Katawa Shoujo Folding@Home Team

[Quidoo]

Hmm...

I don't have a very good computer at all, in fact, it's bordering on 'landfill worthy' at the moment, but I thought that I would try to help, even if it's just a little bit...

[Bara]

Hmm...
I don't have a very good computer at all, in fact, it's bordering on 'landfill worthy' at the moment, but I thought that I would try to help, even if it's just a little bit...

If it can run the client thats fine. Even one WU adds to our total; so if you have the cycles to spare anything you can add is welcome.

[JetAlone]

There's a significant difference between power draw at idle and power draw at 100% CPU....

This. I noticed a bump in my electric bill after the first month of folding, and this is the stated reason we're not allowed to run distributed computing stuff at work.

[Kota]

Another worthy point includes non-apparent costs of cooling and the like. When you run F@H, it doesn't cost much more, especially if you already run 24/7, but it is a noticeable jump that gets multiplied as you add components.

I'm thinking about grabbing either an 8600GT (or whatever) or a 9800GT. That way I can always have one GPU folding, and I can game as well.

[darkblade986]

The electricity thing is exactly why I only do hard core folding on campus. My regular usage of my computer and playstation at home run up my mother's electric bill enough, but since I don't have to pay for electricity on campus, I've had my playstation running 24/7 for as much as I can. Last I checked, I think it had about 130-140 WUs to its name alone since I resumed folding in late August.

Regarding the cooling issue - we're approaching the Winter months, so as long as you can keep a window cracked or at least some outside ventilation going, you can probably counteract the two and keep your room decently heated by the computer fans while not so totally freezing from the windows. I know my playstation was my primary source of heat last winter since the higher ups on campus decided that leaving the heaters to run so that the hallways are 68 degrees (rather than individual rooms) was more than sufficient. I'm jealous of that dorm now because over the summer, each room got individual air conditioning and heat. Bastards...

[Pickles]

Why, you guys almost make it sound like I am stealing something

Believe me, there is no noticeable change in the electric bills before and after I got the computers folding. I should know, I have a hand in processing them. I suppose they did increase an iota, but believe me when I say that the PC electric bills even with F@H are just a drop in a bucket.

[Bara]

Why, you guys almost make it sound like I am stealing something
Believe me, there is no noticeable change in the electric bills before and after I got the computers folding. I should know, I have a hand in processing them. I suppose they did increase an iota, but believe me when I say that the PC electric bills even with F@H are just a drop in a bucket.

Well, technically it is. But it is a real fact that most companies have to tolerate a certain amount of personal use of computer resources by their employees. Even if it is web surfing on lunch breaks or sending personal e-mails from work during breaks. It sure the heck doesn't fall into the same league of someone in the IT department at a bank I worked for who partitioned off part of a server to run a porn site from.
If a company truly wanted to be frugal, they would insist on powering down all desktop workstations not being used. A computer uses absolutely no power when it is turned off after all. Even annoyingly stringent sleep settings set on all workstations would still consume more power than none. I'd suspect the decision was more motivated by the management objecting more to the perceived loss of "control" of their machines than a real concern for energy efficiency. Not that I know for sure, but it fits more with my experience with "management mindset". They will claim it is motivated by profit, but when you watch them it is all about the "Pecker Power Ranking" in the conference room.

[berserker29]

Why, you guys almost make it sound like I am stealing something

Believe me, there is no noticeable change in the electric bills before and after I got the computers folding. I should know, I have a hand in processing them. I suppose they did increase an iota, but believe me when I say that the PC electric bills even with F@H are just a drop in a bucket.

I wasn't pointing any fingers at you pickles. I was referring to the fact that road-runner was single-handedly putting out, what 250,000-300,000 ~ish PPD? Assuming that a bleeding edge CPU + equivalent GPU would put out about 10,000 PPD alone, that would still be a minimum of 25-30 computers for personal use - take into account that most companies don't spring for dedicated graphics cards, probably means SMP clients all around, which would probably account for about 2,000-3,000 PPD per machine averaging to about 125+ machines.

That would definitely be stepping on some managerial toes, but if you're careful or using a personal machine I'm pretty sure no one would care.

I'm glad that you're dedicated to the greater good, but don't do anything to risk getting yourself fired, or you'll end up helping less than you could be.

[Kota]

I'm coming for you, JetAlone! Half a year from now, I will surpass you!

[Bara]

Hmm, has anyone else had problems with or read about unstable GPU clients and CPU clients "looking for new work" forever? I have made no changes to my software or setup at all on my XP rig but for some reason I keep finding clients that stopped working.

[Kota]

I know for sure that there's a bad GPU WU going around that causes EUE unstable machine errors, but not sure about the CPU.

To fix bad WUs, delete the work folder and restart the client.

[darkblade986]

I know my client hung for a while a few days ago. I thought it had something to do with the fact that I tried to install a second client, but it eventually fixed itself, albeit after I had uninstalled both clients and reinstalled a single one.

[Juno]

Yes, the CPU client I had been using for some time just hung up for about a day "attempting to get work packets", so I had to uninstall it and installed the GPU client instead (again).

[Bara]

Well, I don't seem to be alone after reading some of the forums at F@h. http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=11826 is talking about the same error I was getting. I decided if I had to mess around in my FAH folders I'd give the SMP console client a try. So far it seems to be working fine but it spewed up some files and folders onto my destop that are rather unsightly. I will have to figure how to get them into my D:\FAH folder without breaking any links and such.

Edit: SMP console client is (as it should with 3 cores and a newer, stronger CPU) ripping through a 500,000 step CPU WU 3 times faster than the same size WU using the Unicode client on my old CPU. This makes me a happy protein folder.

[Tweaked]

Hooray! We hit the six-million mark. I'm surprised no one mentioned it.

Now we just have to hit 15k WUs.