Join the MicroCenterOfficial Folding@Home Team: #257944

cine_chris

MissingNOLA said:

Question for those who know better than I:
I've gotten an old Core2Duo system resurrected with a Linux OS.  The graphics card is too ancient to fold and this CPU doesn't eek out enough points to justify its power drain.  Anyone know of a cheap PCIe GPU that would work in this clunker to make it worthwhile?  Don't want to spend much since folding is the only use this box will ever get.

A GTX 750Ti will do ~100k PPD.  The GTX 1050Ti will do ~200k PPD, neither of these cards require a pcie pwr plug.  Folding maintains a list of GPUs  & pwr efficiency https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRcR50eJc1MC60klR5d8R1jeYspg3RAMbeEeguvybakdmy0kM3E-_IDcjbsUwhzhGrzhgSpPRqEQ7Ek/pubhtml
 

cine_chris

kmiller922 said:

Well we may be down to 48.6% of the total users we had but we are still turning and burning
  GO TEAM

Spotted this on the Overclockers site.  Looks like they do this monthly.
https://www.overclock.net/forum/55-overclock-net-folding-home-team/1747616-may-2020-foldathon-monday-25th-wednesday-27th-1200-et-1600-utc.html
Not meaning to sound critical, but MC could likely find several options for sustaining interest for the team folders.  Even achievement certificates would be nice, t-shirts, hats, gift certificates, etc 

kmiller922

ryau said:

Interesting, not sure I want to switch to Linux, but I did manage to fine tune my config to get about a 20-25% increase in PPD. I have a 3950X (16C/32T) and found running multiple CPU slots with 4 threads each seems optimal. I've also applied a mild CPU OC, but am leery of pushing it too much as temps climb pretty high for not much performance gain.

Now is it more efficient to break up the cpu on a intel chip as well just wondering because I just left it as it was when I installed the f@h app? 

kmiller922

cine_chris said:

kmiller922 said:

Well we may be down to 48.6% of the total users we had but we are still turning and burning
  GO TEAM

Spotted this on the Overclockers site.  Looks like they do this monthly.
https://www.overclock.net/forum/55-overclock-net-folding-home-team/1747616-may-2020-foldathon-monday-25th-wednesday-27th-1200-et-1600-utc.html
Not meaning to sound critical, but MC could likely find several options for sustaining interest for the team folders.  Even achievement certificates would be nice, t-shirts, hats, gift certificates, etc 

I'm diffidently up for taking part in it if we can do it as a team.

cine_chris

CRANK It uP!  Look at the teams we're chasing: Reddit, Ukraine, Brazil, Hewlett Packard, Google, ASRock.
Check out the Overclockers Top 100 analysis page:
https://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/team_list.php

ryau

cine_chris said:

kmiller922 said:

Well we may be down to 48.6% of the total users we had but we are still turning and burning
  GO TEAM

Spotted this on the Overclockers site.  Looks like they do this monthly.
https://www.overclock.net/forum/55-overclock-net-folding-home-team/1747616-may-2020-foldathon-monday-25th-wednesday-27th-1200-et-1600-utc.html
Not meaning to sound critical, but MC could likely find several options for sustaining interest for the team folders.  Even achievement certificates would be nice, t-shirts, hats, gift certificates, etc 

Interesting idea... I'll see what I can do.

ryau

kmiller922 said:

ryau said:

Interesting, not sure I want to switch to Linux, but I did manage to fine tune my config to get about a 20-25% increase in PPD. I have a 3950X (16C/32T) and found running multiple CPU slots with 4 threads each seems optimal. I've also applied a mild CPU OC, but am leery of pushing it too much as temps climb pretty high for not much performance gain.

Now is it more efficient to break up the cpu on a intel chip as well just wondering because I just left it as it was when I installed the f@h app? 

It's been many years since I last folded on an Intel CPU, so I'm not sure. Maybe @TSMichaelB might have some insights?

Kirito

Something I have been following loosely...

The number of exabytes is down to 2.1.  We were folding over 2.4 at the beginning of my journey here.  This means every team is losing members.  FAH needs to get itself back in the press again.  More importantly, there needs to be a way to find a community that hasn't been tapped to help out.  MIght I suggest a few ideas...

Stadiums and Arenas: (When not in use there are hundreds of computers sitting idle in a stadium)

Start a town computing project:

         Every town that has a library or town hall take one computer and set it up to run FAH.  As of 2018, there are 19,495 incorporated cities, towns and villages in the United States. 14,768 of these have populations below 5,000.  Presume 15000 computers at a minimum of a Core2Duo.  That's 60,000 cores producing 20 Petaflops.

Hospitals and clinics:

       There are over 7000 hospitals and clinics in the US.  Imagine if every hospital and clinic contributed one computer to the cause.

Corporations:

      There are tens of thousands of corporations across the US.  Some are small, some are huge.  Most have an IT department.  Take one scrap computer (or more) and set up FAH stations around the company, showing how they are supporting the fight against disease.

I don't have the connections to get these ideas to people except on a one on one basis.  As a grass roots methodology I am just one person and I have tried to encourage people to join this fight.  Others are in better places to make changes, and kick this up to WSU for them to consider.  I presume WSU has a marketing team?  I'm just an idea guy.  Maybe someone here knows how to run with it.

Be cool,

Kirito

kmiller922

I'd also add to that list every towns schools as well as colleges and university's.
There are so many places that have the cpu and gpu that could be put towards the efforts. The only thing is getting the media attention that it deserves is going to be at best difficult for those that do have connections in the industry. @ryau Would you by chance have any contacts you could use?

cine_chris

@Kirito As an engineer (retired) I like to look at the efficiency of the system & impact +/- overall.  In general, most CPUs aren't efficient folders on a PPD/$ or PPD/watt basis.  So, ganging hordes of inefficient systems, especially during summer months doesn't appeal to me, nor would it appeal to corporations or municipalities that are forced to consider the logistics and answer to shareholders or voters that see no immediate benefit.  Leveraging gaming platforms makes the most sense to me.  Getting  Xboxes or Playstations to Fold, perhaps adopting legacy gaming boxes could make a huge difference as a research tool.  Perhaps a virtual world where you need PPDs to recharge your laser cannons, energy xtals, or life support system.  

cine_chris

@kmiller922 
While participation has dwindled, MCO must be fairing better than other teams, as we are at #20 for the week, up +12!!! 

MightyMayfield

Big drop in points today across the board. Wonder if the servers are having issues again.

kmiller922

MightyMayfield said:

Big drop in points today across the board. Wonder if the servers are having issues again.

I noticed most of my units are timing about the same crunch time so points might come as big burst. There was also a line of sever storms that came through and is still going through about half of the country some producing sever damage which might be the cause as well for the point drop off also.

kmiller922

cine_chris said:

@kmiller922 
While participation has dwindled, MCO must be fairing better than other teams, as we are at #20 for the week, up +12!!! 

It does seem that way. I took notice that we picked up a few new people as well which of course is great!

Kirito

cine_chris said:

@Kirito As an engineer (retired) I like to look at the efficiency of the system & impact +/- overall.  In general, most CPUs aren't efficient folders on a PPD/$ or PPD/watt basis.  So, ganging hordes of inefficient systems, especially during summer months doesn't appeal to me, nor would it appeal to corporations or municipalities that are forced to consider the logistics and answer to shareholders or voters that see no immediate benefit.  Leveraging gaming platforms makes the most sense to me.  Getting  Xboxes or Playstations to Fold, perhaps adopting legacy gaming boxes could make a huge difference as a research tool.  Perhaps a virtual world where you need PPDs to recharge your laser cannons, energy xtals, or life support system.  

I agree.   Last I heard Sony wasn't going to embed anything new and the PS3 isn't really efficient anymore.  I am not much of a gamer and have no experience with X-Box.  It would be nice if Microsoft could help.  While CPU's might not be the most efficient answer the goal of using a distributed computing system is to have more systems online.  If we could get a full scale bitcoin mining warehouse on this (1000 GPU networked system) we could possibly model the Singularity, but unless there is compensation no one is going to contribute that.  My logic is to get more systems online from people and places who will ultimately benefit from the solutions found in FAH.  Sure, I would love to get some nice GPU's.  My Lenovo Think-Stations do not accommodate them.  I don't have the money  for them.  I have 52 cores across four computers I can contribute so that is what I do.  I believe others could contribute what they can and if they did we would have that many more weapons to use on this disease.

This is more of the social model of helping people to see the value of the technology beside surfing YouTube and checking email.  This also distributes the power costs over a broader range of people.  This logic could also be applied globally.  "What if they gave a war for a virus and everyone came?"  Declaring war against Covid-19 as a full political model, and then develop strategy and tactics appropriately we could be more efficient about beating it.

Defense:

     Social Distancing

     Face masks

     Working from home

     Contact tracing

     Support Systems (Hospitals, Testing)

     Home front contributions

                             FAH, Making Masks, Ventilators

Offense:

     Intel:        Scientific research, data sampling, Virus Modeling

     Attack:     Vaccination, Medication

     Weapons:     Distributed computer modeling, scientific research facilities, pharmaceutical plants

     Support systems:     IT, FAH, Communications

We are just one part of this war.  We do our job.  We need more Rosie the Riveter's, one rivet at a time, helping to find the answer to this.

FAH gives people a way to contribute, to fight the war, instead of being locked in their house and powerless.  We may not be the most efficient, but when we work together we can overwhelm the problems.

So in the end it may be less about efficiency, and more about pulling people together.

Like I said, its just an idea.  I just don't know how to reach a broader audience with it.  I am just a geek with a few computers.  I'm not a salesman.  I just operate equipment.  I just think it would be better if we had more weapons at our disposal.

Kirito

Tramp78

We are 30th in active users

kmiller922

@MightyMayfield congratz on making it to 600 there bud.

ChrisHarshman

cine_chris said:

MissingNOLA said:

Question for those who know better than I:
I've gotten an old Core2Duo system resurrected with a Linux OS.  The graphics card is too ancient to fold and this CPU doesn't eek out enough points to justify its power drain.  Anyone know of a cheap PCIe GPU that would work in this clunker to make it worthwhile?  Don't want to spend much since folding is the only use this box will ever get.

A GTX 750Ti will do ~100k PPD.  The GTX 1050Ti will do ~200k PPD, neither of these cards require a pcie pwr plug.  Folding maintains a list of GPUs  & pwr efficiency https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRcR50eJc1MC60klR5d8R1jeYspg3RAMbeEeguvybakdmy0kM3E-_IDcjbsUwhzhGrzhgSpPRqEQ7Ek/pubhtml
 

For just a few dollars more than a GTX 1050 TI, a regular GTX 1650 doesn't require a power plug either.  It's only when you get to the 1650 Super does it require a 6 pin power plug.  I guess it all depends on what your definition of "cheap" is. 

ChrisHarshman

I have a GPU card which seems to be stuck on Download status.  Has anyone else seen this behavior?  The only thing I see in the log is when I tried to pause and unpause it.  This looks different than when it can't find a work order to download:

******************************* Date: 2020-05-24 *******************************
******************************* Date: 2020-05-24 *******************************
03:42:42:FS01:Paused
03:42:48:FS01:Unpaused
******************************* Date: 2020-05-24 *******************************
******************************* Date: 2020-05-24 *******************************
03:42:42:FS01:Paused
03:42:48:FS01:Unpaused
******************************* Date: 2020-05-25 *******************************
work server is: 206.223.170.146

kmiller922

you might try a memory purge by rebooting make sure you pause folding before you do when your system comes back up it will restart.

cine_chris

ChrisHarshman said:

I have a GPU card which seems to be stuck on Download status.  Has anyone else seen this behavior?  The only thing I see in the log is when I tried to pause and unpause it.  This looks different than when it can't find a work order to download:

Windows? Yes. In 2nd slot. Device Mgr showed error 43 (iirc) Had to install Nvidia, update drivers, fixed it. Worked OK in 1st slot.

ChrisHarshman

@cine_chris, thanks for the response, but this is a Linux machine, I guess I should have specified that.

@kmiller922, after pausing, updating, and rebooting, then the control program couldn't talk to the client program.  I verified client program was running, but at OS command line it wasn't responding if I tried stop, restart, or even log.

Digging around I found the log file before what I posted, which confirms it did start downloading the next work item but never finished:

10:04:33:WU00:FS01:Download 11.84%
10:04:40:WU00:FS01:Download 12.67%
******************************* Date: 2020-05-24 *******************************
******************************* Date: 2020-05-24 *******************************
******************************* Date: 2020-05-24 *******************************
03:42:42:FS01:Paused
03:42:48:FS01:Unpaused

I tried to re-install the client program, and after that the CPU slot picked up where it left off, but the GPU slot seems to have lost whatever it was trying to download before and is now looking for new work.  I guess it's better than sitting there idle

kmiller922

I had that happen as well on my windows system, it happens sometime that the preverbial bit bucket happens to appear out of no where like a rouge comet. Sometime all we can do is a fresh install or reload of drivers to get it back on course.

MightyMayfield

The battle between Duluth and Secretlab is real.

kmiller922 said:

@MightyMayfield congratz on making it to 600 there bud.

Thanks!

kmiller922

I'm currently sneaking up on Houston155 slowly but surly. LOL.  I never thought I would ever be up at this level. I'd say rank 6 - 9 is some serious competition atm.

kmiller922

Our next teams to over take are:

Top 5 Conquests and Threats!

Team Name Rank Diff Points Diff Gain Daily Date Overtake ASRockMania 2 -279,814,138 42,520,262 06.01.20, 4am / 6.6 Days Macrumors.com - Team Folding 6 -997,196,125 154,766,822 06.01.20, 1am / 6.4 Days NVIDIA USER 2 USER FORUMS 5 -812,226,069 155,282,516 05.30.20, 8pm / 5.2 Days NCIX.com Forum Folding Team 3 -485,300,235 166,893,302 05.28.20, 12pm / 2.9 Days Google 1 -9,244,560 149,237,716 05.25.20, 4pm / 1.5 Hours

cine_chris

If you're running multiple systems it's useful to get the remote comm working (green box).  Not obvious is the summation window in the lower left (orange box), which makes it easy to see your current total estPPD and spot if something isn't working.  Like, shown below, estPPD had dropped, when I checked, it was a nominal send/download cycle.  It's often a non-loading slot, which a slot right-click, pause/fold cycle will often nudge into loading.

cine_chris

@Yellowbillycat 100M !!  A 'lone-wolf' shout out.

Yellowbillycat

cine_chris said:

@Yellowbillycat 100M !!  A 'lone-wolf' shout out.

@cine_chris Thanks!  Though I also used that milestone to shutdown my folding machines. 
The temperature in the Zwift Cave is now officially (Northeast) unbearable.  First 90 degree day here. 
When the first floor AC gets repaired next week I will restart the folding heaters.

kmiller922

@Yellowbillycat congratz hope your back up soon