F@H now for Corona-Virus

Zitterbacke · Post by **Zitterbacke** » Sun Mar 15, 2020 4:44 pm

If you are into distributed computing and want to help working on the virus, here is your chance.
https://foldingathome.org/2020/03/15/co ... ple-terms/

hitbyambulance · Post by **hitbyambulance** » Sun Mar 15, 2020 5:07 pm

this is what got me back into F@H

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Sun Mar 15, 2020 11:54 pm

Do we have a team?

hitbyambulance · Post by **hitbyambulance** » Mon Mar 16, 2020 12:06 am

if there were, it would probably be called fOOlding@home or something like that

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Mon Mar 16, 2020 12:25 am

I installed it. Somebody be my hero and make a team.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Mon Mar 16, 2020 12:28 am

How do you set it to work on COVID-19? I have four options (cancer, Alzheimer's, a couple of others.)

Zitterbacke · Post by **Zitterbacke** » Mon Mar 16, 2020 1:57 pm

From what I've read it prioritise Covid over the other right at the moment, but you can't select it straight away.
"By downloading Folding@home and selecting to contribute to “Any Disease”, you can help provide us with the computational power required to tackle this problem."

I'm rendering for the PCMasterRace
Teamnumber 225605

PC Master Race / Octopus Overlords, it sounds like a match.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Mon Mar 16, 2020 4:19 pm

Kraken wrote: ↑Mon Mar 16, 2020 12:25 am I installed it. Somebody be my hero and make a team.

241653

wonderpug · Post by **wonderpug** » Tue Mar 17, 2020 11:49 am

Are we team 225605 or 241653?

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Tue Mar 17, 2020 1:11 pm

I used the latter.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Tue Mar 17, 2020 5:33 pm

wonderpug wrote: ↑Tue Mar 17, 2020 11:49 am Are we team 225605 or 241653?

22 is the PC Master Race team. 24 is the OO specific group for those that prefer it.

Zaxxon · Post by **Zaxxon** » Fri Mar 20, 2020 8:27 am

Just joined with my GTX 1060 6 GB, set to medium... The fan fired up pretty quickly to high, and if I switch the power to Light, the process seems to stop. Too bad there's not an intermediate setting that runs constantly but at a low-enough level to not kick off the fan noise.

Max Peck · Post by **Max Peck** » Fri Mar 20, 2020 9:46 am

Yeah, I had a lot of issues tuning the F@H client to avoid overheating my PC. My solution has been to underclock the GPU to prevent excess heat and using the F@H "Advanced Control" UI to limit the number of CPU cores that are used (on all cores, the heat generated was overwhelming my Noctua cooler and triggering thermal throttling). That allowed me to run it on the Medium setting without overstressing the hardware. If I drop it down to medium, the CPU still overheats if I run it on all cores, and the GPU doesn't do any processing because the app never detects it as being idle.

Zaxxon · Post by **Zaxxon** » Fri Mar 20, 2020 9:53 am

Max Peck wrote: ↑Fri Mar 20, 2020 9:46 am Yeah, I had a lot of issues tuning the F@H client to avoid overheating my PC. My solution has been to underclock the GPU to prevent excess heat and using the F@H "Advanced Control" UI to limit the number of CPU cores that are used (on all cores, the heat generated was overwhelming my Noctua cooler and triggering thermal throttling). That allowed me to run it on the Medium setting without overstressing the hardware. If I drop it down to medium, the CPU still overheats if I run it on all cores, and the GPU doesn't do any processing because the app never detects it as being idle.

Mind sharing your specific tweaks? I'm considering doing something similar, as I would prefer it to be less loud and put out less heat, but don't want to drop to Low as that would disable the GPU processing entirely.

Max Peck · Post by **Max Peck** » Fri Mar 20, 2020 10:26 am

For the GPU, I just used the manufacturer's overclocking utility (Firestorm from Zotac) to lower the target temperature. Currently, I have it set for 70C, and the card is showing an actual temperature of 69C with the fans running at about 35% of max RPM. There are options to configure some GPU settings using the F@H Advanced Control gui, but at first glance they appear to be for people with multiple GPUs, so I haven't fiddled with them or tried to find out more about them since the above work-around is getting the job done. If I need to use the GPU to play a game or whatever, I just switch F@H to light, so that it doesn't use the GPU and return the GPU settings to default using Firestorm. It's a little cumbersome, but it gets the job done.

For the CPU, I launched the Advanced Control gui from the F@H icon in the system tray. Go to Configure/Slots, then select the folding slot for the cpu and edit the number of threads to use. By default, it will be -1, which allows F@H to choose how many, and it appears to use all available threads when given its druthers. Note that both the cpu and gpu have settings for number of threads, so I've been setting them both to the same value, just in case the gpu slot is grabby when it comes to cpu resources. At that point I just experimented with how many threads I could allow while keeping the CPU package temperature in a happy place. I've been using Intel's Extreme Tuning utility to monitor the impact on the CPU usage.

Zaxxon · Post by **Zaxxon** » Fri Mar 20, 2020 10:43 am

Cool. I grabbed the MSI Afterburner utility and did something similar.

Max Peck · Post by **Max Peck** » Fri Mar 20, 2020 10:54 am

It's interesting that F@H puts such a high load on the CPU/GPU. None of the games or stress tests I have run come anywhere near the impact of an unbridled F@H session. When it comes time to upgrade/replace this system, I'll need to remember to get my system integrator to run a F@H stress test before deciding that any particular cooling solution is "good enough." Last time around, I let him talk me down from going full-on water cooling, because he believed that air cooling is good enough and mechanically more reliable. And it was good enough until I ran up against F@H.

Zaxxon · Post by **Zaxxon** » Fri Mar 20, 2020 10:59 am

Max Peck wrote: ↑Fri Mar 20, 2020 10:54 am It's interesting that F@H puts such a high load on the CPU/GPU. None of the games or stress tests I have run come anywhere near the impact of an unbridled F@H session. When it comes time to upgrade/replace this system, I'll need to remember to get my system integrator to run a F@H stress test before deciding that any particular cooling solution is "good enough." Last time around, I let him talk me down from going full-on water cooling, because he believed that air cooling is good enough and mechanically more reliable. And it was good enough until I ran up against F@H.

When your goal is specifically to use every cycle...

Max Peck · Post by **Max Peck** » Fri Mar 20, 2020 11:03 am

It does demonstrate why it's a bad idea to buy a used video card from a cryptocurrency miner.

Max Peck · Post by **Max Peck** » Fri Mar 20, 2020 11:59 am

Max Peck wrote: ↑Fri Mar 20, 2020 10:26 am Note that both the cpu and gpu have settings for number of threads, so I've been setting them both to the same value, just in case the gpu slot is grabby when it comes to cpu resources.

I just noticed that the # of cpu threads field in the gpu slot settings reverts to -1 after saving, regardless of what number I set it to, so I'd guess it doesn't actually apply and can be safely ignored.

Zitterbacke · Post by **Zitterbacke** » Fri Mar 20, 2020 2:08 pm

Max Peck wrote: ↑Fri Mar 20, 2020 10:54 am It's interesting that F@H puts such a high load on the CPU/GPU. None of the games or stress tests I have run come anywhere near the impact of an unbridled F@H session. When it comes time to upgrade/replace this system, I'll need to remember to get my system integrator to run a F@H stress test before deciding that any particular cooling solution is "good enough." Last time around, I let him talk me down from going full-on water cooling, because he believed that air cooling is good enough and mechanically more reliable. And it was good enough until I ran up against F@H.

Stressed your rig, accidentally found a cure to cancer.

Zaxxon · Post by **Zaxxon** » Sat Mar 21, 2020 9:19 pm

Dang, somehow after today's stat update I'm... leading the the team? My rig is good but not that good.

Join us! Save the world or something?

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Sat Mar 21, 2020 10:37 pm

I'm trying! For some reason it doesn't seem to be progressing, though.

Zaxxon · Post by **Zaxxon** » Sat Mar 21, 2020 10:48 pm

Blackhawk wrote:I'm trying! For some reason it doesn't seem to be progressing, though.

I noticed that they seem to not have enough CPU work units, as I've only gotten GPU WUs lately. So if you're set to Low priority which disables the GPU, currently you get bupkis.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Sun Mar 22, 2020 12:22 am

I'm not getting anything for the past 24 hours. Sending keeps timing out, and receiving keeps getting "no work" which I assume means it's refusing connections. I think their home server is overwhelmed. Apparently there are now 400K members folding for folding@home. I'm not sure they have the capacity and they never tested their system under this kind of load.

hitbyambulance · Post by **hitbyambulance** » Sun Mar 22, 2020 3:15 am

Zaxxon wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 10:48 pm
Blackhawk wrote:I'm trying! For some reason it doesn't seem to be progressing, though.
I noticed that they seem to not have enough CPU work units, as I've only gotten GPU WUs lately. So if you're set to Low priority which disables the GPU, currently you get bupkis.

set it to Medium and my computer quickly powered off. i don't think it's supposed to do that. (clearly a thermal safety threshold was exceeded)

Formix · Post by **Formix** » Sun Mar 22, 2020 5:00 am

Looks like they're out of work units? I have 0.

Zaxxon · Post by **Zaxxon** » Sun Mar 22, 2020 7:10 am

I'm still getting them for my GPU, which is a GeForce 1060.

Zaxxon · Post by **Zaxxon** » Sun Mar 22, 2020 1:08 pm

Interestingly, after my CPU was getting no WUs for over a day (while the GPU was chugging along with nary a delay), I went into the Advanced Control just now, the Status tab, right-clicked my CPU, and told it to pause (even though it wasn't doing anything). I waited a few seconds, then told it to Fold. It immediately was able to pull a new WU and started folding.

So not sure whether that was really a fluke, or whether there's a possible bug with the CPU piece getting stuck.

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Sun Mar 22, 2020 1:49 pm

Reminder to be careful. Lots of malicious apps and folding stuff out there right now.

Zaxxon · Post by **Zaxxon** » Sun Mar 22, 2020 1:52 pm

Daehawk wrote: ↑Sun Mar 22, 2020 1:49 pm Reminder to be careful. Lots of malicious apps and folding stuff out there right now.

Not this one! Nonetheless, a good reminder.

Zaxxon · Post by **Zaxxon** » Wed Mar 25, 2020 3:56 pm

We're now in the top 7,000 teams out of 240k+. Join us!

gbasden · Post by **gbasden** » Thu Mar 26, 2020 5:32 am

I've got an enterprise grade server with 16 cores set up to pull, and I can't get any work units, sadly. I know it's been mostly GPU workloads, but I was hoping it would do more than 2 WU in two days.

Zaxxon · Post by **Zaxxon** » Thu Mar 26, 2020 5:38 am

gbasden wrote:I've got an enterprise grade server with 16 cores set up to pull, and I can't get any work units, sadly. I know it's been mostly GPU workloads, but I was hoping it would do more than 2 WU in two days.

FWIW, I follow the project lead on Twitter and he's said they are adding WU servers as fast as they can, and that they hope to have enough work for everyone soon. The available capacity has gone up like 10x in a couple of weeks.

gbasden · Post by **gbasden** » Thu Mar 26, 2020 5:40 am

No doubt, and I can only imagine how much difficulty they must be having dealing with exponential growth in their computing power. I'm just hoping I can help more soon.

Zaxxon · Post by **Zaxxon** » Thu Mar 26, 2020 5:43 am

gbasden wrote:No doubt, and I can only imagine how much difficulty they must be having dealing with exponential growth in their computing power. I'm just hoping I can help more soon.

Same. My GPU has generally been working with no more than a couple hours idle at a time, but CPUs have been starved for days.

gbasden · Post by **gbasden** » Thu Mar 26, 2020 5:50 am

I've been having my gaming pc set to run when idle, but I don't think it's actually engaging. I haven't wanted FAH to kill my video card while playing games, but maybe I just need to bite the bullet.

Zaxxon · Post by **Zaxxon** » Thu Mar 26, 2020 7:53 am

The GPU is also like 10x as good at the folding tasks, so if you want significant contribution you're going to have to enable the GPU. The F@H process is assigned a very low priority, tho, so if you're gaming it should back off.

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Thu Mar 26, 2020 8:07 am

Downlaoding and learning.

Zaxxon · Post by **Zaxxon** » Thu Mar 26, 2020 8:13 am

Sweet.