Folding@home-Team Linux Mint-76140

[Professor_Slughorn]

Glad you got it working

It’s a fun way to add some heat to the house (I’m also in the northern hemisphere, and I’m also using Folding at Home as part of my heating)

It’s neat watching yourself slowly climb the Team's ranks (I see you’re currently in spot 115), and the Team climb the ranks overall (At our current pace, it appears that Linux Mint will end up being a top 100 team.)

I only fold on my GPUs, as the amount of daily points the CPU contributes is rather low by comparison. If the CPU fan noise is too annoying you might want to try doing the same. I don't like noise, and always buy overkill quite coolers for efficient lower power hardware.

While not necessary, I think you get bonus points if you have a pass key for your Folding at Home:
https://foldingathome.org/support/faq/p ... ey/?lng=en

It has only taken me three days and a lot of fiddling to come to the same conclusion you did. I am in the process of finishing up the current work units on this PC. When done I will switch to GPU only.

Already made the switch on the ASUS PC (Win 10). Tried two threads. The CPU was still using 65 watts according to the Intel Power Gadget. Changed the setting to one thread. Still using 50 watts. Going with no threads - 27 watts. But, the good news is that the fan noise is down considerably. I am using MSI afterburner on this PC to keep the GPU at 92% utilization, 72C, and 130 watts with the fans on auto (34%). If I let the fans go to 50% the temps drop to 56C but the fan noise becomes very annoying.

And to finish on some good news, F@H is now running on my 2013 Dell with Linux Mint XFCE and a Nvidia GT 1030. I could have been cleaning the garage. This was a bigger priority.

[Intrinsic]

Jeff13, I didn’t know of the nvidia-smi command. I never bought higher end cards (anything over 200 watts), because I don’t like high wattage PC components, but this command seems like an easy way to fix that issue. I suspect the many more cores of a high end GPU, running at 200 watts, will likely be more efficient than a lower end card running at 200 watts

Professor_Slughorn, I see you are up to spot 36 on the team. It’s like an RPG though. The first few levels are quick and easy, and then leveling really slows down.

The next team on the All-Time tier list is only 191,472,929 points away from us

[Jeff13]

Jeff13, I didn’t know of the nvidia-smi command. I never bought higher end cards (anything over 200 watts), because I don’t like high wattage PC components, but this command seems like an easy way to fix that issue. I suspect the many more cores of a high end GPU, running at 200 watts, will likely be more efficient than a lower end card running at 200 watts

Professor_Slughorn, I see you are up to spot 36 on the team. It’s like an RPG though. The first few levels are quick and easy, and then leveling really slows down.

The next team on the All-Time tier list is only 191,472,929 points away from us

Intrinsic, for F@h I think its all about the number of CUDA cores that can be used. I both underwatt and under Freq my cards in windows. I do boost the memory speed a bit but MSI Afterburner makes that easy in a windows system. If you're thinking of shopping for a new card let me offer this site as good to know info. Their numbers for the 3070 and 3070ti are close to what I see on average.
https://folding.lar.systems/gpu_ppd/overall_ranks

[Professor_Slughorn]

Professor_Slughorn, I see you are up to spot 36 on the team. It’s like an RPG though. The first few levels are quick and easy, and then leveling really slows down.

The next team on the All-Time tier list is only 191,472,929 points away from us

33 Now

Some really interesting stats.
https://folding.extremeoverclocking.com ... s=&t=76140

I think we will be at 104 by the end of the year. (pass five teams, but passed by one)

Just ordered a new case, cpu cooler and power supply. Hope to increase my daily production by 10-15% in a week or two. I will let you know if my diabolical plan works.

[Professor_Slughorn]

After reading the following, I am thinking about doing some CPU folding in the future if the new cooler and case work as planned.

" Post by bikeaddict » Mon Sep 11, 2023 9:46 am
The 0xa8 and 0xa9 rows are the current active CPU project type. The 0x22 row is the current active GPU project type.

The three Jobs columns show how many tasks are waiting for clients to download and process. And the Assign Rate shows how many jobs of each project type are being distributed to clients every hour.

For 0xa8 CPU projects, waiting job count is huge and the assign rate is fairly small."
https://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?t=40549

https://apps.foldingathome.org/serverstats

It looks like they need more CPU time. Funny how they seem to give less points for CPU work. Or do I have that wrong?

[Professor_Slughorn]

I suspect the many more cores of a high end GPU, running at 200 watts, will likely be more efficient than a lower end card running at 200 watts

Absolutely! The RTX 2070S is about the same performance as the RTX 4060. The 2070S uses up to 215 watts, the 4060 uses 115 watts! If my 2070S dies I would probably replace it with a 4060.

https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/comp ... e-RTX-4060

[Intrinsic]

I think how many points a folding job is worth is based on how long an old i5 (i5 CPU 750 to be exact), would take to complete the task. Because the folding simulation can leverage the power of many “gpu cores”, and GPUs have a lot of cores, the computational power behind a modern GPU is just that much greater than most current CPUs. I think the GPU work units are likely larger and designed for all the cores a GPU has, but the way the base amount of points is derived for each work unit is still the same

The extremeoverclocking link that shows our team's position is pretty neat.

I also do most of my folding on a 2070 Super. My initial plan was to use some old GTX 970 cards too, but then I saw what my power bill was going to be, and decided that running the GTX 970 cards wasn’t worth the electricity they consumed. The current RTX 4xxx cards are soooo much more power efficient for the amount of points you get. I’d be nice to have one.

[Intrinsic]

Team Linux Mint has now taking overall ranking 107.

[Professor_Slughorn]

Good job team! Looks like we will be 106 tomorrow.

[Professor_Slughorn]

Does anyone know why 900i stopped folding? He was the founding member of the team.

I feel bad that after only a week of folding I passed him on the team list with a meager 150 or so work units. He had about 1,600 WUs. There are a couple of people with 8,000 WUs down the list. There is definitely a lot of point inflation going on. It devalues all the work people did in the past. Maybe they need to give people some kind of longevity credit. I think I will hop over to the F&H forum and mention it.

[Professor_Slughorn]

Done.

https://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?t=40827

Taking bets on how far the suggestion will go.

[Intrinsic]

Team Linux Mint has now taking overall ranking 106.

I don’t think it’s actually inflation. The GTX 970 cards I have make just as many points as they did several years ago. It’s just that the newest hardware is much faster. The points a single 4070 card generates is twice the points that you would get by running a 2070 super, and two GTX 970, combined.

[Professor_Slughorn]

FYI, I continued the point inflation discussion here: https://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?p=362792#p362792

Position 105 for a day. We will get passed by Loxo tomorrow. Argh! Another two weeks plus before we pass the next team.

[Jeff13]

My numbers will be down a bit today and possibly tomorrow. I'm finally able to use wired connections again with my Starlink internet but getting it set back up takes a bit of time.

[Professor_Slughorn]

Doing an upgrade to the i5 PC. It will be down later today.

[Professor_Slughorn]

The upgrade is complete! (EVGA 80+ GOLD 600W Power Supply, Noctua NH-U9S CPU Cooler, LIAN LI PC Case 205 MESH C) The goal of the upgrade was to improve cooling, lower noise levels and increase points per day/work units.

The new cooler allowed me to start CPU folding without the stock cooler making lots of noise. The software is set to use 8 threads for CPU folding, 1 thread to help the GPU and leave 3 threads for everyday computing.

CPU-X is reporting about 68% CPU usage and 50 - 55C temp.
GPU is at 99% usage, 149 watts and 64C temp.

With the Intel stock cooler CPU temps were 82C with 6 cores folding and 71C with 4 cores folding.

The PC is now very quiet. Mission accomplished.

The leftover case and power supply will allow me to create a 4th folding PC. Hope to have it finished by the weekend.

[Professor_Slughorn]

It looks like the team is averaging about 50 million points a day. At this rate our overall rank should be under 100 sometime in January, 2024.

All my updates are complete. My daily PPD should average around 5.5 million going forward. I was hoping to add a 4th folding computer. Unfortunately that project is not going to happen. Ran into a snag, it will not start. It would have been an i3-8100 CPU and a GTX 1050. The electricity cost to run it for a year would have been $163. Based on the GPU database the card would land somewhere between the 1050 Mobile and the 1050ti or about 300,000 PPD. https://folding.lar.systems/gpu_ppd/overall_ranks No point investing any more time and money into the PC.

I started folding on 11/6. This was right at the beginning of the billing cycle for our electricity and natural gas. It will be interesting to see the damages. For now the extra warm air generated by the three PCs helps to heat the house. When summer comes the plan is to shut down the Dell, reduce the RTX 3060 to 100 watts and turn CPU folding off for the i5. Who knows, by summer we could be in first place.

Has anyone else on the team done a calculation to determine the cost of folding? My estimate is about $750/year without adding in savings on natural gas.

Cheers

[Jeff13]

I have not run any cost calculations Professor,

but I do have to give notice I fear. The background info on my folding is that I have no bitcoin exp at all, but have a gaming addiction that waxes and wanes with a mind of it's own. When my gameing interest lessens my points go up. (Points lessen also with summer. Heat is generally bad.) The source of the addiction, Everquest, has a new expansion coming out tomorrow. I think it likely my points will go down if the expansion is interesting. Bad timing on my part with the team making so many passes soon. I'll do what I can.

[Professor_Slughorn]

I have not run any cost calculations Professor,

but I do have to give notice I fear. The background info on my folding is that I have no bitcoin exp at all, but have a gaming addiction that waxes and wanes with a mind of it's own. When my gameing interest lessens my points go up. (Points lessen also with summer. Heat is generally bad.) The source of the addiction, Everquest, has a new expansion coming out tomorrow. I think it likely my points will go down if the expansion is interesting. Bad timing on my part with the team making so many passes soon. I'll do what I can.

Having fun is good. I know the feeling. Spent five years (3 hours a day) grinding away at World of Warships. Enjoy the game! Tried to go to the EverQuest site. They are undergoing maintenance. I wonder why? Wouldn't have anything to do with the expansion, would it?

I need to correct my estimated electricity cost per year. Entered 12.69 cents per Kwh instead of 10.269 into the spreadsheet. The new estimate is $607 per year at 673 watts a day. The electric bill will be arriving this week. I will be able to see the actual increase in electricity cost and determine if my heating costs went down.

[Intrinsic]

Team Linux Mint has now taking overall ranking 106.

When I first started I did like you (had everything I owned folding). Then I checked my foretasted electric bill and backed off. For example: I had two 970 cards in an old motherboard that was drawing about 500 watts, and only making about 1 million points a day. Another PC, with a single 2070 super card in it, was making more than triple the points at half the power. So I stopped running the 2 x 970 setup. It just didn't seem worth it. There is more to the story, but the TLDR is that I considered how many points per watt I was getting with different hardware, and how many watts I was willing to run, and I did some optimization (only using certain hardware, and limiting the wattage of some cards. I noticed that at 150 watts the 2070 Super seems to almost make the same amount of points as its default 215 watt setting)