Folding Guide and Links(Last Updated: 4/6/12)

[YARDofSTUF]

What is Folding@home?

Folding@home is a distributed computing project designed to perform simulations of protein folding and other molecular dynamics, and to improve the methods of doing so. Also referred to as FAH or F@h, it primarily attempts to determine how proteins reach their final structure, which is of significant academic interest and has major implications for research into Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, cancer, and many other afflictions. To a lesser degree, Folding@home also tries to predict that final structure and determine how other molecules may interact with it, which has applications in drug design

From the article found here.



Where to get the folding client

Go to the Folding@Home website and download the appropriate client for your machine.

For Windows Simply click the "Windows All versions" link. For Macs, or linux Computers click on "Other platforms" and select the client best for your system. The PS3 client can be found at the bottom of this list. And older GPU and SMP clients can be found here.


Differences in Types of Clients

There are basically 3 different of PC clients, CPU, SMP, and GPU, as well as a PS3 client. With version 7 the client will offer you modes that will work for your PC.

CPU clients will use a single CPU or core to fold with.

SMP clients will uses multiple CPUs or cores to fold on.

And the GPU clients use the graphics card to fold on. The GPU clients using Nvidia cards will use a small percentage of a CPU or core, where as an AMD card will use up a whole CPU or core.


Installation Guides

Vindows Version 7 Install Guide

Linux Version 7 Install Guide

Mac OS X Install Guide

Annoying but Helpful PS3 Install Video

Full List of Guides Available


How to join the Speedguide Folding Team

To make your points count for Speedguide enter 15 as your team number during the setup. After that your name and your points will show up under the Speedguide team stats.


Is a passkey important?

A passkey is only required to receive bonus points. Currently all WUs that offer bonus points are tied to the SMP client(most of which are the bigadv WUs). To get a passkey click here and fill out the info. You need to have completed at least one WU in order to get a passkey.



Stats and other Useful Links

Stats: SG Team Summary, SG User List, All Teams List

Projects Summary Page - useful for determining how many points each type of WU is worth

Folding@home Main Page

Offical Folding@home Forum

Folding@Home Blog


3rd Party Applications

HFM.NET - Folding client monitoring program.

FAH GPU Tracker V2 - Program to control multiple folding clients and track them.

Diskless Folding ISO Generator - Make an ISO file you can run from a CD or install to a USB thumb drive.

[YARDofSTUF]

Optimizing your SMP client

Pretty much everyone today has a CPU with multiple cores. To make use of multiple cores for folding you need to use the SMP client. Both the GUI version 7 client and the console version 6 clients can be set to use all or a limited number of cores.

If you have an AMD graphics card and are folding with both the SMP client and the GPU client, its importnat to remember that the GPU client will use up a core of the CPU as well. So when setting up the SMP client you should choose to leave a core free for the GPU.

The reason for this is performance. IF your CPU has 4 cores and the SMP client is trying to use all 4, but one is continuously busy due to the GPU client using it, the time to finish each frame(percent) of a WU may be longer than if the SMP client was set to use only 2 cores.

Limiting the cores available for the SMP client would also be a good idea if you had another program using up a core or 2 on a regular basis.

To limit the cores available for SMP folding in the version 7 client, go to "Configure" then the "Slots" tab, select "SMP" from the list and click "Edit" at the bottom right. Under the "SMP section of the new menu change the "CPUs" value to the desired number.

For the console client version 6, instead of using the "-smp" flag, use "-smp X", with X being the number of cores you want it to use.

Due to an issue on 7500 and 7501 WUs it is strongly advised to set the SMP Client to use an even number of cores at all times.



BigAdv WUs

Bigadv units reward you with bonus points for finishing them early, but there are a lot of requirements you need to meet in order to run this flag. You need a linux or OS X system, 8 cores(possibly changing to 16 cores soon) running at 2.4ghz or more, and 8 GB of RAM.

Also when you set the "-bigadv" flag make sure you also set the client to accept "big" WUs and DO NOT use the advanced methods option as it can override the "-bigadv" flag.

If you are able to meet these requirements you can rack up the points very fast!