# Bottlenecking and folding



## BarbaricSoul (Nov 24, 2009)

How much will a slow CPU slow down a fast video card in folding? My parents leave thier computer on all the time. It's a older AMD 3500 single core system. It does have a available PCIe slot, and I'm wondering if it would be worth me putting one of my GTX280's in thier computer and start it folding 24/7. What do you think?


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## [Ion] (Nov 24, 2009)

BarbaricSoul said:


> How much will a slow CPU slow down a fast video card in folding? My parents leave thier computer on all the time. It's a older AMD 3500 single core system. It does have a available PCIe slot, and I'm wondering if it would be worth me putting one of my GTX280's in thier computer and start it folding 24/7. What do you think?



Not at all, I ran the F@H GPU2 client on a 9600GSO in a rig with a 2.8ghz Pentium 4 folding, the CPU usage never went above 7% (until I installed the CPU client).  One thing to remember is that in XP it makes the desktop *very* laggy, so it is painful to use the computer.  However, in Vista and 7 this is not an issue, I read that it was because of Aero


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## BarbaricSoul (Nov 24, 2009)

> One thing to remember is that in XP it makes the desktop very laggy, so it is painful to use the computer.



Well shit, the computer has XP media center. I can't do anything that will hinder it's performance. It's slow enough as is. Mom likes XP, so I doubt she'll go for the change over to 7 unless she has to.


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## [Ion] (Nov 24, 2009)

BarbaricSoul said:


> Well shit, the computer has XP media center. I can't do anything that will hinder it's performance. It's slow enough as is. Mom likes XP, so I doubt she'll go for the change over to 7 unless she has to.



One of the reasons I upgraded from XP to 7 was the issue with F@H.  I kept pausing the F@H GPU client whenever I was using the computer, and, in addition to loosing valuable F@H time when i was on the computer, I frequently forgot to resume it afterwords.


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## mike047 (Nov 24, 2009)

I run XP home with a 260 folding with no affect at all.  It is my daily driver and I don't even notice.


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## bogmali (Nov 24, 2009)

mike047 said:


> It is *my daily driver* and I don't even notice.



Does it have like 24 inch spinner wheels Mike


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## mike047 (Nov 25, 2009)

bogmali said:


> Does it have like 24 inch spinner wheels Mike



AND custom mud flaps


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## [Ion] (Nov 25, 2009)

mike047 said:


> I run XP home with a 260 folding with no affect at all.  It is my daily driver and I don't even notice.



Really?
I ran various cards (9600s, the 9300, an 8600GTS, and the 8800GT) and had lag with all of them in XP.  Maybe it's something that's different between the Geforce 8/9 series and GTX200?


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## mike047 (Nov 25, 2009)

[Ion] said:


> Really?
> I ran various cards (9600s, the 9300, an 8600GTS, and the 8800GT) and had lag with all of them in XP.  Maybe it's something that's different between the Geforce 8/9 series and GTX200?



Possibly...my card is a evga 260/192 with the shaders @ 1512.  I run XP home svp3 with all updates on a Tyan Tomcat with a Opteron 180[2.4],2gb ram, no overclock.  Also run BOINC 100%.

It's like a rock..no issues ever[touch wood]


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