Meet the Folder: XisTG

It’s mid month, and from now that means Meet the Folder time, as long as we have enough participants that is. I’ve also changed the questions slightly so things get covered that bit better.

Hey ho… this time around we have XisTG, who also goes by the name of XTG whilst doing his bit for the world, so let’s go.

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Folding Q & A

There are several different reasons why people run Folding@home, be it experience with one of the diseases folding aims to cure, just helping out, or just for community status. But what got you into folding and for TheSixthAxis’ Team?

I started folding in 2007 for a Portuguese team (through witch I learned about folding), but I no longer have any contact with them. So I joined TSA the first time I heard about the TSA folding team; I figured, since TSA is my daily source for gaming news, why not join them in folding?

There are several different platforms that folding@home can be run on (PS3, PC, MAC), what platforms do you use to fold?

I fold on my “fat” PS3 and iMac at home, and I’ve recently started to fold 24/7 on the Power Mac at work (not for long though, I’ll be leaving the place this month).

Some people get worried about using the PS3 to fold because they’re worried about their PS3 dying on them. As a guide, how long do you fold on your PS3 for, and in which mode?

My PS3 is on pretty much 24/7, with some shutdown time here and there. She folds from 21h to 24h on weekdays (light gaming), and around 18 or so on weekends.

I always fold on advanced, although I can’t really figure out the difference between both modes. I like to think advanced mode speeds up the folding.

I should also mention that this only happens outside the summer months. It gets so hot in July/August that I just have to shut it down so my house doesn’t become a real furnace.

There may be some people who might think that their hardware isn’t powerful enough for whichever reason. What Specification are you running folding@home on?

My iMac has a 3.06 GHz Core2Duo (E7600, I think) and 4GB of DDR3 RAM, and it uses both cores in full. For the record, as I was afraid to fold on this machine, the CPU temperatures never get above 50 degrees (it’s safe). The Power Mac at work is old, it has a dual PowerPC G5 (two physical processors) clocked at 2.00GHz, with 8GB of RAM, and it doesn’t do that much of a good job. The Folding@home client for PowerPC is very limited too, and it only recognizes one of the CPUs.

There will be people from the TSA community that will read this who don’t currently fold, is there anything you’d like to say to those members?

Well, for non-folding TSA’s I’d like to start by saying that you won’t feel any significant difference in your electric bill, or parents’ electric bill if you live with them (and I fold 24/7). I fell that’s one of the things that may keep some people from folding. Second, and the main reason for folding, is helping. Your PS3 has an immense power that can be used to pave the way for curing many diseases, and the only thing you need to do is to click on Life with PlayStation, run Folding@home and that’s it. You’re helping. And, to my knowledge, this is the cheapest/more effortless way of contributing to a “social cause”. Win/win.

The Folding@home software on the PS3 has evolved over the past few years, bringing in Music playback and most prominently Life with PlayStation. Is there anything that could be added to improve the experience?

Or is there something that you would like to be removed from Life with PlayStation?

My general feeling is that a folding application should just fold. I think it’s great that it can play music, as I’m sure some PS3s are used as a media hub, but not for me. That being said, I wouldn’t take anything out of the app so as long as it maintains its purpose: folding.

The only change I would like to see is more of a redesigning of the app. I would like it to be just like the folding clients on PC/MAC; mine is always running, taking 100% of the CPU, but it runs with the lowest priority, so if I start surfing the web or watching a video etc., the app frees up the necessary CPU to do it. On the Mac I can run folding@home and watch a 1080p video without hiccups. So yeah, if the folding client could do the same on the PS3, being always active but allowing the user to do whatever he wants/needs without hindering the performance, it would be great.

An interesting point to make is that XTG’s folding on an 80GB PlayStation 3 (a.k.a “fat” PS3) almost 24/7 so it just goes to show that it’s not the constant running that harms the console.

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If you would like to feature in a future Meet the Folder post, please fill out the form over at folding.jas-n.com and when you press send you’re answers will be forwarded to me and I’ll reply to you as soon as possible.

We’d like to thank Paulo for his time in answering our questions.