what all hardware are you guys using to run folding home
I (alias
xii5ku) am running three RTX 4090 right now (board power capped at 360 W, although actual power consumption rarely goes near that when running Folding@Home) and one Xeon E5-2699 v4.
The latter warrants some explanation: Folding on CPUs gets one much lower points-per-day and much lower points-per-Joule than folding on GPUs. (Decent discrete GPUs, that is, not iGPUs which I guess are hardly better than CPUs.) And worse than CPUs are *old* CPUs like this Xeon. I am using it anyway due to three circumstances:
– I can tolerate its heat output currently.
– A while ago, my previous "daily driver" computer died and this Xeon based computer was the next best thing which I had on hand as a quick replacement.
– Last time I read about this subject, the Folding@Home consortium conducts projects on CPUs which do not overlap with their projects on GPUs. That is, volunteers' CPUs are giving them results which stand on their own. Even if poorly credited.
how often do you run it in routine daily life
Me, basically only during January. Throughout all year I
am running BOINC based projects though. I have an unreliable Internet connection at home, and most of the BOINC based projects enable me to buffer work for arbitrary lengths of time, in contrast to Folding@Home which supports only very minimal buffering. I hate it if an unsupervised always-on computer goes idle due to empty work buffer. Furthermore, I lean a little more towards supporting physics/ geoscience/ astro projects, relative to bio/ medical projects.
Also, a while ago I experienced a degradation of my Internet connection which caused result file uploads to stall or ultimately fail quite often. This was a particular problem with all projects which (a) have large result files and (b) have an ocean located between me and the upload server. Both is true with Folding@Home. I have since found out how to fix this problem, by means of better IP packet queuing control locally on my computers, and can therefore participate at upload-heavy projects again, to the modest extent of the bandwidth of my Internet link. Right now I have Internet over TV cable, but soon™ I shall get FTTH with hopefully better stability and better upload bandwidth (depending on where the service provider's price gouging on the one hand and my stinginess on the other hand are going to meet). Ducts for FTTH have been buried in the street recently, but fiber has yet to be threaded in the street and installed in the house.
Apropos. My real points-per-day (PPD) are quite a bit lower than the estimated PPD which FAHControl is showing to me. I am guessing the main reason for this is that FAHControl does not take the time in account which it takes me to upload result files. But workunit turnaround times include the time needed for file transfers besides the actual computation time. Therefore slow transfers cut into the quick return credit bonus which F@H assigns to results.