F@H Tweaking Guide

[winterburnd]

Bunch of stuff to help you get every last CPU cycle.

1) Major Geeks F@H Client Types Roundup & Tweaks (http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=38418)

2) F@H Console Guide (http://folding.stanford.edu/console-userguide.html)

3) Devhardware Forums F@H Tweak Guide (http://www.devhardware.com/forums/t33532/s.html)

Folding with HT setup like you would with a dual CPU rig.

Ugly n Grey has a guide
F@H Windows setup guide -56K unfriendly (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=77246)

Sorry about not updating.

[[XC] moddolicous]

Thanks, this should help alot of people produce alot more a day.

[winterburnd]

*bump*

I certanly hope the team can get a boost from it.

[pythagoras]

Thanks Winterbund, stickied so we dont need to keep bumping it.

I'll start work on a visual guide to add to this.

Regards

John.

[Disposibleteen]

that first link isnt working anymore, you may want to revisit and find a new link for it.

[winterburnd]

Thanks Disposibleteen. MaximumPC must have gotten rid of the site. It was almost 2 years old anyway. :p:

First post is edited with another link from major geeks. Anyone else feel free to add links as they find them too.

There are also tons of F@H farm guides online. Thats for another thread. :cool:

[pythagoras]

Keep the threads coming :toast:

This team has massive potential. Immediate goal is top 1000, that isnt far off.

Next top 100 and then top ten.

We WILL achieve this, its just the timescale thats variable ;)

Regards

John.

[Disposibleteen]

Thanks Disposibleteen. MaximumPC must have gotten rid of the site. It was almost 2 years old anyway. :p:

First post is edited with another link from major geeks. Anyone else feel free to add links as they find them too.

There are also tons of F@H farm guides online. Thats for another thread. :cool:
i saw something about this project in an issue of their mag not too long ago, maybe its back up ill go look for it.

[DeltZ]

right, I'm running 2 instances...are they supposed to be doing 2 different proteins? cause mine seem to be doing the same thing :/ ie...waste of time?

[pythagoras]

They could be the same protein, but different run/clone/gen numbers, in fact they need to be or you are indeed wasting your time.

Check this portion of the logs:

Project: 741 (Run 1, Clone 99, Gen 4)

Regards

John.

[DeltZ]

sorted...took me a while to find out how to change the switches though :/

i eventually did it through regedit.

[winterburnd]

right, I'm running 2 instances...are they supposed to be doing 2 different proteins? cause mine seem to be doing the same thing :/ ie...waste of time?

It doesn't matter if they are the same. If its a constant thing I might worry.

The double protien cruch might be a waste of time but it helps give Stanford more accurate results.

[Onycho]

Hey Pythagoras, I was wondering if we could get together and figure out why I'm getting such a high score per work unit as compared to the rest of the team. If we could get everyone scoring as high as I am, it would really do a lot for the team.

[Poly15]

I don't really understand how to get both running could someone help me a little? I Have a duel core processor so this could really help me

[Steensen]

Copy F@H console version in to two folders (with different names)
go down in Start menu, and click on run click on browse
navigate to one of the newly created folders
double click the F@H console *.EXE file.
Before clicking OK, ad: -configonly (Remember space before "-") click OK
Answer the questions, and when you are asked if you want to change advanced options answer Yes
continue answering the questions.
When asked for Machine ID, then you must chose a different number/ID for each F@H instance you want to have running.

After compleeting one F@H configuratione, you repeat it all over again, only changing the Machine ID to a different value in each folder.

[sc00p]

UnG's F@H setup guide (http://xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=77246)... <- that should have been here a long time.

EDIT: what about marrying this thread and UnG's guide with this ;)

[emberix]

good stuff... this will help me alot. :)

[STEvil]

Should sticky UnG's guide.

[JVguest]

Another f@h performance tweak:

I don't know why, but I got a jump in performance in SMP projects running 3 GB instead of 2 GB on Win XP Pro. I actually have poorer bandwidth now with 4 sticks of mixed type (2 x 512 MB Corsair XMS DDR800 C5 and Adata 8500 2 x 1 GB) but the performance went up. Not by a large amount, 5%, but significant. That's on proj 2653.

[SparkyJJO]

Interesting.... not like it appears to be starved for memory so I wonder why http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g270/SparkyJJO/smileys/headscratch.gif

[JVguest]

Interesting.... not like it appears to be starved for memory so I wonder why http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g270/SparkyJJO/smileys/headscratch.gif

Yeah, it (2653) only uses 300 megs. Swapping has definitely been reduced with 3 GB, I used to get some massive disk activity at times just browsing directories. Windows bloat sucks, and throwing memory at the problem seems to work.

[sc00p]

Just noticed do we've another finn in our team :confused: :eek: :cool: :welcome:

[JVguest]

I haven't seen these posted anywhere else, these optimizations/hardware upgrades are for Win XP and Core 2 based systems:

with SMP and CPU clients , run the minimum memory size allocated for the type of project you want to run. Setting console clients to 320 meg usage instead of 1024 knocks off up to 7-10 percent off the frame time.


I can confirm that running 4 GB RAM is faster than 2 GB, mainly with CPU clients. Not all projects are affected, but a lot are. The difference is minimal on SMP 2653, and I haven't really had many other than 2653.

From a bang/buck perspective, running 4 GB probably isn't the best use
of cash, but if you want ram for a new system later, then having extra RAM now doesn't matter.


Running large system cache with =<2 GB slows f@h down, except with 3+ GB, when it seems to have no effect.

Disable unnecessary windows services if running a dedicated windows folding machine (see the guides on the internet). This one can easily cut 20% off frame times, including SMP.

In BIOS, enabling no execute bit (NX/XD) turns on PAE in Win XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1 , which causes a slowdown in memory performance. Disable no execute bit in BIOS, unless you have a specific need for it.

[SparkyJJO]

Good info there JVguest, thanks! :up:

Going to have to tweak my crunchers a little bit methinks :D though on the memory thing I don't think it would change much, most of them have only 256MB RAM anyway lol.

[Kingcarcas]

About the memory, if i set client 1 to use 512mb and client 2 to use 512mb they'll both be using up 1GB right?....

[SparkyJJO]

They only use as much as they need, you are just allocating a maximum amount to be used. Apparently limiting them is helpful though.