How To Get More Folding POWER!!!

I've seen this question asked a couple of times, and had realized a few things myself. Overclocking is one of the best ways to fold faster, but here's some more.

Ways to get more folding power :

1) OVERCLOCK!!!

2) Kill P2P software (Kazaa, Morpheus...) when not in use. These programs really eat up processor time. I got an extra 8% folding power from cutting these out when not in use. That's like getting an 8% overclocking WITHOUT the heat.

3) Don't Play Music on folding rigs. Build another box, some little pentium 1 or something that can fold, slap a CDrom,snd card and speakers on it. Make it your juke box.

4) Check for other programs stealing cpu cycles. Pressing Ctrl + Shift + Esc will bring up windows task managaer (win2k & XP). I'm not sure about win9x/ME. Under the Tab Processes you can see everything that is in your computers memory. If you click on the heading CPU, it sorts the list by CPU usage (%). Core_65 is the folding program, it should be at 99% for complete use. Another thing to check is CPU Time. If say you leave your computer running 24 Hours, and are not using it, then the Core_65 file should have almost 24:00:00 under CPU time. IF you click the CPU Time heading and there are other programs using an hour or
2 of your CPU Time, you might want to investigate as to what these are. Gaining an hour or 2 a day will help you fold that litlte bit quicker.

5) If you browse the forums alot, skim it down abit. Avatars rain hell on your processor time when scrolling. It all depends on how much you use the boards for this one's effectiveness.

6) Limit Display settings when not needed. If 256 colors will suit fine (browsing internet) then it will cut back on processor time while surfing

7) Set your monitor to shut off. You can set this in Control Panel > Power options. Set a time to shut your monitor off. Just remember if your to watch a movie to disable this setting. This setting will shut down the monitor from the video card, so that your computer stops using it and CPU time.

8) Turn off the "Eye Candy". This is really bad with WinXP. Use a blank background to. Color are ok (white's hard on the eyes)

9) The best tool to check to see just how much time folding is getting is the Performance Monitor. It comes with win2k (not sure on the rest). You can select the individual threads your computer is processing. If you select the Core_65 thread you can monitor the CPU usage it's getting and even make a log of it. This can also be used from one single computer on your network to monitor all computers. (use of 486 or pentium1)


If anyone has anything more, I'll continue to add to this list.

Faster Folding

What sort of windows junk can you disable in win2k... that's what I'd like to know.

With WinME cut down restores activity by minimizing the amount of disk space it has to operate. Also in ME exit all unnecessary programs in the system tray..Use 256 colors when possible. Do not use Wall Paper images turn monitor off when not needed.

Re: Faster Folding

Arkaine23 said:

What sort of windows junk can you disable in win2k... that's what I'd like to know.

Click to expand...

Be carefull with most things that are in the task manager. Alot of them are system files. There should be about 30-35 + whatever programs you have running.

Your best bet is to look in your system tray, and have a look at what you don't need.

There's another way to find all the "Background" programs running besides task manager. This exposes more but i don't remember the command for it. I think it displays every thread.

Also, run MSconfig in anything other than 2k, and make sure you only have things you want start up with windows. If you dont know what it is, and it isn't linked to windows, chances are you don't need it. When I turn off F@H for a min, then my CPU use is at 0% unless I move my optical wireless mouse! Yours could be the same way!!!

Rezman5 said:

Also, run MSconfig in anything other than 2k, and make sure you only have things you want start up with windows. If you dont know what it is, and it isn't linked to windows, chances are you don't need it. When I turn off F@H for a min, then my CPU use is at 0% unless I move my optical wireless mouse! Yours could be the same way!!!

Click to expand...

You got me as I was typing, that's the program I was looking for MSconfig.

My optical wireless mouse doesn't use hardly any CPU time, the odd time it might regiester 1% but that's even rare. What mouse? Mine's Logitech.

faster

Oh, ok. Nothing in my system tray but Folding, Volume, and Foldmonitor.

Cluster said:

I've seen this question asked a couple of times, and had
1) OVERCLOCK!!!

2) Kill P2P software (Kazaa, Morpheus...) when not in use. These programs really eat up processor time. I got an extra 8% folding power from cutting these out when not in use. That's like getting an 8% overclocking WITHOUT the heat.
If anyone has anything more, I'll continue to add to this list.

Click to expand...

Yes 1 and 2 will help for sure! (when your overclock is 100%stable)

I don't wanna be sarcastic BUT... THE most easiest way to get more folding is to convert other humans' computers to join the folding.

fold on!

Cluster said:

10) WARNING!!! DEDICATED FOLDERS ONLY!!!
Like the title for this one says, don't do this on your normal righs that you use. A fool proof way to make sure Folding is getting 100% of the folidng time is too set it as the highest priority, This will prevent EVERYTHING from working. As your computer cannot process anything but folding. You could setup FoldMonitor with the Highest priority, and Folding with the second highest. This would allow you to monitor the program. Don't use this on your many box, I've tried, you can't clikc anything, select anything, and your keyboard is disabled. This i because you get no INTERRUPTS.

Click to expand...

Please do yourself a favor and don't try this. You need a functional OS and if you try setting the client to the highest priority or real time you will not have a functionining system. There are some good suggestions in that list. Important to keep in mind that the idea of the program was to use spare, unused resources only and not to encroach on the enjoyable use of someones system.

Doer - I believe that you are onto something People, people and more people is what will help us. We can add systems on our own but the greatest strength has been to get the aid of more people.

Not play music??!! Are you kidding?? Maybe if your sound card isn't accelerated ... I play music all the time - doesn't seem to slow down folding on my box.

About the only significant stealer of CPU cycles on my box is IE, and mostly when displaying animation (ie avatars). It's very simple to stop that - wait for the page to load, and press the STOP button.

I run TaskInfo2002, and while there are a lot of tasks running on my box, the folding core still runs at better than 95%, with all other tasks running at 1% or less.

Use AdAware to get rid of spyware ... THERE's a hidden CPU stealer!

For you Win2K users out there, they also have a version of msconfig for it too. It makes it real easy to control the unneeded processes running, just like mscofig does for win9x.

Another great way to get more folding power is the way that I've been doing: Buy more rigs.

This is just a guide for systems that are strictly folding. Some of it my be usable towards your main rig. You don't have to go buy these, but for instance with music, i know that Win Media Player uses about 12% cpu time while it's playing music. If you have the extra box that can't fold, use it instead.