So I just got clued in that the Kossacks were starting to Fold recently.
I'm a former member of the #1 team in the world, HardOCP, aka the Horde.. If there's anything the Horde knows (other than how to be mostly a bunch of right-wing rejects) is how to fold. Fair warning: I am a hardcore nerd. I will try and explain as much as possible in any comments that may pop up.
Edit for most: Folding@home uses your computer to help try and possibly find cures for diseases by simulating the folding of proteins. This project is sponsored by the Pande Group at Stanford University.
This is a link to the project's homepage - folding.stanford.edu
DailyKos's team number is 48083
There's some suggestions belizzle the fizzle.
We need to be folding on GPUs. GPU (video card folding) is yielding between 4-15 times the number of points that regular CPUs are turning in (SMP may yield some pretty high ppd on Intel hardware, especially Quad core)
In order to do GPU folding you want to have an 8x00 series or better NVidia card, or a 4xxx series ATI card. The nvidia cards fold much faster than the ATI cards currently. This may change in the future.
In order to get folding up and running, you do need pretty modern hardware.
You probably want to have Vista. I personally use vista64 with the beta 185.20 drivers from nvidia, and have had zero problems in the 2 weeks my machine has been crunching along with my 8800gt. I get about 5000 ppd from my 2-year-old card.
You do not need beta video drivers to fold well, you can fold with regular drivers as long as they include the CUDA API. Most recent ones do, iirc.
Folding "porn" as I like to call it .. The Horde has a couple members who have several multi-gpu boxen :: computers with 4 video cards, each with 2 GPUs on them.. These machines put in about 50,000 points per day, which is more than all of Kos so far...
If we are going to thrash the FReepers, we need MOAR MEMBARS.
And a few GPU folders would go a LOOOOONG way.
My current team, 71257, has 17 guys in all, producing 60,000 ppd. A lot of us are GPU folders. It makes a huge difference.
The Most important part about GPU folding: It's easy.
Download the most recent drivers for your video card.
Download the GPU client from the high performance clients page: here - I suggest the system tray client (the top one)