Team Anandtech vs Tom’s Hardware FAH Race - Round 2

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Pokey

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Oct 20, 1999
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The race starts Monday, March 12, 18:00 UTC and ends Friday, March 16, 18:00 UTC.

Welcome to the race!

You can simply download the software and let it crunch on its own as is, or you can try to maximize your output and tweak your settings to your heart’s content. It is up to you.

This is a basic getting started guide. For more complex scenarios and for help with the advanced side of the Folding at Home Control please ask questions and someone will try to help. Please be as concise as possible when asking a question.

Go to the main page of F@H (https://folding.stanford.edu/) and download the software by clicking on the “start folding” button. You can let them download the Windows version or if you have a different OS, click on “Alternative Downloads” in lower right of the pop-up window and pick your poison there.

You will first need to create a user account, and get a passkey. You do this in order to get bonus points after crunching ten work units. See Passkey FAQ on this page at the bottom: https://folding.stanford.edu/support/faq/

When starting up the first time be sure and enter your Folding Name and Team Number and Passkey or your points won't be counted properly.

Team Numbers:

Team Anandtech > 198

Tom’s Hardware > 40051

Most beginners should choose Express Install which automatically starts with Web Control. If you wish to see behind the curtain and have more control over everything you can switch over to Advanced Control after F@H starts by right clicking on the system tray icon and choosing Advanced.

Miscellaneous Issues:

It is important that you pay attention to your GPU drivers. Make sure you have drivers suited to your equipment and try NOT to let Windows automatically update the driver once you get things working properly.

In the event you are a first-time folder it is highly recommended that you start ahead of time in order to work out any problems and to let the first ten work units process before the race starts. This race is fairly short, five days, so it will be like a sprint.

There is a lot of good info on the Folding@Home web site but occasionally you may run across old info, so don’t be afraid to ask questions if things don’t go as expected.

Often when you make a change it is applied right away but it is usually best practice to stop the client and restart it after a change, especially if it does not behave as expected.


Good luck to all.
 
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Ken g6

Programming Moderator, Elite Member
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Dec 11, 1999
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Hey, looks like we got a couple more FoldingCoin users. Welcome to @Razt323 and Timmmay! (@Timmah! ?) Timmmay, you don't have to set up separate FoldingCoin accounts on each machine. Once you have one you can use it everywhere.
 

TennesseeTony

Elite Member
Aug 2, 2003
4,209
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www.google.com
I've started early, like some of the others, so I don't have to muck about with converting 1800UTC to local on Monday, and also to get my 10 units done on a new client.

Pokey has already mentioned this, but:
Don't forget to get a passkey, or you don't get the QRB (quick return bonus)!!!!

One main benefit of passkeys is that if someone cheats, we will not need to zero out the points of everyone with that username — only the offending party and those without passkeys.

Perhaps more interestingly, we have introduced a new Quick Return Bonus (QRB) points program, which is tied to passkeys. To earn this bonus, you must use a passkey.
 

TennesseeTony

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Aug 2, 2003
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From Tom's, is it just me, or.....is plagiarism at work here? :D

Welcome to the race!

You can simply download the software and let it crunch on its own as is, or you can try to maximize your output and tweak your settings to your heart’s content. It is up to you.

This is a basic getting started guide. For more complex scenarios and for help with the advanced side of the Folding at Home Control please ask questions and someone will try to help. We have a discussion thread set up here. Please be as concise as possible when asking a question. You can also check out our Folding@Home Guide for easy reference.

Go to the main page of Folding@Home and download the software by clicking on the “start folding” button. You can let them download the Windows version or if you have a different OS, click on “Alternative Downloads” in lower right of the pop-up window and pick your poison there.

You will first need to create a user account, and get a passkey. While passkeys are not a strict requirement, they do grant bonus points so it is strongly recommended. See Passkey FAQ at the bottom of the FAQ page for more info.

When starting up the first time be sure and enter your Folding Name and Team Number and Passkey or your points won't be counted properly.

Team Numbers:

Team Anandtech > 198

Tom’s Hardware > 40051

Most beginners should choose Express Install which automatically starts with Web Control. If you wish to see behind the curtain and have more control over everything you can switch over to Advanced Control after Folding@Home starts by right clicking on the system tray icon and choosing Advanced.

Miscellaneous Issues:

It is important that you pay attention to your GPU drivers. Make sure you have drivers suited to your equipment and try NOT to let Windows automatically update the driver once you get things working properly.

In the event you are a first-time folder it is highly recommended that you start ahead of time in order to work out any problems and to let the first ten work units process before the race starts. This race is fairly short, five days, so it will be like a sprint.

There is a lot of good info on the Folding@Home web site but occasionally you may run across old info, so don’t be afraid to ask questions if things don’t go as expected.

Often when you make a change it is applied right away but it is usually best practice to stop the client and restart it after a change, especially if it does not behave as expected.


Good luck and may the best folder win!
 
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TennesseeTony

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Aug 2, 2003
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I'd like to say I didn't know about rainwalk either, but then I clicked the links and it does look familiar. @Howdy2u2 , are you the one who introduced us to that stat site? Anyway, an interesting take-away from rainwalk, the daily activity tab, shows that TeAm 198 jumped about 350 work units yesterday compared to the previous few weeks. Tom's jumped only a few (maybe 50 wu).

An interesting tid-bit of knowledge from the Stanford site was that we have 8, yes EIGHT, CPU's in this fight, whereas Tom's has 601 (active in the last 50 days). We'd best not ever challenge them to a CPU fight. ;)
 
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Pokey

Platinum Member
Oct 20, 1999
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I noticed that too. Our production has jumped and Tom's has not. Maybe they are going to give us a running start. :)
 

Ken g6

Programming Moderator, Elite Member
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Dec 11, 1999
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Saw a note about the Folding Race and jumped back in. Last distributed project for me was DPAD. Since Stephen Brooks isn't using that data any more, I stopped. :( [TA]JonB
I'll toss my fairly new Ryzen 7 1700 into the race.
Welcome, Back, Jon! I haven't seen you in a long time!
 

Ken g6

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I've never seen more than 100 people active on our F@H TeAm before! :)

@mcg, @Neutrinos, @enweeJafar, and everyone else who isn't doing FoldingCoin, welcome!
 

Markfw

Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
May 16, 2002
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So here is what I see.... 37.5m ppd for team, and 22.5m ppd for Toms (last 24 hour) which is what I always look at. Unless they are going to fire everything up at 11 am tomorrow PDT, it will not be a race.

And we have 30 more people active, and I alone put out more than their top 3 users put together.(12 vs 10 million ppd)
 

TennesseeTony

Elite Member
Aug 2, 2003
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Yeah, poor Tom's is going down, hard, again. Even worse, their forum software sucks inhales vigorously, I don't see how they keep track of anything unless they bookmark every thread of interest.
 

Howdy

Senior member
Nov 12, 2017
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I'd like to say I didn't know about rainwalk either, but then I clicked the links and it does look familiar. @Howdy2u2 , are you the one who introduced us to that stat site? Anyway, an interesting take-away from rainwalk, the daily activity tab, shows that TeAm 198 jumped about 350 work units yesterday compared to the previous few weeks. Tom's jumped only a few (maybe 50 wu).

An interesting tid-bit of knowledge from the Stanford site was that we have 8, yes EIGHT, CPU's in this fight, whereas Tom's has 601 (active in the last 50 days). We'd best not ever challenge them to a CPU fight. ;)

I believe so, but it does go down also if Stanford is having stats issues.
 

biodoc

Diamond Member
Dec 29, 2005
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Another nor'easter coming tomorrow and they are predicting blizzard conditions with 16 inches of snow. I hope I don't lose power again. Three nor'easters in 2 weeks. :(
 

biodoc

Diamond Member
Dec 29, 2005
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biodoc no generator.........what kind of Folder are you :) j/k.

My small generator broke down during the last outage so it's in the shop. I may have to get a whole house generator. Expensive though! :)
 

StefanR5R

Elite Member
Dec 10, 2016
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An interesting tid-bit of knowledge from the Stanford site was that we have 8, yes EIGHT, CPU's in this fight, whereas Tom's has 601 (active in the last 50 days).
Most of the teams have the number 601 at that place. Maybe there is a subliminal message carried by that number, but it's surely not the count of active CPUs during the last 50 days.
 

Ken g6

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The race has started and the stats are up! For the record, there was no update at 18:00 UTC, so the starting stats match those from Extreme Overclocking.

TeAm AnandTech: 18,038,848,450
Tom's Hardware: 16,353,060,166
 
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