Folding@Home is a project run by Stanford University which simulates protein folding, the root of the cause of cancer. If a protein folds incorrectly it can lead to cancerous growth. This program studies how a particular protein folds to see how we can stop incorrectly folding proteins and effectively ELIMINATE cancer completely.
This is a great cause and you can contribute for free! You can run this simulation on your computer without losing any performance as well. F@H is designed to be the lowest priority task running. If you fire up a game F@H will stop, wait for you to finish, and resume when you are done. This is the case with any program that needs cpu cycles. Folding backs off and lets you use your rig with no performance loss.
Here is a link to a review regarding performance loss while folding (or lack thereof):
Folding Benchmarks
if you want to help out here are links to ultra easy installers. all you do is double click the exe or bat file and you are done! no maintenence, no checking on it, no starting it, no nothing. its installed as a service so it starts with your computer.
Windows 2000 / XP Single CPU Systems
Windows 2000 / XP Dual CPU or Hyperthreading Systems
Windows 98 / SE / Me
Maxvla and myself (and Addict also - if he's still folding) have been going at this for quite some time now. Why waste your extra CPU cycles when you could be using them for a good cause?