How many people here use their PS3 for folding?

Archaea

Archaea

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Oct 19, 2004
Messages
11,828
The power usage of the PS3 at full tilt is just shy of 300 watts.

300 watts 24/7 will cost (guestimate from my own power usage bills and observations - feel free to correct me if you've got more details) about $30 a month in the midwest + or - $10 a month so say $20-40 a month.

This is my observation on month to month bills based on shutting my PC off at night and leaving it on, and then comparing bills several times. (I've taken into account the seasonal differences as well)

For those of you who fold, more importantly those of you who are old enough to live on your own (pay your own electric bill) --- would your idealogy change on this if you realized you were donating between $20-$40 a month towards your power bill to contribute to the folding communicty?
 
I was thinking about folding on my PS3, but the fact that my bill will be raised by so much turned me off.

Folding does help make the world a better place, but I think most fold for stats, to see how big their e-penis can get. Most do not even bother looking over their power bills, that is why folding is justified. Folding on my desktop 24/7 and ps3 and server would mean that I am spending nearly $100 more on power a month = 1200 a year = vacation money maybe?

I am in college, I work alot and go to school alot, every bit counts. Yes, with folding I wil lget more use out of my connection, but the power bill would be too much to swallow.
 
folding on a low power chip on a desktop PC would be okay.

Something like a BE-2400 PC that is a 45 watt (AMD x2 4600-4800) equivalent. I've heard of people putting together a barebones AMD BE system that consumes less than 60 watts at full power for the purposes of folding.

They more or less "underclock" by lowering voltages to the lowest the chip will still run at stock clocks etc, use everything onboard, use the most power efficient power supply they can find etc.

I think most would be able to swallow that cost, maybe $5 a month?, no worse than leaving the porchlight on all the time.

But a 300 watt PS3 is a magnitude more expensive.
 
I found that running the PS3 for a month folding 24x7 cost me ~$15. If you look at it from the perspective of FLOPS vs kWH it is actually better. Also apparently if you get one of the new systems it is cheaper as it consumes less power.

I have a total of 9 systems folding, 8 PCs and 1 PS3, the PS3 makes up 600 of my 1300 WU. The only reason it isn't higher is because I now have R&C and Uncharted :D
 
I turn mine on when im just sitting at home idle, on weekends etc. I dont leave my F@H on 24/7 though.
 
Excuse me for being stupid, but what is folding? I have never heard this term before and am curious to see what you are talking about. Thanks.

Excuse the brief thread hijack btw.
 
I don't fold on my PS3 because its too much of a waste of power. I often leave my PC on to bittorrent and other task so Folding in the background wouldn't be as much of a waste of energy.
 
derek533 said:
Excuse me for being stupid, but what is folding? I have never heard this term before and am curious to see what you are talking about. Thanks.

Excuse the brief thread hijack btw.
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Somebody gave you a link..
It's pretty much you helping Stanford Univ. do cell research to cure diseases. Your pc downloads data and then processes it for them. Once it is done processing it, sends data back to Stanford and grabs another file.

Funny thing, old IT guy at my company managed to install and config F@H on every dang workstation (30+ systems). Well, since we have POS pcs there, F@H for some reason was using a ton of CPU all of the time, making every system slow :(.
 
I use to...but the ps3 is in my bedroom...and it combined with my PC being on 24/7 make it a little too hot. I use to have it on almost 24/7 though.
 
aFive said:
Folding does help make the world a better place, but I think most fold for stats, to see how big their e-penis can get. Most do not even bother looking over their power bills, that is why folding is justified.
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Don't be a jerk.

I know full well how much the systems in my sig add to my power bill each month and I would imagine most people who are significantly into Folding do as well. I consider this cost my contribution to society and pay for it gladly.
 
aFive said:
I think most fold for stats, to see how big their e-penis can get
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Sorry, your wrong.....

I've been at it for a solid year, and as you can see, my "e-penis" is rather small.... and I don't give a shit about that. Every single work unit that gets turned in helps, and that's all that matters to me..... maybe once you watch a loved one die a long painful death, maybe then perhaps you'll understand why we fold....

Why don't you drop into the DC sub-forum and ask how many of us fold just for stats... really, you should.

 
I started folding after my 20 month old nephew was diagnosed with cancer
 
My PS3 is part of my folding farm because, while it can be slightly expensive to run depending on the region, it's a powerhouse folder. It contributes a lot of bang for the buck scientifically.

Also, since I got my 8800GT, all I really do on it is fold and watch movies. Might as well use it for something.

 
I fold.
My 60GB PS3 was/is consuming 194W. and putting out 900ppd.
My new Q6600 looks like it consumes about 96Watts and puts out over 2Kppd with everything stock.
Whoever says they DO NOT FOLD FOR the STATS should be lying.
The stats represent the amount of science donated towards the cures. Bigger stats, better science.
Back in the day there were ways to "cheat" and get big stats with little work. AFAIK this is gone in Folding.
Of course, some of us fold for the heat in the winter :)
"Hey Martha, it's getting cold in here! Fire up another PS3!"

/edit - Originally the programs were designed to use spare cpu cycles, and they still can. But there are many of us who leave their CPU's on 24/7 since we access them frequently and don't want to wait for them to boot etc.
 
gnewbury said:
Whoever says they DO NOT FOLD FOR the STATS should be lying.
The stats represent the amount of science donated towards the cures. Bigger stats, better science.
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If you look a your stats purely as a numerical representation of the amount of work you have produced, that's fine... but using them as an "e-penis" is not fine. I'm not saying that because I'm a slow producer, rather because doing so is not only stupid and selfish, but it pretty much side steps the reason people should be folding....That's all I was trying to say...

Fold on... one work unit at a time:)

 
gnewbury said:
I fold.
My 60GB PS3 was/is consuming 194W. and putting out 900ppd.
My new Q6600 looks like it consumes about 96Watts and puts out over 2Kppd with everything stock.
Whoever says they DO NOT FOLD FOR the STATS should be lying.
The stats represent the amount of science donated towards the cures. Bigger stats, better science.
Back in the day there were ways to "cheat" and get big stats with little work. AFAIK this is gone in Folding.
Of course, some of us fold for the heat in the winter :)
"Hey Martha, it's getting cold in here! Fire up another PS3!"

/edit - Originally the programs were designed to use spare cpu cycles, and they still can. But there are many of us who leave their CPU's on 24/7 since we access them frequently and don't want to wait for them to boot etc.
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so the PS3 "supercomputer" isn't all that super eh? I remember seeing all kinds of commercials and laughing as they called the PS3 processor a supercomputer and faster than anything else on the market. From your numbers above, looks like a desktop intel proc is over 2x's faster in something the PS3 is supposed to be EXTREMELY and uniquely good at!!! :eek:


by the way I DO have a PS3 (and an xbox 360) - so no fanboyism here...


They should make the disabled core on the PS3 do folding on every PS3 that's connected online...It's disabled for yeild purposes, but I imagine on most of the PS3's it works just fine. Perhaps a test could be run to determine if the core is good, and if so, then run folding on it everytime the PS3 is on without any implication to the ps3 user.
 
Archaea said:
so the PS3 "supercomputer" isn't all that super eh? I remember seeing all kinds of commercials and laughing as they called the PS3 processor a supercomputer and faster than anything else on the market. From your numbers above, looks like a desktop intel proc is over 2x's faster in something the PS3 is supposed to be EXTREMELY and uniquely good at!!! :eek:
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Uh... no. The PS3 is much faster.

http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=osstats
http://folding.typepad.com/news/2007/09/post-petaflop.html
http://folding.typepad.com/news/2007/09/new-ps3-version.html
 
I fold approx 2 work units per day with a ps3. And it's closer to 200w, for which I consider a worthy investment.
 
Archaea said:
I was going by this.
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I know what you were going by. That doesnt change the fact that the PS3 is far superior than the PC for folding. Do a little research of you dont believe me, or read the links I dropped.
 
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