When I saw kill(something sorry I forgot the rest of your name. ) posted about the NIC card in this board and posted a link to HardOCP it reminded me of Folding @ Home. I was wondering how many of you fold? I fold for HardOCP - team33 (which is why I thought of it). If you don't know what it is read this: http://www.hardfolding.com/

If you're interested, join team 33.

I'll only download and run it if it produces leet graphics of the proteins it's simulating.

I think there is a version that does that. I'm assuming it would be the graphical client. I'm not sure how it works as I'm running hte console version, but hell, its for a good cause. Might as well work my CPU when I'm not.

I ran it for a while on my downstairs computer. Let's just say the graphics are slightly less than 'leet'. (If you're curious, I folded 1 unit and gave up because it took almost a week -- that's how slow that computer is.)

It makes graphics, involving lots of atoms. You can manually display it, or it has a screensaver option. I don't recommend the latter since it takes a while to resume from the screensaver.
I run F@H on and off, primarily depending on whim and what I'm doing at the time.

Who cares what it looks like? its for a very good cause! Now that you mention it, I'm gonna fire up two instances of it (w00t w00t for dual core )

Don't worry about it slowing down your comp, as it auto sets itself to the lowest priority level

EDIT: Got my two console clients of folding @ home going and both are set to run at startup - are yours? (btw, it can be set to run at boot in linux as well using an init script - Gentoo sets up that script automatically, not sure about other distros or not)

EDIT2: Each of my X2 4200+ cores can finish 1 frame (250,000 frames per workload I think) every ~30min, so that should give you an idea of how long it takes

I set it up on my comp, and I can do about one frame every 20 min (but I don't have a dual core). This seems like a good cause, and at least I can feel like I'm not wasting the 90% of my cpu that normally is spent running that system idle process.

The time it takes per frame also depends on the work unit and the protein involved... also since I got lotsa RAM, it is using the large WU (should only be used if you have more than 512mb of RAM - its in the Advanced Options)

Anyway, here are some links to read if you aren't sure what its for...

http://folding.stanford.edu/science.html

http://folding.stanford.edu/results.html

Is everyone on team 33?

I did this stuff. It was cool, like Seti @ home. I would install it and help, but... I am not on my pc. There also was a plugin for Google(Maby Yahoo!) toolbar that did this also.

I am - and I would recommend that you too help the [H]orde out

I am on team 33, but what is the [H]orde?

[H]orde=Team 33

I have my computer running 24/7 so I don't really have to have it set to run at boot. This computer I'm on now sucks so I don't get a lot of WUs done, but if I can get a 3.5 first semester, I get my good computer, and that means mucho WU's. (Athlon 64 3700 O/C'd to 2.7Ghz )

[H] == [H]ard|OCP
horde == a large group

[H]ard|OCP + horde = [H]orde

the [H]orde (aka, team 33) is hardocp.com's offical folding@home team

Wow, I must have had a large speed increase when I left my comp alone. Now it says it's doing 3m11s per frame. I'll have a work unit done by tomorrow night.

I have 3 minutes 47 seconds per frame

Do note not all frames are equal (Hell, one of my frames took 41minutes whereas another frame on the other core took 48 minutes - and I wasn't using the comp at all)

It does a "benchmark" right before it grabs the work unit, so it probably tries to pair your comp up with the best match (aka, faster comp == more work)

having said that, however, it isn't slowing me down at all, I can still play vid games without a problem (although one FAH does get less CPU cycles that the other, but thats life )

Hmmm, perhaps I will try this program after all. Any suggestions as to which version to get? Do you guys recommend the basic command-line one or the more advanced GUI versions?

depends, if you want to watch it, get the GUI version, if you just want to help out and not be bothered with it, do the command line version. You can minimize the GUI version to the system tray, whereas the command line version can actual be launched as a service (in windows anyway), so that it is completely transparent to the user (you can check its progress via the FAH log in the same directory as the EXE)

For the command line version, don't forget to first run it with the -config swtich

The transparency has me thinking: I wonder if some good samaritan - hacker will write a virus that installs this transparently. If they were good enough they could infect a good percentage of the world and we'd find a cure that much faster. The more I think about this, the more it sounds like a good idea. It's like the criminal with a heart.