BF2S Forums folding@home team?

TEAM NUMBER: 137764
TEAM NAME: 'bf2s.com'
link (unless it's updating)

normal client
high performance (multi-core, betas, GPU client)

fahmon (program to monitor fah)



To make a long story short. My current folding team is sucks, so I'm looking for a new one. I know some of you fold as well, so I was wondering if anyone is interested in starting a BF2S/trackr team. I believe that with the processing power we have here, we could make a great team

For all of you that don't know what folding@home is. It's a distributed computing project that studies protein folding when your PC is idle. It serves a good purpose and I hate to see PCs idling around with nothing to do.

wiki wrote:

Accurate simulations of protein folding and misfolding enable the scientific community to better understand the development of many diseases, including sickle-cell disease (drepanocytosis), Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, BSE (mad cow disease), cancer, Huntington's disease, cystic fibrosis, osteogenesis imperfecta, alpha 1-antitrypsin deficiency, and other aggregation-related diseases.

and finally a cool screenshot



EDIT: link to Standford's site

Guide: how to set up fah


Setting up folding@home (fah) might look complicated, but it's really not. Before you set your PC up, it is probably best to quickly skim though the guide

All of you can help the project by running the CPU client. As long as its a P3, you should be able to meet the deadline
If you own a geforce from the 8, 9 or 200 seriers or a HD2000, 3000 or 4000 series you can also run the GPU client. GPUs are a lot more powerful than CPUs at fah. They can't do all types of simulations though, so running the CPU client is also importanat
The PS3 also has a client. It's more powerful than the CPU. A good graphics card outperforms it though-
fahmon is an app designed to monitor your progess and benchmark your speed.



I) CPU client

There are multiple CPU clients, but IMO the V.6 beta console client is the best. It gives you good performance and shouldn't hinder you in your daily use of the PC. Sadly the client is single threaded at the moment (multi core support should come soon), so you'll have to run a dedicated process for each core in your system. The SMP (multi-threaded) client is too buggy and hard to set up to be really useful.

First you need to download the client from here. Unzip

Make a new directory somewhere on your HD. C:\fah is what I use.

• ]If you have a single core CPU, copy the exe you just downloaded there.
• If you have a cpu with multiple cores, create a new folder (just call it 1, 2, 3, 4, ...) for each core you have in the directory you just created and copy the executable you downloaded to each one.
• If you run XP and want to run the GPU client, you need a full free core for that. (i.e only 1 cpu client for a dual core and a graphics card, 3 clients for a quad and a graphics card). Due to Vista's superior driver management (see, not everything is bad about vista) you don't need to do this. Under Vista the GPU client shouldn't need more than 10% of a core to runIt should look something like this for multi-cores. For single cores you should just have the exe in there.

doubly click the .exe. You should see a command prompt with some writing on it open.

• For user name put in whatever name you want and press enter.
• For team number put in '137764' and press enter.
• Leave passkey blank; just press enter.
• For the next option type in 'yes'. This will install fah as a service. That way it runs in the background without being in your way and without any interaction from you.
• Just press enter on the "use proxy" option.
• For acceptable size, most will want to use big. If you have an old or weak CPU, leave it at normal.
• On "change advanced options" put in yes.
• Leave core priority, requestred useage, optimized code, battery, checkpoint interval, memory, advanced methods and ignore deadline at the default values. If you are running this on a laptop, I suggest you change the battery option to yes. That way your battery won't be drained quicky. It takes some time before the fah client realizes you unplugged the laptop, so allow a couple of seconds for the threads to stop
• If you have a multi-core make sure that each folder has its own machine ID. (put in 1 for the first folder, 2 for the second, ...). If you want to use the GPU client, leave machine ID 1 (and 2 if you have dual cards) free for the GPU. Easier that way

The app should start and begin downloading work. After some time you should see "completed 0 out of XXX steps (0%)".
If you have a multi-core, repeat for all other folders you created

Check your task manager, is your CPU being used close to 100%?


reboot, check task manager again. If you're close to 100% you sucessfully installed the CPU client

Theoretically the process should not take any resources away from your other apps. I notice no difference. If a possible performance loss annoys you, you can safely kill the fah
-win32-x86.exe from the task manager


II) GPU client

First of all update your drivers. Nvidia users need to get CUDA enabled drivers from here
Again, you need to download the client from here
Install like any app
Open the program
In the contol panel under the user tab, put in your nick and '137764' as the team. In the connection tab tick "allow receipt of work assignments and return results greater than 10MB ..." In the advanced tab, make sure you have "slightly higher" instead of "lowest possible" selected (to avoid conflicts with the CPU client).

The GPU client largely plays along nicely with games, but sometimes can cause problems. If you experience problems (performance loss, crashing, ...) right click the icon in the taskbar and select quit while you game. I haven't heared of problems during video playback, but it doesn't seem impossible either.

SLI/crossfire is kinda hard to set up and only few people have such rigs, so I'll leave that bit out for now until someone needs it


III) PS3 client

you can install and run the PS3 client under Network. Press triangle --> auto-start to have the console automatically start folding


IV) Use fahmon to monitor your folding

fahmon allows you to monitor the status and progress of your folding. It can also tell you how many points per day you make
Download fahmon from here and install.
Open the app and right click the white field. Select "add a new client".
Give the process a name. For the CPU client the location is
For the GPU client the location is The PS3 can't be monitored, as it doesn't supply the necessay info to the network
Click OK. Rinse and repeat for all other running folds.
Green means everything is OK, yellow means it's not performing at 100% (most likely the process throttled back to allow for other apps to run, don't worry about it). All other colors mean that there is a problem



CPUs should give you roughly 200 PPD per core (points per day). Low end graphics about 400. High end graphics can earn you up to 5000ppd.  The PS3 gives you 900ppd

Last edited by max (2008-07-14 12:08:42)