Okay well im thinking about folding on my rig, mainly because im at school 6 hours a day and it could use a workout. Im 14 so i got school 5 days a week +Homework and my rig could be folding away all that time. In case your wondering yea, i built it and paid for it myself. My parents dont know much about computers, have to show how to do everything. But my questions where- -My friend has a PS3 that he folds on, and he said his parents only let him do it like every couple days a week because it runs up the power bill, is this true? And if it is, by about how much? -Also, exactly what is folding, i know its good, but i dont know EXACTLY what it does. Something with gene folding right? And finding proteins and stuff. So those are the two main ones for now. Thanks so much guys!
Well in terms of power consumption; if you were to run a gpu folding client on your particular graphics card, you'd be using an extra 144W of power compared to when the card is sitting idle at the Windows desktop. The extra power usage for a cpu client would be less than that, if you haven't got any energy saving features enabled for your cpu then you'd see even less difference between folding/not folding on the processor.
So, should i fold on my CPU? Would i fold better on my GPU? Or just how much would running both up the bill? Or just the GPU?
Fold on both of them if you want. PPD will likely be higher on the GPU, but the SMP client can pass up quite a fair amount too. Its your call really
Well the thing im wondering is how much will that run up my bill. Because if i can fold on both while im at school than that would be great! But im just wondering how much it will run up the electric bill.
It depend where you are from. Here in Quebec Canada, electricity is one of the few place in the world where it's really cheap because it's hydrauelectricity. Hewever europe cost a lot more, and Us is close to Canada in term of energy cost. Just how much, I think your need a voltometer to determermine just how much your pc will consume power. Then do the math, how much $ it cost for a giga watt. Or estimate it to 350w, and let us know how much! ($/Giga is on the power bill)
Hmmm, ill probably just run it a few nights and see how much it runs up the bill, if i run it and i dont notice a major difference, then ill run it a little more, and so on.
Don't worry about it! People are dying of cancer and you're worred about your electricity bill... Selfish! This is why the world is the way it is; becaue of people like you! J/K
Folding@home does not care how much you fold as long as you fold. Every completed WU moves the process closer to a cure. Contribute what you can, but be careful you can get addicted to folding. I started out with one computer and now I'm folding on 23 computers. Fold for a Cure, Fold for Life, Fold for Humanity Mike Leganfuh - Team XCUPs Aka: The Commander