Question

[DTHCND]

I just heard about Big WUs, and advanced WUs, and was wondering are there any permanent issues using them may cause? Also how do I use them. I am planning on using it on a computer that is not used any more, Hard Drive is 10GB (Lol soo small) and idk bout rest cause it is 20 years old and I can't remember, also it runs Windows Millennium. PLEASE HELP!!!

[DTHCND]

Any help? Anyone?

[DTHCND]

Oh oops, I posted in wrong place... I am VERY sorry.

[7im]

Hello DTHCND, welcome to the folding forum.

Big WUs and Advance WUs are typically geared towards taking advantage of the higher processing power and larger available resources in newer higher end computers. These WUs tend to tax a system more than standard WUs. I don't recommend them for Pentium 3 class systems, but P4s and above should work fine. Kind of depends system memory, processor speed, etc.

[codysluder]

Yes, you posted in the wrong place, but you can still read about the bigadv WU in the announcements.
viewtopic.php?f=24&t=10697

[bruce]

Topic moved.

[DTHCND]

Would it dramatically decrease performance & would it cause any damage to your computer you cannot easily fix? I have AMD Athlon X2, Windows Vista 64-bit, and then the computer listed in the first post I ever made. Oh and thanks 7im. Edit: Hard drive is 208GB, 180GB free. Also I hear you must have linux?

[bruce]

FAH is designed to use the unused resources on your computer. That means that instead of being idle most of the time, the computer stays busy most of the time. The processor doesn't "wear out" like other things do, so there's no damage there.

Because it's constantly running at 100%, though, it does produce more heat. A well designed computer can dissipate the heat of running at 100% and it will last for many years. Some laptops and some poorly designed computers cannot deal with the extra heat, and it's possible that that heat can cause early failure of various components. Also, if you have a cat or if the computer is in a dusty room, dust can accumulate in the heatsink and make matters worse, so periodic cleaning may be appropriate.

Most people fold 24x7 for may years without any kind of problems, but it wouldn't be fair to say that nobody ever has a problem.

[DTHCND]

Ok thanks, so basically if my computer is ok with heat, BigAdv WU should be ok?

[parkut]

to run a -bigadv wu, you need a machine capable of running 8 cores and the SMP linux client. If as you say your machine is several years old, it probably does not have the required number of processor cores.

[bruce]

To run FAH on Windows ME, you'll need to run one of the older clients. Those clients don't have a setting for BigWUs and certainly don't have the power to run -bigadv. (BigWus need to allocate more RAM than Win9x/WinME can handle.)

You may be able to run -advmethods, but it's not clear whether that would be an advantage or a disadvantage. FAH does quite well when you accept the default configuration settings.

[DTHCND]

to run a -bigadv wu, you need a machine capable of running 8 cores and the SMP linux client. If as you say your machine is several years old, it probably does not have the required number of processor cores.

Ok I feel a little dumb now. What is a core & a SMP linux client? I am wondering if I can run it on another one of my computers.

[P5-133XL]

Newer computers commonly have more than one processor per chip and each one is considered a core. I believe you said you have an Athlon X2 and that has two cores. I think you would be better served running two copies of the uniprocessor client rather than SMP. Linux is an operating system like/competing with Windows but since you are running 64 bit Vista simply use the Windows client.

[DTHCND]

Newer computers commonly have more than one processor per chip and each one is considered a core. I believe you said you have an Athlon X2 and that has two cores. I think you would be better served running two copies of the uniprocessor client rather than SMP. Linux is an operating system like/competing with Windows but since you are running 64 bit Vista simply use the Windows client.

Ok Thanks! How do I do what you said I be better off doing though? Edit: Lol, I know what Linux is but thanks anyways.

[P5-133XL]

The SMP client is a high performance client designed for multiple cores. The SMP requires much more regular hand holding too and you being a beginneer in this, I would not recommend it for you. Your Athlon X2 is very low-end for it and may possibly not be able to finish all the WU's SMP assigns so I would definitely recommend the uniprocessor client for you.