some basic guides please

[juanmartin]

Hi, im Juan from Argentina.

i ended knowing about F@H by accident realy, i was searching about how to overclock my core i7 and in a page they talked about this so....

The thing is...this i very confusing to me, the things about servers, teams, units, uploads etc....

I have a core i7 3.8ghz with 12 gb ram and a Nvidia quadro fx 580 machinne that i recently build for rendering 3d animation that i work on.

Id like to share some of that computing power with this project, i dont know too much about it but i think is a nice thing to be involved.

Could anyone just tell me the minimal steps i have to follow to get the thing running.

I already dowloaded the program and is running... i jus put my user name and put team 123 ramdonly to get it working, but i have no idea when the job is done and how to upload it.
I could use the nvidia quadro for faster results or not?


Thank you.

[Baowoulf]

Welcome to F@H Juan. Everything is mostly automated. So if you're new or want a set it and forget it client then the CPU client is the perfect one. Basically you get a WU(work unit), a small part of a bigger project, then your computer runs the WU to see how it folds and once it's completed it sends(uploads) it back. And then you get another WU.

Basically there are Assignment Servers which assign work and Collection Servers that collect the completed work. You can check out the Server Status page up at the top it gives more info about servers at the bottom of the page so you can tell when a server is up or having problems. As well as see the F@H wiki for even more info if interested. You can create your own team if you want. Also if you ever run into problem you can check your log file and post it for people here to help you out if needed using the

Code: Select all

tags.

Do you have a dual or quad core i7? If so once you get comfortable with using F@H you can check out the SMP client, as well as the GPU client if your card is capable of it. Also look into getting a passkey so when and if you try out the SMP client you can be eledgible for bonus points if you feel you want some competitive fun.

[bruce]

Welcome to the folding forum, juanmartin.

Congratulations for taking the first step.

At first, you shouldn't need to do anything more. The program that you downloaded will upload the results when it is finished and will request a new assignment. Take some time to learn more about FAH. Then when you're ready, you can upgrade to the SMP client.

There are several choices of programs that you can run, but since you already have one working, let it run for a while and appreciate the fact that you're contributing to a field of science that will help cure disease.


Please use Team 0 if you don't have a specific team, rather than 123. (You don't need to have a team.)

[juanmartin]

@Baowoulf and bruce Hi, thank you for the welcome and the replies...both very usefull.

i do have to read the wiki, yesterday at night i get very anxious and just posted here, but i´ll read more and eventually ask for specific things if needed.
About i7, here is the thing about last intel processors:

i3 : 2 cores with hiperthreading
i5 : 4 cores without hiperthreading.
i7 : 4 cores with hiperthreading = 8 threads

So i have the i7 930 (confortable running at 3.6 ghz....trying to push a stable 3.8) quad with those 8 threads, but i only fully use them at rendering time wich is a fraction of the time compared to the hours i use just one core (because professional application for 3d animation like Maya, incredibly don´t have support for multythreading yet ).

I think that i could use 4 threads for folding this simulations, by the way , what a cool thing those simulations are !! i mean not only for the contribution to cure disease wich is the main thing of course, but also is amazing the fact that people can create this kind of software that mimic the behaviour of proteins.

cheers!!

[codysluder]

When you use all threads for rendering, FAH should essentially stop. It probably won't matter whether you shut it down or not because it runs at a low priority, but if this isn't correct, do let us know.

If smp is set to run on all 8 threads and you do animations on one, FAH will make some progress but MUCH LESS than 7/8 of the uninterrupted speed. You'll get much better performance if you specify -smp 6 or -smp 7 if one thread is going to be busy, even if that leaves some idle time when you're not using the computer for animations.

[juanmartin]

Hi, thanks for reply, good information about how things work while rendering.
Well, i just made those separated folders for running different clients, with the cpu1, cpu2 etc shortcuts, i change the id machine to run a separated thread and is all working, EXCEPT....because they all say..."attempting to get work packet"!!!
Now even the original shortcut to the standard F@h is not doing any work even if all the icons are in the Sys tray and processes appear in the task manager, but with 0 load.

Any ideas?...

[John_Weatherman]

It sounds like you have a anti-virus or firewall blocking access to Stanford. I would check that first, or are using a proxy?

[juanmartin]

Hi,thanks John_Weatherman! i excluded now the [email protected] in firewall. Now i have running 4 instances on core i7 4ghz (chequed stability first with occt 1 hr, i just had to buy another PSU to get the thing powered)!...temps are ok at i 65c avergage per core.
Though i changed the firewall setting, the differents instances started to work after changing the queue number in configuration for each one, and also deleting the queue.dat after failled attemps. I also had the 4 configuration set to proxy server, now i disabled because your comment about proxy.

Excuse my english! i never studied it but i realy like the language.

Any other suggestions or tips about how is this going or if can be improved at this stage won´t hurt, but i feel already this is a succes when i see the four threads runnings they separated work units.

Cheers.

[7im]

I don't know how much is translated to Spanish, but we do have localized pages on the Folding@home web site. Try this: http://folding.stanford.edu/Spanish/Guide

[patonb]

Get a passkey to protect your account and qualify for bonus points.

You'd be better running 1 instance on 4 cores by adding the flags -smp 4 when you start it.

See here for the passkey: http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-passkey
See here for the smp: http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-SMP#ntoc3

[juanmartin]

Ok, i have a passkey now, i just pasted it in the configurations for the diferent cpus.

About smp, i thought that the advice was to get several single cpu threads until become familiar with them, and later on make the jump to smp.

?

Thanks.

[Baowoulf]

It is if your new to F@H or if you currently aren't comfortable enough with it to make the jump yet. But if you want to give it a try the people here are more then happy to help, if you run into any problems or have any questions before during or after.

[juanmartin]

If that´s the case, in the days i´ll make a good read of the smp install guide and i´ll install it, it looks like in my case has more sense smp than multiple single cpu at the same time.

Thanks, you all reply at light speed!!

bye.

[juanmartin]

ok, now i dowloaded and finished a Wu with smp, and is at 50% of other.

I´m also testing the GPU client, but is very unstable, freezes the pc (not only when trying to open the viewer, thing that now i know is not necessary, or good idea either), it uses the gpu at 100% and besides that it seems that there is something that is just not working good. I don´t want to install SP3 for windows since sp2 is working well for me and i don´t mess with updates of this kind except really need to. I´m also going to install win 7 soon, so that maybe will fix that part of "the problem", in case that is ralated with sp2 the hangs of the pc.

I have a quadro fx 580 cuda compatible / drivers quadro 258.49.

Maybe is not a good idea to have running smp at the same time that GPU?
In fact , yesterday night i let the pc running 4 single cpu, 1 smp, and the gpu at same time. Today morning i found the pc was restarted.

One more thing...the smp is using only 13% of cpu. That´s normal?...i suppose is using 13% but of all the cores at the same time. Probably later on , i´m going to ask if different smp can be running at the same time.

Anyway i managed to get 7 WU in one day aprox, and doing more.

Thanks.

[bruce]

I'm not sure about the best drivers for the fx 580, but with only 32 SPs it's not going to produce as well as some of the newer cards. It's supposed to be equivalent to the 9500, so it may be helpful to add the command-line parameter string -forcegpu nvidia_g80

The SMP client can be run with the GPU client if you choose. Normally, the SMP client uses all of your cpus so you doen't want to run it with the Cpu client. If the machine is for other activities, SMP production will fall rapidly, but that's rarely a serious concern.