F@H Holiday race ?

[Markfw]

Are we doing this, this year ? If so we better get organized soon.

 

[petrusbroder]

Yes, we are going to race ... I'll get it organised next week end!

 

[Ken g6]

:thumbsup: Bump, so you don't forget!

I was going to bump this earlier, but then I realized you might not celebrate the same thanksgiving holiday we do in the USA.

 

[Kiska]

In which I won't be participating had too many errors on F@H

 

[biodoc]

I'm in!

 

[Pokey]

I'm in........

 

[ZipSpeed]

I'm in as well. How much in, I haven't decided yet.

 

[blckgrffn]

In. No behomoths to call on this year, but my crunchers are are significantly newer. I am thinking about changing over a couple to start folding now so I can get an idea of thow things are going....

 

[WildW]

I'm working my way through the first ten units to get the bonus points. Haven't done any folding since about 2009.

The way things seem to work now with the bonus points, there's basically no point folding on any old machines, so it seems.

 

[blckgrffn]

I'm working my way through the first ten units to get the bonus points. Haven't done any folding since about 2009.

The way things seem to work now with the bonus points, there's basically no point folding on any old machines, so it seems.

Yup. All points seem to be tuned to getting results back ASAP.

 

[GLeeM]

I'm in!

there's basically no point folding on any old machines

How old is old?

 

[WildW]

Tried running an SMP unit on an Athlon X2 @ 2.8 ghz and it was showing 1000 ppd. Laptop (i3 @ 2.2 Ghz) is managing about 3000. Only my main pc is doing anything very useful, about 25k ppd with CPU and GPU. Running a lot hotter and noisier than my usual boinc stuff. Not sure I fancy running like that for a whole month.

 

[blckgrffn]

Tried running an SMP unit on an Athlon X2 @ 2.8 ghz and it was showing 1000 ppd. Laptop (i3 @ 2.2 Ghz) is managing about 3000. Only my main pc is doing anything very useful, about 25k ppd with CPU and GPU. Running a lot hotter and noisier than my usual boinc stuff. Not sure I fancy running like that for a whole month.

You could go CPU only - I wouldn't blame you. I don't run my 5870 in any races because it is a freaking hair drier. GPUs are typically the hogs/noisy ones. When you are gaming its OK because there is stuff *going on*, but when you are surfing the web and that thing is cranking away... not pleasant.

 

[HutchinsonJC]

Is the goal of the holiday race to try to convert as many friends/family machines over to crunching for the month?

Is it to try to bring back old crunchers to bump up the team for the year's end?

I glanced over last year's thread on the subject, and it seemed like there was some attempt to organize two different teams with all participants being split between the two teams. It also seemed like there was a period where all participants were gauged for a few days or a week, and then once those numbers were in the teams would be finalized and locked trying to keep the teams even based on ppd.

If the teams are largely forced into even playing fields, it would seem to me a big part of the race is really in trying to convert friends/family as opposed to what the machines belonging to the participants can do, since those machines are all intentionally spread out into mostly two even ppd teams.

I guess I'd be interested in playing, but I'd also be interested in the full details, rules, etc. Is this year the same as last year?

 

[biodoc]

Is the goal of the holiday race to try to convert as many friends/family machines over to crunching for the month?

Is it to try to bring back old crunchers to bump up the team for the year's end?

I glanced over last year's thread on the subject, and it seemed like there was some attempt to organize two different teams with all participants being split between the two teams. It also seemed like there was a period where all participants were gauged for a few days or a week, and then once those numbers were in the teams would be finalized and locked trying to keep the teams even based on ppd.

If the teams are largely forced into even playing fields, it would seem to me a big part of the race is really in trying to convert friends/family as opposed to what the machines belonging to the participants can do, since those machines are all intentionally spread out into mostly two even ppd teams.

I guess I'd be interested in playing, but I'd also be interested in the full details, rules, etc. Is this year the same as last year?

You've pretty much summarized why we run the race except for one thing: It's a lot of fun!

I'm assuming the rules will be the same as last year.

 

[WildW]

but when you are surfing the web and that thing is cranking away... not pleasant.

Or indeed trying to sleep. The rewards for F@H seem to scale very strangely. Because the bonus points are awarded on an exponential curve based on return time there is a disproportionate bias towards a single powerful machine. e.g. one eight core PC is worth much more than two quad core PCs.

It seems somewhat contrary to the idea of distributed computing taking spare cycles on regular desktops. I can understand wanting to give extra incentives to the enthusiasts, but now that the entry requirement for bigadv is 16 cores that seems to eliminate almost everyone.

 

[Thump553]

Or indeed trying to sleep. The rewards for F@H seem to scale very strangely. Because the bonus points are awarded on an exponential curve based on return time there is a disproportionate bias towards a single powerful machine. e.g. one eight core PC is worth much more than two quad core PCs.

It seems somewhat contrary to the idea of distributed computing taking spare cycles on regular desktops. I can understand wanting to give extra incentives to the enthusiasts, but now that the entry requirement for bigadv is 16 cores that seems to eliminate almost everyone.

Yes and no. I've been running FAH for over a decade, mostly because of it's good cause. All of my (few) machines are antiques so my PPD is very low, but it is slow and steady.

Sign me up for either team, essentially as filler. I don't expect my PPD to have any meaningful change.

 

[Markfw]

Or indeed trying to sleep. The rewards for F@H seem to scale very strangely. Because the bonus points are awarded on an exponential curve based on return time there is a disproportionate bias towards a single powerful machine. e.g. one eight core PC is worth much more than two quad core PCs.

It seems somewhat contrary to the idea of distributed computing taking spare cycles on regular desktops. I can understand wanting to give extra incentives to the enthusiasts, but now that the entry requirement for bigadv is 16 cores that seems to eliminate almost everyone.

Actually, I am kind of pissed at this also. Last year I spent over $1200 to get 12 threads to do big adv. Now they have raised the bar to 16. I was all ready to get a 24 core box, then realized it was never ending, so I didn't buy it this year. I can make an extra mortgage payment instead.

An Peter, where are you ? I thought you were going to set this up last weekend.

 

[geecee]

I'm in for the F@H race as well!

I'm a cruncher down though, unfortunately, as one of my X6 boxes died over the weekend, just after the WCG race. I found it rebooted and just beeping away after I got home Sunday night. I think either the MB or the PS is shot, but I haven't had time to do a mix and match repair. I did move the GTS450 from that dead box into an old, retired X2 3800+ box, just to try and salvage some ppd for the race. From what I've been reading here, and on the F@H forums, it looks like SMP on an old, slow dual core is fairly pointless. Only other thing I've got that I could throw in is an i5-2520M work laptop (SB, two real cores, 4 threads), but I don't expect that will make much difference. Then again, I don't expect I've influenced the results of the race at all, so just wishful thinking...

 

[petrusbroder]

Sorry for the delay, in RL work has to be done - no metter what. But ...

The official Holiday Season F@H Race thread is up!
Please check if your name is in the list, if no, please post in the official thread! (i.e. not this one, the other one!)

 

[blckgrffn]

no machine is pointless - but realize that points do not scale in a linear fashion