Folding Forum

As I just started using my GPU for folding, it's possible I didn't set the "cause" to COVID-19 before the WU was attributed (I'm not sure, I set it to COVID-19 when I noticed). I got Project 11763 (https://stats.foldingathome.org/project?p=11763). I'm no expert but I can see "Cause: unspecified", yet the decription says:

CORONAVIRUS PROJECT

Coronavirus SARS-CoV (SARS causing virus) receptor binding domain mutated to the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) trapped by a SARS-CoV S230 antibody.

So to me it seems related. So because I read the post about waiting for a WU (viewtopic.php?f=61&t=34581) I thought I'd ask if it's better to leave the cause to "Any disease" for the GPU so as to pick up work units that may not be labelled COVID-19 per se but still be related, as well as because I read elsewhere that COVID-19 projects are prioritized anyway in the queue (the prior version of the software didn't allow for selection but COVID-19 jobs were still prioritized)? Is it better to wait for a COVID-19 WU for the GPU even though it may take longer i.e. for you to add projects and bandwidth?

At this point it probably will not make much of a difference, all of the COVID-19 related projects are set to high priority on the servers. Some of the earlier projects will not have been set up with that cause listed, the clients didn't support making that choice until the updated client was released within the last few days.

Out of curiousity I've set my preference to any and cancer. I've only had Covid-19 work so far.

I have an odd attitude to this. Any help I can be to help treat any disease is fine by me.

(Now that folks can choose COVID-19, I hope researchers get to go back to releasing their other WUs. It is 'publish or perish" and if they don't get their Doctoral research done it will go bad for them)

"Only" helping to treat cancer is not a bad result. Having nothing to fold is a bad result.

My two cents.

Thanks all for the insight. I don't want to mislead anyone as my question sort of implies you can set the cause for the GPU independently from the CPU one. I don't think that's the case actually. I'm using the web client. Sure for instance now my CPU is working on a project for COVID-19 and the GPU has nothing assigned and I can select the GPU tab and change the cause in the drop down. But when this gets refreshed by some trigger or what not, like refreshing the page, it comes back to the cause that was initiated for what's running i.e. COVID-19 in my case. In fact I'm pretty sure you can't independently select a cause, at least in the web client. Not only both CPU and GPU use the same cause, but you cannot change anything once one has started, except "visually" and temporarily in the drop-down as explained imho, unless I guess you stop folding?

So apologies, I should have checked that before asking. The question of whether one should generally select "any disease" before starting to fold is still valid and has been answered by Joe_H. As far as my opinion goes I'm quite happy to donate CPU/GPU time for any cause. There is not doubt that it's COVID-19 that made me aware of folding@home which I didn't know before, despite knowing the concept because of other distributed software for crunching data...

That is correct BP2020. The Preference selector is at a client level and any selected value applies to all slots (CPU + GPU) on a given client. It is not possible to assign the CPU slot to one cause while setting the GPU slot to something else.

JonazzDJ wrote:Out of curiousity I've set my preference to any and cancer. I've only had Covid-19 work so far.

I have had my preference set to Any. Most of the WUs I have received have been for COVID-19 and related projects, but I have also seen three WUs for cancer-related projects and a couple WUs related to an enzyme, all within the past week, so non-COVID-19 work is also taking place.