5th Annual Folding@Home Holiday Season Race thread.

[petrusbroder]

Well, it is the time.
For the race some of us have been waiting for for quite some time.

This is the official 5th Annual Folding@Home HolidaySeasonRace thread.

The rules will be the same as before - why change a successfull concept:

Here are the rules:
1. Have fun.
2. Let others have fun.
3. Crunch as much as you can, as often as you can and as efficiently as you can.
4. Assimilating computers, adding members to the teams, switching teams, borging is allowed.
5: (Sid's rule) Whistle while you work; DON'T whistle while you sip.
6: (Sid's rule) No pouting.

Time frame:
Start: December 1, 18:00 UTC
End: January, 1, 18:00 UTC.

The teams:

The Snowmen

• biodoc
• filibusterman
• geecee
• Markfw900
• octavio (=Tivo20)
• paulnt04 = PCTC2
• Peter Trend
• Baldurs_gate=Rattledagger
• RTThurman
• salvorhardin
• TA_andy
• TonyH
• Uppsala9496

The Yetis

• GLeeM
• jtmiller (=SemperFi)
• Ken_g6
• kb3edk
• Neurodog
• Pokey_TA
• QuietDad
• TAS-petrusbroder
• theAnimal
• TomPhilippart
• wingding (=brownstone)
• VirtualLarry
• ZipSpeed

BTW: Folding@Home is the project of the month December for TAS - that is tradition and no vote is needed. :ninja:

What we need to decide if we should challenge some other team to the race; we have done that before ... :\

Edit 15/11/2010: added more racers.
Edit 17/11/2010: added more racers.
Edit 20/11/2010: added more racers.
Edit 24/11/2010: added more racers.
Edit 26/11/2010: posted the Teams.
Edit 27/11/2010: Changed Teams' namnes
Edit 01/12/2010: Teams' names finalized according to the poll as it shows now.

 

[Peter Trend]

I'm in, definitely!

 

[Ken g6]

I bought my GTX 460 before November, so I could have it ready for this race. I'm in; except for December 18-21, PrimeGrid's Winter Solstice Challenge, which uses the CPU and GPU applications I wrote!

 

[Neurodog]

I'm in

 

[TAandy]

What's the team number?

 

[PCTC2]

What's the team number?

Team #198!!!!

I can't believe it's already this time of year again. I really hope I can afford to do this again this year. I'll let you all know soon! I've got a few more computers up my sleeve now!

 

[ZipSpeed]

I am in!

 

[Pokey]

Need you ask? I'm in. And I will try not to pout....... :whiste:

 

[Neurodog]

I've just completed the smp client on all my home fleet.

 

[theAnimal]

I'm in. Still trying to decide on this year's upgrade...

 

[Neurodog]

Is it normal for the GPU client to use about 17% of CPU? if I turn it down it slows it down considerably.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Is it normal for the GPU client to use about 17% of CPU? if I turn it down it slows it down considerably.

Not for Nvidia cards, it should use nearly zero CPU. Unless NV undid some of the CPU optimizations that they put in around 180.xx.

PS. I'm in. Gotta get some of these computers built quickly, I guess, and I need another 750W PSU.
I'm building a quad-core gaming rig for my BIL with an X48 mobo, 750W PSU, and a pair of HD6870s.
I'm building a F@H secondary rig for myself, with an X48 mobo, another 750W PSU (still need to acquire), and a pair of GTX460 1GB overclocked cards.

 

[Ken g6]

Not for Nvidia cards, it should use nearly zero CPU.

Really? It uses about that much of my quad-core too, in Linux under Wine. (Around 50% of one processor.) I haven't turned on advmethods; would that help?

 

[Philippart]

I'm in too!

 

[Pokey]

Peter, we could use the team names from last year. Although biodoc suggested a few good ones back then too. I kind of liked one in particular: pi stackers if we should use new ones.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Really? It uses about that much of my quad-core too, in Linux under Wine. (Around 50% of one processor.) I haven't turned on advmethods; would that help?

I don't know about Linux, but under Windows XP, after the 180.xx drivers (haven't tried too many newer ones either), CPU usage for four 9600GSO GPUs running the F@H GPU2 client went down to basically 0-1% CPU time.

I run the newer Prime95 SoB client on both cores of a dual-core AMD CPU, while crunching F@H on the four 9600GSOs, and I get around 4K PPD per GPU.

 

[Pokey]

Is it normal for the GPU client to use about 17% of CPU? if I turn it down it slows it down considerably.

FWIW:
Running windows, (XP, Vista) my older quad core's w/gtx260's, I get negligible cpu usage. With the I7 (Win7) and GTX460's I get 2-4% cpu usage per card.

All my setup's are pretty much default settings.

 

[Pokey]

I'm in. Still trying to decide on this year's upgrade...

That's a heck of a decision............ You know of course that whatever you do it will be obsolete next week.............

 

[brownstone]

I'm in, unfortunately I'm selling one of my 460's

 

[Ken g6]

Overclocked to 3GHz, my C2Q is using 30-40% of one core on FaH. I'm running with the latest Developer Drivers for Linux (260.19.14, I believe). I'm also not sure I'm getting the same WUs as everyone else: I'm running '247 ProG_hpin' right now.

I also get irritating, occasional freeze-ups when system CPU usage jumps to 100% of one core; no idea why, though they seem to let up with time. Plus the FaH core seems to use enough memory bandwidth to stop one out of four BOINC CPU processes from executing some of the time.

Edit: with -advmethods, a 'PEPTIDE (1-42)' is better, using just 20% of one core.

 

[theAnimal]

You know of course that whatever you do it will be obsolete next week.............

We'll see...

 

[geecee]

New to this, so I've never participated before, but would be happy to give it a try. Although the little piddling amount I contribute may be more of a hindrance to any team I am assigned to.

On the bright side, I should be able to bring another folder or two online temporarily for December. Also, I also have an approximately $200 budget to build a new machine. Considering that I have a case, a 400w PS, an extra HD, and a 2gb stick of DDR2 already, I was thinking of this:
GT430: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814187121
Athlon II X4 640: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103871
and either
MB1: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813138111
OR
MB2: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157204

Anyone have any thoughts? While certainly not anywhere near top of the line, I figure this could be a decent low end folding machine between the CPU and the GPU. The GPU should give anywhere from 4-8K ppd (depending on the units) from what I can see online, and the CPU should be able to do another 2K or so running SMP? I might be able to bring that system online in early December, and run it concurrently with my current setup for December (for the race), and then decommission the older X2/GT240 system in January.

 

[ZipSpeed]

Doesn't look like I will be getting my new fancy GTX 580 in time for the race. That said, better start stress testing and get my 10 units folded for SMP on my i7 950!

 

[TonyH]

I'm in too.

I don't have plans for anything new on my systems unless there's some really sweet deals on BF. I sould get a dummy plug for my GX2 and start folding with its' second GPU. That could add a bit more to the pot.

 

[Philippart]

I hope we get many people to join in order to have great sub-teams competing.

I challenge myself to quadruple my output compared to last year for whatever it takes! (hoping that my last year's score wasn't too high lol )