NVIDIA'S QuakeCon Folding@Home

[Nok]

The fine folks at NVIDIA have come up with a great way for BYOC participants to use their spare CPU cycles for a good cause AND have the chance to win some cool prizes at the same time. Read the following press release and then see the FAQ (PDF) for more details.

To leverage the power of your NVIDIA GPU when using Folding@Home, make sure you are using this High Performance for Windows. Other versions (including those for Mac and Linux) can be downloaded here. We will make a local copies available, as well, once the BYOC opens.

Donate your computing power for a good cause

Attention all Quakecon BYOC Gamers – NVIDIA and the Quakecon staff would like your help in participating in the Quakecon Folding@Home Challenge, a first of its kind effort whose goal is to use the massive computing power of the Quakecon BYOC LAN party in conjunction with Folding@Home to help research protein folding. Folding@Home is a distributed computing project that uses the power of computers all over the world to collectively search for cures for all sorts of protein-folding related diseases, including Alzheimers, Parkinsons and many forms of cancer.

We’ve created a Folding@Home team just for Quakecon (team name is Quakecon&NVIDIA, team # 169355) and have a goal of completing 5,000 Folding@Home work units before midnight on Saturday. The NVIDIA Foundation will donate $5,000 toward Folding@Home’s research efforts at Stanford University if the Quakecon&NVIDIA Folding@Home team succeeds in our goal!

Participating in the Quakecon Folding@Home Challenge is easy, just follow these steps:

1. Download the Folding@Home client off the net or the internal network.
2. When you install the client, make sure that you create a unique user name and set your team to #169355, this will credit all your work units to the Quakecon&NVIDIA team.
3. After installation, Folding@home will automatically launch and run from your system tray. You should configure your Folding@Home client to work when you want it to, especially at night and when you are away from your computer. Make sure you pause the client when you are going to game because your frame rate will drop significantly if Folding is on.
4. Now you are ready to Fold! Remember, every work unit counts as we approach our goal of 5,000.

As a special incentive, Quakecon&NVIDIA Folding Team members in the BYOC will get custom NVIDIA wristbands that will make them eligible for special prizes and activities at the NVIDIA booth. But best of all, if you use a NVIDIA GPU (or two, or three) for your folding, you’ll be calculating Folding@Home work units up to 140x faster than on traditional CPUs.

Check the status of the Quakecon Folding@Home Challenge at http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/...teamnum=169355. It will be updated every 2 hours with the latest statistics on the Quakecon Folding@home Challenge.

[Elad]

sounds cool to me, gives my computer something to do while im not there

[elim]

Im running very crummy hardware in this laptop, but hey, it's for the greater good, a little processing while im afk isn't going to hurt anybody

[Tahnit]

im going to be running this 24/7. Core i7 ftw.

[paulj]

Hey guys - this is Paul from NVIDIA. We're going to need everyone's help - and everyone's spare GPU and CPU cycles for this effort. Once you complete a work unit and are on the status page - come by the NVIDIA booth and you'll get a Folding@Home wristband that will come in VERY handy during the show - trust me on that

Also, I'd like to see who can come up with the most finished work untis during the event. That person might get something cool too

Anyone can join the team and contribute to the challenge - even people that aren't at Quakecon can join us and help.

[catbox999]

i guess 33% of my stuff will be donated to the luckiest challenger

i will make sure to run and change my info around to point at the nvidia con crew

[GIGARAM]

well im not at quakecon but i will add my PC, GPU AND 2 PS3's to the folding crew