Newbie needs help.

[nivrip]

P.S. What is a cruncher?

It's someone who allows his computer to be used for medical research. All very simple and runs in the background.

Here's some info from our Cruncher Captain, Muckshifter.

'But what is crunching?' I hear you cry. Fear not, I shall explain.

Find-A-Drug, Folding @ Home and World Community Grid all have the same aims: to solve medical problems through using the processing power of computers. This is where you come in... It would costs a great deal of money for these research companies to buy the processing power required, and so they ask for help from the general public. By simply downloading the relevant software, anyone can let their computer 'crunch' data, with the aim of finding such things as a cure for cancer. The program runs in the background while your computer is switched on, and you can go about your normal daily business without noticing any difference.

As well as the enormously good feeling of doing something to help others, there is fun to be had. There are teams of crunchers the world over, indeed, PCR has one: 'The PCReview Crew II' with World Community Grid. Members of this team crunch away, their data is automatically submitted, and a leader-board emerges. It's always good to try and beat the winner with your crunching power!

So how can you help? We are always on the look out for volunteer crunchers. You can join the team by firstly downloading the software (it is available for both Windows and Linux). Having done that, the next step is to register yourself on their website and join a team! Couldn't be more simple!



A number of the members here on PCR crunch on a regular basis and the results are shown daily in the Cruncher's Corner section of the Forums. At present we are crunching on projects for AIDS, Dengue Fever and The Human Proteome. We all hope that this work will eventually help in the treatment and cure of some of the nasty diseases that are around.

If you're interested or need any more info stick up another post.

 

[Madxgraphics]

I would agree with what most say about graphics cards, and would add, rather go for XP than Vista, but that is just down to my opinion, I seem to have a lot of trouble with Vista

 

[floppybootstomp]

I would agree with what most say about graphics cards, and would add, rather go for XP than Vista, but that is just down to my opinion, I seem to have a lot of trouble with Vista

He's probably in agreement with you as well but if you read the whole thread you'll note he received the two ATI cards for free, so little choice, really.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Well the last of my rig arrived yesterday, so after spending about 5 hours putting it all together it is finally working and can say am v. happy with the results, think i got quite alot for my money and wasn't as hard to build as i thought, the Phenom CPU doesn't even get that hot (i read in reviews it does) and my bro has overclocked it for me to 2.8Ghz and it is stable.

A big big thanks to everyone who helped,

Wayne

P.S. What is a cruncher?

AMD Phenom Quad Core 9850, MSI K9A2 Platinum, 4Gb OCZ/ATI 8500 RAM, Thermaltake VB1000 Black Case, 250Gb Maxtor Diamond HDD, 2 x Sapphire HD 3650 (512mb) OC @ 804Mhz, Vista HP 64 Bit, Creative Labs X-Fi Sound Blaster 7.1, LiteOn Lightscribe DVD/CD, 650 Watt PSU, Samsung 19" & 32" Monitors.

A fine system

Did you have any problems getting the sound card to work with Vista 64 Bit?

And how do the two cards in crossfire perform with games?

 

[Waynos_Face]

No, no probs at all with the sound card, had to get a friend to help cause i didnt know i had to disable the onboard sound.

The only game i have tried so far is Company of Heroes, have put it at 1920 x 1200 and had all the settings at ULTRA or HIGH, (which ever was highest), AA was only at x4, but it ran fine, my mate was checking on ATI catalyst as i was playing and the GPU usuage was at 77% and the temp was at 58 - 59 degrees C.

They are running in XFire and have overclocked CLOCK RATE from 725 to 804 and Memory from 500 to 515, i imagine this is why its abit hot, will try C & C 3 tomoz and am borrowing Crysis off of my mate, don't think it will cope too well with the latter.

Can anyone recommend a decent gaming pad?

Wayne

 

[Madxgraphics]

The question I would like to ask is.What sort of affect does it have on my machine in terms of using memory etc..? I don't want to run anything that might low me down...Also I am a bit dubious about runnnig something I can't see...Who's to say that information on my machine is not been accessed.....

 

[floppybootstomp]

These are, in my opinion, the best two gamepads on the market:

Corded: X-Box Pad for PC £18.00

Cordless: Logitech Rumblepad 2 £27.00

 

[floppybootstomp]

The question I would like to ask is.What sort of affect does it have on my machine in terms of using memory etc..? I don't want to run anything that might low me down...Also I am a bit dubious about runnnig something I can't see...Who's to say that information on my machine is not been accessed.....

If you mean Vista, yes, it will slow things down a little compared to XP but in my experience it's negligible. The difference is mostly in opening programs and folders on remote hard drives.

You do really need a minimum of 2Gb memory and Vista will cache lots of it in standard mode.

You can, however tweak Vista to suit your own preferences, just takes a little looking for, is all

As for strangers accessing your machine, I don't really know. Within Vista if you're permanently connected online MS will access your machine fairly frequently unless, as mentioned earlier, you tweak it not to.

But I'm honestly not that clear about that aspect of things, sorry.

 

[Madxgraphics]

Sorry, I was on about the CRUNCHER thing at the top of the page....

 

[nivrip]

Sorry, I was on about the CRUNCHER thing at the top of the page....

Well, I don't find any problems with speed or anything else for that matter. The whole research programme is only 75MB. I am not even aware that it is running at all.

And you can see the programme running at any time. You are connected to the research programme which automatically down- and uploads tasks which your PC completes - but you don't need to do anything.

There are 300,000+ people on the programme worldwide so I think you can be happy that it's safe. You can switch it off any time you like.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Sorry, I was on about the CRUNCHER thing at the top of the page....

Oh

Nobody and nothing will access your computer except to download 'work units' and upload the results.

You can switch it on and off at your leisure.

The program is designed so that it only uses your spare CPU cycles, it will give way and even shut down for any other usage.

It will constantly run your CPU core(s) at 100% though so you do need a good cooler on your CPU cos it will get hot at 100%.

FWIW my Dualie 6600 ran at around 43C at 100% with a Zalman cooler (see sig).

If you're doing something CPU intensive and maybe a little sensitive, it is advisable to close BOINC down.

And it's only fair to point out that crunching did give me some issues with Call Of Duty 4 online so I always shut it down before online gaming.

But that's the only game it ever affected in nine years of crunching, a lot of that time 24/7.

Those are the facts, it's for medical research, it's your choice

 

[Madxgraphics]

Hey Nivrip

Thanks for that. Now if only I could get the programme to download, seems since I read the first post, I am unable to download the programme due to Statistic updates or something like that..Will keep trying though..Like I said if there is anything I can do in anyway that might help Medical research I will..Have been doing quite a bit of work on fundraising for research on breast cancer..I lost my child hood swweetheart at the tender age of 19 to breast cancer and it is something that is dear to my heart..So always willing to help where I can....

 

[nivrip]

Sorry to hear that. I forgot to mention that there is also a project called "Help Conquer Cancer" as well as the others. You can choose which projects you wish to crunch on.

 

[Madxgraphics]

Thanks and thanks for the info, I will for sure look into it..Anything I cando to help research I will....

 

[V_R]

These are, in my opinion, the best two gamepads on the market:

Corded: X-Box Pad for PC £18.00

This thread go a little hijacked didn't it?

Amyway, i got one of them, superb, For driving games. If your playing first person shooters (FPS) Like call of duty 4 etc you have to use keyboard and mouse.

 

[floppybootstomp]

This thread go a little hijacked didn't it?

Welp, ya know when the conversation in the pub somehow goes from how cool a '65 Aston Martin DB6 was to the very real benefits of Broccoli in an everday diet.

That's the way it goes sometimes

I have one of those X-Box pads now, using it on my AMD 3.2Ghz system, it's good.

Been playing a little Carmageddon TDR2000 with it lately, actually, lol