No idea where to start

[smit33]

Hey guys! i Just got a new computer and figured I would download folding @home for it. I've run the program before on my ps3 and it's just awesome. As a 3rd year undergrad bio student I find this stuff really cool. But back to my question. I just got an i7-2600k, with an amd hd radeon 7970 and I have new clue which client is the best for me. I was looking into the more high performance ones as my rig is capable of handling them, I just didn't know which one to download. Since I have an amd GPU I was looking more into the SMP, but I've read that they are trickier to install. Any comments would be much appreciated!

[Jesse_V]

Hi there smit33 welcome to the F@h support forum!

Yes I have to agree that it is a bit difficult to decide which client to use. The Pande lab is aware of this and is seeking to unify all the clients together into one simple program, referred to as V7. We're beta testing it, and it does have a few quirks here and there, but I think it should work pretty well for you, and should make the installation pretty straightforward. http://folding.stanford.edu/English/WinGuide and https://fah-web.stanford.edu/projects/FAHClient/ are the links for you. The developers say that it's almost ready for release to the main page, there's just a few more things to address before that happens.

If you don't want to go that route, on this page http://folding.stanford.edu/English/DownloadWinOther you can install the Windows SMP2 client for you 2600K. Your GPU can run the Windows System tray client, which is the first link under the "Windows: v6 GPU2" section.

Let us know how it goes.

[smit33]

Thanks a lot for the quick repply! I got side tracked from my studying so I thought I would take a break and post on here asking for help. I have an advanced cell bio midterm in a couple hours so when I get home I'll definitely be installing this! Thanks a lot again, much appreciated!

[bollix47]

If you're going to run both smp and gpu clients then it's probably best to only give the smp client 6 cores rather than all 8. The amd gpu will require regular and frequent access to the cpu for loading and unloading and that would greatly interfere with the smp client if you give it all 8 cores.

[smit33]

I ended up installing the V7 beta and everything is running good, already made it through one work unit! Just one thing though, whenever i hit view to see the protein in 3d, it renders for about 10 seconds than the "view" crashes. Is this an issue with the beta? Or can i attribute this to my card being too "new" and not fully supported yet?

[7im]

Issue with beta. The viewer's development hit fah on a crossover point. Viewer works with an older fahcore (client file), but not on the newer fahcores. And newer fahcores haven't added support for the viewer yet. Also not sure what the final solution will be yet, if the viewer will change again, or the fahcores.

[smit33]

Alright, thanks a lot! I look forward to some good folding!

[Jesse_V]

Did you get a passkey? You enter it into the client. You'll need one to qualify for bonus points, which non-linearly reward you for quickly returning WUs. You'll also need to complete 10 WUs and maintain an 80% successful return rate. That isn't too difficult to do, but you'll see a big jump in the points you receive.

[smit33]

Yes, I saw that on one of the links you sent me and I grabbed one. Figured it would be worth it. And ya, I'm pretty sure I can manage that, just starting my 3rd unit lol