Getting into dc. Is my card good enough? Other questions.

[perrywilloughby]

I currently have a saphire 4670 and I want to upgrade in 4-6 months to another amd based card. I need to keep it below 200.00.

Also I have a phenom quad denab processor what good distributing projects can I run with it. My video card is doing folding at home and I am happy doing it, but I need a graphical application to set it up and work with all 4 cores. I really like the idea of folding at home, but can you suggest other medical dc projects for cpu cycles that are easy to setup and use? Also I don't have an always on internet connection so that needs to be addressed in the program.

Thanks in advance for all you help. When I get my new video card I might join team at.

Perry

 

[Ken g6]

Hi, Perry, and welcome to TeAm AnandTech!

First, the good news: There are several BOINC-based medical dc projects for cpu cycles. See the [thread=2637]comprehensive list of all BOINC projects[/thread] for more, but here are a few:

World Community Grid
Project Status: Open for processing.
Team Name: TeAm AnandTech
Account Creation: Create on the site.
Project Description: Runs the FightAids project to find better treatments for AIDS patients, the Help Defeat Cancer Project, and the Human Proteome Folding project to predict the shape and folding characteristics of human proteins.

My opinions: simple to set up and use, several project options.

Rosetta@Home
Project Status: Open for processing.
Team Name: TeAm AnandTech
Account Creation: Create on site or in the client.
Project Description: Determine the 3-dimensional shapes of proteins in research that may ultimately lead to finding cures for diseases such as HIV, Malaria, Cancer, and Alzheimer's.

My opinions: A bit of a memory hog, but otherwise good.

SIMAP@Home
Project Status: Open for processing.
Team Name: TeAm Anandtech
Account Creation: Create on site or in the client.
Project Description: Create a public database of pre-calculated protein similarities for use in many bioinformatics methods and studies.

My opinions: Very useful work, but work isn't always available. (Work is released at the beginning of each month. There's less than a week's worth left this month; sometimes only a few days' worth is released.)

Now, the bad news: AMD GPUs aren't very good at doing medical dc projects. Folding@Home works OK on most recent AMD cards, I guess, but I gather that nVIDIA is faster. There's also GPU Grid, which only works with nVIDIA.

 

[totalnoob]

I highly recommend the Folding@Home 7 beta. It is VERY easy to set up, much easier than the older clients. Just choose the "SMP" option during installation and it should use all four of your cores to fold. Give it a shot: http://folding.typepad.com/news/2011/03/client-version-7-now-in-open-beta.html

 

[perrywilloughby]

ty totalnoob I am dl it now. that is what the problem was it was just to messy to use. Hopefully this new client will be better and I can get even more folding done. I wish I had a better processor but will wait now until my next build in 6-12 months. But time is a-wasting so I am going to do all I can with my current build and see how much I can wring out of it.

Thanks again.

Perry

 

[totalnoob]

ty totalnoob I am dl it now. that is what the problem was it was just to messy to use. Hopefully this new client will be better and I can get even more folding done. I wish I had a better processor but will wait now until my next build in 6-12 months. But time is a-wasting so I am going to do all I can with my current build and see how much I can wring out of it.

Thanks again.

Perry

cool, let us know how it goes. If you have any questions, there are lots of helpful people here: http://foldingforum.org/viewforum.php?f=67