helping hand?

stopthekilling77 · Post by **stopthekilling77** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 11:29 am

hey everyone! okay so i'm running F@H v.5.03, i believe it's the "graphical" client? its the only one i've used, an it has the 3D model refreshed every so 6 or 8 seconds or so. anyhow i'm running it on a pentium 4, 3.06 Ghz, (not the build in my sig, i have yet to order those parts for my home PC

) and it's got two single processors from what i can see in the control panel.
out of curiosity, i checked to see how much the program was using out of the systems processing power, and i was at 51%
i THOUGHT i had the program maxed out, am i missing something here?

in the F@H "configure..." tab i had the core priority at the highest possible priority, with "slightly higher" clicked on, and maxed out.

in the spirit of "wtf why am i running at only 51%" i put the core priority to "lowest possible (recommended)" and about 10 minutes later, its still plugging along, at a slightly slower speed, but not much.

i'm a little confused,
help on getting the most out of my work PC?

Mad_Goku · Post by **Mad_Goku** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 11:52 am

I'm guessing the reason you are seeing 51% is because the p4's run with hyperthreading. The other 49% is free because of that. The windows clients of FAH don't support multiple core or in this case I doubt they support hyperthreading either.

The core priority is something different. It's basically just to arrange which processes come first when it comes to demand for CPU power. Setting it to low or idle won't have an affect unless you are doing something else on the PC, the cpu resources will be allocated to the other programs with a higher priority over FAH. Setting it higher will give FAH first "dibs" so to speak.

Post by **Apoptosis** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 12:11 pm

you'll have to run two instances of it to work at 100%....

Folding@Home does not have native support for multiprocessor systems. To take advantage of more than one CPU or a CPU with Hyper threading, multiple instances of Folding@Home must be installed. The Machine ID is used by Folding@Home to tell these instances apart. When set to "Auto", the Folding@Home Service Installer will detect how many CPUs are in the system and automatically install multiple copies of the client and assign Machine IDs as necessary. If you would rather install a single instance of Folding@Home with a Machine ID of your choice, you can specify one from 1 - 4.

bubba · Post by **bubba** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 12:29 pm

If you're like me and running a single core P4 with the hyper threading on, then when you look at the CPU usage then it will look as you see it now, due to the fact windows thinks its a dual core. If you turn off the Hyper Threading then look at the CPU usage it will show up as a single core and maxed out, your machine will also run a tad hotter.

stopthekilling77 · Post by **stopthekilling77** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 1:25 pm

Apoptosis wrote:you'll have to run two instances of it to work at 100%....

Folding@Home does not have native support for multiprocessor systems. To take advantage of more than one CPU or a CPU with Hyper threading, multiple instances of Folding@Home must be installed. The Machine ID is used by Folding@Home to tell these instances apart. When set to "Auto", the Folding@Home Service Installer will detect how many CPUs are in the system and automatically install multiple copies of the client and assign Machine IDs as necessary. If you would rather install a single instance of Folding@Home with a Machine ID of your choice, you can specify one from 1 - 4.

so just download another instance of F@H, install it, and it'll be ready to go balls to the wall?

also, would turning off hyper threading be preferrable or not?

Post by **Illuminati** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 1:30 pm

for the graphical client, you would have to turn hyperthreading off...

If you want to run two instances, you will need to run two instances of the Console version. Only the console version will properly balance the workload between the two cores because you will be able to assign each instance to a different cpu core.

Check out this oldie I wrote up a few years ago... still valid, but the FAH version numbers are a little different now.
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/78/1/

stopthekilling77 · Post by **stopthekilling77** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 1:35 pm

so i should uninstall this client, download 2 separate text-only (console) versions in separate folders and install them individually, and i'll be good?

would i lose my total progress in the team?

Post by **Illuminati** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 1:50 pm

as long as you use the same username and use our team number (38296),,, you will not lose any progress with the team so far. You will just lose any progress you have on your current work unit with the graphical client.

But yes, you will be good if you uninstall the graphic client and use two console versions. that's what I've done since before I wrote that article.

stopthekilling77 · Post by **stopthekilling77** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 2:05 pm

thanks a ton, i'm almost done with this massive WU, i'm at 44000/50000 right now, so when this one's done, probably when i get into work tomorrow morning, i'll do all that! what'll probably happen is that i'll run one in the background all day (most demanding thing i do all day with this pc is word processing, email, and run Firefox) and then run the other instance of F@H when i leave, letting it go all night at 100%

flippin sweet!

stopthekilling77 · Post by **stopthekilling77** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 8:43 am

ok, so far i've:

- uninstalled my graphical client
- made 2 separate folders to accommodate the 2 new installations of the console version
- installed both console versions separately, set one to start when the computer starts (it didn't even after i restarted) and set the other not to start when the computer starts (well i guess that worked)
- feeling gipped, i manually started the 1st console version, and now it's not running. it just stopped at "Completed 0 of 20000000 steps" and its been like half an hour...

i dunno whats up

road · Post by **road** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 1:50 pm

I just read your original post and wanted to note my experiences. If you run CPU-Z, the main tab notes how many cores you have.
http://www.cpuid.com/download/cpu-z-139.zip
I have an older P4 that has "1 core and 2 threads". My control panel lists two processors, and the performance monitor shows two graphs, but only because of the HT ability. I have a single core, and everything I've read after my own 50% wtf moment has said, "it's okay just run 1 client".
Before things get too complicated and we start looking into your FAHLog.txt to see whats wrong, make sure you have a dual core CPU before running two F@H clients.

from: http://fahwiki.net/index.php/FAH_&_SMP#Hyper-Threading
However, if you try and run two instances of Folding@home on the same Hyper-Threaded CPU, they will both be competing for the same instruction units. This essentially means that each Folding@home instance shares its access to those instruction units. Overall a small performance gain is achieved due to the few calculations that can be run on the "spare" instruction units. However the end result is that the two WUs you are running complete in just under twice the length of time as a single WU would because of the afore mentioned instruction unit sharing.

This was my experience also, 1 WU takes roughly twice the time with a single core HT processor when running two clients. I ran a graphical and console version. You will see the two processes lists at 50% usage each, but there is no performance gain.

Post by **Apoptosis** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 2:07 pm

or just disable HT in the BIOS and it will run at 100% load on one client ;)

stopthekilling77 · Post by **stopthekilling77** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 2:12 pm

so after all that, i didnt know that i'm running Pentium 4 534 HT CPU in there... i got the same reading, "i core, 2 threads" now what does that mean when it all is boiled down?

i get that i should only run one client now, but not even thats working right now... suggestions? questions? idunno.

Post by **Illuminati** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 3:39 pm

I always manually start mine and never run as a service... I like the easy ability to just kill it whenever I like and know its not running anymore... that's just my opinion...

basically road is pointing out that there is virtually no difference between running two instances on a Hyper-Threaded CPU, but it doesn't hurt performance either... in fact, there is a slight performance gain overall... but negligible. So with HT turned on, even though Windows says your CPU is only at 50% load, that really means that 1 of your 2 threads is using 100% of the CPU's resources. So the single core is at 100% (or 99% rather) load... so there's very little reason to disable HT in the bios even if you just run a single instance of FAH. I like running two WU's at a time... to each their own.

Sounds complicated, but let us know if you are still lost.

stopthekilling77 · Post by **stopthekilling77** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 5:35 pm

lol i'll reread it later, i'm just diving into Linux for Dummies, 7th ed.

and my work computer is about 5 miles away right now

time to learn! when i'm back at work and i can get back to seeing the PC firsthand, i'll get back into it

i will return! in about .... 19 hours

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helping hand?

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