What you need to go RED!

[Wedo]

We seem to have a wonderful wave of new folders flocking to our little team and while cruising the much-loved rainbow stats (http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/team_members.php?TeamID=32) I wondered if everyone knew what it takes to move up the ranks in color.

So here's a rough guide:

Every AMD xp1800, running 24/7, can put out a single 47-60 point protein in about 24 hours or so. I find that taking a nice and easy average of 50 ppd makes calculations conservative and more manageable. Thus, a cpu with at least the power of a xp1800 will produce 50 ppd and yield 350 ppw. I appreciate all the folders who churn out these numbers with their only rig and our team is thankful for their contribution, but what does it take to go higher?

Here's the numbers:

To go green you would need 2 cpu's.


To go yellow you would need 3 cpu's.

To go orange you would need 8 cpu's.

and finally,

To go red you would need 15 cpu's.

Go forth and recruit, build, and borg.

Wedo

[JDXNC]

PPD/W also depends a lot on the value of the given WU's Stanford is sending out so it can vary quite a bit.

Either way, I'm in it for the cause, not for racking up points... but competition always helps build production :)

[vonkaar]

Bah, it took me 50 PCs to go red =p

[Wedo]

Originally posted by vonkaar
Bah, it took me 50 PCs to go red =p

This is meant to be a just a guide... as we all know there are server's that drop off the planet, WU's that crash, and rigs that lock up here and there.

w00r to the fold,
Wedo

[vonkaar]

Well, in my case it was simply choosing 50 of the slowest systems this side of 1982.

But yeah... the guide seems to be spot on the money... pretty much everybody that's red on our team fits exactly where you say they should be. I'm just a freak I guess =p.

[JDXNC]

I'm folding with 6 rigs, but 5 are sub XP 1800... eh, it all counts in the end :)

[Wedo]

Originally posted by JDXNC
I'm folding with 6 rigs, but 5 are sub XP 1800... eh, it all counts in the end :)

The mere fact that you are folding is what really matters. :D There's been so much talk of color's recently *cough* vonkaar *cough* that I thought there might be some people that could use the guide.

Sometimes it's good to see the numbers.

Wedo

[JDXNC]

Originally posted by Wedo


The mere fact that you are folding is what really matters. :D


I do what I can do. Trying to get the admin at work let me borg thier 80 or so computers (about half are Athlons, rest are Celly's & P2's.)

Oh.. and BTW... hope you don't mind my new addtion to my sig :D

[Maxvla]

osumaxx and i are at 9 cpu's with 3k ppw. i'll be adding a dually and he'll be adding a couple more rigs. that should put us REALLY close to red or over it :D

[Fast420A]

My 1700 Tbred @ 2.3 Ghz does most of the Gromacs in 13 - 14 hours so you get 1 WU on day one and then 2 on day two etc...

[OSUmaxx]

Originally posted by Maxvla
osumaxx and i are at 9 cpu's with 3k ppw. i'll be adding a dually and he'll be adding a couple more rigs. that should put us REALLY close to red or over it :D

Actually, we had 7, now we have 8 (I added it yesterday). I run 4 instances on my duallie ;), so Stanford shows us with 2 extra procs. I hope to level off at around 3200-3300 ppw with these 8 cpus.

[Disco_Stu]

I think I'm up to 8 now, got two more tonight, but one is a P2 400, yay!

Anyway, might level off for awhile now, no more borgs in sight. Told you guys I'd ramp up once school started! ;)

[Alacritan]

I should just buy as many old laptops as possible and make them all fold and buy a crapload of wireless network adapters. I bet I could get the laptops pretty cheap if they're all under 1Ghz...

[JDXNC]

Originally posted by Alacritan
I should just buy as many old laptops as possible and make them all fold and buy a crapload of wireless network adapters. I bet I could get the laptops pretty cheap if they're all under 1Ghz...

Good luck! :p

You can get an K7S5A motherboard & XP 2400 for less than $100 at Fry's I think, throw in some cheap ram, DDR or SD(board takes both) and a PSU and cheap NIC and CDROM, you can make nice diskless clusters with much more power than crappy old laptops.

[Fast420A]

Instead of buying old laptops, buy layers of a folding farm. Laptop HD's tend to die when folding is done on laptops constantly. You can put together a folding farm with an Athlon for each layer for pretty cheap.

All prices new from NewEgg.com

Sparkle Power Supply FSP300-60ATV OEM - $27 each
AMD Athlon 1800 Retail with heatsink - $57 each
Biostar M7VIG PRO Motherboard - $56 each
Dane-Elec SDRAM 256MB 32MBx64 PC133 RAM $35 each ($40 for DDR)
Lite On 52x Black Cd Rom - Model LTN-526 - $15 each (to run Overfoldix)
or
You find some cheap HD's on ebay to use with a Windows install.

Now this comes to almost $200 per layer but it's all BRAND NEW, THE CHEAPEST way is to find as many of the parts used or in the NEWEGG refurbs section. Plus there's the added prices of a hub, Cat5 cables and power strips/battery backup.

[Wedo]

I agree wth the guys above, if you are going to purchase equipment as dedicated folding gear, there is no better way than a layered farm.

There are some things I would change though:

www.driveguys.com have sub 3GB HD's for under $20

You can find cheapola psu's for under $20 and split the psu between two layers to save even more.

Buy a mobo with built in vid/lan so you don't need to purchase those. I use the M7VKQ's for my farm and they work great. In addition, I bought them from the refurb section of newegg for only $23 a piece.

With these suggestions, and what the guys wrote above, you can get a layer down to the sub $150 level.

Wedo

[esau]

got 9 rigs folding, cant quite make into the orange
:(


hmmm.....been running some numbers and i should be orange. time to go check up on the borgs.....

[Wega!]

Hmm, I just added a celly 450@525Mhz so all together I'm at about 4.6Ghz. To bad they aren't 24/7, but I should be able to hit green :)

[Fast420A]

Keep it on 24/7!!!!

[Wega!]

Originally posted by Fast420A
Keep it on 24/7!!!!

I wish I could! But 3 computers consume a lot of power when running 24/7 and my rent will go up if I let alle the computers run all the time. :(

[JDXNC]

Originally posted by Wedo
I agree wth the guys above, if you are going to purchase equipment as dedicated folding gear, there is no better way than a layered farm.

There are some things I would change though:

www.driveguys.com have sub 3GB HD's for under $20


Wedo

I know of a place for Canadian's to get 1.5GB drives for $9 Canadian and 8x CDROM's for $5. heck, they have 24x cdroms for $9.99

[MrMgrMatt]

That does seem about right, my 3 - 2100's pump out about 85-90 ppd each. And my 1600 does about 60-65. Keeping in mind that they are are o/c'd as much as I can w/o frying them using only air. Each 2100 is running at 2300-2400, and the 1600 is running at 1710. I also have a Pentium M 1.4Ghz that does about 70-75 ppd on average. So thats 380 ppd for my 5 cpu's, which translates to 2660 ppw, so that just shows how much overclocking can help(assuming its stable). Cut the cpus needed for orange from 8 to 5. And therefore, cutting red from 16 to 10. That can save ya some money.
Fold on
uNF