Oh, OK. That makes sense. Yeah, FAH put my dash to an underscore as well. Thanks all for the warm welcomes. Once I can upgrade this machine, this thing will be running 24/7 for Folding. Good and trusty E8400 at 4.2GHz. ;)

Another fellow Canuck
Welcome aboard!!!!

I'll also pick up the change when you hit the millionaires milestones 
 
And welcome

Hey guys.. Im new to the site and also to the Folding program. My name is Steve and Im a stay at home father of 2 girls. Im also taking care of their grandmother who has been fighting COPD for the past couple years. She is currently waiting on a transplant that is scheduled for next month. Some days are easier than others :)
I came across the folding program the other day and was wondering what I needed to do to join a team so that I can get started?
 Any pointers would help. Like I'm not guite sure on how to obtain a passkey?
 
 
 

AKAOX

Hey guys.. Im new to the site and also to the Folding program. My name is Steve and Im a stay at home father of 2 girls. Im also taking care of their grandmother who has been fighting COPD for the past couple years. She is currently waiting on a transplant that is scheduled for next month. Some days are easier than others :)
I came across the folding program the other day and was wondering what I needed to do to join a team so that I can get started?
Any pointers would help. Like I'm not guite sure on how to obtain a passkey?

First: Welcome to the EVGA forums, and a BIG welcome to folding!!! What you're doing as a stay at home father is very unique, and you are definitely respected for that. I'm a single father of an 8 year old boy, however he stays with his mother most of the time about 250 miles away from me. I drive every chance I get (usually every weekend) to see him and it's worth every penny. :-)
 
As far as folding, there's so much information here it's really hard to "introduce" you to folding without you at least poking around a little and coming to us with questions. That being said, I will do what I can for you. :)
 
As far as joining a team, EVGA is the team I fold for, and we would love to have you on board! Our team number is 111065, and all you need do is enter that number in the "Team" field of your client. For the latest version client, which I believe is v7, you would open the "Advanced Control" by right-clicking the tray icon and selecting "Advanced Control".  When the screen comes up, click the gears/"Configure" icon and on the home screen enter the team number. Make sure you also choose a name to fold under, one that is unique to you so you can research your stats and such. Once you have got all that info entered, you'll notice the "Passkey" section at the bottom of the screen there where you enter your name and team. Click the link there, or just click this link that I copied and pasted out of the application from my computer:
 LINK
 
As far as pointers, I'm not the "OMG I need to get a million points in a week" folder, I'm just a "do what I can, when I can, and try not to increase the cooling bill too much" folder. A newer generation CPU and video card will provide you with some pretty nice PPD (Points Per Day). My GTX 670 SC edition gets about 37,000 PPD, and my Core i7 3930k CPU, Overclocked, gets about the same, and maybe slightly more depending on the overclock.
Overclocking can definitely increase your PPD, however it can cause problems down the road with stability and possibly wearing out your parts (CPU, Mainboard, etc). Heat destroys these items, and when you OC you need to increase voltages, and when you increase voltages you increase the heat, so make sure you have a good cooler before doing anything like OC'ing. Watercooling is preferred.
 
Other than that, poke around, read some posts, and come back with more questions! There's plenty of guys here that LOVE to help!
Again, WELCOME to EVGA!
-TigerDeath
 

Thanks for the quick reply TigerDeath.. I finally got er up and running :)   Glad to be apart of something here to help others. That's what was so interesting to me about the program.  I'll be a "fold when I can type guy" I see; by the way its slowing down my machine. But I see I can leave it running while I sleep and that's a big plus.  I'm running a  09' Dell desktop here with only 2 cores and an embeded G45 chipset.  Definately nothing to brag about. Compared to most on this site :)     But like I said, I'd like to help any way I can and "folding@home" seemed like a great way to do that.
It seems to be doing its thing and it shows Im on Team EVGA and I also choose which disease I  wanted to fold for.  So, I think I'm on track for now.  I would like to stay in touch with you guys throughout the week and see how everyone is coming along? I'm pretty sure I'll have more questions.
 
Cheers
Ox
 
 

AKAOX

Thanks for the quick reply TigerDeath.. I finally got er up and running :)   Glad to be apart of something here to help others. That's what was so interesting to me about the program.  I'll be a "fold when I can type guy" I see; by the way its slowing down my machine. But I see I can leave it running while I sleep and that's a big plus.  I'm running a  09' Dell desktop here with only 2 cores and an embeded G45 chipset.  Definately nothing to brag about. Compared to most on this site :)     But like I said, I'd like to help any way I can and "folding@home" seemed like a great way to do that.
It seems to be doing its thing and it shows Im on Team EVGA and I also choose which disease I  wanted to fold for.  So, I think I'm on track for now.  I would like to stay in touch with you guys throughout the week and see how everyone is coming along? I'm pretty sure I'll have more questions.

Cheers
Ox

Sweet man, sounds like you're up and running!
A little bit of information about why folding is making your computer run slower:
"Folding", as I myself understand it (others feel free to correct me if I misunderstood), is basically turning certain proteins into mathematical equations that your computer can understand. Your computer takes a certain "work unit (a set or portion of an equation)" (picked at random) and basically starts calculating the math. All computers really are, are really fast calculators... In fact, that's how most of us "benchmark" and test the stability of our systems - we use some applications that calculate PI to ENORMOUS numbers (several tens of thousands of digits!), or that try to find the prime of a really large number, which uses 100% of the CPU. When you are folding, your computer is calculating these numbers and all CPU's and/or cores are being used at 100%, which is why your computer is running slower than it normally would without folding running.
 
You can adjust the "slider" on the home screen of your "Advanced Viewer" to something other than "Full" and it will only fold when the computer is not in use (meaning, the mouse isn't moving for example). There are also other things you can do, like telling the Folding Client how many cores you would like to use. If you have a dual core machine and you tell it only to use one core, that core would be at 100% and your other core would be at whatever percentage your computer normally runs at, so technically you would only be using 50% of your CPU power to fold.
Of course this means that you won't be generating near as many PPD as you would when you are folding at 100% on all cores, but I think you get the picture. :-)
 
Of course you are more than welcome around the EVGA forums, and we would LOVE to see you reporting back and keeping us up to date with any questions or problems you might have. I'm not the most knowledgeable, but there are many others that use these forums that are more than happy to provide you with insight into any questions or problems you may have.
 
Once things stabilize for a day or two, report back and let us know how many PPD you're making - we all love numbers and details! :)
 
Feel free to ask if you need anything!
-TigerDeath
 

Thanks very much... I let it fold last night while i slept and  this morning progress was at 23 percent completed.. Which it ran from 1 am last night until 7am this morning.  That's probably slow.   I figured I'd just run the program when Im sleep or away from the computer.
 
Ox

AKAOX - First, welcome to both the EVGA Folding Family and the Folding world.  Looks like Tiger is getting you pretty well sorted out on this stuff. 
 
On your point about "that's probably slow" - yes, but it all relative.  For the setup you have, that's probably pretty normal.  It also depends on which work unit (WU) you are running (or ran).  Some take forrrrrrever.  Some go pretty quick.  One of the things you can look at is the Time Per Frame.  On the Advanced Client - it will show as "Estimated TPF" and will have a minute and second value.  Every WU has a different TPF and the TPF is also very much dependent on your equipment.  As an example - the same WU being run on my 660Ti FTW runs slower than on a 690, 780, Titan, etc.  So - really, the biggest thing to watch out for is the temps on your system.  Folding is VERY intensive on your system (if you have it set to full it will run 100%).  As you get in to it some more, you will start to see how your computer reacts and learn how the different WU's affect your computer. 
 
And, as Tiger said - ask questions.  This team has some of the best (and most knowledgeable) people around! 

Just got into folding, happy to join this team even though I changed GPUs to an MSI I still support EVGA a lot and hope to move to more products by them in the future! FOLDING AWAY!!!!