FAH-Addict

I have reluctantly discarded InCrease and decided to run via the System Preferences > Other > Folding@Home panel which, with InCrease, was disabled.

All is working fine, but the installation instructions at http://folding.stanford.edu/English/MacSMPGuide (which I believe is the right page) it says little about what to do with the Advanced tab.

I presume that Advanced is where I would add additional arguments (I'm not a techie so don't understand what it actually means) so what do I add to get the best Folding performance? I'm interested in the Project, not earning maximum points unless, of course, the two are compatible.

I have, in my ignorance, currently got ...

-bigadv -smp 8

... entered, but is that correct? And Core network address is blank.

If it helps, I'm running a 27" iMac under MacOSX.6.2 thus:

Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac11,1
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 2.8 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 8 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Processor Interconnect Speed: 4.8 GT/s
Boot ROM Version: IM111.0034.B00
SMC Version (system): 1.54f33

It has hyper-threading which sounds like a really bad disease of dogs, but I guess it means that it is smarter then I am. It sometimes (with FahCore_a2.exe) runs as if it has 8 cores - or so MiniUsage and Increase told me).

I have asked this question on the Folding@Home forums but, alas, not had a response - hence my venture onto here.



Edit by iBozz On 02/22/10 at 23h32

Thanks, toTOW, much obliged.

I have 4GB of RAM out of a maximum of 8GB on this machine and I have noticed no problems with day to day use which I might attribute to Folding, nor has Folding ever run beyond the Due date save when I've been fumbling with InCrease trying to get it to work. And that's all down to me and not calxalot, by the way. It's an excellent front-end but operated in my case by an idiot.

Accordingly, I'll stick with -advmethods -smp 8 until someone tells me that there is a better configuration which may well occur when newer clients come on stream. It's a shame that, as far as I can tell, there seems no one single reference point (surely on the Pande site somewhere, they are the experts) which is kept up to date with all recommended settings and changes.

I generally find that Folding forums on various sites are aimed at the seasoned computer user and not the blundering ignoramus such as myself - and that's an observation and not a criticism. The Stanford site, for example, tells you how to download the Mac System Preferences files and shows you how to deal with the F@H Preferences panel, but says nothing about the Networking and Advanced tabs - not even "Leave well alone unless you want to destroy the Universe".

I stumbled with my previous front-end application on four separate machines (a G3, two G4s and the new i7) because I could never find a definitive, and simple, guide as to how to install it - posters on several sites were exceptionally helpful during my several periods of acute distress, but if I check all the advice given it differs from user to user and that only served to confuse me even more.

Now I accept that, although Marvin The Paranoid Android may have had a brain the size of a planet used only for taking hitchhikers to the Bridge, I only have a brain the size of a grain of sand trying to wrestle with a problem that would even have beaten Einstein and Hawking working together, but a simple Noddy Guide would help many first timers as well as congenital bumblers like me!

Still, each to their own, of course.

Many thanks again.



Edit by iBozz On 02/25/10 at 08h43