[The Placid Casual]

Ok,

I have been running the GUI F@H client on my dual 450 for a fair while now, on average about 5 hours a day for a week or so. I looked at the status of the unit, a 'p638_L939_K12M_ext', and it was only showing 7.75% complete!!

I realise that the machine is not cutting edge (Dual G4 450, 700 MB RAM), but surely it must be able to turn in a WU quicker than that! I don't think it would even beat the time limit!

Today I installed 'Increase', and it has installed 2 versions of the CLI client and is running them concurrently.

It is showing this in the status menu:

Unit at /Users/marc/Library/InCrease/cpu1/work
Protein: p638_L939_K12M_ext
- Frames Completed: 31, Remaining: 369
-rw-r--r-- 1 marc marc 808046 17 Mar 18:49 /Users/marc/Library/InCrease/cpu1/work/wudata_01.arc

Unit at /Users/marc/Library/InCrease/cpu2/work
Protein: p520_BBA5_pf
Completed 0 out of 500000 steps (0%)
-rw-r--r-- 1 marc marc 146520 17 Mar 19:08 /Users/marc/Library/InCrease/cpu2/work/wudata_01.arc
-rw-r--r-- 1 marc marc 439320 17 Mar 19:13 /Users/marc/Library/InCrease/cpu2/work/wudata_01CP.arc


Running Clients: 2

USER PID %CPU %MEM STAT STARTED CPUTIME COMMAND
marc 1982 0.0 0.1 Ss 7:12PM 0:04.57 /Users/marc/Library/Application Support/InCrease/bin/fah4 -local -advmethods -forceasm -verbosity 9
marc 1983 0.0 0.1 Ss 7:12PM 0:04.51 /Users/marc/Library/Application Support/InCrease/bin/fah4 -local -advmethods -forceasm -verbosity 9

Running Cores: 2

USER PID %CPU %MEM STAT STARTED CPUTIME COMMAND
marc 2054 9.9 1.7 RN 7:12PM 7:27.12 ./FahCore_78.exe -dir work/ -suffix 01 -checkpoint 15 -forceasm -verbose -lifeline 1983 -version 400
marc 2061 12.0 0.7 RN 7:12PM 7:55.19 ./FahCore_65.exe -dir work/ -suffix 01 -checkpoint 15 -forceasm -verbose -lifeline 1982 -version 400

Is this the right thing to do, or should I be looking at other things to help speed things up?

Any help appreciated!

Marc

[reader50]

It sounds like you are running Folding in the background while you are working, ~5 hours per day. Folding takes a low priority, so if it's in the background with other stuff going, Folding will crunch rather slowly. You can increase Folding's priority (which may cause foreground apps to run slower), or you can increase the running time - such as leaving the box crunching overnight.

The first unit you got (p638) is a 70-point Tinker, which should never have been issued to your older Mac. You can't complete that one in time, get rid of it. Quit Folding, launch a Terminal window, and 'cd' into your cpu1 folder. Then type:
./fah4 -local -delete 1
Relaunch Folding, it will get a fresh unit.

The second unit (p520) is a Gromacs, and should run well.

[The Placid Casual]

Thanks reader...

All going well now!

Seems to be running 2 clients and cores, each showing 58% done after less than 1 day...

[The Placid Casual]

Hmmm things still not going according to plan with Increase.

Looks like it takes 3 days to get the WU back to the F@H servers. But the limit on the WUs is 2 days!

My machine is crunching 6-7 hours a day in the back ground for nothing!

I think the problem is that there are 2 cores running, one for each processor, and this is just too much.

Anyone else with any ideas as to how to make the dual 450 the most efficient it can be for F@H?

[Turias]

Originally posted by The Placid Casual:
Looks like it takes 3 days to get the WU back to the F@H servers. But the limit on the WUs is 2 days!

A 2 day limit on workunits? Are you sure? I'm pretty sure all units get at least 2 weeks. What proteins are you getting?

[The Placid Casual]

Originally posted by Turias:
A 2 day limit on workunits? Are you sure? I'm pretty sure all units get at least 2 weeks. What proteins are you getting?

Sorry. my bad. I just checked and they are '5 day' units, and of only 18 credit, so I didn't see any real jump in my stats and assumed they weren't being counted...

Well, I guess it all counts. (But roll on the time when I get a new rev B G5!)