*Posted with permission from our kind moderators*

Hello fellow hardware guru's and overclockers,

This is quite a long post, so please bear with me. The LYN forums need your help.

More specifically, the Folding@Malaysia team needs your assistance.

1. What is Folding@Malaysia (F@M)?
The team was formed over 7 years ago and are involved in a distributed computing project called Folding@Home (F@H). This is a project created by reknowned Stanford University in the USA and its main purpose is to find cures for protein-related diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, cancer, Huntington's diseases, and others.

Basically, you use your PC's spare CPU/GPU cycles to perform simulations of protein folding. We typically use our PC for Internet surfing, MS Office type tasks - light tasks. So the CPU (and GPU) are idling - this idle capacity can be dedicated to F@H, to help find cures for these diseases!

For more information, please check out the FAQ at the F@M forums.

2. Why should I bother?
Other than indirectly doing charity work on your PC (and hence accumulating alot of "goodness" for yourself ), there is also a friendly, global competition where most of the top forums/companies are participating in (Hardocp, Anandtech, xtremesystems, techreport, EVGA, Google, NVIDIA, etc). And this is why F@M was formed - so we as LYN forum'ers and patriotic Malaysians can contribute to this good cause together! This is where we can put lowyat.net on the global map!

Right now, we are ranked 66th and slowly sliding back, being overtaken by many other teams with more folders! So we need YOUR help! We can't be beaten by the others, we are lowyat.net! Let's show them who we are, and what we are capable of! lowyat.net boleh!

If you can spare some CPU and GPU cycles, please join us in this good cause!

3. How can I help?
You can download the F@H client here. There are a few different types of clients (CPU, GPU) and F@H also supports different OS (Windows, Linux, Mac, PS3). Please take a look at the official F@H guide for more information on these clients. Read below for a short section on these clients.

In summary, you can use a CPU-based client (uniprocessor or SMP) and/or the GPU client if you have a discrete gfx card like NVIDIA or ATI. YES! You can even fold on your CUDA cores or your Stream processors, and the advantage is typically 5-10 times faster than the CPU client :



All you need to do is to download the client and start folding! Join F@M as team 2999 with your own userid!

4. Won't running the F@H client interfere with my PC usage/gaming?
It depends - if you use the CPU client then it automatically runs only when the CPU is idle, and so will *not* interfere with your daily usage, even when gaming!. If you use the GPU client and you play games, then it is recommended to temporarily pause/suspend the client before gaming.

For the hardcore overclockers, the F@H clients are also a good way of stress-testing the CPU/GPU. Whilst it will not send your CPU and GPU temperatures soaring like Prime95 or Furmark, it is nevertheless a good indication of stability as well.

5. What if folding does not produce a cure?
In the end, folding will not produce the cure, it has and will continue to produce results for researchers to study. These results teach us things we did not know, or had not considered. The more we learn, the more we adapt our understanding of nature and its mysteries. Folding will never replace the human mind. And with the right tools, time, and curiosity, eventually a cure will be found. If you have a friend, relative, or know of someone suffering from these diseases, help find a cure by joining this great project!

We know there are many, many hardcore PC guru's here in LYN, and the level of expertise here probably equals the gurus in forums like HardOCP, Anandtech, xtreamesystems, Techreport, etc. These forums all have their own F@H teams and are doing very well - let's show these guys that we in LYN forums are just as good, if not better! Let's try to give these guys some real competition!

Please do join us at the Folding@Malaysia forums, and post any questions you have - we will be glad to help!

Thank you goldfries for pinning it and lucifah for permission to post!

Wow, great response guys!

One thing to ensure that you are joining the correct team (Folding@Malaysia) is to join team 2999 when configuring the client (e.g. in saturn85's case)...

If you have any questions, please feel free to post in the F@M forums!

Fold on!

Hi everyone,

I will try to address your questions here in this post :

saturn85, do you use a 3rd party firewall? If so, it could be blocking the FAH client from connecting to Stanford. If so, try adding the FAH client to the trusted list? If it still does not work, please post your client.cfg. Do you have a proxy defined in your IE settings?

FidelisGVR, I am also folding on a GTX460 - my temps are also about 60+C but it is lower than gaming. Your mileage may vary I suppose. If you do not want the temps to go up so high, you can set the client to use e.g. 50% of the GPU utilisation instead of 100%. In my case, folding temps are about 15C LOWER than e.g. stress-testing on Furmark.

barry80, your GTX275 would be a folding monster. Looking forward to see you climbing up the rankings.

VT-Ten, Absolutely! Depending on what h/w you have and which clients you use (CPU or GPU) your electricity bill may or may not be affected. In my case, my PCs are on 24/7 and I let it fold full-time. My bills are ok, but your mileage may vary.

Lastly, welcome once again to F@M Please do register and introduce yourselves here, especially your nicknames so that we may monitor our team and your statistics at the EOC stats page.

Hi karthyhu,

Thanks for joining us! I'll try to provide you with step-by-step instructions :

1. Download the GPU3 client

2. Install it and run it :


3. Add your own userid (you may want to check first to confirm it is not used globally by anyone yet) :


4. Team is 2999

5. Let it download the work unit (WU) and confirm it is working by mousing over :


6. You can also pause the simulation at any time you choose (e.g. if you want to play a game) by right-click -> Pause :


7. For easy monitoring of your WUs and to estimate the ppd (points per day), you can use FAHmon which can be used to monitor multiple clients all from one easy to read GUI. Add the new client by pointing it to the work directory. In Win7, the work directory is in "C:\Users\<your Windows user>\AppData\Roaming\Folding@home-gpu\". To find out your work directory, you can goto the F@H shortcut -> right-click -> and copy the "Start In" location :


8. Finally, once your WU is completed, check your ranking at the EOC stats page

Remember that we are doing this for the science, and are also competing with other global teams like Hardocp, Anandtech, EVGA, Google, and many many more, in order to push lowyat.net and Folding@Malaysia up the charts!

Fold on!

saturn85,

Could you try accessing the following via ur web browser :

http://assign.stanford.edu:8080/
http://assign2.stanford.edu/

Do you use any AV programs then? Try disabling momentarily and see if it works?



Points/scores are Stanford's way of rewarding donors like you and me - there are various protein "projects" and each project has a different number of credits or points assigned. When your client connects to Stanford to download these projects, it is typically called a work unit. When the work unit is 100% processed by your PC it is uploaded back to Stanford, and then you get assigned the points.

So when we say PPD, it means Points Per Day ie. estimated number of points your CPU/GPU can process per day. It is a way Stanford "rewards" its donors and keeps us donors continuously interested in the project. We as individuals then join or form our own teams (e.g Folding@Malaysia) to compete against other teams and this friendly rivalry ultimately benefits the folding community.

A passkey is a unique id given by Stanford to differentiate donors with the same userid. Eg if there is another person called saturn85 running F@H then u could generate a passkey for your own id so the points u contribute would be recognised individually.

Let me know if you need more info! Fold on!

This post has been edited by Diademz: Oct 29 2010, 08:18 PM

Good morning everyone!

Great responses so far. I see that many have already submitted WUs as shown on the stats page :


Well done! I have also created a welcome thread at the F@M forums - please take all your discussions there, and please introduce yourselves to the F@M community!

Now to answer all your existing queries :

wildwestgoh, if you have followed the default config options your gfx card will be utilised 100% - if this is too much then feel free to reduce the utilisation via right-click -> Configure and adjust the slider accordingly. Even at 100% utilisation I find that my gfx card temp is still lower than gaming or stress-test tools like Furmark.

The viewer is nice to see what the protein looks like, that is all it does.

TDUEnthusiast, you do noeed FAHmon to check your stats on the stats page - it is automatically uploaded to Stanford, and then EOC picks it up and processes it and updates it in its own stats page. FYI the stats are updated on an hourly basis so it always lags a little.

Your 9800gt is running very cool then! Nice! My 8800gt running 24/7 gets up to 75C at 100% load, which is still ok. The Nvidia GPUs are spec'ed to run up till 90C so no worries about the temps. Again, if you're worried about the temps then feel free to dial back the GPU utilisation to e.g. 50%.


Great work saturn85! I see your contributions already in the stats page.

karthyhu, your stats are already showing up the page. As to why FAHmon is not working, let's take this discussion in the F@M forums - can you please create a new thread and post the error messages? It would be a pity to lose your contribution...

saturn85 Sometimes that happens especially when you access a client via a network drive, just reload the client and it will be ok.


Great responses so far guys! Please take all discussions into the F@M forums so we can keep it there and introduce you guys to our existing members.

Fold on!

That is some serious h/w you have there - I have reposted your question in the F@M forums here. See you all there!

Well done TDUEnthusiast! Sure, whatever you're comfy with. Remember that it's also a form of charity (helping find cures for these diseases), and the competition and fun comes next

Nevertheless, we are glad to have you onboard. Fold on!

Great to hear that Eric! Let us know if you have problems in the F@M forums....fold on!

GT220 is definitely supported! Try uninstalling the existing Nvidia drivers, and reinstalling the latest? What OS are you using? If you still can't fix it please post in the F@M forums. Will get everyone to help you there!

That's very strange then. Could you please post a GPUZ screenshot after the drivers are installed? You are using the latest GPU client also?

Hmm looks ok though. I would just stick with the latest 260.99 drivers. Could you try using the GPU3 client instead? Your GT220 would still use the GPU2 binaries from the GPU3 client.



No worries, fold when you like, when you can

ah brilliant! You've managed to go past the issue - ok, can you please post your fahlog.txt? If you don't mind EricCYL, please post in the F@M forums and we'll take it from there!



Sure! Does it have a discrete GPU? If not, it would just be using the CPU client which will still work, but will not be as efficient from a point-per-watt standpoint. Let me know and I'll see how I can help.

Hello! The details are on the first post - which part can I help you with? Folding@Home uses your spare CPU/GPU cycles to ultimately help find cures diseases such as certain cancers, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease. So it's a good charitable cause. You do this by downloading the F@H client, which then connects to Stanford to download simulations which can run on your CPU or ATI/Nvidia GPU.

If you have further questions please feel free to post in the F@M forum!

Welcome to F@M hackcremo! For using your CPU you have 2 choices :

1. Uniprocessor client - this is the "classic" F@H client with normal WUs that gives standard points
2. High performance CPU SMP client - WUs for this client give high points but have a shorter expiration period that typically requires you to have your laptop on 24/7

Although modern laptops nowadays come with powerful discrete GPUs and modern CPUs, I would not recommend folding on your laptop as it may get too hot, unless you run the CPU/GPU utilisation at e.g. 50% instead of the default 100% utilisation - although in my case my laptop has been running at 100% CPU utilisation for over 2 years with no issues running the F@H client.

Another point to note is GPU folding typically gives at least a 100 to 1000 time better efficiency compared to CPU folding, so unless your laptop is a Core i7 CPU with 4 cores and more then you are better off just using your GPU to fold.

If you need more information please feel free to post in the F@M forum. Fold on!

For your CPU, sounds like you could have downloaded the uniprocesser client - try the SMP client instead and you should see it using all 8 logical cores. Then you can certainly lower the CPU utilisation when you configure the client by run the SMP client with the flag "-configonly -smp". Example below :

User name [Anonymous]? hackremo
Team Number [0]? 2999
Passkey []? <you can get your passkey here. Passkey FAQ here>
Use proxy (yes/no) [no]?
Acceptable size of work assignment and work result packets (bigger units
may have large memory demands) -- 'small' is <5MB, 'normal' is <10MB, and
'big' is >10MB (small/normal/big) [normal]? big
Change advanced options (yes/no) [no]? yes
Core Priority (idle/low) [idle]?
CPU usage requested (5-100) [100]? <any value you like, eg 90% as you said>
Disable highly optimized assembly code (no/yes) [no]?
Pause if battery power is being used (useful for laptops) (no/yes) [no]? yes
Interval, in minutes, between checkpoints (3-30) [15]?
Memory, in MB, to indicate (4083 available) [4083]?
Set -advmethods flag always, requesting new advanced
scientific cores and/or work units if available (no/yes) [no]? yes
Ignore any deadline information (mainly useful if
system clock frequently has errors) (no/yes) [no]?
Machine ID (1-16) [1]?
Launch automatically, install as a service in this directory (yes/no) [no]? <enter YES so F@H starts up as as service everytime you start your PC, or no if you plan to start it up manually>
The following options require you to restart the client before they take effect
Disable CPU affinity lock (no/yes) [no]?
Additional client parameters []?
IP address to bind core to (for viewer) []?

Hope this helps! Let me know if you need more info. Fold on!

Sure! For Folding@Home you can use either your CPU or GPU. In my case I use GPU primarily as my CPU is too old, and would not give me good efficiency. I have a GTX460 and a 8800gt folding 24/7.

Would you like to join us as well?

---

Added on November 9, 2010, 3:07 pmOk I think I see your problem - yep, just 1 SMP client is sufficient. When it starts up it should detect you have 8 logical cores and use that accordingly. Secondly, since you are folding on your CPU and GPU, you have to use different machine ids. Eg if your GPU is set to 2, then you need to set your SMP client to use another number e.g. 1.

Since you are using both SMP and GPU clients, I recommend the following :

1. Start SMP client with parameter "-smp 7" so it only uses 7 cores, we should reserve one CPU core for the GPU
2. Run your GPU client normally - and right-click the GPU process (normally FAHcore_15.exe) -> Set Affinity and set it to use the remaining 8th core

Then you will have optimal points per day. Hope this helps! I see [url=http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_summary.php?s=&u=535070your stats[/url] in EOC already.

Well done! Fold on

This post has been edited by Diademz: Nov 9 2010, 03:07 PM

not at all! Very glad you can join us in F@M - feel free to post in the forum as well.

If you are starting the client as a service (if you answered YES to start as as service under the -configonly option) then you need to use regedit -> Find "Folding@Home" and append "-smp 7" to the FAH service commandline.

If you're starting your SMP client eg from a Windows shortcut then just append it accordingly e.g. under the Target :

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Folding@home\Folding@home\Folding@home.exe" -smp 7

Fold on!

Yes you're right! I would love to see your FAHmon stats once you get both your i7 and GPU folding....fold on

Ah no wonder! Possible to get your Evo kaki's to start folding again (eg pWs? I think only phunkydude folding for Evo now... )

Folding on your laptop is not so ideal because of the extra heat generated, so please make sure it's well ventilated!

Ok your SMP client does not look good as it is still folding the normal Gromacs core. If it is SMP it should be "SMP2 Gromacs" under FAHmon. Can you check again if you have the correct client? And make sure to use "-smp 7" when running it? If you do then your CPU utilisation should be quite high.

I get about 14k+ ppd on the gtx460 and about 5k ppd on the 8800gt. My 8800gt is 2nd hand (bought for ~RM200) - if you don't mind, you can pick up some good and cheap 2nd hand h/w and start right away!

Fold on!