Folding Chit-Chat

[Golden Dragoon]

No need to wait for the unit to finish, the upgrade has been seamless when I have done them, just quit the client, and run the new installer, it should pick up that you already have it, and install over that one while keeping your configurations and current work units.

[Golden Dragoon]

Hmm I have the opportunity to get a HP 4U rackmount server with the following specs for about £150 and was wondering if it would even be worth my time, might be fun to fold on but I am not too sure it would be that efficient

4 Opteron 885 2.6GHz processors, 32GB ram and 4 x 73GB 15k U320 drives with a hardware raid card, oh and not to mention a cd rom drive, nothing but the top of the range for this baby

[Terbinator]

Hmmm 8 cores.

Although for £150 I'd imagine a i5 2xxx and a cheapo H61 board would be faster and more efficient?

[Golden Dragoon]

Searched HP's site for it's service tag, and it looks like those 2.6 duals are the top of the range Opterons for socket 940, no way to dump them and put quads in unfortunatly, as that would have been interesting.

Hmmm 8 cores.

Although for £150 I'd imagine a i5 2xxx and a cheapo H61 board would be faster and more efficient?

I doubt I would get 4 15K hdd's or 32gb or ram in budget though

Anyway the conversation went something like this:
Me: whats that server doing sat there under all that junk?
Him: it's the reserve server we had for our old system
Me: do we need it?
Him: nope, not sure what it's still doing here we upgraded ages ago, why do you want it?
Me: depends on the spec, why what do you want for it?
Him: not sure 150-60ish I guess, it is pretty old
Me: I'll check it out and get back to you.

[Terbinator]

You don't need them for folding though.

Anyone you can hook it up at work and see what the production is like?

[Golden Dragoon]

I am trying to justify getting it for reasons other than messing about with folding lol
using excuses like, ohh I could use it as my home server, and completely ignoring the fact I have a much lower powered system that does the job just fine

[Terbinator]

I am trying to justify getting it for reasons other than messing about with folding lol
using excuses like, ohh I could use it as my home server, and completely ignoring the fact I have a much lower powered system that does the job just fine

That feel. Someone is selling a Q6600 G0 for £40 on Aria.

[Golden Dragoon]

I have a G0 Q6600+mobo+ram sat right next to me, have just changed out to a Phenom X6 setup, had a look about and I could get this sort of thing:
Quad socket mobo £100
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/W466G-Dell...item3cc1abde13
4x 6 core opterons £80
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AMD-1-8GHz...item1c23debe1c

Haven't really checked on the compatibility of them or anything, and that isn't including case, ram, heatsinks or storage, but still 24 cores for £180 sounds nice

[Terbinator]

Definitely tasty.

Do it!

[Golden Dragoon]

I actually looked up the processors, and they are dual socket only, the quad socket hex cores ones are the 84** series, and they are much more money:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AMD-Six-Co...item3a6f88e18c

Dual core quad socket compatible 82** cpu's are much more reasonable:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AMD-Optero...item1e5d4b02fe

[Butuz]

Don't go near the two core units. Atrocious crunch per watt value.

6 cores might be interesting.

For cruchy power v watts efficiency as terminator said above an i5 will easily win out over old opterons.

Butuz

[Golden Dragoon]

V7.1.52 is now out:
https://fah-web.stanford.edu/projects/FAHClient/

Also they are considering updating the front page to this:
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Main2

I think it looks pretty good.

[Vimeous]

Well I've finally got round to playing more with v7 and have a few little tests running.

My home machine's HD 7850 has dropped some PPD as I've switched to the beta 12.5 drivers to prevent crashing on idle. I'm now getting 3500 or so which is being matched by the CPU. I'm a little miffed the SMP units are now only worth 180 points (8013) when the v6 client at work is running 2500 pointers.

My work machine is running v6 and v7 simultainiously which will hurt the ppd but until the v7 gets some bigger units I'll leave the v6 running.

I've also commandeered a Dell T1600 workstation. Granted I don't know how long I can run it for as v7 doesn't sit quietly as a background service but it has an E3-1270 and Quadro 2000. It appears the CPU will push 25k ppd on the 80xx units and there'll be a little boost from the GPU. I'll probably switch off the GPU after a short while as I don't want to cook the card.

My work machine remains my primary folder as the rest is likely to be temporary but it's a handy boost for a little while.
What's interesting to me is it's the first time I've ever got a decent CPU PPD and really shows how a couple of carefully considered Sandybridge machines could return 50k PPD quite cheaply and without OC'ing. I just wonder if the extra cost of cooling and powering an OC'd setup is really worth it.

[Vimeous]

Quick update.

I managed to fold for a whole 3 days on my home PC before it rarified the atmosphere in the house and drew significant ire from my dearest. Needless to say it'll be winter folding at best

At work I've switched back to the v6 client on the X5355 as it's pushing 5k ppd vs half-that for v7. However I've managed to keep the E3-1270 online and despite the low value WU's it's still doing the bulk of the work.

For the future I really like alsenior's proposal of an AMD folding machine but much as though I'd like a dedicated folding rig I need the funds to go elsewhere for now

Now I wonder if solar panels would be enough to run aircon AND pay for itself?!

[scaryjim]

Just looked at my stats and realised that the beta server for my old unit (the one I left 2 months ago) is still chugging away for the cause!

Wonder how long I'll get away with it for...

[Tattysnuc]

Hey folks. Just popped by to have a quick read up. Looks like there;s been a few things going on lately, but generally speaking things are ticking along. Guess you don't miss me then

Work has been MAD since last October - had a new line manager start, and I've had my nose to the wheel pretty much ever since then. Money has also been VERY tight the past 12 months, so I've had to scale down my folding venture - I've actually reverted to 2 S1366 setups as they were better value for money for me (I had 2 SandyBridge setups, which up until the changes in BIGADV were proving very fruitful - both have since been sold (actually I killed one!) and bills paid with enough cash left over to then buy an Asus RIIE board and 2 i7 9XX cpus)

Good to see so many familiar faces still popping by here. Hope to get back into folding after next January - I'd like to build my very own server and get that configured with a proper domain, SQL Server and with Hyper-V. All in good time, and with it folding 24/7 for good measure.

I'm still downloading daily stats from EOC and fully intend to do a version of the stats service I used to do in the spreadsheet should I manage to get my machine built.