Tweaking Folding@Home..

[dawks]

I am looking for ways to speed processing of Folding@Home on my system.

What are some characteristics of F@H, does it like higher memory frequencies, or lower latencies..

How do I find out how well my processor is doing? My stats on a Athlon XP Barton 2500+ @ 2.0Ghz with 512meg Kingston DDR at 2-2-2 I believe. XP SP2.

Extreme Overclocking Stats

My Folding@Home Stats

F@H LogStats

I run F@H as a service, with my computer on 24/7, about 20 hours perday, there is no one logged in, with only minimal processes running about 18 + F@H)

 

[ProviaFan]

Obviously, faster memory will make things faster, but I'm not sure that the difference will be noticeable (unlike SETI where higher FSB makes a very big difference). Faster CPU speed always helps, but don't overclock to the point of instability because you'll end up loosing points that way (even though you do get partial credit for some incomplete, failed WUs, it would be better for your points if you ran at a slightly slower clockspeed and had stability). If you choose Big WUs (say allow >5MB transfers in the config, and add the -advmethods switch (this involves editing the registry since you're using the service, but it's not hard, and though I'm pressed for time, someone else will surely post the instructions shortly), you can get double points for certain WUs. However, this does eat up a lot of RAM, so if you have only 512MB and use things like Photoshop with high res scans, your system will hit the pagefile noticeably more than it would without Big WUs. If the system is just for internet and basic office tasks, then you can probably enable Big WUs without a major impact in performance.

 

[Insidious]

In the Registry editor, Navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\FAH@(this will be the location of your F@H Executable)

Then edit the image path with what ever switches you want to use..

I use the following:

(path to your directory containing the executable)\FAH502-Console.exe -svcstart -advmethods -forceasm -verbosity 9

-Sid

(I have very nearly exactly the same system as you (well, I have two of them) except I have 1GB of RAM.)

 

[dawks]

Originally posted by: Insidious
In the Registry editor, Navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\FAH@(this will be the location of your F@H Executable)

Then edit the image path with what ever switches you want to use..

I use the following:

(path to your directory containing the executable)\FAH502-Console.exe -svcstart -advmethods -forceasm -verbosity 9

-Sid

(I have very nearly exactly the same system as you (well, I have two of them) except I have 1GB of RAM.)

Yea, I found that after snooping F@H forums after the post above yours..

What does teh verbosity switch do?

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I dont mind using lots of ram.. I've been getting some of the bigger WU's lately.. (start using 130megs) and it just feels cool.

When I get the occasional FahCore_65.exe and its using 2megs.. it feels so.. lame or something. Oddly though, I have a FahCore_65.exe using 65megs.. never seen one of these using that much memory.. Usually its the 78's...

 

[GLeeM]

-verbosity 9

Writes more information to the log - makes for easier troubleshooting.