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In a nutshell....

bmacd

Lifer
what's the short story of this DC stuff? I went to TeamAnandtech and tried reading the FAQ. I have a duron 700mhz box w/512mb memory. My cable connection is up as much as it is down..not the best connection, but i get fast speeds. How much of my CPU does it consume? Will this bog my system down?

I'm gonna go try and re-read the FAQ, but i'm having a hard time keeping my attention to it.

BTW...i see there are different types of DC...like SETI and RC5. What's in my best interest?

TIA

-=bmacd=-
 
DC is the concept of breaking a task into small peices and using many less powerfull computers to accomplish the task as opposed to doing the whole task on one or two large super computers.

You won't need much bandwidth to do a DC project so even 56kers can get involded. DC projects run at the lowest priority so when you need your CPU it will be availible but when you aren't using it th DC project will use the full power of your CPU.

There are amny DC projects you can joing. SETI, ECCP, and Folding@Home are the most popular Team Anandtech projects at the moment but any of our teams would be glad to have you. Here is a list of how Team Anandtech ranks in several projects against some of our top competators.
 
I would also suggest you read the Welcome to the Distirbuted Computing Forum thread stickied to the top. It gives a run down on the various projects and can probably help you make your decision. If you have questions about any of them feel free to post them or you can PM me and if I can't answer it I will direct you to the right people 🙂
 
I have found a very minimal impact upon my system. I run dc projects ( currently FaH and before that Seti ) on 4 of my comps, a 1.4xp, a 1.0 Duron, a 750T-bird and a Pll 400 and have found that the dc programs do just as advertised--they use your cpu's "off-duty" cycles and when you have something you need the cpu for, promptly--and I mean promptly--release them and everything runs just fine. I've found no impact upon my comp because of running any dc project. Give it a try dude🙂
 
Like Crazee said, read through the info thread at the top of this forum. Lots of info there and lots of helpful people here to help if you have any questions. 🙂
 
Before I got heavily into SETI and Folding, I also tried out the RC5 project(of which I'm again doing).

In my opinion, it's a good project to start with as the client is SMP(multi-processor) enabled and you can cache a large number of blocks(units) in case your connection goes down. Additionally, the RC5 client plays very nicely with other software so it can be configured to back down on CPU usage when needed. 🙂

EDIT: You can also cache work units for SETI; unfortunately, this isn't possible with the Folding project.

EDIT#2: BTW, Welcome! to a fellow Michigander! 🙂 I'll be in the Detroit area in a few weeks too, visiting family.. I could go for a beer too. 😉
 
Hi bmacd! If you join our SetiTeAm I'll buy you a beer the next time I'm in the Detroit area. My office is in Madison Hts! Do you ever go to the weekend computer shows around Detroit? You could replace that 700 Duron very cheaply!
 
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