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I've been quite pleased with ASUS products. BTW, ever since I switched to Win 8 :mmph::mmph: my points from the gpu (zotac gtx550) have increased. Could be coincidence or could be 8's less demanding graphics.
 
I installed a new video card on Friday (1/15/13) and upgraded to the V7.2.9 client. Now up to about 20K PPD.
With a few tweaks, I am now up to about 24K PPD. I also had to roll back the video driver update to the previous version. I was having problems with Excel and two other programs along with several screen lock ups.
 
Things have been going smoothly and then the lights (and the rest of the power) went out two weeks ago. When the power came back on, I didn't think much of it since my GPU box is configured to restart when the power comes on. Well, not this time, as I finally got around to looking at my Points production on Extreme Computing and noticed that my daily average was under 10K.

When I got to the basement, my PC was sitting there with the green LED on but not running Windows. After I shut the power off and let it sit for 30 seconds, I applied power and it started Windows right up. However, Folding did not start up. I figured that now was as good as ever to update my FAH version to the latest one.

Long story short, my quad-core Xeon and NVIDIA box is back on the Folding path.
 
I went down to check my Internet connection and found my Windows XP box with the nVIDIA 9800GTX card had Windows Updates. When I tried to apply them and reboot, they all failed. Puzzled, I looked on the System Even Log and saw way too many entries reporting Hard Disk errors.

That means my most prodigious Points producer is down for the count. I have another IDE drive I can put in, but it's smaller and most of the backup solutions I have available won't go smaller. I will probably end up installing WinXP on the smaller drive and copying over the few files that matter for Folding@Home.

But right now, it's time to patch the servers (why did I flash on the Dunkin Donuts guy just then?)
 
I had to rebuild the machine from the Recovery CD (Windows XP SP2) so most of the time was downloading SP3 (Windows Updates doesn't work until you install at least Internet Explorer 8 and you can't do that until you install SP3) (Catch-22: When you go to the "Download Windows XP SP3" site on Microsoft, they tell you for a single machine to get it by using Windows Updates!) So eventually I got around to installing FAH V7.3.6 and it is apparently Folding away again. One issue: Pande Labs changed the FAHControl and moved the simple controls into a web-based app, leaving the power-lifting to FAHControl. Well, I can't start FAHControl on my machine, and it's suggesting re-installing the Application. Everything else seems to be working, so I'll give it a day and see if it fixes itself (like it did for some other folks over at the Folding Forum.)
 
Update: I had to load .NET 3.5 as well as .NET 4.0 in order to get FAHControl to run. I also had to manually add FAHControl to the Windows Firewall so I can use my Mac's FAHControl to monitor Folding in the basement. After a long weekend, I cautiously think I'm back to normal.
 
Boy, if it isn't losing a Folding box and having to rebuild it, it's the Internet dying yet again. AT&T was down last night so I had some WUs backed up on my Mac Pro and GPU. Now, I just looked and for some reason the GPU slot isn't showing up. Phoo!

Edit: Maybe the 9800 GTX card has finally had it. I tried rebooting to see if that clears it up. I had pulled it out when the system was down before to blow all the dust out of the heatsync.

Edit again: After the reboot, it's Folding away. I wonder if this is a repeat of the Windows Remote Desktop issue where the nVIDIA card drivers don't like the Microsoft mirror driver being used and the only way to clear it up is by rebooting. I'll avoid using RDC and if I do, I'll remember to reboot.
 
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I recetly put a new video card in my home computer, an ASUS GTX760, and what a difference. It's throwing off around 57000 points per day. And it runs quieter and cooler than my old Zonar GTX550 which I put in my work PC replacing an old 9800. BTW, I'd never recommend Zonar products - made too cheaply.

I figured this would give me more points, but never expected to get to the top of our list. :)
 

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