Returning to Folding

[Edward2]

Due to a variety of issues, I have not Folded for several years; however, I am ready to get back into it again. I looked at the stats and noticed that I have fallen to a rank of 259 on our team; hopefully, I can start moving back up again. Here is a list of the computers that I currently have available. What would be the most efficient way to set each one up?

Intel P4 @ 3.2GHz (478) running W2K
AMD Athlon @ 2.2GHz running W2K
Intel Core 2 Duo Laptop @ 2.2GHz running WXP 32-bit
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 running WXP 64-bit (coming soon)

I don't think the video cards on any of the computers, except the new Quad, would be good enough to Fold. The Quad is probably going to have something like a Radeon HD 4670.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks,

[blakehenry00]

I found with my P4 rigs and socket/slot a were just better off being sold and using the money for a C2D rig, I did that because the points mine put out were not worth the power they used. I'm learning how to use VM's as a few people (including chasr) said quads make the most points using them. And if you don't have preference of brands, a 8800gt from the classies would be awesome bang for your buck. Take a look at the stickies on how to install all of the clients, they really are easy to follow. And welcome back to the fold :)

[Is_907]

Your P4 and Athlon rigs could always run Rosetta@Home. That project has better results using older CPUs. (I'm running it on my old A64 rig at the parents' house.)
We do have a Rosetta@Home team, after all ;)
(http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta and check the Other DC Projects forum.)

In other news, welcome back to the Fold!

[Cluster]

Tsk tsk, pimpin out our rigs to others :p

Those older rigs might not dish out the same points, but the old Uniprocessor client is quite stable, meaning its pretty much the set it & forget it that you'd remember from back in the day.

For the Duo and the Quad, its worthwhile to setup VMs if you have the ram available. We run VMware VMs from windows, the VMs run linux, so we can run the linux client. Yes, its that much faster :)

And the vid card, if your not an ati fanboy like me :p you could get a cheap pair of nvidia cards and they'll crunch like crazy. SLI them for games to bump performance a bit. Of course the only games i play are wprime and superpi... so what would i know :crazy:

VMware guide is in my sig if your wondering what is all involved with it.

[dfonda]

Welcome back to folding Ed!:beer:

[Is_907]

+1 to the vote for VMs, btw. ;)

[drshivas]

Welcome back to the Fold. :clap:

Those older rigs will definitely need the classic uniprocessor FAH client, or just run Rosetta on BOINC as Is_907 mentioned. I fold for both projects for OCForums/overclockers.com.

The newer rigs can do Linux SMP on VMWare. Check the stickies for FAQs. Note that you'll want lots of RAM to run the VMs, as they should each have 768MB allocated.

As for the 4670, that should yield come PPD. There's an ATI/AMD results thread buried in this forum somewhere with PPD estimates for Radeon GPU2.

[jintatsu]

:welcome: back ed..