Intel Core 2 Duo computer. Vista 32bit.

Is it a bad idea running a Uniprocessor Client (qty 1) Folder@home (cpu) AND Boinc on the same computer?

Using default settings, who would get most of the idle time... or, is just really a bad idea?

(note: I am actually doing this on 3 pcs of different configurations)

BOINC and F@H usually play nice with each other on Windows. I set the CPU version of Folding at 50% cpu usage and it affects BOINC the least amount, yet manages to get its work done, too.

It will affect the output of both platforms a bit, but not it's tolerable with F@H backed off to 50% like that. I've never had either program crash or anything on WinXP Pro.

You can also run BOINC on the CPU and run F@H on an ATI card, as well. When I've done that, I could not detect any change in output from BOINC, as the GPU app didn't seem to use the CPU enough for me to register any change in output on BOINC. The ATI card will provide monster performance on the F@H GPU client.

Right now, my focus is BOINC and nearly all of my machines are running Linux, but in the near future I hope to set a machine back up with the above arrangement. It seems to be the best configuration if you want good F@H output without choking back BOINC output. I was using a Radeon HD3870 card when I had my WinXP machine set up this way.

---

Jeff Gu
Guru Mountain DC Team

I have done this on my Mac (OSX PPC G5), and Linux (Fedora Core _64) computers. I also have BOINC on Vista, and the F@H GPU together on one PC. You have to make sure BOINC is set to 50% of the processors so that it only uses one. Otherwise, you get F@H on one core and two projects on another core.

Quick side rant: It would be really nice if the BOINC manager had the option of saying "Number of cores to use: #" instead of percent. Now that there are three (my AMD Phenome) and six core PC's, it would be much easier.