I'm ready to start folding, can someone take a couple of mins to help me get started?

I'm ready to start folding, can someone take a couple of mins to help me get started?

OK, previous to a few days ago I was one either a laptop (which I didn't want to heat up all the time) or a celeron 600. So I wasn't quite ready to fold. But a couple of days ago I finally got my rig (in the sig) built. So I'd like to start Folding. I've been reading through the stickies and stuff, but I still feel lost and a little intimidated.

Can someone take a few minutes and tell me which settings and stuff I should use for my system?

So far, I have made 2 folders on my harddrive and put the FAH504-Console file in each one. I then installed using the idiot guide in the stickies. But I stopped at the advanced install options because I wasn't entirely sure what to do.


I am looking forward to the help and to joining the team!

Glad your on the Team jive you'll make some great ppd with that rig.

But..... for much better folding you should run The SMP client in VMware.

Heres the link. http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=494925

This can create a virtual machine on your OS and you can then run a Linux OS Distro(Ubuntu or another) which will allow you to run the SMP client. I would highly recoomend this.
It will take a little longer but will be well worth it , to you and the team.

dfonda said:

If you have your "user name" set and the "Team 32" set your ready to go. Did you give each client a differnt user ID?

But..... for much better folding you should run The SMP client in VMware.

Heres the link. http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=494925

Click to expand...

Well I actually canceled out the setup because I wasn't sure what to do at the advanced section. I just want to be sure I'm getting the most "optimized" use of my CPU. But I do know that I put in the same username and team number in for any installs.

Would I actually get better results doing the VMWare method over just running two instances on my windows install? (which is Vista Business BTW) I would have thought that vmware would require more overhead. ?

Sorry about the edit. You'll be close to 1400ppd with the smp, depending on your OC. My e6400 is only @2.33Ghz Its in native Linux doing aprox 1400ppd. So I think you'll do better.(Because I'm guessing your e6400 is @ 3.5GHz or better...Right?)

The two client way will be much less...I don't know the numbers for that.

Some one else will have to confirm VMware on Vista.http://news.com.com/2061-10805_3-6146306.html

One other question....since it's running in a virtual machine, wouldn't it run all the time, and not go idle when I'm using the PC?

I thought it would give up the clock cycles regardless, but since I'm not doing VM yet. I'll take a backesat here and let the experts appear shortly.

dfonda said:

I thought it would give up the clock cycles regardless, but since I'm not doing VM yet. I'll take a backesat here and let the experts appear shortly.

Click to expand...

OK, I'll see what others have to say about it. But I greatly appreciate your help, and for pointing out a good alternative to possibly increasing my productivity

My pleasure jive.This is right were I was a couple months ago. Also I see your an ATI user. If you stay ATI on your next upgrade there are lots of Points(Science) to be had with the GPU as well. Along with the SMP.

Its addictive.

dfonda said:

My pleasure jive.This is right were I was a couple months ago. Also I see your an ATI user. If you stay ATI on your next upgrade there are lots of Points(Science) to be had with the GPU as well. Along with the SMP.

Its addictive.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm thinking my next upgrade would hopefully be the new ATI's (money permitting). We'll have to see how things go. (Though I thought I heard you can also fold with the new 8 series from nvidia. )


And yeah, I can see myself getting addicted to this and borging all of my friend's and family's computers
EDIT: I recently bought a 2GB flash drive (My previous one was a 128MB). I planned to have it filled with various apps and stuff for fixing computers, etc. Because every time I'm around relatives or friends or friends of relatives or relatives of friends I always hear "HEY, you know a lot about computers.....I've got this problem" So I'll just have to make sure that F@H is on there also and drop it on the system, perhaps as my "fee" for fixing it

jivetrky said:

Yeah, I'm thinking my next upgrade would hopefully be the new ATI's (money permitting). We'll have to see how things go. (Though I thought I heard you can also fold with the new 8 series from nvidia. )


And yeah, I can see myself getting addicted to this and borging all of my friend's and family's computers
EDIT: I recently bought a 2GB flash drive (My previous one was a 128MB). I planned to have it filled with various apps and stuff for fixing computers, etc. Because every time I'm around relatives or friends or friends of relatives or relatives of friends I always hear "HEY, you know a lot about computers.....I've got this problem" So I'll just have to make sure that F@H is on there also and drop it on the system, perhaps as my "fee" for fixing it

Click to expand...

Thats what i do, people rarely object aslong as you explain that it has no effects on proformance.

And yeah, I can see myself getting addicted to this and borging all of my friend's and family's computers

Click to expand...

I look forward to seeing you on my threats list.

jivetrky: VMWare works fine on vista. Where did you get stuck on the install? I just setup VMWare and Debian bout a week ago on my X2 machine

Well I'm actually, right at this very moment, thinking I'm about to format and reinstall XP. I'm really liking vista overall...but I'm having too many issues with sound drivers and hangups here and there. I think I'll reinstall XP and try Vista a little later on when drivers and the OS itself are a little more mature.\


So I'll be doing this in XP (In about an hour or so I should be all back up with Xp running instead...just have to make sure I have all of the latest drivers real quick, then do a quick backup of anything I have installed on Vista.)

My questions or concerns about the VMWare method are:

• Will it actually perform better in that emulated environment than it will by just running 2 instances in windows XP itself?
• Being that it is running in a "seperate system", if I'm not focused on the virtual window, will it consider that to be idle and ALWAYS run F@H? I'd like to have my CPU cycles when I need to use the PC...but of course otherwise I want as many of those cycles to be there for F@H.
• Am I being too anal about all of this?

I do remember hearing about virtualization optimizations being built into the Core 2 Duo's...so I'm guessing that will allow there to be no performance hit versus running directly from the native OS....am I correct in thinking that is how it works?



oh, one more question... When I borg a PC...will it be completely invisible to the user/owner of that PC? I'd hate to be creating more "family tech calls" from it

EDIT:

Mustanley said:

jivetrky: VMWare works fine on vista. Where did you get stuck on the install? I just setup VMWare and Debian bout a week ago on my X2 machine

Click to expand...

I didn't yet try to install VMWare...when I got stuck on the install, I was installing the F@H console, and it got to the "Advanced" questions, and I stopped because I wasn't sure how to answer them correctly.

Mustanley, jive had this question about VMware...I couldnt answer, might you?

One other question....since it's running in a virtual machine, wouldn't it run all the time, and not go idle when I'm using the PC?

Click to expand...

I haven't actually watched the cpu usage to see if it goes idle when other tasks require the cpu, though I have gamed and burned CD and DVDs without any noticeable slowdowns. Normally VMware uses only 80%-90% anyway while smp folding. I'll check it out this evening if no one else has chimed in by then.

I've noticed that every now and then, VMWare will be chewing resources, even though I havent run the SMP client for a few hours...so I shut it off. One thing that bugs me also is that VMWare has doubled my boot time, because of all of the services it starts on boot.

dz_jad said:

I've noticed that every now and then, VMWare will be chewing resources, even though I havent run the SMP client for a few hours...so I shut it off. One thing that bugs me also is that VMWare has doubled my boot time, because of all of the services it starts on boot.

Click to expand...

Are you getting a noticeable increase in your output versus just running 2x instances of the windows console version?

Usability of vmware for a main rig seems to be fine according to Lee's posts
(lee authored the vmware beginners guide thread here)

He leaves the vmware smp running while he games on his 6600 rig with 2 GB. He also folds on his gpu when he isnt't gaming on it.

I can't quite read your sig (black on near black) but i think you should also be ok if you have 2 GB of ram.
/edit ... ok finally was able to see you have 2GB ... so vmware will work fine for you.

If you do find the vm causes perf issues with a specific app, it can be suspended when need be fairly quickly.

I run wmware/smp on a few of my dedicated folding rigs .. but they are all on 1 GB ram ... the only usability issues i ever have is on the quad running 2 VM's at the same time ... this is due to lack of memory.

jivetrky said:

Are you getting a noticeable increase in your output versus just running 2x instances of the windows console version?

Click to expand...

You will at least double the ppd you would get by running 2 windows cpu clients, even with the best (and rarest) windows wu's.

jivetrky said:

Are you getting a noticeable increase in your output versus just running 2x instances of the windows console version?

Click to expand...

I havent dont much with SMP, probably only 5 work units at most...but heck yeah, its a lot more productive than 2 uniprocessor clients, way more Points Per Day (PPD) as we call it