waiting on new client

[mitchellds]

Well I have a shiny new ps3 to play some games on, now I just need that promised new ps3 folding client to unleash my two teraflops on.

[BlackAdder]

Awesome...I'm doing well with my GPU client at approx. 660 points per day,(ATI 1950 Pro ) my CPU would take 3 to 4 days to process a 600 point wu. It should be interesting to see what further boost the PS3's will give, and the new streaming GPU GeForce8800 cards once they make a client to run on them.The 8800's have 128 programmable streaming engines ( that right ? ) on it's GPU. WOW !!!

[mitchellds]

Very cool BlackAdder. I think I'm about to make the switch to 100% folding for awhile, I'm getting kinda tired of boinc stuff. I plan to get to 1 million wu in Einstein, and then give that a rest. That should be within the month for me. I have a ati 1900 also that I have'nt been making use of for folding. I ran a couple of folds to try it out originally, then havent got back on it. I discovered that I could'nt effectively run 2 boincs and a 1 gpu folding instance on the same box. The folding gpu still make to much use of a cpu. I'm going to start the gpu back right now anyhow.
I cant wait to see the High def graphics of the ps3 folding client running, and to see what kinda credits they will grant running on the ps3. I've been playing that Call of Duty 3 game, and man thats alot of fun.

[drezha]

Nice.

Will be good to see the science it can churn out. And at what speed.

[Brucifer]

So many thoughts........... hard to sort them out into any logical manner. I guess to start with, like others, I've thought about laying out the coin for a PS3. Well then I went doing a little reading off on the F@H forum on a thread that NVM posted in another thread. And in the course of reading on that PS3 thread, and then that pushing me off to another thread dealing with multi-core and GPU's, etc., I'm left with some minor, teensy, expensive questions.

I ran the multi-core client for 64-linux, and didn't have any problems with it. But the disturbing part of that is that it's really only using one core, and that just speeded up according to comments in the forum. However, the multi core option leaves me at basically the same power consumption I've been on for quite some time now.

The next option is to pick up an AT19xx graphics card and shove that into one of my slow athlon 1800+ boxes, and run the gpu client. However that then requires that I buy windows for the box so I can run the GPU client, and then it also jacks up the current draw. So that puts me in the spot of maybe having to pull another single cpu system off-line just to free up the amps needed to drive the GPU. It also pulls 2 systems off crunching on another project. So I guess that leaves one to wonder whether the output/points in f@h is worth the expense & loss to the other project.

Then further reading one gets into the issues regarding "point disparity" regarding the awarding of points between all the standard single core cpu's, versus the points awarded the multi-core/GPU/PS3 points. And also the factor of points awarded to low point wu's in comparision with high point wu's. So then the comments go off on people dumping crunching on low point wu's so they can get higher point wu's. And some say that the basic awarding of points is hosed, and then others siding with stanford say it's just marvey as it is....

So somewhere along the line then, one is left wondering if it's even worth the effort to get involved in the f@h stuff as things are shifting towards the really fast stuff over the older slow stuff in spite of denials of this by the stanford crowd, and thus old-timers getting soured on folding anymore.

So I guess I'm at the point of wondering if others here have gone through or are going through the same analysis/growing_pains over this whole scenario. And if so, what answers if any has anyone arrived at?

[gatekeeper53]

Bruce,
I have windoze on all my machines and all legal. I just ask people that I know that are getting rid of mchines (mostly Gateways & Dells ...go figure) to save me their Windows key. I then load up another box and the windows is only on one machine and legal.

[Brucifer]

all well and good re the keys, however doesn't the GPU client require XP?

[drezha]

Yeah AFAIK it does.

Brucifer, I currently have some of the convections that your having.
I've now taken a system off line because I deem it no use. (It is a use, it's my media center, but having my Xbox modded now, I feel I should removes this box and cut back on power a bit, both electricity and PC wise)

Currently have a Core Duo and a A64 3500+ on it. One is a legal windows and the A64 is linux. I enjoy the linux and I've not found another DC project easier to setup and run (espcially as a service) on linux except FAH (with the finstall script). That one will stay on Folding for a time being, until the situation gets a bit more on the bleak side. Dnet is nice to run but not set it up as a service and I'd prefer to help IMHO better science.

From the brief time I ran BOINC on my Core Duo, it appears the lack of cache compared to the Core 2 Duo's and the A64's meant it wasn't as good as I thought it was. (It rocks on Folding, outproducing my A64 because of it's dual core..but churns out a unit in approx only 5 minutes faster). This leads me to believe I want to keep it going for the while as well.

I'm looking to hit 100,000 points in Folding before I give any serious consideration to stop running folding. Hopefully top 20 in TPR will be around then as well.

[Brucifer]

So is anyone here running the multi-core client on linux presently. Are there still errors in it with WU's erroring out near the completion time???

[drezha]

Sodding hell...

After my rant about staying, I've got a p2055 unit on my core duo. 193 points for it.

Estimated time to completion, 2 days and it's 10% in. If Standford do carry on messing us around, I'll consider where I'll go DC wise.