The Annual Holiday Season Foldin@Home race

[petrusbroder]

In an other thread a discussion has been forming about the history of the Annual Holiday season F@H race. I have now started this thread to get the the TeAm members more aware of the race, which will start this year too ..

Petrus:

Race ________ posts ____ reads
1st Race _____ 517 _____ 3 542
2nd race ___ 1 098 ____ 10 038
3rd race _____ 570 ____ 10 239
4th race _____ 415 ____ 20 713
5th race _____ 721 ____ 64 169
6th race _____ 486 ____ 41 303
7th race _____ 308 ____ 22 167
8th race _____ 401 ____ 16 959
Total: _____ 4 516 ___ 189 140

Assimilator1:

Lol, wow the 5th race had a lot of views!
Been going for longer than I thought!

GLeeM:

Thanks Peter
It was great to see all the old names in the 1st Race thread, sure miss Sid

Pokey:

Good times..............
Unfortunately participation has been declining. :|
Hope we can make it to ten years..........

Well, yes ... in looking at the reads and the number of participants:

Race ______ participants __ total points
1st race ___ 20+14=34 __________ 693 066
2nd race ___ 19+15=34 ________ 4 069 993
3rd race ___ 13+15=28 _______ 10 341 407
4th race ___ 13+12=25 _______ 12 744 217
5th race ___ 14+16=30 _______ 35 125 126
6th race ___ 13+13=26 _______ 41 092 501
7th race ___ 12+13=25 _______ 47 311 639
8th race ___ 11+13=24 ______ 106 460 799

The number of points has increased 153-fold ... reflecting the increase in the crunching power of the computers - the biggest difference being the coming of GPU-crunching. Also the reward (points for each WU) has changed ... sometimes increasing, more often decreasing.

I'll be posting more stats in the coming days, and the rules, racers, and other info - let's have some more fun!

 

[petrusbroder]

This is a list of all those who have taken part in at least one of the eight Holiday Season Folding@Home Races. I appologize for possible misspellings, if I have missed some one (I had to find my files on the back-up computer with the different tape-drives) and then transfered from some files the namnes manually. Anyhow, here are the 98 folders:

Name __________________ races
GLeeM ___________________ 8
Mark_F_Williams _________ 8
Pokey_TA ________________ 8
TAS-Petrusbroder ________ 8
Baldurs_Gate ____________ 7 = Rattledagger
biodoc __________________ 7
salvorhardin ____________ 7
Neurodog ________________ 6
theAnimal _______________ 6
Tom_Philippart __________ 6
Uppsala9496 _____________ 6
Insidious _______________ 5
Ken_g6 __________________ 5
PCTC2 ___________________ 5
[TA]Assimilator1 ________ 4
CupCak3 _________________ 4
FullMetalChocobo ________ 4
geecee __________________ 4
Hurricane Andrew ________ 4
Mike90 __________________ 4
Thump553 ________________ 4
Wingding ________________ 4
ZipSpeed ________________ 4
Peter_Trend _____________ 3
VirtualLarry ____________ 3
blckgrffn _______________ 2
Drsignguy _______________ 2
Gravity _________________ 2
Icecold _________________ 2
ICXRa ___________________ 2 = RAThurman
kb3edk __________________ 2
m1ldslide1 ______________ 2
natethegreat ____________ 2
Orange Kid ______________ 2
rabrittain ______________ 2
SemperFi ________________ 2
Slider76 ________________ 2
TurtleBlue ______________ 2
[TA]cawchy ______________ 1
Alyx ____________________ 1
amd_borg ________________ 1
astralusion _____________ 1
Athlex __________________ 1
Brainwrinkle ____________ 1
Caferace ________________ 1
Cooper76 ________________ 1
Curly ___________________ 1
Cutthroat _______________ 1
DainBramaged ____________ 1
Denithor ________________ 1
dmo _____________________ 1
Dragon5152 ______________ 1
filibusterman ___________ 1
Foxery __________________ 1
GenHoth _________________ 1
GoStumpy ________________ 1
HutchinsonJC ____________ 1
Iron Chef _______________ 1
JeffCos _________________ 1
jened ___________________ 1
jibberegg _______________ 1
jonesthewine ____________ 1
ksherman ________________ 1
Lightstar_dj ____________ 1
Lizardth ________________ 1
ljtatej _________________ 1
MadMurph ________________ 1
Martin_Trevino __________ 1
MDE _____________________ 1
MoFunk __________________ 1
mooseracing _____________ 1
mrwizer _________________ 1
nanaki333 _______________ 1
nemesis13 _______________ 1
octavio _________________ 1
Phaxmohdem ______________ 1
Plimogz _________________ 1
Proviafan _______________ 1
QuietDad ________________ 1
rise4310 ________________ 1
RudyToody _______________ 1
RustyNale _______________ 1
Scott66 _________________ 1
scottv67 ________________ 1
somethingsketchy ________ 1
T_Yamamoto ______________ 1
TA_andy _________________ 1
THE_LAWNoob _____________ 1
TonyH ___________________ 1
Vikesrock8411 ___________ 1
WildW ___________________ 1
winr ____________________ 1
winsantz ________________ 1
xbassman ________________ 1
xpblackdragon ___________ 1
yourwhiteshadow _________ 1
Zensal __________________ 1

A nice group, isn't it?
Quite a few are still very active, some not at all ...
To all of you: well folded!

 

[Pokey]

Thanks for going to the trouble of compiling the lists.............
I did mis-read the first one, my apologies. (posts and reads)

You are right, while participation has shrunk, the production has increased. So yep, we are fewer but better equipped.............

There are a lot of familiar names on the list of participants. Seeing the list makes me wonder what became of them. Of course, we are all going to wander off sooner or later................ :|

 

[Orange Kid]

Thanks petrusbroder.

So any tips and/or tricks for maximizing output. CPU's, GPU''s?

Took me till half way through the Seti race to maximize the output there, don't want to do that again :$

 

[Assimilator1]

I see I was in 4 races (thought I'd done more :$), the 2nd, 3rd, 5th (kinda!) & 8th.
I see averaged 12-14k on the latter 1/2 of the last race, same CPU still (don't think I tried 450 MHz FSB, don't think it was worth the extra voltage IIRC), but a better GPU which is supported this time ..... last I checked!

I'll be in the next race btw, this time I'll start crunching before hand!
Oh btw an idea for team names, The Starks & The Lannasters

Interesting to see whose been in all the races

 

[salvorhardin]

Thanks for the stats. Was looking at the other thread and was taking note of my production over the years and noticed that I missed a race.
I'll be start running in November in order to see which combination gives me more ppd and work out any issues. Last year I just used the windows installer and crunched on the gpu with a core feeding it. Gpus gave much more ppd than cpus, that losing one core for the gpu was worth it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I don't guarantee anything, but I'm interested in the upcoming race. Maybe I will be able to afford my pair of A8-7600 APUs, or alternatively, a pair of 750ti cards for my Q9300 rigs. (Or maybe a pair of G3258 overclocked rigs.)

 

[Pokey]

I'm just babbling here, but I went dual boot with Linux Mint a while back to get better F@H production and I believe it worked. But there was a learning curve on my part, even though I was able to get them all working with help from the Linux community. But when I switched back to Windows for the seti challenge I had difficulties with several of the MBR getting hosed on a couple of machines. In addition, I found Windows needing a gazillion updates. It proved to be somewhat painful going into Linux and coming out, so I decided to stick with windows. Not saying I won't change my mind later..... ()

Orange Kid
You do need to start ahead of time. I did with seti and needed every bit of it to get where I wanted to be when the race started.

Assimilator1
Look at the list again. The number to the right of the name is what you are looking for. There have been four people who have been in every race. :whiste:

 

[GLeeM]

Quite a few are still very active, some not at all ...

Thank you petrusbroder

I think this early thread will help bring new and old members to this years race, good idea!

 

[biodoc]

Thanks for digging up all the history of this race, Peter!

Last year Stanford finally officially supported Nvidia GPUs on Linux.

I'll have to start following the forums over there to see how I can maximize ppd on my hardware.

 

[Assimilator1]

Btw if anyone wants some idea of F@H performance on various h/w see this benchmarking thread.

Assimilator1
Look at the list again. The number to the right of the name is what you are looking for. There have been four people who have been in every race. :whiste:

I saw that 1st time , just thought I'd been in more races.

 

[Rattledagger]

Hmm, not sure why I missed the 1st. race, but a quick look reveals this was 2005 and at the same-time I took part in the so-called Folding@home/BOINC "beta-test"...

BTW, was there no race in 2006?

You do need to start ahead of time. I did with seti and needed every bit of it to get where I wanted to be when the race started.

You need to run at least 10 wu's with the passkey before you'll get any bonus-points, but if you've already done this in a previous race it's not so important to pre-start folding. In SETI@home you'll needed to validate against a wing-man and being up-to-speed before the race was an advantage. In FAH on the other hand the work is not validated against anyone else, meaning unless a server is down or is having a problem, crediting should happen within a few seconds after result returned.

Now using some days to trying to optimise your setup can still be an advantage. Additionally starting exactly at the point you'll report the first results 5 minutes after race-start is also an advantage.

 

[Ken g6]

I'll probably be back this year. Although I'm getting frustrated that I haven't found my annual prime this year. I somehow found it three days early, on 12/29/2013, and I haven't found one since.

I plan to upgrade my GPU this year, but I'm waiting to see what Nvidia comes out with in October. I might also upgrade the rest of my system, or I might wait for Skylake.

Does anyone know if hyper-threading is helpful on F@H? It's not for PrimeGrid.

 

[Markfw]

I got up to almost one million PPD, but my electric bill was out of sight, so I have 74 cores, and 4 video cards shut down. If it gets cold, I might be able to fire some of that up. Regardless, I will be back again this year.

 

[PCTC2]

Hey guys! Unfortunately, I left my job at the HPC shop, so I lost all of my bigadv rigs! No more 32-48 thread monsters or quad-GPU compute nodes. And I've actually gotten my personal computers down to a laptop, a Mac Mini, and a 2007 Mac Pro (all the rest are... in need of repair).

I work for a company that I could technically get infinite amounts of compute... for a crap ton of money (probably $thousands). So I'll probably have to sit this race out. Hopefully I'll be able to join again next year.

 

[Assimilator1]

You could join in with the laptop?

Some nice h/w you had access to!

 

[Markfw]

I'll probably be back this year. Although I'm getting frustrated that I haven't found my annual prime this year. I somehow found it three days early, on 12/29/2013, and I haven't found one since.

I plan to upgrade my GPU this year, but I'm waiting to see what Nvidia comes out with in October. I might also upgrade the rest of my system, or I might wait for Skylake.

Does anyone know if hyper-threading is helpful on F@H? It's not for PrimeGrid.

It probably is. In my case I have 2 boxes with dual 6-core cpu's and hyperthreading which makes 24 threads. This is required to get bigadv units. Also, I think it makes the 4-core / 8-thread boxes work better, but I never turn it off on any, so not positive there. and FYI, 2 6-core (24 threads with hyperthreading)@2.8 blows away the ppd of 24 real cores (dual 6234 opterons)

 

[Markfw]

Thanks petrusbroder.

So any tips and/or tricks for maximizing output. CPU's, GPU''s?

Took me till half way through the Seti race to maximize the output there, don't want to do that again :$

If you can not build a 24 thread machine (or more), then GPU's are probably better. I get 180k ppd on ZETA unis on a factory OC'ed 780. I get half that of no ZETA units are sent. I get 60k ppd on 660ti cards on ZETA, and again half of that when I don't get ZETA. Its like 50% of the time.

 

[Markfw]

Well, if I ever get my 290 working, I will be ready. When do we start setting up teams ?

 

[petrusbroder]

I have planned to start the racing thread tonight ... be prepared!

 

[Rattledagger]

I have planned to start the racing thread tonight ... be prepared!

That's the saying about men and doing multiple things... :hmm:

It's time for the WCG 10-year challenge before have to start thinking about FAH. :whiste:

 

[Ken g6]

It's time for the WCG 10-year challenge before have to start thinking about FAH.

And then I need to bump the PrimeGrid LLR race thread for the next race, Nov 19 18:00 to Nov 24 18:00 (UTC).

 

[petrusbroder]

Yeah, the F@H race starts December 1st, 2014 and ends January 1st, 2015. The timing will be disclosed ...