New processing power....

[Nick F]

Just got my new PS3 and already have it running Folding@home, its tearing though the calculations so should hopefully have some positive impact on team performance so we can hit the 400 mark sooner rathr than later!

I'll be running it 24/7 for the time being along with my normal PC

[Webby]

Good good

That's what we like to hear more dedicated processing power of course its also sad that the are no decent games on the PS3 so you can happily have it folding 24/7...

[Dorza]

Great, I'll be adding a Q6600 to the fold (excuse the pun) this week too .

[directhex]

nothing gets points like a smp linux machine with big scientific cores enabled

no really, my t7400 at work seems to churn out work at the same rate as a windows-based q6550

[Webby]

My E6550 now churns out a SMP unit every 26 hours since it was clocked to 2.8GHz that's down from 30 hours at stock speed (2.33GHz). I may clock it higher and see how fast it can fold but I'm reasonably happy at 2.8GHz, running at stock voltage and ~48oC (Core Temp 0.95.4 Beta) when folding

[directhex]

My E6550 now churns out a SMP unit every 26 hours since it was clocked to 2.8GHz that's down from 30 hours at stock speed (2.33GHz). I may clock it higher and see how fast it can fold but I'm reasonably happy at 2.8GHz, running at stock voltage and ~48oC (Core Temp 0.95.4 Beta) when folding

and my t7400 (2.13ghz) does it in 28.5 hours with no overclocking

no two ways about it, linux craps on windows for folding

there's a reason people don't think much of windows for clustering (up to 50% performance drop compared to anything else on the same hardware)

[Webby]

Wasn't arguing with you was just saying what my current output was

If I didn't use this PC for gaming and writing my PhD thesis (in Word, Open Office would potentially cause all sorts of re formatting issues in a 200+ page document, which I'm not willing to risk) then I would have a play with Linux and see what performance boost I could achieve, maybe in January when the thesis is finished I'll go duel boot and use windows just for playing games when I want too and Linux for folding web browsing etc.

[Nick F]

Good good

That's what we like to hear more dedicated processing power of course its also sad that the are no decent games on the PS3 so you can happily have it folding 24/7...

Funny but true , only got Fifa 08 until I play some decent demo's and decide what else to buy. It's amazing how much difference the PS3 has had on my rank, I've generated roughly 5000 points from 4 work units.

[MadduckUK]

when GT5 pops out ill get a ps3 and will fold on it... not until though

[Webby]

Funny but true , only got Fifa 08 until I play some decent demo's and decide what else to buy. It's amazing how much difference the PS3 has had on my rank, I've generated roughly 5000 points from 4 work units.

I would guess that at least a couple of those units would have been SMP units from your PC @1760 points per unit, since the most you should be able to achieve with a PS3 is 900 points per day due to the way points are allocated.

F@H uses a benchmark system to determine how long a WU should take and then the points for this unit are calculated thus,

System points per day, x
Days required on benchmark system, y
Points work unit is worth, z

x * y = z

So some examples for x, SMP 1760, PS3 900, GPU 330

So for an SMP unit which takes 1 day on the benchmark system would be worth

1760 * 1 = 1760

Now in all cases except the PS3 you can exceed the x values in a day by having a system which is faster than the bench mark so for example my X1950 XT would complete a unit in ~18 hours for 330 points so it was running faster than the benchmark, now with SMP units if you see above i run slower than the benchmark system and only get 1760 points every 26 hours. For the PS3 however which is the benchmark system for PS3 work units the is not much variability in the speed of the processors so you will expect to achieve a maximum of 900 point per day.

If this is not true to your experience (for example your not running the SMP client as well) then F@H lie on their website

[peterb]

and my t7400 (2.13ghz) does it in 28.5 hours with no overclocking

no two ways about it, linux craps on windows for folding

there's a reason people don't think much of windows for clustering (up to 50% performance drop compared to anything else on the same hardware)

Just started shutting down the X server on my Linux box when I don't need it - no point in uselessly wasting processor cycles! (However I draw the line at changing the nice value to -19 )