Home | Community | Message Board

Original Seeds Store
This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.


Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

Jump to first unread post Pages: 1
OfflineToTheSummit
peregrinus
 User Gallery

Folding@home Statistics
Registered: 08/22/99
Posts: 9,126
Loc: Las Vegas
Last seen: 1 month, 23 days
F@H questions
    #9718413 - 02/01/09 04:51 PM (15 years, 1 month ago)

So I finally started running F@H about a month ago.  Its been fun watching my work units and stats stack up.  I shoulda done it years ago.  The only real question I have is whether or not it will have a detrimental effect on my computer in the long run.  I can hear it working all the time now (obviously its cruching for F@H constantly).  Sounds as if the hard drive is always working.  I'm assuming this will this shorten the life of my drive/machine?  And if so, how big an effect will it have?

Also, looking through the Shroomery team stats page I was surprised how much variation there was in workunits/score ratios.  At one end there is a user who has done 534 W/Us with a score of only 1590.  Thats less then 3 points per w/u.  At the other end someone who has only completed 41 W/Us has a score of 73758.  Thats works out to nearly 1800 per wu.  Why is there such a discrepancy?  Does each work unit really vary that much?  And I'm assuming that what you get is all just randomn?


--------------------
You invented the wheel....You push the motherfucker!!

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineYthanA
ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
Male User Gallery


Registered: 08/08/97
Posts: 18,817
Loc: NY/MA/VT Borderlands Flag
Last seen: 3 hours, 36 minutes
Re: F@H questions [Re: ToTheSummit]
    #9719173 - 02/01/09 07:17 PM (15 years, 1 month ago)

Good questions. :smile:

Folding@home mostly places a load on your CPU, keeping it running at 100% utilization. It shouldn't cause your hard drive to work much more than normal, unless you don't have a lot of memory (ie. < 1GB) and opted to receive "large work units with high memory demands" when you configured the client. In that case it might be utilizing your swap file, which is not a desirable situation for performance reasons, but this can be fixed by configuring Folding@home to not receive these resource-intensive work units.

As for whether it will shorten the life of your CPU, the answer is "yes and no". Running your CPU at 100% utilization may indeed cause it to fail sooner through the effects of electromigration. But all modern CPUs are engineered to manage such a load and this is a relatively minor concern. That is to say, you might be looking at a hardware failure after 15 years instead of 20, but the system will be woefully obsolete by then anyway. The biggest issue with running the Folding@home client is its power consumption; CPUs use more electricity when they're operating at full load, and this cost will dwarf any expenses you might incur due to hardware failures. The exact figures will vary based on your CPU and the cost of electricity in your area, but a rough estimate might be $10/month. Depending on your financial situation and your views on power conservation this might be a good reason to uninstall the client, but I wouldn't worry about its effect on your hardware.

The reason some work units are worth more points is simply that they take longer to process. The Folding@home team tries to make the point distribution relatively fair and consistent, so you get the same number of points for the same amount of work, regardless of how long the work unit itself takes to complete.

Anyway I hope that answers your questions, and I also hope that after consideration you decide to stay on the team. We need all the help we can get!

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Invisibledaussaulit
Forgetful

Registered: 08/06/02
Posts: 2,894
Loc: Earth
Re: F@H questions [Re: ToTheSummit]
    #9719221 - 02/01/09 07:25 PM (15 years, 1 month ago)

Obviously with all the processing power required, there will be more heat generated.  If you have proper cooling, it shouldn't be detrimental to your system.  As far as wear on your HD, there will be some, but no real way to determine how much.  A cheap fix if you are worried about wear on your HD is to get a 128 meg flash drive(what are they now, like $0.99?) and run F@H on the flash drive.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineToTheSummit
peregrinus
 User Gallery

Folding@home Statistics
Registered: 08/22/99
Posts: 9,126
Loc: Las Vegas
Last seen: 1 month, 23 days
Re: F@H questions [Re: Ythan]
    #9719603 - 02/01/09 08:18 PM (15 years, 1 month ago)

Thanks for the answers.  It helped clear up some things I didn't understand.

Quote:

Ythan said:
I also hope that after consideration you decide to stay on the team. We need all the help we can get!



No worries there.  I'm gonna keep on folding! :thumbup:


--------------------
You invented the wheel....You push the motherfucker!!

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineD4NK
Omni-Potent
Male User Gallery


Folding@home Statistics
Registered: 04/05/05
Posts: 1,707
Loc: A Different Parallel Real...
Last seen: 11 years, 5 months
Re: F@H questions [Re: ToTheSummit]
    #9723850 - 02/02/09 04:35 PM (15 years, 1 month ago)

I run a GPU client, and my video card has started flaking out after a few weeks of use.  I don't have any conclusive evidence that FAH is the MAIN reason, but I have a feeling that it didn't help.

I've also had a power supply go bad while folding, but again, this is not something that I can pin directly to FAH.  To be fair, the power supply was quite shitty, so FAH probably just pushed it over the edge.

The way I see it, if your hardware can't handle some serious processing, it's time for new hardware :thumbup:


--------------------
  Moderation is key 

  "There is no god higher than truth." 


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Jump to top Pages: 1


Similar ThreadsPosterViewsRepliesLast post
* Boards and cpus question
( 1 2 all )
Demiurge 3,304 22 08/23/03 10:59 AM
by fIsh in my head
* man...wtf...computer question Cubieman420 1,846 16 07/28/03 10:29 AM
by wingnutx
* Mandrake 7.2 question DazedSol 1,451 11 02/14/04 08:37 PM
by manuscript
* IP questions
( 1 2 all )
Zen Peddler 3,628 20 09/20/02 01:41 PM
by llib
* computor question Dobie 1,198 14 01/07/04 05:59 PM
by windex
* copyright question joshlaxin 1,563 12 12/06/03 11:29 PM
by Le_Canard
* An ipod question GreyStreet 1,584 10 01/27/04 12:59 AM
by RunDMT
* pc question scotsman1 1,268 8 11/06/03 05:34 AM
by mntlfngrs

Extra information
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: trendal, automan, Northerner
373 topic views. 0 members, 0 guests and 0 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ]
Search this thread:

Copyright 1997-2024 Mind Media. Some rights reserved.

Generated in 0.021 seconds spending 0.006 seconds on 14 queries.