another way to make this possible? I consider myself moderately tech-savvy, but any instructions I think I've found here on the forum might as well be written in Klingon. Especially since I'm fairly new to working on a Mac (I've had this MacBook Pro for almost 2 months, and used a MacBook dual-boot with WinXP for 4 years before that, but spent too much time on the WinXP boot), I could really use step-by-step "click here, type this, hit Submit" instructions.

Please and thank you.

ButMadNNW


Computer Specs: MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2012); 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7 (quad-core); 4GB RAM; Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 4000 & NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M.
Network Connection: DSL (though because of my isolated desert location, our connection sucks); Firewall has permission to let F@h send/receive.
Operating System: OS X 10.8.2 (12C60)
Overclocked?: Don't think so and I'd rather not, I think.
Software: F@h Version 7.2.9
WU details: Um... what?

[bruce]

Welcome to foldingforum.org, ButMadNNW.

A number of years ago there was a screensaver but it had some rather significant problems and it was discontinued. There are plans to develop a screensaver for the more modern V7 client but you won't find any code or any specific promises about when it might be available.

Bottom line: There is presently no screensaver.

We can help you reduce the heat generated on your laptop, however.

Open FAHControl. In the upper right corner, change Novice to Advanced if it's not already set that way. Pick Configure + Slots + SMP + EDIT. Under the SMP section you'll probably see CPUs set to -1. Change that number to 4 and save the results.

At the top, select Pause and wait perhaps a minute before clicking Fold. That should reduce the heat somewhat but I don't know how much. Further changes may be needed.

Laptops are generally more difficult to keep cool that desktop computers. It is useful to allow more air to circulate under/around them. You can buy a laptop cooling tray with fans, etc. but it's almost as useful to just put water bottle lids under the corners or most anything else that lets the air circulate under it. I recommend you avoid running it while it's setting on something soft like a bed or carpet.

[Jesse_V]

The Main FAQ is several years out of date and needs to be updated. Sorry about that.

As Bruce mentioned you can turn down the number of CPUs Folding@home uses. However, since you have a quad-core, changing the number to 3 instead of 4 might help. That way F@h is only using 3 out of your 4 CPU cores, which will cut down on the heat production.

[ButMadNNW]

Thanks much, bruce and Jesse_V (love the avatar!).

I mucked around with Automator, trying to figure out if I could set up a "if screensaver runs, then run F@h" kind of thing, but trying to figure out Automator just made my headache worse. I usually take a great deal of pride in my ability to poke around and figure things out on my own, but I'm just not getting that done tonight.

Then checked back here and I've now made the change you suggested, plus telling it to pause when I'm on battery. We'll see how it goes from here. (And yes, I have a platform to elevate and thus help cool laptops. Guess I'll have to start using it again - the MBP hasn't been getting as hot as my old MB did.)

[Jesse_V]

Thanks.
Actually, you're i7 might use hyperthreading, and if that's the case then it's 4 actual cores look like 8. If so then you want to set the number to something like 7. The point was to use N - 1 CPU cores, whatever that turns out to be.

[bollix47]

Using 7 will cause some projects to fail. You'd be better off to use 6 if 8 makes your laptop too hot.

Another alternative is to turn hyper-threading off in the bios and try using 4. I've noticed that doing so does drop the temperatures slightly and makes very little difference in F@H productivity.

[calxalot]

You could also add a uniproccessor slot and disable or delete the smp slot after using Finish.

[bruce]

Right. Tuning hyperthreading off in the bios (and using 4) is a reasonable approach. It can work but it is really not that different than just setting SMP to 4 as I suggested earlier. You'll still use the essential capabilities of your CPU but the heat will go down. As long as FAH is using one task per physical core, it will be pretty much the same. Besides, when you do use your computer, the four extra idle threads can interleave your use with FAH more effectively than turning them off.

Using all 8 threads does increase the throughput maybe 15% compared to using 4 (not double, like you might expect) but it also runs the heat up quite significantly. Leaving those extra threads idle is a good first step to see how much the heat is cut -- whether that's enough or whether you need to cut it even more. If you decide it's cool enough that you'd like more productivity, increasing it to 6 will make a small difference. If it's still too hot, then try 3.

The steps between 1 (a single uniprocessor client) and 2 and 3 and 4 are really big steps. Steps between 4 and 6 and 8 are much, much smaller. ... and completely avoid 5 and 7 because the FahCore will crash much more frequently.

[P5-133XL]

Having hyper-threaded cores that do not fold significantly improves the ability for folding to deal with outside applications having some CPU usage. That is an argument for having hyper-threading turned on even if it isn't used for folding.

[susato]

I fold on a Mac desktop (dual quad Mac Pro early 2008 model) and concur with all of the suggestions here. When folding on all 8 cores and also doing other heavy duty processing in other applications, the computer can get a bit laggy. Setting SMP to 6 helps a lot. The last thing I recommend is checking your RAM usage. Open Activity Monitor, click on System Memory in the lower section, and look for two things: a green pie-piece in the pie chart denoting free RAM, and the "Page Outs" which denotes the amount of information written to disk when RAM is insufficient. When your machine has to write "data-in-process" to disk rather than storing it in RAM this really slows down processing, both for Folding and for anything else you happen to be doing on the computer.

Ideally Page Outs should be zero and you should have at least 5% of your RAM free.

You can free up RAM by quitting unused applications (which reserve memory for themselves even when idle) and you can also look into increasing the RAM on your computer if it's not already maxed out. I recommend the crucial.com memory advisor tool and system scanner.

Apologies if this advice is too elementary - the detail is meant for the general reader.