Folding@Home is a distributed computing project. You download free software that runs on your PC and consumes the idle clock cycles of your CPU or GPU. This project combines millions of PC's processing power in order to increase computing power needed to calculate how proteins fold for the purpose of research. This research concerns diseases such as Alzheimer's, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers. This is the link:
http://folding.stanford.edu/
Please be sure to download this software to your PC especially if you have a good GPU (9500GT / 9600GT / 9800GT / GTX 260 / GTX 280 / GTX 460 / GTX 470 / GTX 480) and all that falls in between. For ATI users, however, folding is slower than Nvidia's equivalent cards, so you can either download the software for ATI, especially for the following cards: 4500-series / 4600-series / 4700-series / 4800 series / 5400-series / 5500-series / 5600-series / 5700-series / 5800-series (or any equivalent cards from the 2 and 3 -series that powerful enough at least to fold...if you cannot run any modern games on your graphics card at least, don't bet that it can fold too well), or wait until Stanford University update the software to use OpenCL so that ATI at least gets a chance to compete against Nvidia's CUDA and perform well at folding. I advise ATI users to fold especially if they have powerful cards like the 4850, 4870, 5770, 5830, 5850, 5870, 5970, etc...
Download the software from here:
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/DownloadWinOther
and choose the software version corresponding to the graphics card you have.
Folding is really important for tackling present-time diseases, so please try to fold and spread the word.
First, make sure your GPU is in a well-ventilated case with enough fans so as to keep the GPU(s) cool. Preferably, the GPU should stay under 70-75 for continuous folding. You can achieve this by speeding up the fan speed with software such as Rivatuner (
http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=rivatuner), EVGA Precision, GIgabyte GamerHUD, MSI Afterburner, Asus Smart Doctor, etc... (these software are usually included with the cards you buy. Most of these tools work with cards from other manufacturers if you would prefer to use them. Rivatuner works with most cards so I recommend you use that. Rivatuner can also monitor temperatures, but Speedfan is helpful too:
http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php) Do note that ATI cards have a higher tolerance for heat due to the higher max temperature (4-series for example). Cards like the 4870 tend to stay 70ish in idle so these cards can take temperature. Max you should stay under is 80, but preferably keep the cards well below that. Note that as we are approaching autumn and winter, it is easier to maintain lower GPU temperatures.
After you install the software, Join the following team: 194182 (Team Cedar). Let's all fold for this team and gather points. You may wish to adjust further settings also.
Be sure to pause the Folding@Home client when gaming. It can drastically reduce framerates since it runs the GPU at 100% and has to share resources and VRAM with the game running. Although the software is stated to hand over to other programs the resources they need, My games run at almost 60% their normal speed when folding is turned on, in addition to large amounts of VRAM the client consumes while running.
About Internet Usage, this client downloads work units that takes hours (depending on your GPU), and each work unit is a few KB (less than 1MB, around 400KB for example), so folding should pose no problem to your quota. If you choose not to run the client due to the few megabytes (2-5MB per day if your GPU is really fast) it may consume during the day, you could run the client at night if you have unlimited download at night. Additionally, you could choose to run the client for a few hours per day due to electrical consumption and inernet usage. The folding client uses almost the full power of the GPU. That means: max 30-40W for 9500GT, 70W for 9600GT, 100W for 9800GT, 180W for GTX 260, 236W for GTX 280, 250W for GTX 480, etc... Note that these are max figures...Folding will never reach those consumption levels.
Please, please do NOT run folding on fake Power Supplies. These get damaged under sustained power loads. Usually, if you have such GPUs, you should have an authentic power supply (Thermaltake, Cooler Master, Gigabyte, Enermax, Corsair, Silverstone, Seasonic, PC Power & Cooling) with enough wattage to sustain power loads. Be sure to always have backups of your precious data, since at any time the Hard Drive / PSU can go defective and make you lose your data. Backups should be done regardless of what you are running / will run. Modern authentic PSUs usually have safety built into them to shut down the system if it (the PSU) overheats, or gets unusually high power draw. But you can never be sure, even if you think your power supply is safe (nothing is 100% safe) that your hard disk wont die in the end...BACKUP)
If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to ask.
