Folding Forum

I would like some advice on which client I should download please.

first of all my hardware, i7 2600 with 4 gig ram running windows 7. My problem is that this pc is not connected to the internet full time but I can connect every few days if needed. The other consideration is the time pc is on. I will not be running 24 hour the time can vary to an hour or so, or perhaps up to 5 or 6 hours.

For now I have downloaded Boinc and have run seti for a few days to make sure everything appears to be working o.k. Seti alows me to cache work units so not being connected to the net and ample time to complete units means this has been running fine.

I would like to run folding but I am unsure which client would suit my needs best as I have no idea which units relate to what clients and I am unsure about the deadlines for each type. SMP units recommend pc is on for 24 hours but I wanted to avoid having to install multiple versions of a single client. must confess I am unfamilliar with the version 7 client.

Could I get away with installing a multiple cpu client and throwing all 8 cores at it for less time and still make deadlines? or would i really just be better off with a single client or two that I would probably make the deadlines easily and perhaps have seti running on other cores?

You certainly can run multiple CPU clients but you have to remember that an i7 is really a Quad with only four floating point units. Each of them is shared with two ALUs so you really don't have 8 cores, they are virtual cores created by HyperThreading and each pair will compete with each other for those floating point resources.

I have not used an i7 as little as 5-6 hrs per day so I'm really not sure how it will perform under those conditions. One possibility would be to run four FAH uniprocessor clients and four Seti tasks. By pairing floating point work with integer work, you're likely to make a lot better use of your resources than almost any other combination, but you'll need to test it. Seti has the advantage of rather flexible deadlines, whereas FAH is very strict about deadlines and will award bonus points for completing work ahead of schedule. I don't think you'll have trouble meeting FAH's uniprocessor deadlines.

Start with the V7 beta client which can be found here: viewtopic.php?f=67&t=19795 Use a custom install and specify a uniprocessor installation. Once the first slot is running, you'll be able to add additional uniprocessor slots. As I suggested earlier, I recommend four, not eight. The current beta client still has a few bugs, but nothing that will prevent it from running. That version has been available since October and there has been talk of a new version some time in January. Whenever that actually happens, the upgrade process will be simpler than configuring it initially.

one of my concerns with your suggestion is by running 4 folding uniprocessor clients I might end up in a position when they finish the work unit and the pc is not connected to the internet. could have anywhere between 1 and 4 cores (threads or whatever terminolgy I should be using lol ) idle, this was one of the reasons I was thinking about smp units as I assume they take much longer I could just wait untill it finishes then connect to internet (Huge assumption here but assumed all threads worked on single work unit rather than loading seperate units for each cpu). other than that your suggestions seems to make a lot of sense.

In my mind I assumed smp client was created up for pc's with 4 cores (such as amd processors) so I naturally assumed by chucking 8 cores albeit hyperthreaded I would have a good chance of meeting deadlines. (didn't know about the floating point thing)

I will probably go with your suggestion (you guys are the experts after all) but would I better off waiting untill full v7 client is released or still go with the beta?

I have the uniprocessor client running flawlessly on another pc, is there a particular reason I should go with v7 beta rather than downloading say 2 or four instances of the uniprocessor client which so far I have had no trouble with?

It's not wrong to run SMP (with either 4 or 8 threads/cores) but the deadlines are much, much shorter than the uniprocessor WUs. A delay of XX hours before you connect to the internet is much more significant against a 2.7 day deadline than it would be against a 20 day deadline.

See http://fah-web.stanford.edu/psummary.html. Basically, SMP gets assignments for the GRO-A3 code with maybe some for GRO-A4. The uniprocessor client gets assignments for the GROMACS code and some for GRO-A4. A i7 that runs 24/7 can do an excellent job meeting the deadlines for GRO-A3, but if you only run it 20% of the time and then you delay the uploads for XX more hours, you'll be having trouble with the SMP deadlines. You're welcome to try, but you really need to meet the Preferred Deadlines of whatever you undertake.

There's nothing wrong with running multiple V6 uniprocessor clients. It is significantly easier to set up V7.

well I jumped in and downloaded it

I think it it running o.k got a 8011 work unit ? estimating between 6 to 9 hours for each slot at the moment

went to configure added slot and after I clicked save it showed 2 running, now added up to 4 slots. I will leave it running for now and see what happens

during the install I added username, team and passkey - is there anywhere i have to add to ad this information for the other 3 slots or is this picked up automatically?

The username/team/passkey apply to all slots.

By the way, V7 does a very small amount of WU caching. By default, it will download a new WU if you happen to be connected when the current WU reaches 99%. In your case, you would probably want to adjust that number downward, depending a lot on how much of the time the computer is processing but not connected to the internet. It won't be perfect, but it will be better than multiple V6 clients.

excellent - thx for help.


I have something new to worry over now lol, if it means too much messing about with moving pc to the network connection I will stop it, now that it is installed i can always restart it when getting connection is easier. Just have to work out now why Boinc isnt downloading work or running other tasks since i installed folding client (had moved PC to upload all completed work). probably just some setting somewhere.

quick silly question ...

is there a correct procedure for closing the control centre?

I am sure I read that if you close control center (I used the quit button) that it stops the local clients, it seems to be doing this fine (task manager shows cpu dropping). what has me slightly concerned is that if I reload, which then re-starts the clients i get the following message showing if I click the log tab.

working with standard loops on this excecution
previous termination of core was improper
going to use standard loops

the bit in italics bothers me am i doing something wrong ?

oh .... v7 was easier than setting up lots of instances of the uniprocessor client and I have managed to return my first 4 Work units so far so good.

If you are running with an SMP slot, you must ignore the error. It is purely cosmetic.

If you are running with a UNI slot, you must not ignore the error. It is purely catastrophic.

Okay, not really that bad, but some people would call the loss of any points catastrophic, so it kinda fits. Need to add the -forceasm flag in the current V7 client (.38, but not in future versions, fixed!) to avoid this problem with UNI client fahcores (fahcore_78).

It is purely catastrophic

ok you have my attention

I set up 4 slots all uniprocessor as the PC in question pc is not always on or connected to network.

I appear to have been credited for the units i completed (extreme overclockers stats show the 4 work units returned)

is the problem only with fahcore_78 units then ? so far I have only done project 8011 units and currently have project 8001 units running.

I have no idea how to set the flags in this version of FAH, only downloaded v7 because of the suggestions in this thread as the best way to go. can you post where to add this to save me trawling through guides and posts?

must admit when I saw message I thought perhaps some optimisation or other may not have been used.

Bozo, you might try this guide for v7 flags (not too much trawling required): http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=18187

Dana

They put an internal bandaid on the SMP client to fix it, but never removed the warning message. Again, purely cosmetic.

Yes, the problem is only with UNI slots, specifically in V7. (It can happen in v6, but is very rare.)

Select the Expert View (top left). Then click Configure button. Expert Tab. Click the Add button on the right hand side (Extra Core Options) and type in -forceasm

Click OK. Click Save. Done.

There are pictures here (V7 Install Guide), if you want to follow along...

starkreiten wrote:Bozo, you might try this guide for v7 flags (not too much trawling required): http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=18187

Dana

I did post a thank you for the link last night, not sure what happened to my post, i knew I had see that somewhere.

I also looked at v7 install guide but hadn't gone far enough down the page - my bad.

thanks for advice, I have now added the flag, decided to hit the sack last night, couldn't justify staying up an extra hour just to wait for fah to finish and I didn't fancy moving pc's around at 4 am

anyway now running and optimisations show as being forced on in the log and my second lot of units have been uploaded - thanks

Bozo wrote:I didn't fancy moving pc's around at 4 am

Could you elaborate on your situation? It's pretty easy and not that expensive to network your computers so you don't have to go through all that hastle.