F@H noob, couple of questions...

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AmberClad

Diamond Member
Jul 23, 2005
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Just joined the AT F@H team, but I have a couple of questions/issues.

1) I can't seem to get it to use 100% of the CPU. I checked the CPU usage settings and made sure it's at the highest, but it'll still stay at exactly 50% CPU usage.

2) The protein simulation doesn't appear to be working. F@H will run fine minimized, but as soon as I try to display it, it'll crap out. In fullscreen mode, nothing is displayed, and in windowed mode, the whole system starts to lock up.
 
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xbassman

Golden Member
Feb 25, 2001
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Welcome to the F@H TeAm! :)

If you want to crunch the bonus WU's make sure to use the -advmethods flag!
 
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AmberClad

Diamond Member
Jul 23, 2005
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Hmmm, I'm not sure if this is normal, but I seem to be getting far fewer work units completed than other ATers for the same number of points. I've seen people who've managed to get dozens more completed work units than me who are around the same rank I am :(. Five days for a single unit seems a bit excessive, at least compared to S@H, even with the computer only folding part time.
 
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Scott66

Senior member
Feb 7, 2004
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Some of the people you are comparing yourself to have been folders for quite awhile. The work units today are worth more points , so you will have less units completed than those who have been folders for awhile. I have just been doing it for more than a month and my work units is 3-5 times lower than those with the same points
 
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AmberClad

Diamond Member
Jul 23, 2005
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Wait, so do the number of work units completed matter more, or the score? I think I was under the impression that the only thing that mattered was how many work units you complete, ala SETI@Home.
 
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Scott66

Senior member
Feb 7, 2004
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The work units are the most important yes but F@H I guess is trying to give further incentives to get more people involved. It is a little unfair to the old guard, but the cause is why people do it in the first place. Also each work unit type requires different amount of processing time so people get more rewards for bigger work units.

Your point production is low if you are running your system 24/7 but not if you have a big work unit and only have it running 8 hours per day. My Athlon 64 3200+ does one WU in about 1.5 days but it is running full out
 
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Scott66

Senior member
Feb 7, 2004
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Amber I made an edit on my last posting to mention the fact that different work-unit types also require more processing time so they are worth more points
 
GLeeM

GLeeM

Elite Member
Apr 2, 2004
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Welcome to the TeAm, AmberClad :)

If the computer you are talking about is the Rig in your sig you should do about 125 points per 24 hours (ppd).

I see that just today you returned your first WU for 249 points.

If you folded for five (5) hours per day you would be right on track. If you folded for eight or more hours per day then we should troubleshoot.

Are you shutting down the F@H application correctly? Reason I ask is that if it is not shut down right then when it starts back up and sees that it was not shut down correctly it thinks that it or the computer crashed and so does not use optimized code, which takes much longer to finish.

A simple way to prevent this is to add the "-forceasm" flag/switch to the startup shortcut. Right click the shortcut and select Properties. In the Target textbox, at the end of what is in there add a space and then the flag without the quotes. This will force the client to not check prior termination and run with full optimized code.

Any questions, please ask!
 
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AmberClad

Diamond Member
Jul 23, 2005
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Thanks GLeeM, I'll give that a try! I think for part of that 5 day period, it was only running at 50% of the CPU because of the hyperthreading thing earlier in this thread. And for one of those days, I had closed the client right after startup for some reason that I can't remember right now.
 
GLeeM

GLeeM

Elite Member
Apr 2, 2004
7,199
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The points are what we go by in F@H, not WUs like in Seti.

If you look here you will see all the possible WUs you could get: http://vspx27.stanford.edu/psummary.html

The points vary from as little as 10 to as much as 600 and everything in between.

A WU worth 20 points might take a few hours to finish. A WU worth 600 points might take a few days to finish.
 
Malak

Malak

Lifer
Dec 4, 2004
14,696
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Just reading the topic header made me want to download this again. I fixed a lot of issues with my computer that kept me from doing DC recently, think it might be time to download F@H again....
 
GLeeM

GLeeM

Elite Member
Apr 2, 2004
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Your hyperthreading CPU will run a single program at 100% even though Windows only shows 50%.

Rest assured that the F@H client is running as fast as possible even though Windows shows only 50%.
 
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AmberClad

Diamond Member
Jul 23, 2005
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Originally posted by: GLeeM
Your hyperthreading CPU will run a single program at 100% even though Windows only shows 50%.

Rest assured that the F@H client is running as fast as possible even though Windows shows only 50%.
Click to expand...

Mmm, good to know. I had experimented with turning HT off, but it'd cause my system to crap out when I played certain games. Like with Civ4, it'd stutter whenever it paused to play a movie. Speaking of Civ4, that may be part of the reason why that work unit took a bit longer to complete than it should have ;).
 
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AmberClad

Diamond Member
Jul 23, 2005
4,914
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Well that was odd..I still don't think I've completely figured out this points system. A couple of days ago, it took about 18 hrs to finish a QMD work unit. Yesterday, it took nearly 29 hrs. Today's was about 19 hrs. It was one of the 450 points QMDs for each of the three days. Looks like they don't really scale it to the amount of time it takes to finish the work unit but to the type of work unit :confused:.
 
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AmberClad

Diamond Member
Jul 23, 2005
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Same one as the one in my rig link. But I'm at home right now, and the Pressie is in my dorm room, so it's been running the past few days at full tilt without me interrupting it to play Civ4 :). LOL, I have this feeling that when I get back, my room's going to be like 80F.

EDIT: Are you running F@H on a laptop? I tried that on one of mine (a Banias P-M) and it estimated it'd take about a month to finish a non-QMD work unit. Ouch.
 
GLeeM

GLeeM

Elite Member
Apr 2, 2004
7,199
128
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Originally posted by: AmberClad
Well that was odd..I still don't think I've completely figured out this points system. A couple of days ago, it took about 18 hrs to finish a QMD work unit. Yesterday, it took nearly 29 hrs. Today's was about 19 hrs. It was one of the 450 points QMDs for each of the three days. Looks like they don't really scale it to the amount of time it takes to finish the work unit but to the type of work unit :confused:.
Click to expand...

After crunching over 150 QMDs on my Northwood P4 @ 3.3 ALL of them took 23.5 hours, they have been very consistent.

Did you add the -forceasm flag so that optimized code would always be used? Although with QMDs it does not make a big difference - most of the optimization is in SSE2/3.

Was something else running or could the CPU have gone into Thermal Throttle?

Each protein's WUs are worth the same points, if it takes two days to finish on a PIII or half a day to finish on a fast P4 the same amount of points are given.


Originally posted by: AmberClad
EDIT: Are you running F@H on a laptop? I tried that on one of mine (a Banias P-M) and it estimated it'd take about a month to finish a non-QMD work unit. Ouch.
Click to expand...

The estimated time to finish is not necessarily accurate, especially at the beginning of a WU.

The Pentium M is one of the best CPUs for folding. I don't think there IS a WU that would take longer than 4 days to finish on a Pentium M.

I read that someone overclocked one on a desktop and got over 700 ppd on two (not QMD) bonus WUs!
 
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AmberClad

Diamond Member
Jul 23, 2005
4,914
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I guess I assumed that the different QMD work units didn't neccessarily take the same amount of time, but you seemed to get pretty stable times. Makes me wonder what that Prescott's been up to while I've been gone :frown:...

I'm pretty sure I didn't schedule anything to run before I left for Thanksgiving. Thermal throttling, possible I suppose. I haven't had any issues with that before though, and they usually turn the heating down during breaks.

It's probably more likely that they may have taken the network down for maintenance while everyone was away for the break, so the work unit didn't get returned immediately and it didn't receive the new one.

As for the P-M, it's a TabletPC. I have it on loan, and I suspect it may have been underclocked because it only throttles to 600 MHz and 1000 Mhz, nothing higher. Not particularly impressive, even when scaled to the P4 equivalent :).
 
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