#UPDATED# Folder of the month - December.

[nibbler]

People seem to have used them to fold.
Oh well, my problem is that I am still at school, so using a work PC isn't possible but yeah. Maybe I should just fold under your username to make myself feel a bit more useful when I see the 30000ppd

[Queelis]

Oh, you haven't reached the bonus points? That explains a lot. When you finish 10 WUs you will start getting a bonus, so that'll be at least a thousand points per WU.

[DDY]

I don;t think that the 8400 supports CUDA so you might find that you can't get folding to work on it.

It does alright! At least I know the 8400M GS does, I had one folding briefly but it took two days to churn out one WU, it wasn't worth the power consumption and one client on a 2.4GHz C2D scored higher PPD. It also was a laptop GPU so you could imagine the noise it made too!

[nibbler]

Well I think a desktop one might be worth it. Would overclocking make much of a difference? 500mhz extra?

[Tattysnuc]

It does alright! At least I know the 8400M GS does, I had one folding briefly but it took two days to churn out one WU, it wasn't worth the power consumption and one client on a 2.4GHz C2D scored higher PPD. It also was a laptop GPU so you could imagine the noise it made too!

Maybe I tried the worng client or, my "spare" test card isn't an 8400 then... Thanks for the heads up, that's another card I might try to squeeze into my server then...

[nibbler]

Maybe I should snap up pob255's 9800GTX in fs forums. Would be a good upgrade anyway and it would sure as hell churn out mroe ppd!

[Queelis]

Maybe I should snap up pob255's 9800GTX in fs forums. Would be a good upgrade anyway and it would sure as hell churn out mroe ppd!

Yup, that would rock at folding But have in mind that it's going to eat electricity up like it was nothing, so if you pay the electric bills - uhh..

[nibbler]

Nah mum and dad do
Gonna go for it if I can afford it, would be a sensible upgrade anyhow.

[Zak33]

as a parent, wondering why you think it's ok for YOUR parent's electricity bill to suddently rocket, may I make a suggestion?

Heat is created in folding... lots of it.

IF you intend nuking their electricity bills, first telll them it's gonna climb and second, volunteer to turn off the radiator in your bedroom so it saves them the gas/elec of heating it.

[nibbler]

Never having payed a bill, how much of an increase will it be? Not 24/7, but perhaps 6-8 hours a day of folding. An extra tenner a month??

[Zak33]

nice project for you I'd say

Ask your parents which elec company they're with, get the online tariff and see what the elec charges are per Kwh. (there will be an initial high pence per unit, but ignore that, theyll pay that anyway.. look so see if they get cheaper night time elec too)

Work out what your 8800 uses, when folding flat out, plus the drain on your CPU PC etc for being on when it would normally be off....

and calculate the daily/weekly/annual cost

But as a rough guess I'd say it'll go up a lot more than a tenner per month.

[scaryjim]

Yup, definitely a good project. To get you started, according to the rated TDPs from Wikipedia (scroll down for the 9-series) your 8400GS (assuming it's the newer G98 core) uses 25W at full load. A 9800GTX uses somewhere between 105W and 140W, depending which core revision it's based on. So it's probably safe to assume that a 9800GTX will increase your power draw by 100W.

Now, you're a scientist so you shouldn't have too much difficulty working it out from there

[shbris]

so 100W at around 12p / kWhr would be:

24 * 30 = 720 hours in a month

720 hours * 0.1 kW = 72 kWhrs / month

72 * 0.12 = £8.64/ month for 24/7

[nibbler]

Well I think if I turn off a light bulb here and there and don't leave the tv on standby that's probably made up for already
I think I'll go for it if I can get hold of the card.

[nibbler]

Just thought of something... Currently I'm folding using the CPU which is pulling about 95W from the wall. If I switch to GPU then the CPU usage goes way down but I have to factor in about 110W from the GPU. This equates to roughly 60W increase at a guess. So even less expensive.

[Golden Dragoon]

Nice to see I am near the top of the list I don't even fold 24/7 but even the bog standard GT240 running alongside my cpu and 4850 seems to have made a nice impact on my points (it gets more ppd than my overclocked 4850 ), did have the urge to get a 768mb 460 a little while ago, but think I will wait until the 6k series come out before deciding on any upgrades.