ATTN: Would71 and F@H Forum: adding a box: ram questions

[Taylor]

Fry's has the Dragon board on sale- $229 with a boxed athlon 1.4.

I've had my eye on this board for a few weeks, I'm thinking I may pick one up and put it together for folding. I have most of the other components I need already, so this could happen pretty quickly. This would be my first experience with a ddr sdram board, as well as RAID.

I will need to pick up hdd's for it, I'm on a budget for a bit. Will it affect the F@H performance if I use an hdd with 5400rpm rather than 7200rpm? price difference is considerable, and the primary function of this box will be to fold, thus the hdd question. I'm guessing it won't matter.

Before anyone asks: I'm getting a raid board because I want to learn how it works. I'm not sure raid helps folding all that much.

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Concerning my other boxes, I have ram concerns. With the recent low prices I've been picking up a stick here and a stick there;

I've got a few different sticks of sdram laying around here, 256mb pc150 cas 2 corsair, and oem 256 mb cas 3 pc 133- (micron?)

will the cas2 pc150 give a significantly better F@H performance over the cas 3 pc133 if they are both run at 133,

and will a box with 512mb sdram perform F@H better than the same box with 256mb?

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I'm working on securing permission to install F@H on as many boxes at work as possible. I had it running on my own box at work, for a couple months, as well as as a couple boxes at home, but I got wind that I may be sticking my neck out a bit too far doing that at work- (I'd never asked)...so I had to remove it while I go through the proper channels...security is the issue here.

Can anyone offer helpful arguments to submit, which may tip the scales? There's a potential for adding more than 20 boxes to our cause.

-Taylor
(here to fold, gone too far now)
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[Ferris]

A 7200 rpm drive would show little/no speed improvement for folding.
CL2@133 is significantly faster than CL3@133. The Micron may run CL2 even though it's rated at CL3. Alot depends on whether they are -80 or -75 chips. Worth checking anyway.
Finally, 128Mb is plenty for a folding rig and little/no improvement with any more than that.

Of course this all assumes that the machine will be a folding box only.

[It_The_Cow]

I'm just about 100% sure that folding is based solely on processor power, and nothing else

[Taylor]

Originally posted by It_The_Cow
I'm just about 100% sure that folding is based solely on processor power, and nothing else

I was sure we'd noticed a strong tie between quality of ram and folding performance.

[JetMech]

Originally posted by Taylor


I was sure we'd noticed a strong tie between quality of ram and folding performance. I agree with you on this fact. The folding programs size will have it working in ram not harddrive. The processor and its ram as well as additional processor tasking would have the strongest affects on folding speed. I think branch prediction( the processors ability to anticipate it's next task) is also important. The ram I think would be the biggest bottleneck if a good processor is used. If designing a folding box design it around the fastest ram technology possible. Thats why we're seeing the 266 mhz DDR Athlons showing such success. The dual ram and the structure of the Athlons pipeline get the job done very efficiently.

[Ploaf]

We have enough people here that we could find out just by posting clock speeds, ram speed, bus speed and time/specific wu. There would be other variables such as how much the machine is used for anything else, but it would be interesting to see how long each machine, in different configs to complete the work. Just a thought.

[JetMech]

Originally posted by Ploaf
We have enough people here that we could find out just by posting clock speeds, ram speed, bus speed and time/specific wu. There would be other variables such as how much the machine is used for anything else, but it would be interesting to see how long each machine, in different configs to complete the work. Just a thought. My feelings exactly. What we are doing is a science. It's like operating a manufacturing line. What is the most efficient way to process each frame. A perfect example is the fact the while working on line I notice that my time for processing a frame increases. While I am idle they go down. The gentleman who wrote the EM program gave us a tool to use to do just what you're suggesting. Each guy or gal folding needs to pay specific attention to frivolous use of clock cycles.

[Taylor]

Originally posted by r_wesleyjr
The gentleman who wrote the EM program gave us a tool to use to do just what you're suggesting. Each guy or gal folding needs to pay specific attention to frivolous use of clock cycles.

Forgive me for asking this here instead of just looking for myself- what is the EM program?

[Mord-Sith]

are you talking about the soyo dragon with 5.1 sound + raid? I cant believe they can sell it that cheap. I just ordered mine for $150 without cpu. My boxed athy 1.4 was $130. Your getting a great deal.

[Ploaf]

EM is electron microscope, a program for monitoring the folding progress. I don't remeber where to get it but I'm pretty sure that there is a link from the team site which is linked to in my sig.

[asmodean]

You can get Electron Microscope for Folding@Home from here (http://homepages.waymark.net/~lperry/weather/download/em.zip).

[Ploaf]

Also. I am trying this now. It (the latest update anyway) doesn't seem to be hogging resources or anything either. It's called kdfold. Found it a few weeks ago and the latest update is here-
http://www.plasticstudios.org/winkdfold11d.zip

The URL changes with each update. I am monitoring three clients across the network without having to map the network drives. It doesn't have any naked lady pics or anything to show progress, but it is showing frame times, what each client is working on, and a few other goodies. Just thought it was worth mentioning since it can monitor up to 10,000 clients across both windows and Linux platforms.

[Ploaf]

Here is a screen shot

[Taylor]

Originally posted by Mord-Sith
are you talking about the soyo dragon with 5.1 sound + raid? I cant believe they can sell it that cheap. I just ordered mine for $150 without cpu. My boxed athy 1.4 was $130. Your getting a great deal.

Yes I'm quoting directly from the Fry's flyer:

"AMD Athlon 1.4 GHz boxed cpu @266MHz FSB
Soyo SY-K7V Dragon Motherboard
VIA KT266 Chipset with socket A interface
6.1 channel hardware sound/ spdif digital audio connector
10/100 network built-in
1 (4x) AGP, 5 pci
3 DIMM slots for up to 3GB pc2100 ddr memory
$229"

Only thing is, doesn't say "raid"- but I know this board is a raid board...


here's a quote from Soyo's site:

SY-K7V Dragon Features:
SOYO Wizard On Hand II Function: CPU FSB Frequency can be setup by 1MHz increment
Embedded Promise IDE RAID chip, provide IDE RAID 0 , 1 function
Supports WOL (Wake On LAN) function to simplify network management
Supports Smart Card Reader connector
Advanced Management Capabilities
Software power off control, Power-on by keyboard, Power-on by Alarm, Modem Ring On
On board 10/100 Mbps Ethernet function by ICS PHY controller
Suspend to Disk
CPU core voltage & FSB & multiplier could be adjusted via BIOS setup
Supports on-board Hardware Monitoring and includes Hardware Health Utility to streamline your PC system management

[Taylor]

Well, I picked up that Dragon board last week, and the boxed 1.4 Athlon...first boxed cpu I ever bought, didn't realize it would come with a HSF...there's a separate question entirely, for the cooling category.

I also picked up 256MB cas3 OEM DDR ram for $35.

I do still need to pick up a couple more HDD's, and I think I'll get a new PS to put in an older case I have here.

So, soon I'll be adding another box to the folding effort.

But I'm waiting to buy new hdd's and a PSU until after I buy another new Glock.

(I hope the right to bear arms isn't one of the civil liberties we're going to be asked to give up soon.)

I'm still working on getting permission to run F@H on the boxes at work, but it doesn't look good...our lan got hit with that nimbda worm last week and our IT people are as nervous as they've ever been; it may be awhile before they loosen up.

Fold on! Taylor

[Taylor]

Originally posted by Would71
Why does this bloody thread have my name on it when it has nothing to do with me?




***sigh***

I'm trying, boss, really I am.

Wouldn't you rather just offer your honest opinion about the Dragon, RAID striping, HDD speed, and cas latency as relates to F@H efficiency? I'm genuinely interested; I really did buy these components, and it's all to be used for folding.

***sigh***


Why is your name on the thread?

Because, it was a question I asked you, respectfully, as well as the other folders. It's my understanding that members who've acquired so many stars have done so by both the quantity of their postings and their relative competency in their subjects. I wanted your opinion.

Also, at the time I posted it, there was a call from Alan to put aside personal differences and come together to become better folders. It was in this spirit that I made the post and asked you in particular for input.

If I remember correctly, at that time you also were urging people to concentrate on folding, in your own way.

I'll also say, in all candor, that this thread was offered as yet another opportunity to escape the cycle of negativity while maintaining dignity.

(Of course, it's less effective in that respect if someone has to explain it...)

Fold on, brother, and peace be with you.

[lennytiger]

That was very civilized Taylor, I'm not suprised just amazed you really do care for the cause of folding.

Good for you sir,
Lenny

[Tithulta]

I originally wanted the dragon also..but life has ways of changing plans and I've put off further upgrades of my system until christmas. I still would like the dragon, but now that the via kt266a is on it's way I'd rather wait and get the dragon once it's been revised to include the new chip...which requires no real revision since it will simply replace the current kt266 with no needed design changes.

Personally I'd love to see a SIS735 board that was truly overclockable..but remains to be seen if there will ever be one.