NASA@Home doesnt exist...

twas a joke, a poor one.

yes it was.

SSE Boost is ok

That's a good thing -- SSE, SSE2, SSE3, MMX, they're all processor optimizations, operations a CPU can be told to do that replaces a longer, more drawn out operation with a very fast short-cut. All the cores, i believe, use SSE, including tinker.. i think..

There's some cores, 'QMDs', that use SSE2, but only Intel users will get those cores.. (core=the thing that runs a workunit) Intel intentionally made their compiler somewhat uncompatible with AMDs nearly identical implementation of SSE2, so F@H won't send AMD chips QMDs.

I personally run with the -forceasm flag, so that F@H runs with optimizations on, whether it thinks it can use my SSE or not That still doesnt work for SEE2, mind you, just forces SSE on.. 'cause ya KNOW a modern chip can use it.

Hence, AMD vs Intel anti-trust lawsuit, which I aint heard much about lately.. story continues there..

i'm done with mythird wu now i got frame's. what are frame's the program is doing now?

I don't understand the specifics of the whats, hows, and whys of the program, but I know a bit about Proteins and stuff, Qaz. I'll try and explain it to you as best I can.

Proteins are really complicated "machines". They are the the things that make your body, allow the processes that work inside you to work, and they can be both very simple, and extremely complex.

Proteins have to build themselves before they can work. Your DNA is like a recipe book - it tells all the ingredients (Amino acids, which are made of groups of moelcules, and can be as small as only three molecules in size) how and where to join together, so that they can make Proteins.

The chemical bonds that form between these Amino acids force the Protein to bend and twist into very, very, very specific shapes. This bending is known as "folding".

This folding is done at an incredible speed - some fold at speeds of millionths of a second!

This alone makes it impossible to phyically watch the Proteins fold, let alone the infinitesimally small size of them. Electron microscopes (The most powerful microscopes in the world) can only just see them, but they aren't anywhere near fast enough to allow us to watch the folding take place.

This is why the Folding@home program exists. It folds Proteins by estimating what physical forces are pulling, pushing, twisting, or bending the Protein.

It does this by creating "snapshots" of the Protein whilst it folds. Each snapshot is a still picture and is simply a single moment in time - like a photo.

When you put all the snapshots together, you end up with a moving image. These snapshots are known as frames in the program.

The complexity of the Protein affects how quickly a computer can model how this is done, but obviously, the more complex the Protein, the more bonds between the Amino acids there will be, so the harder it is to do, and the longer it takes to fold.

Each workunit is not the entire folding sequence of a single Protein - far from it, in fact.

Each work unit is merely a few moments in a fold, since it has been estimated that it would take 30 YEARS for a single CPU to fold an entire Protein! This is obviously useless to the scientists, especially since we know of literally thousands of Proteins. It would take Millennia for the results they need to come through!

The scientists have overcome this problem by breaking the folds into small chunks that are more easily completed by the average computer.

As the results of each work unit is sent in, they build up a picture of how (And why) many Proteins fold, sort of like a jigsaw puzzle. This information can then be used to develop cures or preventions to Genetic diseases.

This is why it is so important that Folding@home gets as many people as possible to fold for them - the more computers running the program, the more results that come in, and the faster they get the information they need.

...

Sorry this turned into an Uberpost, but i've answered several questions in one there. Please remember that I don't know the specifics of the program or of the folding process, so I may be wrong.

So then if you want more info, it would be best to check out the FAQ's on the folding@home site:

http://folding.stanford.edu/faq.html

Obviously these will be better at providing info for you than me, since the people that wrote them will understand the process far more than me.

There's also an FAQ on how the points are calculated, if anyone is still reading this...

Is the science lesson over yet Matress

No! I will repeat until you've got it into your head!

Proteins are really complicated "machines"...

thank's moe.

S'ok, but like I've said before, I can get carried away sometimes...

...

Ringold, if you know any better about any of the things that I said in my post, then let me know.

...

Bogseat...are you there?

If he or she is a member great name

Lol, nothing I could possibly add about the science part. Just also think that Stanford probably has us compute the proteins folding process a few times just to make sure it's right, too, since difference CPUs have different accuracies (which never matter 99.99% of the time, but the ten millionth decimal place does in science).

On another note, WOW, I just looked at the Project page, and I saw a 1294 point "DGGROMAC" WU available for some lucky nut to DL. That'd even take my 2.6ghz chip probably 4 days to do!

Pardon me while I go pray that I get one of those things, somehow.

i bet it would take my 2700+ half that time to do.

i enjoy braggin bout my computer

oh yeah, and im not contributing a lot right now, since im back on my night = download, day = encode schedule.

i liked your rant moe, learned some things that i may need in the future...

I'd still say running F@H wouldn't effect either if you have at least 512 RAM.. Especially zero effect on the downloading, especially if you run uTorrent. I just ran across that baby, and wow, huge difference from that RAM & resource-eating monstrosity Azureus. Azureus looks pretty, has nice features, but nothin' steals that much RAM without my say so. It'd eat up 1.5gb of my 2gb of my RAM just seeding if I let it run long enough... And yeah, during the day, it'd just get knocked out of the way when ever you encode.

What number was that WU?

Somebody blink, and i'll have the top spot.

C'mon, somebody borg a bunch of computers and put me to shame

On another note, I was wrong; -advmethods doesn't get you 600pt GROMACS, it tends to get you little itsy bitsy WUs these days. Run without it. Those GROMACS gets me 360 - 380ppd, other smaller WUs get 130 - 150ppd or so, just as an example.

Also, in case nobody's noticed and is running dual-CPU or an X2 system (or those silly Intel processors that like to think they're really dual-core), one install will only use one core. Need to use the console version and install it twice, in conjuction with a -local flag in the registry.

*ahem*

I think I have one of those Intel processors...

In my device manager, it says:

Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20 Ghz
Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20 Ghz

Could someone once and for all tell me if that means I have 2 CPU's or not? And as you know, TrekBoy, I have the exact same thing with my graphics card(s)!

If I have two processors, Ringold, what's a registry flag?

Other than to reset the trial period for some of the programs I have, () I don't touch the registry for fear of breaking it.

Oh, Mattress, I was thinking of the dual-core chips, what you are seeing I believe is HyperThreading. You've got one, but it allows two operations to go on at once if one operation doesn't fully utilize the whole processor core.. basically thats how it works, anyways. I think. I wasn't putting down your computer, just computers built off a cousin of it It's the Intel version of the AMD X2. I don't have anything against Intel, but they really just tried to throw something out the door to meet the X2 in that case, but I dont think anybody really buys them.

With a normal P4, it's not worth the effort to run a second client, so wouldn't worry about it in your case. It would eat RAM at twice the rate and only net you about 5 - 10% more points per day. I've heard some WU's even fight so furiously for resources that it actually hurts performance. Only on a Dual processor system (Athlon MP, Xeon) or Dual-core system (X2) does one need two console versions running.

As for your video card, i dont know anything about that.. And as for touching your registry.. I know how you feel. it's a fickle beast; I only touch it when I absolutely have to. F@H is about the only exception, and only then 'cause I read 5 n00bie guides before trying it

Edit:
Quick Dual-CPU Install guide

1.Download console exe.
2.Place someplace like C:\FAH1
3.Place a copy in C:\FAH2
4.Create shortcut to "C:\Fah1\Console504thingy.exe" -configonly
5.Make the above go in the "target" field of the shortcut's properties.
6.Run shortcut.
7.Input proper information:
Name: Ringold
Team: 46574
Install as service: Yes
8. Make sure to set a Machine ID to 1.
9. After completion, close window if it doesnt do it itself.
10. Repeat the shortcut process for the console.exe in FAH2.
11. After making sure to use Ringold as the user name, set Machine ID for this one to 2 when prompted.
12. Start => Run => regedit
13. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE => SYSTEM => ControlSet001 => Services
14. Scroll until you find the FAH listings.
15. Click on them. Right click the ImagePath one, Modify, and add -local -forceasm to the end.
(Forceasm forces SSE boost to be used; if you're reading this message board, I bet you have it, so no worries)
16. Repeat for both listings.
17. Reboot.

After that, it should work silently from then on, utilizing both cores, physical or virtual if you so wish (with a P4 w/ HT).

Edit of Edit: Oh, and make absolutely sure to enter 'Ringold' as the user name, or it absolutely wont work.

it would have been better if you didnt add that last little bit in your post

anyways, now ive got my fileserver up and running again, i might get it folding. tis only a celeron 1.7 but it all helps i spose.

holy crap CaptRingold, i just checked the team status, you are going through wu like a hot knife through butter

By the way, the guy who started Folding asks that you don't use Hyper-Threading while folding as it unbalances the program for some reason (See the FAQs on the site)

The knife has gone right through the butter now, Silvercliff!

Ringold has beaten me in points!

http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=46574
...

I wasn't ranting at you or anything, Ringold, its just that i've asked quite a few people what my computer actually has processor-wise, and people haven't given me a definite answer before.

As for my graphics card rant, it says:

SAPPHIRE RADEON 9250 128MB
SAPPHIRE RADEON 9250 128MB - Secondary

So basically I was asking the same question - have I got two CPU's/Graphics cards or just one that has a personality disorder?

if you are dual monitoring or tv-outing, then the secondary vid card is the 'virtual' controller of the second display device.

hope that helps

I've only got one monitor, although I can watch TV on my computer - I just haven't got an aerial for it.

I listen to the radio on my computer instead - i've got a radio antenna.

both my tv 21 inch tv and my 19 inch monitor are conected to computer so i can watch star treck and play birth too:)

Ringold how the hell are you folding that fast? Though it appears that you're not getting many points per WU. What spec have you got?

Mattress, they're right, that second video card with the "Secondary" is either a second D-Sub or DVI out port (doesn't have to be in use to be listed) or a TV-out. My ATI card shows the same thing.

Trekboy: 11ghz 24-7 generally helps. I got a TON of 30-50pt WU's early on thanks to setting -advmethods, but now its largely 600 point GROMACS WUs. You wont see too many of those in the stats for a few days, they take me like half a day to a day to do them, versus a couple hours of the smaller ones.

thanks,

What are advmethods?

-advmethods has your client request WU's that are in beta-testing or WUs that they want done on specific kinds of computers. Lately, they've been netting a whole ton of low-point WU's though, so not a flag I'm using at the moment. Could change in the future, though.

So basiclly if you get a few you're lucky, if you don't then boo hoo

I've updated our avatar again.

Trekkie2114, your cheese liberation army is now present and correct, and I increased the size of your avatar, Zahadoom.

Those annoying black bits at the top and bottom are no more!

If you want me to send you the file so you can use it in your BOTF2 (Site) avatar, let me know.

I'll update your avatar on the weekend, Silvercliff.

http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=46574