FR Folding@Home Project Update - We're Now #58 of all teams with 16,800,000 Points

Stanford University ^ | 12/17/2006 | Texas Booster

[texas booster]

Happy Birthday to the many folding FReepers who joined our little band last December. While we had been folding as a team for a long time, systematic was instrumental in rekindling interest in the team, and all the growth starts with his efforts.

We had just passed into the top 2000 of teams when December started. No Klutz, no lrenh, no malsua.

Uriah was our big gainer, having posted over 2000 points in less than a week!

BoT was folding that first week and is still folding away for us.

The research that we help advance will truly make a difference one day, for you or for one of your relatives.

Please ping us if you have any questions or need help - we do respond!

[texas booster]

Screengrab from a Playstation F@H simulation. Looks very good, very detailed.

Here are some links to videos showing off the processing power of a PS3:

Spacefill

ddsa Test02

abeta Test02

[fhlh]

have my C2D cranking still.
Rebuilding my x2 4400 machine for the duties

[LonePalm]

We are now #57

We passed Team MacNN about 0900 GMT today.

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

[texas booster]

I completely forgot to check on our progress yesterday.

Now if we can add a couple more folders over Christmas we can stay ahead of that pesky xstremesystems.

[LonePalm]

Huh?

They are 700K points behind us and only have half the processors going that we have.

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

[texas booster]

Thye also have a new user that is producing 10,000 ppd with only 18 systems. Probably souped up systems with ATI cards or running PS3 betas. He averages about 600 ppd per system.

A normal system will earn 80 - 130 ppd. Souped up dual processor probably 150 - 200 ppd. An ATI video card will gather 660 ppd.

The ATI cards make an enormous difference. The 7,000,000 points will take a while to overcome, but it will happen eventually. Maybe 2 - 3 years if we don't add additional processors and capabilities.

I am not used to seeing any team catching up to us. That red line below us bugs me!

[texas booster]

At least one of the members of xstremesystems.org is using an ATI card and getting a ton of EUEs (early unit end). His totals from today bear this out:

XS_THE_MACHINE

http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_summary.php?s=&u=203214

Last 7 Days Production
Day Points WUs
12.20.06 1,998 4
12.19.06 6,670 1,961
12.18.06 4,881 3,051
12.17.06 5,669 2,290
12.16.06 5,430 17
12.15.06 2,452 8
12.14.06 1,310 5
12.13.06 1,174 2

Last 24 Hours Production
Time Points WUs
12.20, 9am 917 2
12.20, 6am 587 1
12.20, 3am 494 1
12.20, 12am 1,278 2
12.19, 9pm 824 105
12.19, 6pm 0 452
12.19, 3pm 1,432 458
12.19, 12pm 342 433

---

How about that 6pm score - 452 work units and no points? It happens with beta units. They will run for 30 seconds and then abend. Later he may be credited with more points after a review.

Gotta admit - he gets and completes quickly a lot of big work units for high points.

[LonePalm]

So how much are ATI cards?

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

[texas booster]

I had found the older X1900 All-In-Wonder cards for about $225, but everyplace was backordered. In stock cards were priced between $350 and $450. Often you also needed a larger power supply as well.

There is a new X1900GT card that uses 36 pixel shaders for about $200 on sale. I do not know if that card will work (it should) but it won't be quite as fast.

[processing please hold]

Often you also needed a larger power supply as well.

What's a 'larger power supply'?

[texas booster]

Most store bought computers include a power supply of 250 watts to 350 watts. This is the box that converts from 110V to +12V and +5V for the motherboard.

State of the art video cards can use a lot of power just by themselves, and that extra power load can cause an existing power supply to fail.

A couple of years ago, my son needed a 550 watt PS for a home brew computer. Nowadays some systems even need a 650 watt power supply.

Top of the line systems today can have 2 GBs of memory, multiple hard drives, two DVD burners and lots of other stuff. The power needs increase very fast.

[Malsua]

I've been in Honduras on a work trip for the past 10 days but now that I am going through my pings, I see that it's been just over a year since I hopped on.

I'm over a million now and no sign of stopping. Grats to EVERYONE who's contributed. Someone will benefit from our efforts, perhaps we'll get a footnote somewhere in the annals of history :).

[processing please hold]

Thank you. I plan on asking him after Christmas for that ATI card. He told me yesterday morning he got me a new desk and a bedroom suit(I didn't tell him the furniture store let it slip to me about the desk) but, the new bedroom suit hit me between the eyes. Now our room is empty except for a campimg bed we aired up to sleep on. Oooh, my aching back.

I don't have the heart to ask him for that card now, but, after Christmas I will. I didn't know about the larger power supply thing. I'm glad I asked.

[texas booster]

The larger power supply is not required but may be.

The X1900 is a very fast card, especially if you play video games. And I don't mean Solitare.

For Folding purposes, it needs to be an ATI card with lots of pixel shaders like the X1900. It is an extravagance if you buy one only for folding, but it IS a neat toy.

It is probably worth the money. But rumors have even faster video cards coming out in the Spring, and the ATI work units will be out of beta testing in March. I will have to wait until then and deal with little things like taxes and college.

[processing please hold]

The X1900 is a very fast card, especially if you play video games. And I don't mean Solitare.

I do play video games and I don't mean solitaire. ;-)

But rumors have even faster video cards coming out in the Spring, and the ATI work units will be out of beta testing in March.

Dang, that's what I can't stand about technology, you get the latest gizmo, and five minutes later...it's obsolete. March, huh? Dang.

[texas booster]

I am building a PVR for the family and I wanted the ATI X1900 AIW to record TV. Figured that it would make the perfect folding box - record and playback and the rest of the time just folding away.

Since I couldn't find an X1900AIW at a price I am willing to pay, I will hold out until Stanford releases the production GPU cores. But when I do buy a PVR card, it will be the best hardware to run F@H.

There is nothing from ATI (that I have heard) will have more than 48 pixel shaders, that will be released in 2007. The talk is of integrating Direct X 10 into the silicon and upping the memory to DDR3 across the whole line.

If you buy now the Direct X 10 features is the biggest upgrade you will be missing out on. That is not really a huge issue. I think that the cards are starting to pull ahead of game designers, at least for a bit.

[texas booster]

I hope that Honduras treated you well.

We have had an azaming run and we will do even better next year. We keep growing and adding to our pile of CPUs.

Now if we can get Klutz named energy czar where he works ...

[processing please hold]

But when I do buy a PVR card, it will be the best hardware to run F@H.

I ran across this when I was looking for info about the ATI.

http://www.orbit2orbit.com/gmd/RedRat/ReplayTV/WhyNotX.html

My son has been talking to me about NVIDIA. That seems to be his preference when it comes to graphics cards.

[texas booster]

I used to implement set top boxes to control closed circuit TVs. Our company chose ATI video chips, and I got to work with the ATI development team closely. Lets just say that ATI driver support, umm ... was really really lousy, no matter how much we paid for custom support.

I have championed NVidia ever since, until I got sucked into F@H. If NVidia produced a card that would speed up F@H as much as the X1900 I would gladly part with the money.

If I had the free bucks I would buy an X1900 for folding and NVidias for general computing.

[texas booster]

This PVR page from George MacDonald is from 2001. I will agree with him that ReplayTV is better software than what comes with the PVR cards. He knows his stuff in this area.

I imagine I will be adding Replay software to the box sometime.

Keep in mind - I do not watch over 5 hours per week of TV, usually less. Now that I am following football again it may go up some. My girls watch TV and I am not happy about the mindless mush TV dispenses, but folks I respect say that Tivo will give us back control of the boob tube.

Girls have enough problems growing up today without trying to measure up to the standards of TV babes.