Folding Tweaks

1) The console version is significantly faster than the graphical version. The graphical version uses up extra CPU cycles to draw those pretty pictures on the screen.

2) command line switches

-advmethods "Request to be assigned work units from new projects, before they are broadly released to the rest of Folding@home. As among the first to try out new advanced simulations, you may wish to post any observations (positive or negative), questions, or issues at the user Forum."

-forceasm recommended for Intel "Instruct the core to use SSE/3DNow assembly instructions if possible, even if it has previously made the determination that the machine may not be handling this well."

-forceSSE recommended for AMD "On machines with an AMD processor, Core_78 gives priority to 3DNow over SSE -- this overrides that." NOTE: AMD TBird processors do NOT support SSE.

-local "Use configuration files from local directory. It instructs the client to read its config information from the client.cfg file in the current directory rather than, on Windows, from the installation directory specified in the registry, or, on Macintosh, the Library/Folding@home directory."

for a complete list of command line switches go to http://folding.stanford.edu/console-userguide.html

e.g. C:\FAH1\FAH1.exe -local -advmethods -forceasm

3) Multiple Instances
This primarily for Pentium 4 machines with Hyper-Threading but also applies to all multi-processor systems.

1st create seperate directories for each instance of Folding; FAH1, FAH2.

2nd place a copy of the folding executable in both directories, create a shortcut for each.

3rd edit the shortcuts with the necessary command line switches, at least the -local switch

4th set the machine IDs to two different numbers [1-8], ideally use 1 and 2.

2 instances on a hyper threading P4 generally improve point output of the machine by 5-10%

Thanks for the info.

However, I'm curious to know how much of a difference there really is between the graphical client and the commandline client. If you just let F@H sit in the system tray and not display the visualizations, is there really a large difference?

I might be checking out the commandline option soon.

about the graphical client, i think its not ideal because it keeps minimizing any full screen games that i use because it is drawing... also, if you open the display with the graphical display(in a way that you can see the picutres it draws) and move a dialog box or a window around, you will see that at any movement of the window it draws a new picture... a big waste of cpu power IMO.

The visualizations are a waste at any time.

It's not drawing anything I don't believe if the display is not up- that shouldn't be why your games minimize.

But is there any other possible explanation to the fact that if i close the graphical client and that i run the game, the game does not minimize?

the graphical client still does the computations necessary to draw the images on the screen even when it is minimized it just doesn't go through the finally step of putting the drawing commands in the screen buffer.

Anyway, as a LINUX and firefox user shouldn't you want the none bloatware version.

question, useing the command advmethods, will it start with the less common WU's after the WU you currently have finish or will you have to do it just before you recieve a new WU?

You can do it at any time. It will take effect the next time it downloads a workunit.

As a linux user there is only a non-bloatware version.

Haha, I'd use F@H in Gentoo but others around the house are only comfortable in Windows. So there iy stays much of the time.

Just got Firefox, the GIMP, and OO.o installed in Gentoo though, so I'll be booting into that fairly often to do things I would normally do in Windows.

hey memphisto, i have a question about this that you said :

-forceSSE recommended for AMD "On machines with an AMD processor, Core_78 gives priority to 3DNow over SSE -- this overrides that." NOTE: AMD TBird processors do NOT support SSE.

turns out that i do have a thunderbird with no sse support, so should i still use the comand? or what then?

No, you want it to default to the 3DNow instructions.

Well, I'd thought that it was stealing focus because of a priority setting, as I haven't had that problem.

But now I know that it really is drawing, minus displaying the image... for whatever reason.


As soon as this WU is done I'll have to grab the command line version.

BWAAHAHAHAHA, well, i dont think that is necessary, i dont know about you, but i just got the comand line one and run it instead of the "pretty" one,
it just continues where the "pretty" one left off (im now at 344 of 400). just download the comand line one and start it, it should read all the info from the "pretty" one and resume, well, im no expert, but it works for me, maybe memphisto or somebody else can confirm.

*EDIT*
I have tested the comand one runing while i play my game (starcraft brood wars, yeah, lil old, but still alive) and it doesnt minimize with the comand line version. Another thing : one time i kept maximising my game screen as fast as i could after it minimized and at one point it stopped, then i thought : what just happened? then i return to windows and see that Folding @ Home has belched an error that looked something like : Error drawing frame : Pixel format not found. so yeah, i assume that confirms what memphisto says about the graphical client still using cpu clocks to calculate those "pretty" pictures.

Oh yeah, i forgot to ask you memphisto, what comand should i use to make it default to 3dnow?

I use -forceasm on my AMD machine

So are you running it as a service or just normal?