[LiveBrianD]

Is it worth running programs like Folding@Home? Or would I be simply wasting energy? And what do you guys think of the ones listed here? http://en.wikipedia....puting_projects

[waldojim]

All I will say is that I don't bother with them.

Bit-coin would have been my only project, but then I figured out that it just wasn't worth the electricity.

[LiveBrianD]

waldojim, on 17 July 2011 - 01:16 PM, said:

All I will say is that I don't bother with them.

Bit-coin would have been my only project, but then I figured out that it just wasn't worth the electricity.

I don't know... bitcoin seems a little fishy, plus I would have no use for the bitcoins I'd get from helping with it....

How much more energy does a PC use if, say, the CPU usage is 50% instead of 5% while web surfing thanks to one of these distributed computing projects? A desktop, that is. Percentage-wise.

[waldojim]

LiveBrianD, on 17 July 2011 - 02:29 PM, said:

I don't know... bitcoin seems a little fishy, plus I would have no use for the bitcoins I'd get from helping with it....

How much more energy does a PC use if, say, the CPU usage is 50% instead of 5% while web surfing thanks to one of these distributed computing projects? A desktop, that is. Percentage-wise.

Not that I care one way or anther here - but I would just exchange out the bitcoins to cash - right now it is something like $20 / coin.

The CPU power used at 50% load shouldn't be all that much (about 50 watts for a typical 120watt system). But there is more to it than that. There always is. Remeber, we are talking more CPU, NB, RAM, Cooling, etc activity. For the most part, when using F@H or similar, just figure on about 3/4 of your PC's typical max power draw.

[LiveBrianD]

waldojim, on 17 July 2011 - 02:46 PM, said:

LiveBrianD, on 17 July 2011 - 02:29 PM, said:

I don't know... bitcoin seems a little fishy, plus I would have no use for the bitcoins I'd get from helping with it....

How much more energy does a PC use if, say, the CPU usage is 50% instead of 5% while web surfing thanks to one of these distributed computing projects? A desktop, that is. Percentage-wise.

Not that I care one way or anther here - but I would just exchange out the bitcoins to cash - right now it is something like $20 / coin.

The CPU power used at 50% load shouldn't be all that much (about 50 watts for a typical 120watt system). But there is more to it than that. There always is. Remeber, we are talking more CPU, NB, RAM, Cooling, etc activity. For the most part, when using F@H or similar, just figure on about 3/4 of your PC's typical max power draw.

Do you know what results there have been from using F@H? I haven't found anything online about that - are they really getting anywhere with it, helping things, or is it just a waste of energy?

[waldojim]

LiveBrianD, on 17 July 2011 - 03:01 PM, said:

Do you know what results there have been from using F@H? I haven't found anything online about that - are they really getting anywhere with it, helping things, or is it just a waste of energy?

Not a clue. Again, I don't mess with it. At one point, I ran SETI@Home, but that was a long time ago - during my K6/2 days.

[crazy4laptops]

The lesser-known distributed computing project is Gomez Peer- http://www.gomezpeerzone.com/
The payout is not worth it if you have less than 4 computers, plus if you make less than $5 a month, you don't get paid...

I was able to sneak around the system last winter and run 6 VM's + host Server o/s on my spare laptop (all Server 2008 R2) got me $12 one month, but the maintenance and uptime required is an absolute pain! The Gomez app is a little buggy and built entirely on Java and when it crashes, it maxes out the CPU I shut down my Gomez last year... They are getting cheap cheap cheap CPU cycles for almost nothing.

If you have a school/work lab where computers are running all the time, Gomez will be your friend! It's not overly intrusive and doesn't eat up too much CPU time, just about 70% cpu for about 3-7 minutes for every 15 minute workload cycle.

I tried the f@H and SETI, got bored because you can only run at 100% cpu usage... which btw, is one way to stress test your system, but you can't run efficiently at 50% which is annoying. It ramps the CPU up from 0% to 100% at about 3 times every 5 seconds to give f@H an average CPU time of 50%

[LiveBrianD]

How powerful of a PC do you need and how much must it be on for you to earn $5?

[crazy4laptops]

Uptime- 22hours a day, 7 days a week, for 31 days...

How powerful? Well that's relative... I ran it on my AMD Sempron 3000+ desktop (1.8ghz with 1gb of ram) and made only about $3 on my first try... loaded Gomez on my spare laptop (same specs. as desktop) and kept my desktop going for 31 days, and made $6. The CPU power is not overly important, your internet speed/type is what Gomez likes, but if your internet has slowdowns, you will get some CPU-based tasks as well. It really depends on the day.

You will need multiple computers whether physical or virtual... (hyper-v server will help maximize your earnings)

Specs of my Hyper-v setup
HP dv6000z laptop
AMD Turion x64 dual core @ 2GHz
4GB of ram
Server 2008 r2 x64
Ran 6 virtual machines of Server 2008r2
Made $12

So earnings are sorta logarithmic/exponential/scales funny... you just gotta run it and find the sweet spot.

[LiveBrianD]

crazy4laptops, on 18 July 2011 - 12:22 PM, said:

Uptime- 22hours a day, 7 days a week, for 31 days...

How powerful? Well that's relative... I ran it on my AMD Sempron 3000+ desktop (1.8ghz with 1gb of ram) and made only about $3 on my first try... loaded Gomez on my spare laptop (same specs. as desktop) and kept my desktop going for 31 days, and made $6. The CPU power is not overly important, your internet speed/type is what Gomez likes, but if your internet has slowdowns, you will get some CPU-based tasks as well. It really depends on the day.

You will need multiple computers whether physical or virtual... (hyper-v server will help maximize your earnings)

Specs of my Hyper-v setup
HP dv6000z laptop
AMD Turion x64 dual core @ 2GHz
4GB of ram
Server 2008 r2 x64
Ran 6 virtual machines of Server 2008r2
Made $12

So earnings are sorta logarithmic/exponential/scales funny... you just gotta run it and find the sweet spot.

Why do multiple computers help? And what kind of stuff does it do anyway? How CPU intense is it? And how much internet bandwidth does it use? I wouldn't want it slowing that down. Man, I think I'd spend more on energy costs than I'd earn with this.

Finally, why do you not get paid if you make less than $5? You won't get that money at all? Is it too much of a hassle for them in that case?

[crazy4laptops]

LiveBrianD, on 18 July 2011 - 12:57 PM, said:

Why do multiple computers help? And what kind of stuff does it do anyway? How CPU intense is it? And how much internet bandwidth does it use? I wouldn't want it slowing that down. Man, I think I'd spend more on energy costs than I'd earn with this.
Finally, why do you not get paid if you make less than $5? You won't get that money at all? Is it too much of a hassle for them in that case?

Gomez specializes in analyzing website performance data... They have also been known to load test websites (aka DDoS stress testing) upon request from the website owner. Its basically a huge analytical company

Multiple computers help in the CPU processing areas (and making more money) plus, if you have a faster internet connection, the more computers/connections to test the sites. Run Wireshark on a Gomez computer to see which websites get tested.

I started my Gomez on DSL for 3 months @ 3mbps down and 384kpbs up, made about $10 total... Upgraded to fiber, made $7, $9, and then $12 before I stopped/ran out of time to maintain the system.
I had no internet speed loss or computer performance issues (besides the occasional Java crash)

I think the $5 limit is an incentive to optimize your system(s) and to have an earning goal and maybe for legal/tax reasons too...
If you don't make the $5 the first time, your earnings are not wiped out, you keep all earnings and they will send you the money after next month's payment cycle closes (can't remember what the cycle is)

[LiveBrianD]

So basically I'm helping with DDoS attacks? COOL!

How much has your energy bill gone up since starting to do that? I think it might be cheaper NOT to do it for that reason. Not to mention that the increased CPU load wears out my cpu fans faster.

[LiveBrianD]

Say crazy4laptops, how does Hyper-V compare to, say, running XP in a VM? Aside from the fact that it's free.

[crazy4laptops]

LiveBrianD, on 18 July 2011 - 04:30 PM, said:

Say crazy4laptops, how does Hyper-V compare to, say, running XP in a VM? Aside from the fact that it's free.

To answer both, I do not know how much my bill went up... lets say it's an extra 50-70watts an hour to make the math easy. And yeah it they call it stress testing but we all know what that means ;-)

So how does Hyper-V compare? It is a specially designed piece of awesomeness! Instead of running the entire o/s inside a single process like VirtualBox/VMware... the thing I noticed about Hyper-V was that machines share various running processes and CPU time instead. It's really neat and doesn't tax or load the system as much. Which is how I was able to run 6 VM's of Server 2008r2 on the Server 2008r2 host. I would have a maxed out dual core CPU struggling to run just 2 VM's of the same o/s with Virtualbox. Thus negating any gain for distributed computing projects.

Its like pushing a baseball through a garden hose when running in Virtualbox... it will work, but it requires alot of overhead.
In Hyper-V it avoids the overhead by sharing various system processes with multiple operating systems (does that make sense?) This is why it is critical to have a stable Host when running Hyper-V

Another way to look at it is this- If the Hyper-V'd system needs to processes lsass.exe, it will place a call for it, latch on to the process and then return it back to the Host when it's done. That is the idea that makes sense to me and is actually really neat to see when you get to try it out!

[LiveBrianD]

crazy4laptops, on 18 July 2011 - 07:09 PM, said:

LiveBrianD, on 18 July 2011 - 04:30 PM, said:

Say crazy4laptops, how does Hyper-V compare to, say, running XP in a VM? Aside from the fact that it's free.

To answer both, I do not know how much my bill went up... lets say it's an extra 50-70watts an hour to make the math easy. And yeah it they call it stress testing but we all know what that means ;-)

So how does Hyper-V compare? It is a specially designed piece of awesomeness! Instead of running the entire o/s inside a single process like VirtualBox/VMware... the thing I noticed about Hyper-V was that machines share various running processes and CPU time instead. It's really neat and doesn't tax or load the system as much. Which is how I was able to run 6 VM's of Server 2008r2 on the Server 2008r2 host. I would have a maxed out dual core CPU struggling to run just 2 VM's of the same o/s with Virtualbox. Thus negating any gain for distributed computing projects.

Its like pushing a baseball through a garden hose when running in Virtualbox... it will work, but it requires alot of overhead.
In Hyper-V it avoids the overhead by sharing various system processes with multiple operating systems (does that make sense?) This is why it is critical to have a stable Host when running Hyper-V

Another way to look at it is this- If the Hyper-V'd system needs to processes lsass.exe, it will place a call for it, latch on to the process and then return it back to the Host when it's done. That is the idea that makes sense to me and is actually really neat to see when you get to try it out!

So your host OS is also Hyper-V? Or is it regular Windows? It sounds like part of it is simply not running a gui. What VM program are you using?

btw for me, it seems that it's like shoving a soccer ball through a 6"-8" pipe. Not very hard. But then again, I have a faster desktop CPU and more RAM. It definitely sounds cool though and I'm trying it.

[crazy4laptops]

My host o/s is Server 2008 R2... sorry if that escaped the details earlier

For the free Hyper-V all you need is a second computer to manage it... Microsoft in all of it's wisdom decided that was how it should be done.
http://technet.micro...c794756(v=ws.10).aspx If the link doesn't work just google- Hyper-V tools for Remote Administration.

Hyper-V has just the Server 2008 R2 core installed and has minimal GUI and setup can be done via command line. But the RA software is your best bet.

[LiveBrianD]

crazy4laptops, on 19 July 2011 - 05:15 PM, said:

My host o/s is Server 2008 R2... sorry if that escaped the details earlier

For the free Hyper-V all you need is a second computer to manage it... Microsoft in all of it's wisdom decided that was how it should be done.
http://technet.micro...c794756(v=ws.10).aspx If the link doesn't work just google- Hyper-V tools for Remote Administration.

Hyper-V has just the Server 2008 R2 core installed and has minimal GUI and setup can be done via command line. But the RA software is your best bet.

So how do you use the machine then?

I'm thinking that maybe I'll install the management tools on the host, then configure the VM's networking to 'Bridged' so it sees the actual network, and boom, there.
Somehow your link didn't work, but I deleted that little bit on the end and got to it. http:// technet.microsoft.com /en-us/library/cc794756(WS.10).aspx

[LiveBrianD]

I just talked to another guy about some stuff, and he happened to say that distributed computing is a good idea. I just downloaded BOINC and was wondering what projects I should run. I added the climateprediction.net one, but that only uses 1 core. I then added Rosetta@home and that seems to be running 3 instances right now (which are independent, so they all have slightly different amounts of progress), so my CPU is maxed out. Are there any other projects you guys suggest adding to this? I was trying to add SETI@home (looks interesting), but right now the site seems to be down and I get an error when adding it to boinc. (the main BOINC site is also down - I had to download the client from a different site. SETI and BOINC are both UC Berkeley projects btw.)

What I've found is that, when idle, the machine uses 80W and, under load, 136W. The CPU is only at 45C, and I don't even hear the fan spinning up (it's at 1400RPM right now, normally 950RPM idle, 2500RPM is what the fan is rated for).

[ElfBane]

LiveBrianD, on 16 May 2012 - 06:35 PM, said:

I just talked to another guy about some stuff, and he happened to say that distributed computing is a good idea. I just downloaded BOINC and was wondering what projects I should run. I added the climateprediction.net one, but that only uses 1 core. I then added Rosetta@home and that seems to be running 3 instances right now (which are independent, so they all have slightly different amounts of progress), so my CPU is maxed out. Are there any other projects you guys suggest adding to this? I was trying to add SETI@home (looks interesting), but right now the site seems to be down and I get an error when adding it to boinc. (the main BOINC site is also down - I had to download the client from a different site. SETI and BOINC are both UC Berkeley projects btw.)

What I've found is that, when idle, the machine uses 80W and, under load, 136W. The CPU is only at 45C, and I don't even hear the fan spinning up (it's at 1400RPM right now, normally 950RPM idle, 2500RPM is what the fan is rated for).

I run Einstein@home and Seti@home. They do increase the temp slightly. You will find though, that BOINC projects will idle if you start doing heavy processing,,, such as launch Skyrim (or any other heavy resource app).

[LiveBrianD]

I just added einstein@home. I guess the SETI@home guys don't want any cpu cycles from me - the site is still down, and I can't add it to BOINC.