Anyone here ever consider turning to the dark side (EVGA folding promotion)?

[VirtualLarry]

I'm under some pressure not to do F@H, because it costs money and has no immediate benefit to me. (Although the science is great, I've always supported DC projects with hard science behind them.)

I was thinking, it only takes 8500 PPD to get maximum value out of EVGA's folding promotion, they give you 10 "EVGA Bucks" (which I assume that you can spend in their store) per month.

I could do that easily, with a single GTX460, and then have my soon to be two Q9300 @ 3.0 quad-cores, and my other GTX460, crunching for the TeAm.

Or just repurpose my quad-GPU cruncher, and run it with three out of four GPUs (once I figure out which one is making nasty fan noises), for EVGA bucks.

At least then I could argue that I was getting something out of folding, some free stuff at their store.

I don't know if it would be worth it, worth the hassle, etc. I'm not sure I'm down with the idea of helping the EVGA team either, but in this case I would still be crunching more for the TeAm, so it's not like I would be helping EVGA pull ahead.

An even more devious idea would be to create two EVGA accounts, and fold under two usernames, and earn 240 bucks/year, but they probably wouldn't let me combine them to spend them.

 

[Pokey]

An interesting dilemma for sure. I thought about it once………. For about ten seconds. I think the answer would be different for each person. Everyone’s financial constraints are different. I have a hard enough time splitting my resources between projects, but deciding between teams would probably make my head explode; The financial reward not withstanding.

Being all-in with one team is what works for me.

The $64 question to me is: How many of EVGA’s folding points are attributable to this program?

As of this writing, they have 1225 active users to our 147 and produce 16,635,550 PPD avg to our 1,366,505. (per EOC)

 

[TurtleBlue]

I have EVGA in ALL of my Boxes (Q6600 = 460GTX, AMD = 250GTX, SandyBridge i7 2600K {on hand, not yet built} = 8800GT) but will not leave TeAm! I have known of the promotion for some time but am not interested...

 

[VirtualLarry]

The other question is, do you have to own EVGA cards in order to register for an account at their site? My guess is yes, although two of the 9600GSOs in my quad-GPU box are EVGA.

 

[ZipSpeed]

I thought about it, I'd be lying if I say I haven't. Computer parts aren't cheap and any subsidies can only benefit the science better.

Rip me apart if you must, I recently diverted my GPU folding rig to team NCIX as they have a contest till the end of February. Two grand prizes of eVGA GTX 460 EE and a bunch of gift cards. Of course when the contest is done, my GPU rig will go back to folding for TA. And if I happen to win that video card, of course it will be used for TA!

 

[petrusbroder]

No, I am not. Partly probably because it is open to US citizens and residents only (and thus is not a problem for me) but mostly because TA is my TeAm! 😉

 

[Bri79]

I thought about it. I fold for Team AnandTech. I have an EVGA 8800 GTS, 260 and 460. They fold for team AnandTech too. The 8800 GTS is retired 🙂

 

[Peter Trend]

No, I am not. Partly probably because it is open to US citizens and residents only (and thus is not a problem for me) but mostly because TA is my TeAm! 😉

Ditto!

 

[Golgatha]

Never had heard of this promotion. Would be nice to upgrade the HTPC on the cheap to get more PPD every year or so.

 

[brownstone]

The other question is, do you have to own EVGA cards in order to register for an account at their site? My guess is yes, although two of the 9600GSOs in my quad-GPU box are EVGA.

I don't believe that you do. Shortly after I started folding again I was made aware of the 10 percent discount off of EVGA b-stock for folding 2500 points for their team. I folded the 2500 and got the discount (not sure if they are still doing it or not) and I'm pretty sure that I did not own EVGA gear at that time.

Fast forward a few months... I thought about folding for the EVGA bucks, the [H] forum giveaways and a few other offerings, but ultimately decided that since this is my preferred forum, this is where I'll fold.