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To: Malsua; ahayes

"I'm almost certain G4's do the SSE boost if all is set up correctly."

"Extra AltiVec boost OK.  Is the same as SSE on X86 cpus ..."

When you say G4s, are you talking about GeForce4 video cards?  Does the video card matter in protein folding?  I thought that the CPU idle time was all that was used.  What actual resources are used in folding?

Just trying to understand the process better (and see if FAH may have been the reason for my Nvidia GeForce4, 32MB, video card burnout.   I replaced it with an older 8MB Nvidia Riva 128  & folding has slowed down considerably (running Windows screensaver version with screensaver turned off & only tray icon).

So, any suggestions or comments?

Thanks,
RT

170 posted on 03/03/2006 10:03:24 PM PST by RebelTex (Help cure diseases: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1548372/posts)
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To: RebelTex

A G4 is a Macintosh G4 processor.

I was reading the FAQ earlier regarding video cards. The rendering of the protein folding is set to minimize processor time so it uses only about 5% on the graphic version drawing the molecule. If your video card is OpenGL capable the video card takes over and processor use for drawing the protein drops to almost nothing. So folding uses very little of the video processing (none if you aren't actually making it render the protein), all of the processor, a small amount of hard drive space, and may also use a considerable amount of RAM on some intensive jobs.

It doesn't make sense to me that FAH could burn out a video card, even an older one like that. I would tend to think it is coincidence. However, it also doesn't make sense to me that using an even older card would slow down folding. Have you looked at the type and size of jobs that you've been getting to see how they compare to previous jobs? If you were working on some of the smaller Gromacs before and then got hit with a larger Tinker it could make an apparent slow-down.


171 posted on 03/03/2006 10:16:56 PM PST by ahayes
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