- last edited on by
ROGBot
Just wanted to say that I finally succumbed to peer pressure (not really) and downloaded the Folding@Home client for my computer after reading this article posted by MarshallR.
I have been playing around with settings for the last 8 hours and have 2 computers running 5 CPU clients each and 1 GPU client each. I am monitoring the instances with HFM.NET and, if the stats are correct, am currently running at a rate of 208,394/day (if I allowed all of the clients to continue for 24hrs).
I was poking around and saw other people throwing up more than 1M PPD and was wondering how they are doing that.
Anyway, any tips, tricks, etc., are welcome if anyone else has some Folding expertise.
I have been playing around with settings for the last 8 hours and have 2 computers running 5 CPU clients each and 1 GPU client each. I am monitoring the instances with HFM.NET and, if the stats are correct, am currently running at a rate of 208,394/day (if I allowed all of the clients to continue for 24hrs).
I was poking around and saw other people throwing up more than 1M PPD and was wondering how they are doing that.
Anyway, any tips, tricks, etc., are welcome if anyone else has some Folding expertise.
LOL... it's been a long night. I had just been researching my video card and must have had EVGA on the brain! I tried to change the title but apparently don't have the permission to do so. If you could take care of that I would appreciate it. Thanks!
Welcome Digi.Cop..................... sweet rig.
Excellent question... i hope this thread takes Off.
I have looked.... I cant find a "Folder's Tweak Page"....if there is..
can this be Stickied for an easier find ?.... Excellent question.c.
Excellent question... i hope this thread takes Off.
I have looked.... I cant find a "Folder's Tweak Page"....if there is..
can this be Stickied for an easier find ?.... Excellent question.c.
In hopes of encouraging other folks to start their own Folding@Home setups, I will give a quick tutorial of what I have learned with my trials and errors which is meant to enhance the excellent article already referenced above.
Disclaimer: I have less than 24 hours of experience with this stuff so if I throw out any information that is inaccurate or outdated, please feel free to jump in and clarify things based on your experience.
1. I downloaded the GPU client HERE.
2. I installed the client and entered my username, team name and passkey in the configuration window.
a. Lesson learned: if you plan to also run CPU client(s), you will need to make a note of your machine number in the configuration screen. By default, mine was "2." I overlooked this originally and then tried to run a CPU client with the same machine ID and it caused my CPU usage to slam wide open to 100% on all cores.
3. I did read on the Folding@Home forums that, as cool as the display window is to watch (reminds me of many chemistry classes that I slept through) it apparently degrades GPU performance slightly. Not sure if this is a big issue or not but figured I would mention it.
4. Next, I also wanted to run CPU clients and figured that I would see how many I could run without putting much of a load on my processor. I downloaded the CPU client from HERE which is the same page referenced above.
a. Lesson learned: Best practices would dictate that you make separate folders for each of the CPU clients that you download. I settled on a main folder, "Folding@Home" and therein have several sub folders labeled "Machine 1, Machine 2, Machine 3..." respectively. It is important to keep all of the files for the different machines separated as I found out the hard way.
5. So, following the instructions in MarshallR's article, I set up my first CPU iteration of the Folding software. All went well and it barely made a dent in my processor's load. I specified this machine as machine # "1" (again, my GPU defaulted to machine #2 so I had to skip that number in successive CPU processes).
a. Lesson Learned: It gets VERY old to continually retype your passkey. I got tired of doing this after about the tenth time and just set up macros for my username, team number, and passkey on my Razer keyboard. This saves a ton of time!
6. So, in each successive CPU iteration, you must download the source file again from the Stanford website and set up a new machine from scratch in a new folder. I found that simply copying the executable over and changing the configuration file to a different machine number did NOT work for me. It is easy for me to tell when I fail in something with this software, my CPU Usage gadget lights up like a Christmas tree.
7. At this point, I had one GPU client up and running and then created five separate CPU instances. Although my graphics card fan sounds a bit like a hair dryer (wish I could have afforded a water cooling setup but my dogs need to eat) as it is running, my computer appeared to actually be doing a lot of work... all for science. (my science teacher in high school hated me since I didn't care about neurons or protons and was more interested in looking at the girls in class. I bet he would be proud of me now. Or not... he always was kind of a prick)
8. So, I was proud of myself for getting 6 separate workloads flowing for good 'ol Stanford but I then realized that my buddy's rig was sitting just a few feet away and lifeless. I figured, since he isn't using it and I am paying the electric bill around here, last time I checked, I would put his machine to work as well. Though I may be wrong, I am quite certain that I may actually be able to cure Alzheimer's within a few days at this rate.
9. So I set up 6 instances on his rig as well, one GPU client and 5 CPU clients.
10. But what is the point of all of this wonderful algorithm crunching if you can't monitor your kingdom? "None" was the answer I was looking for here. So I endeavored to find a monitoring utility and stumbled on FahMon (version 2.3.99.4)
11. This program was decent to use, easy to set up, however, in reading forums, I found that many folders were using HFM.NET instead. The rationale was that HFM did a better job of displaying your stats. So, I figured, time to try it out.
12. Ultimately, I decided to stick with HFM.net because, as stated, it does appear to be better at displaying real-time stats.
13. Time to configure HFM... this is pretty straight forward.
a. For CPU Based Clients: You simply add a new client and then navigate to the folder where it is stored. Again, I called my folders "Machine 1, 2..." Once you point to the location where your folder is, HFM does the rest of the work and displays your stats in real time, refreshed at the user-chosen interval.
b. For GPU Based Clients: The only trick here is knowing where the folder is located that has your work information. You will need to jump into the system files here so, if you don't have "view hidden files" enabled on your file system (Start > Control Panel > Folder Options > View > "Show hidden files, folders, and drives"), now would be a good time to make that happen.
i. The location where you are going to point HFM to is: [user] > AppData > Roaming > Folding@Home GPU.
c. But what about my buddy's machine? I want to monitor that bad boy too! (displayed at "Pete" in above images). This is very straight forward. The other machine is already a member of my home group. I simply navigated to the folders where the relevant information is stored in Windows Explorer and then right clicked on each folder and shared as a read-only with the home group. Then, in HFM, I simply browsed to my network location, saw Pete's computer, and then expanded to select the appropriate files.
14. Viola! My monitoring is up and running!
15. Points Per Day: So, this can be viewed by HFM as a 24hr estimate. I wanted to run all of the machines to see, for fun, if I could actually climb up on the rankings for the ROG folding team. It takes some time for Stanford to update their scoring server, however, as of this posting with less than 24 hours of effort, I am currently ranked 292 out of 555 team members. Not bad for such a short period of time!
Again, I am certainly no more than a noob to Folding@Home but I figured it is a fun way to incite a little competition among us and all for a great cause. Rather than running benchmarking software on my rig and comparing those scores, I would much rather be making an actual difference with my time and system.
In that vein, I hope to encourage others to get their own systems going as well and get their rankings climbing.
Whoever cures Alzheimer's first wins.
Disclaimer: I have less than 24 hours of experience with this stuff so if I throw out any information that is inaccurate or outdated, please feel free to jump in and clarify things based on your experience.
1. I downloaded the GPU client HERE.
2. I installed the client and entered my username, team name and passkey in the configuration window.
a. Lesson learned: if you plan to also run CPU client(s), you will need to make a note of your machine number in the configuration screen. By default, mine was "2." I overlooked this originally and then tried to run a CPU client with the same machine ID and it caused my CPU usage to slam wide open to 100% on all cores.
3. I did read on the Folding@Home forums that, as cool as the display window is to watch (reminds me of many chemistry classes that I slept through) it apparently degrades GPU performance slightly. Not sure if this is a big issue or not but figured I would mention it.
4. Next, I also wanted to run CPU clients and figured that I would see how many I could run without putting much of a load on my processor. I downloaded the CPU client from HERE which is the same page referenced above.
a. Lesson learned: Best practices would dictate that you make separate folders for each of the CPU clients that you download. I settled on a main folder, "Folding@Home" and therein have several sub folders labeled "Machine 1, Machine 2, Machine 3..." respectively. It is important to keep all of the files for the different machines separated as I found out the hard way.
5. So, following the instructions in MarshallR's article, I set up my first CPU iteration of the Folding software. All went well and it barely made a dent in my processor's load. I specified this machine as machine # "1" (again, my GPU defaulted to machine #2 so I had to skip that number in successive CPU processes).
a. Lesson Learned: It gets VERY old to continually retype your passkey. I got tired of doing this after about the tenth time and just set up macros for my username, team number, and passkey on my Razer keyboard. This saves a ton of time!
6. So, in each successive CPU iteration, you must download the source file again from the Stanford website and set up a new machine from scratch in a new folder. I found that simply copying the executable over and changing the configuration file to a different machine number did NOT work for me. It is easy for me to tell when I fail in something with this software, my CPU Usage gadget lights up like a Christmas tree.
7. At this point, I had one GPU client up and running and then created five separate CPU instances. Although my graphics card fan sounds a bit like a hair dryer (wish I could have afforded a water cooling setup but my dogs need to eat) as it is running, my computer appeared to actually be doing a lot of work... all for science. (my science teacher in high school hated me since I didn't care about neurons or protons and was more interested in looking at the girls in class. I bet he would be proud of me now. Or not... he always was kind of a prick)
8. So, I was proud of myself for getting 6 separate workloads flowing for good 'ol Stanford but I then realized that my buddy's rig was sitting just a few feet away and lifeless. I figured, since he isn't using it and I am paying the electric bill around here, last time I checked, I would put his machine to work as well. Though I may be wrong, I am quite certain that I may actually be able to cure Alzheimer's within a few days at this rate.
9. So I set up 6 instances on his rig as well, one GPU client and 5 CPU clients.
10. But what is the point of all of this wonderful algorithm crunching if you can't monitor your kingdom? "None" was the answer I was looking for here. So I endeavored to find a monitoring utility and stumbled on FahMon (version 2.3.99.4)
11. This program was decent to use, easy to set up, however, in reading forums, I found that many folders were using HFM.NET instead. The rationale was that HFM did a better job of displaying your stats. So, I figured, time to try it out.
12. Ultimately, I decided to stick with HFM.net because, as stated, it does appear to be better at displaying real-time stats.
13. Time to configure HFM... this is pretty straight forward.
a. For CPU Based Clients: You simply add a new client and then navigate to the folder where it is stored. Again, I called my folders "Machine 1, 2..." Once you point to the location where your folder is, HFM does the rest of the work and displays your stats in real time, refreshed at the user-chosen interval.
b. For GPU Based Clients: The only trick here is knowing where the folder is located that has your work information. You will need to jump into the system files here so, if you don't have "view hidden files" enabled on your file system (Start > Control Panel > Folder Options > View > "Show hidden files, folders, and drives"), now would be a good time to make that happen.
i. The location where you are going to point HFM to is: [user] > AppData > Roaming > Folding@Home GPU.
c. But what about my buddy's machine? I want to monitor that bad boy too! (displayed at "Pete" in above images). This is very straight forward. The other machine is already a member of my home group. I simply navigated to the folders where the relevant information is stored in Windows Explorer and then right clicked on each folder and shared as a read-only with the home group. Then, in HFM, I simply browsed to my network location, saw Pete's computer, and then expanded to select the appropriate files.
14. Viola! My monitoring is up and running!
15. Points Per Day: So, this can be viewed by HFM as a 24hr estimate. I wanted to run all of the machines to see, for fun, if I could actually climb up on the rankings for the ROG folding team. It takes some time for Stanford to update their scoring server, however, as of this posting with less than 24 hours of effort, I am currently ranked 292 out of 555 team members. Not bad for such a short period of time!
Again, I am certainly no more than a noob to Folding@Home but I figured it is a fun way to incite a little competition among us and all for a great cause. Rather than running benchmarking software on my rig and comparing those scores, I would much rather be making an actual difference with my time and system.
In that vein, I hope to encourage others to get their own systems going as well and get their rankings climbing.
Whoever cures Alzheimer's first wins.
You are welcome to use it, and I appreciate it. Hopefully some of the folks on ROG will find it to be useful!
yes, I have been doing additional reading and now understand that people are creating "folding farms" of multiple computers. Pretty cool concept... if you have the available hardware.
