To answer your original question, at 4.2GHz, I've seen configs running in Windows with up to about 35k ppd just off SMP alone.
The reason your ppd is so low is because you don't get a bonus yet. The current SMP2 work units have quite low base point counts; usually 3-400 points apiece (the 6040 project has 1400 base points, and that's the largest SMP2 work unit I know). What really rakes in the points, especially for Nehalem CPUs, is the bonus. However, Stanford sets certain conditions for the application of the bonus:
1) You must have a passkey
2) You must have folded 10 SMP work units on that passkey
3) You must complete at least 80% of your assigned work units on time (maybe? I don't know if this condition has been dropped).
You can get a passkey here:
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-passkey#ntoc3
Close the client, then navigate to your folding@home folder.
Create a shortcut for the Folding@home executable, then go to the shortcut's properties.
In the 'target' field, append the location of the shortcut with "-configonly" (include the hyphen, but don't include the quotation marks).
Run the shortcut, and then add the passkey in when it asks.
After that, run the proper executable for the client and you should be folding under your passkey.
As for running -bigadv, I assume you're running Windows. The -bigadv work units are very large, about 25000 points each. They were designed for dual-socket quad-core machines, and as a result there must be at least 8 threads to run the client (though the Core i7s can run it as well). Basically Stanford created them to allow more extensive simulations, and to reward people who were folding on systems way overpowered for running the normal SMP client.
The only way to run -bigadv is under linux. Windows users get around this by installing a linux distribution under a VMware virtual machine; however, with the 980x, things get a little tricky. This is because the free VMWare Player 3.0 that most Folders use only allows 8 cores (and it doesn't even support this; the maximum supported core count is 4). This is fine for other i7s, but not for the 980x. So you have two options; install 2 VMs running two instances of -bigadv, or run Linux natively with 1 instance of -bigadv.
The RAM requirements for -bigadv are quite large; each instance would cost you about 4-5GB of RAM. Also, because of the bonus, it is much more efficient to run 1 instance natively than 2 instances in virtual machines; this is compounded by the overhead that the VMs require. So if this is going to be a dedicated folder, I would strongly suggest you run Linux. If you're going to be using the machine for other stuff, I would still suggest you run Linux natively (unless you're gaming or you have to use Windows, for example if it's a workstation or if there are program compatibility issues). The 35k ppd is running at 4.2GHz running 2 VMs using 6 threads each, and fooling the SMP client into thinking there are 8 threads. At those same clocks, running bigadv on a native Linux install nets about 47k ppd.
For more information on -bigadv, look here:
http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?t=10697
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