The Big Thread of Client Configuration and Tweaks
Welcome to XS Folding at Home . Team number 36362
This thread contains guides on choosing clients for your machines, how to install and configure those clients, how to monitor them and finally how to tweak them for best points per day production. The best way to get specific help for your specific machines is to start a thread where the super friendly members will chip in and get you going very smoothly! I take no credit for the hard work that went into these guides, they are a result of team member (both XS and other teams) dedication in the cause of science and friendly competition. Thank you for the hard work.
A summary of links in this thread for quick reference.
Folding Clients Download from Stanford
Single thread service install guide
SMP Beta Client Service Install Guide
SMP Affinity Changer Thank You Team nik4eva
GPU installation guide
Linux Install Script at fahwiki
A Note about overclocking and folding
This is Xtremesystems. You are on one of the most advanced enthusiast forums on the internet and it serves as home to most of the worlds top overclockers and is in fact owned and operated by one of those same overclockers (Charles AKA Fugger, thanks Bud!) . We EXPECT that you are likely overclocking the machine you are using and this is great! As a rule of thumb, your machine needs to be rock solid stable in the OC department PRIOR to installing a client. A good way to test for stability is Orthos, 32meg Spi and various others. The reason is that the client pushes the computer hard and performs continous calculations, if the computer is unstable, the client simply errors out and no work is done, frustrating you and not benefitting the cause at all. Stable rigs are happy rigs :up:
Folding at Home - What is it
http://folding.stanford.edu/
A more detailed explanation
What is protein folding and how is folding linked to disease?
Proteins are biology's workhorses -- its "nanomachines." Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or "fold." The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery.
Moreover, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.
XS Folding at Home Team
The XS team is group of dedicated folders who donate their spare CPU cycles to this research cause. By using the spare cycles of computers the XS enthusiasts put up tremendous PPD (points per day) even though our team isn't as large as some. We love friendly competition and we will seek out upcoming friendly rivalry that aids in increasing folding on both our and competitors teams. Come in, join the party and pull up a client. We recommend choosing a folding team name similar to your forum name.
What client do I use?
Because of the sheer amount of clients available to different computing situations, this is actually a very flexible program to enter into. All clients may be downloaded from this site. Folding Clients Download . Clients fall into several categories and should be chosen with consideration for where they are going to be installed. Note that these guides are used for both AMD and Intel based computers. At the moment, the compiler used by Stanford allows more SSE optimizations on Intel computers and they score higher. Utilizing the SMP Affinity changer for INTEL (only) further stretches this scoring advantage. That does not mean you shouldn't fold on AMD, to the contrary, a simple dual core AMD computer will put up a 1000PPD or more on average (2.6 Ghz). A quad core Intel can put up over 4000 PPD depending on it's configuration.
Guides for Windows
Set it and forget it - PPD not a major concern or a single core PC
If you want to simply install the client in a basic mode that is plain and easy, you may choose from a fairly cool screensaver or a really quiet background service client. The screensaver version puts up some funky graphics and is OK for a while but we recommend the text only client in this scenario as there is really no way for an end user to turn it off by accident.
The screensaver version is listed on the Stanford download page as "Windows 2000/XP/Vista Graphical client" .
The service install version (recommended) for a single threaded instance can be installed using this Single thread service install guide
Dual Core and Better Computers - BETA SMP client - More points per day (PPD)
Dual and quad (and more) core computers (both Intel and AMD) are capable of large amounts of parallel processing activity. In order to take advantage of that, Stanford has built a client called the Windows High Performance Client and it comes only in a basic text only version. We have had no major issues in running this application as a service when it is installed using the guide provided here. Windows SMP Client Install Guide
Windows GPU folding Client
At the time of this writing GPU clients only work well on x1800-x1950 ATI cards with 512 megs ram. If you would like to give this a try, please download the GPU client from Stanford in the link above and take a look here at the GPU installation guide
Linux Installation Guides and Information
Linux is a super cheap alternative for building dedicated crunchers. It's slighter more compatible with the MPI process used in the SMP client as well so offers some slight performance increases. Definitely the OS of choice for a dedicated cruncher. We're Linking to the fahwiki as it seems like an excellent installation script even for non Linux educated folders. FAHWIKI
