Katawa Shoujo Folding@Home Team

[Silentcook]

YAY! I finally actually succeeded in sending my first work unit back to the F@H server, even though I had to download an obsolete WinXP client to get through. Still no idea why the newest client refuses to swap data for me, but at least I can be credit to team.

(By the way, should someone else suffer my same troubles: here's the the relevant download link.)
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/DownloadOld

[Bara]

Cool, I just noticed on the team page that the KS team has completed over 375 Work Units and is Team Ranking (incl. aggregate) 8352 of 161791. Not a bad showing in 9 days or so.

[G3n0c1de]

Cool, I just noticed on the team page that the KS team has completed over 375 Work Units and is Team Ranking (incl. aggregate) 8352 of 161791. Not a bad showing in 9 days or so.

Heh, I can see the interweb headlines now: "Cripple Game Community Helping Cure Cancer"

Keep it up.

[sydwert]

i have dual core and the system tray client is only ever using up one core's worth of juice, i cant seem to get the smp client up and running, and the gpu client makes my entire system lag shit. do i run 2x console client for maximum CPU usage?

[Malinor]

Waaaaah. I BSoD'd from something unrelated and lost both SMP and GPU WUs that were ~90%. The SMP one was worth almost 2000 points too. D=

That aside, KS is in the top 5% of all teams now. (7676/161820)

Our grand score of 170600 can only go up. Onward!

<_<

[Bara]

i have dual core and the system tray client is only ever using up one core's worth of juice, i cant seem to get the smp client up and running, and the gpu client makes my entire system lag shit. do i run 2x console client for maximum CPU usage?

While it IS possible to get the CPU anf GPU client to run simultaneously, I could only get it to run by manualy restarting to GPU client after every WU. I decided that babysitting the client was not going to work on my computer. It might be possible to get 2 CPU clients running at the same time on a dual core, but when I tried, I ran into machine ID problems at start up and the second client gave an error. I did not feel like putting much effort into getting it to work though. Anyone else get it running with 2 CPU clients on a dual core?

[Malinor]

The GPU client runs straight off your graphics card, so even if you've got a lot of RAM and a good processor, the GPU client will make your computer eat dust if the graphics card is too old.

That aside, I didn't have any trouble running both clients. I initially downloaded the regular CPU client and started it up, then nabbed the GPU client, both ran without a hitch. About 60% of my way into the first CPU WU I realized that they had a client for those with multiple cores, and since I'm running a quad core system I figured, hey, why not? Getting the SMP to run was easy except for one simple thing that the guide failed, which is a certain file that hit its deadline just a few weeks ago, and as such the guide is outdated. After digging through their forums about it, I got the right file (it's the actual x86 launch file and having an old one made it impossible for me to configure or set it up at all, let alone start it) and discontinued the CPU one in favor of the SMP client.

I now have them both running simultaneously and unless I try running a newer or more intensive game, there's little to no impact on the general performance of my system.

As for running a separate client for each core, my understanding from browsing their forum is that it's possible and some people do it, but it isn't recommended.

[berserker29]

i have dual core and the system tray client is only ever using up one core's worth of juice, i cant seem to get the smp client up and running, and the gpu client makes my entire system lag shit. do i run 2x console client for maximum CPU usage?

While it IS possible to get the CPU anf GPU client to run simultaneously, I could only get it to run by manualy restarting to GPU client after every WU. I decided that babysitting the client was not going to work on my computer. It might be possible to get 2 CPU clients running at the same time on a dual core, but when I tried, I ran into machine ID problems at start up and the second client gave an error. I did not feel like putting much effort into getting it to work though. Anyone else get it running with 2 CPU clients on a dual core?

Yes, 2 console clients would have your cpu running at 100% all the time.

@Bara: Every F@H that you are running is set as being "machine ID 1" as default. If you are using the console client you can change it under "advanced settings" during config, or just go to "settings" in system tray version. You just have to make sure that no 2 F@H's have the same machine id on a single computer.

Waaaaah. I BSoD'd from something unrelated and lost both SMP and GPU WUs that were ~90%. The SMP one was worth almost 2000 points too. D=

That aside, KS is in the top 5% of all teams now. (7676/161820)

Our grand score of 170600 can only go up. Onward!

<_<

STOP!!!

The GPU client still needs to be using 1 of your CPU's cores to work, but the SMP (multi core) client is already using all of them!!!

If you have a dual core, but are running SMP+GPU, your poor little CPU is trying to work at 150%! The BSOD was probably due to your CPU getting so hot that windows freaked out and bailed on you.

Try to leave one CPU core free if you intend to use the GPU client.

(Not trying to be harsh, just trying to get your attention before your computer pulls a Hisao.)

[Bara]

Uhhh, my head hurts now, but if the thread I saw on the F@h forums is the same one as mentioned in Malinor's post above this is the link to the thread on F@h forums.

http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=10490

Why re-invent the wheel, or re-post it anyway; I figure most folks have better things to do.

To help folks who may not quite understand which client might be best suited for their computer to run this is what I've figured out:

GPU client: Is availble for Windows only. Can be run if you have a Nvidia or ATI video card that supports it. Check the websites they link. It will impact your video performance. (Don't forget to get the correct drivers if needed.)

Unicode client: is for single core CPU's.

SMP client: Is for "recent" multi-core CPU's. (How recent they do not say, but if it does not work on your CPU you can run the Unicode client.) SMP has a 64 bit version (MPICH) and a 32 bit version (DEINO). Basicly, under XP or Vista these are Linux emulators that allow the client to use all the cores of the CPU.

This sure the heck is not a comprehensive guide but might help some folks find the right FAQ's and understand some of the forum threads more easily at F@h.

[Malinor]

Nay, berserker, the GPU client runs off of your graphics card. While it does require a small amount of processor power, there is an option contained within the GPU client for that very reason, allowing it to take precedence over the SMP client. The end result is that three of your cores are running at full speed and the last core is running at ~99% of normal output, allowing both to run simultaneously without incident. If you browse around their forums for a bit you'll see that it is not at all uncommon and to some extent is actually recommended. The BSoD I encountered was from an unrelated issue.

To Bara - That is indeed what I was talking about. I used the MPICH guide located on their site--

http://folding.stanford.edu/English/WinSMPGuideMPICH

The topic you linked to contains a file that is now necessary for installing the SMP client, I don't know why but from my understanding they set dates by which the SMP client will stop working, possibly as some form of extended beta testing. The last one recently expired and the instructions in the guide have yet to be updated, so if anyone else is trying to get the SMP client running, make sure you follow the guide (you might want the DEINO guide which is on their site as well) and use the link Bara posted when you get to the actual installation.

EDIT: I see that topic says they'll be refreshing the packages soon, so it's quite possible that by the time anyone else actually tries this out, the instructions from the guide will be accurate again.

[Synoptic]

Tried it (after I tried for an hour to get the client to work lol n00b), while idle and my PC bailed on me after half an hour.

I'm using a 7 years old system that has a 1300MHz Athlon processor with a shitty cooler. :/

BSoD was just a matter of time. lol

Sorry, can't help with this.

PS: I saw a dude on the team page named "Yamaku_High_School_Protein_Research_Facility" LOL good one

[Malinor]

Hey man, no big loss, you gave it a shot after all. =)

I just enjoy it because I put together a fairly powerful computer to play newer games (which is mildly ironic as lately I play more VNs than anything else) because my computer before this was OLD. IIRC it had an 850MHZ processor. I had that stagnant beast until about a year ago. The thing is, even though I have this vastly superior computer now...I'm not always pushing it to the limit, you know? So I figure I'd put it to good use when I'm not putting it to my use.

That said, KS is now ranked 6884th, with just over 200,000 points and just under 500 WUs.

[berserker29]

@Malinor

What GPU are you folding with? I'm on an HD4850, and when I'm folding it maxes out one of my cores.

Of course, AMD and Nvidia GPU's run via different languages, so if you're using an Nvidia card I'd be curious to know if that's why your CPU usage stays low.

I didn't mean to offend you if I did, I just tend to get a little jumpy when I hear problems from people about F@H "Hurting their computer". My most recent occurrence of painfully obvious user error, was when a friend of mine complained about problems running F@H on his P4.

I checked it out and he was trying to use the SMP client.

When I asked him "WHY!?!" he gave me a blank look and said that it was worth more points.

He didn't understand the principle behind the SMP, he ONLY that it was worth more points.

As a computer technician, such abuse makes me sad.

[Malinor]

I use an Nvidia 9800GTX.

Perhaps you have the display box running at all times?

I've noted that if left in the system tray and not displayed, it takes up a whopping 0% (so far as the task manager is concerned) of my CPU. However, with the graphical display up, it dances between 6% and 11%.

Even with both SMP and GPU running with the display box active, all that appears to happen is (as it should according to a simple option in the GPU clients configuration menu) is that the SMP essentially just "gives up" all that is necessary to run the GPU, meaning I end up with three cores folding efficiently, the GPU client hogging between 1/5th and 2/5ths of a single core, and the SMP using what remains.

Keep in mind that I am not a computer technician, just someone who spends far more time than they should on the computer. =P

That said, I very well could be doing something wrong, but I've seen no negative impact in performance related to either client besides the aforementioned and expected "I must turn it off when I play high performance games" issue.

[G3n0c1de]

Congratulations all!

The Katawa Shoujo team has smashed through the 5,000th team mark, and is currently placed at rank 4,841 of 162,084! This puts us in the top 3% of all registered teams!

We have turned in 776 work units, and have accumulated a grand score of 331,211.

And we have done this in only 2 weeks.

Keep up the great work guys!