BOINC Pentathlon Race Strategy and Tactics thread

[petrusbroder]

There is a rather nice and complex race ahead: the Seti Germany May Race.
We should take part - IMHO. Tas has a poll, and it stands 6 for running the race and 0 against. In this thread we should discuss the strategy of how we vote and how we race. I'll start with some links and some quotes from the other thread.

BOINC Pentathlon

TAS-poll (for TAS members only) - please PM me and you can become a member!

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[petrusbroder]

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We really can't register until we vote on the projects in each category.

Here's more info from the website:

The BOINC Pentathlon will be performed in 5 different disciplines:

Astronomy
Physics & Chemistry
Biology & Medicine
Mathematics
Alternative

The projects for the various disciplines to choose from are

Astronomy
SETI
Cosmology
Milkyway

Physics & Chemistry
Einstein
Ibercivis
Leiden
QMC

Biology & Medicine
Rosetta
Docking
MalariaControl
HFCC
HCC
HCMD2
FA@H
HPF2
WCG (in complete)
RNA World

Mathematics
ABC
PrimeGrid
RCN
Collatz

Alternative
yoyo
POEM
FreeHal
Spinhenge

Each team signing up for the BOINC Pentathlon (possible until 1st of May) can suggest a project for every discipline. The project with the largest number of suggestions will be crunched – except for those projects which
can't provide a sufficient number of workunits
support just a few operating systems
use a buggy application
don't offer the creation of new accounts
To keep this process as transparent as possible, we'll publish the suggestions of every team when announcing a new discipline (7 days before it's going to start).

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[petrusbroder]

I guess I would go with:

Astronomy
Milkyway

Physics & Chemistry
Einstein

Biology & Medicine
Rosetta

Mathematics
PrimeGrid

Alternative
yoyo

..

 

[Rudy Toody]

I would go with:

Astronomy
Cosmology

Physics & Chemistry
Ibercivis

Biology & Medicine
Rosetta

Mathematics
PrimeGrid

Alternative
yoyo

 

[Ken g6]

I want to vote for aqua, collatz, milkyway, gpugrid... and.. oh what the hell... seti .

aqua, collatz, and milkyway are the main programs that the top crunchers are doing

Of course I'd vote for PrimeGrid over Collatz; I'm not sure about the others.

 

[dajeepster]

is gpugrid not an option?

here's my breakdown and reasons
Astronomy
Milkyway (if you have a 48** or 58** ati, then you're golden.. I think it works for the nvidia side too... but the credit on the ati cards are just phenominal)

Physics & Chemistry
Einstein (i really need to get more points here and if they aren't going to do aqua, i might as well do einstein.. though it will hurt my current stats standings )

Biology & Medicine
Rosetta (cause i got nothing better here.. just that currently the work units take as long as aqua, but give about 5% of the credits of aqua )

Mathematics
collatz (if you have a DX10 or above card whether ATI or nVidia.. you're golden )

Alternative
yoyo (cause i got nothing better)


i petition for them to allow aqua and gpugrid
I would vote in the poll, just i don't know my pw

 

[Rudy Toody]

In rereading the rules--- If you think the team cannot compete with the big dogs, you can put all your resources on one project. There will be an overall winner and five project winners.

They will have projects that use GPUs, so we need to take a survey of our GPU resources to see how they match up to the projects.

 

[biodoc]

I've got 2 x ATI 4870 radeons and 1 GTX295.

All 3 are on milkyway right now and they are doing 200K ppd combined.

These numbers are for Windows OS (the radeons are on XP and the GTX is on Windows 7 64 bit).

I have vmware player installed on all 3 machines so I can also run ubuntu 64 bit simultaneously. You can run 64 bit linux on top of 32 bit windows XP as long as you enable intel virtualization technology in the bios.

On the XP boxes I'm running windows boinc (milkyway on radeons) and I'm also running ubuntu 64 on vmware (boinc/aqua on the cpus). I get 2x ppd running the 64 bit aqua linux client vs the 32 bit windows client. There's no ati gpu client for linux so with this setup I can maximize my ppd. You would probably need a minumum of 4Gigs of RAM (2 for each OS) to do this comfortably though. Although on some projects, 2Gigs of RAM may be enough? The latest version of vmware player allows the use of all 4 cores on a quad.

I guess it's kind of crazy but it does allow me to maximize ppd on all 3 rigs!

 

[biodoc]

From the Milkyway@home message boards: link

Milkyway@Home requires a GPU supporting Double Precision arithmetic.

NVIDIA:
Compute Capability 1.3 and Above
Example Products:
Geforce GTX 295
Geforce GTX 285
Geforce GTX 280
Geforce GTX 275 (credits to Bruce)
Geforce GTX 260
Tesla S1070
Tesla C1060
Quadro Plex 2200 D2
Quadro FX 5800
Quadro FX 4800
(Based on GT200 GPU)

ATI:
Example Products:
ATI HD Radeon 5970 (credits to kashi)
ATI HD Radeon 5870
ATI HD Radeon 5850
ATI HD Radeon 4890
ATI HD Radeon 4870
ATI HD Radeon 4850
ATI HD Radeon 4770
ATI HD Radeon 4830
ATI HD Radeon 38x0
(credits to cenit for the AMD documentation describing the products above)
ATI Firestream 9270
ATI Firestream 9250
ATI Firestream 9170
(credits to Cluster Physik)

Please post other working products and this list will be updated as time goes on.

 

[dajeepster]

here's my list:

i7 CPU 860 [2] NVIDIA GeForce 210 and 250, Vista Ultimate x64

i7 CPU 920 ATI Radeon HD 4770 Vista Ultimate x64

i7 CPU 860 ATI Radeon HD5770 Vista Ultimate x64

Xeon(R) [2] CPU E5405 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 Windows 7 Ultimate x64

i7 CPU 940 [2] CAL ATI Radeon HD5870 and 5850 Windows 7 Ultimate x64

i7 CPU 920 GeForce GTX 260 Vista Ultimate x64

i7 CPU 920 ATI Radeon HD 3800 Windows Server 2008 Standard x64

Core(TM)2 Extreme CPU Q6850 [2] NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT window7 Ultimate x64

Xeon(R) CPU X3210 [2] NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GSO (768MB) Vista Ultimate x64

Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9550 ATI Radeon HD 3850 Windows 7 Ultimate x64

Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 8400 GS (256MB) Windows 7 Ultimate x64

i7 CPU 920 [2] NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 (896MB) Server 2008 "R2" Standard x64

Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 ATI Radeon HD4850 Vista Ultimate x64

Xeon(R) [2] CPU E5310 @ 1.60GHz Windows Vista Ultimate x64

i7 CPU 920 [2] NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 (896MB) Vista Ultimate x64

Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9400 @ 2.66GHz Radeon HD 4890 and 4850 Windows 7 Ultimate x64

Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 HD 4670 Windows 7 Ultimate x64

Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9300 HD4850 (512) Windows 7 Ultimate x64

i5 CPU 750 GeForce 9400 GT (512MB) Windows 7 Ultimate x64

Xeon(R) [2] CPU E5335 Windows Server 2008 "R2" Standard x64

i7 CPU 860 GTX 280 (1024MB) Windows 7 x64

Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 ATI Radeon HD 4830 Windows Vista Ultimate x64

 

[petrusbroder]

I am impressed ... OTOH: I have almost no GPUs - just a few 9600 and GTX260. But we could see in which projects the CPUs matter most vote for them too.
If PrimeGrid will be one of t he projects I'll run 64-bit Ubuntu on some of the boxes ...

 

[Philippart]

hmm I think I read that the team which got the most credits wins, but then we should only choose high credit projects.

otherwise here's my list:

Astronomy
SETI

Physics & Chemistry
Einstein

Biology & Medicine
WCG (in complete)

Mathematics
PrimeGrid

Alternative
POEM

 

[biodoc]

Impressive list dajeepster!!

 

[dajeepster]

Impressive list dajeepster!!

know of a good computer addiction kicker?!.. er.. nevermind... they're called "girlfriend"

 

[biodoc]

know of a good computer addiction kicker?!.. er.. nevermind... they're called "girlfriend"

:biggrin: If we see your production drop, we'll know what happened!

 

[Rudy Toody]

It looks like a might have to pass this race, or be a bit late. I just got a notice from Seattle Cancer Alliance that they have me scheduled for 5 May for a series of 51 biopsies. Depending on how well I recover, I might be able to get in a few days late. Sorry, Guys.

 

[biodoc]

It looks like a might have to pass this race, or be a bit late. I just got a notice from Seattle Cancer Alliance that they have me scheduled for 5 May for a series of 51 biopsies. Depending on how well I recover, I might be able to get in a few days late. Sorry, Guys.

51 biopsies? Gee RT, I hope everything will go ok.

 

[petrusbroder]

51 biopsies? Gee RT, I hope everything will go ok.

Ditto!

 

[biodoc]

Only 4 of us have voted on projects so far:

Astronomy
SETI (1)
Cosmology (1)
Milkyway (2)

Physics & Chemistry
Einstein (3)
Ibercivis (1)
Leiden
QMC

Biology & Medicine
Rosetta (3)
Docking
MalariaControl
HFCC
HCC
HCMD2
FA@H
HPF2
WCG (in complete) (1)
RNA World

Mathematics
ABC
PrimeGrid (3)
RCN
Collatz (1)

Alternative
yoyo (3)
POEM (1)
FreeHal
Spinhenge

 

[Rudy Toody]

51 biopsies? Gee RT, I hope everything will go ok.

Ditto!

This will be my ninth series of biopsies in the last 13 years. I am in a study for those who have the precancerous condition know as Barrett's Esophagus. 48 snips are removed in a grid pattern from the lower third of my esophagus and usually 3 more from my stomach. They might do a few more this time, depending on what they discover.

Each time I do this, it takes longer to recover. I think my esophagus is getting old and tired.

I do know that I won't be doing much thinking that day while the juice they slipped to me wears off.

 

[petrusbroder]

My vote:

Seti
Einstein
MalariaContol
PrimeGrid
YoYo

Lets run those!

 

[biodoc]

5 voters are now recorded.

Astronomy
SETI (2)
Cosmology (1)
Milkyway (2)

Physics & Chemistry
Einstein (4)
Ibercivis (1)
Leiden
QMC

Biology & Medicine
Rosetta (3)
Docking
MalariaControl (1)
HFCC
HCC
HCMD2
FA@H
HPF2
WCG (in complete) (1)
RNA World

Mathematics
ABC
PrimeGrid (4)
RCN
Collatz (1)

Alternative
yoyo (4)
POEM (1)
FreeHal
Spinhenge

 

[petrusbroder]

Let us consider something else: How much do the different projects affect the CPU's and GPU's tempoeratures? Because if the CPUs run cooler in some projects we can OC them more ...:

Astronomy:
If you use the optimised application seti runs quite cool for CPUs (but not for GPUs) compared to many other projects.
Milkyway runs quite hot when using CPUs and I do not know how it is for GPUs ...

Physics & Chemistry
Einstein has an optimised application and and runs quite cool on Intel but hotter on AMD.
Ibercivis is not bad, but runs the CPUs hotter than Einstein - in my experience 3 - 5 ºC hotter.
QMC runs also hot. Leiden runs ok no hotter than Einstein.

Biology & Medicine
In my experience all of thos run OK - not as hot as Astronomy, Physics and Math.

Mathematics
PrimeGrid does not run as hot as ABC - at least on AMD dual- and quad-core processors. No experience with Intel.
I have no temps on the others ...

Alternative
POEM is OK - but it was some time ago I ran that one.
YoYo is a mixed bag: Muon runs quite hot ... the other projects within YoYo run cooler. In YoYo we should see which projects yield better credits ... and then run only those ...

Please comment ...

 

[biodoc]

Thanks for the info on temps/overclocking Peter.

One thing to keep in mind. When we register, we are just voting our project preferences. Once registration is over (May 1st), the organizers will tally up the votes and the projects that have the most votes will be the projects we crunch in the race.

This is from the website:

The BOINC Pentathlon will start on 5th of May 2010 and will end on 19th of May 2010 – so it will run for two consecutive weeks.
Every discipline will run for 5 days and is going to be announced a week before it will start via Blog (Feed , Twitter , Facebook ) - therefore no team will know the entire sequence of the Pentathlon right from the beginning!
The different disciplines may be performed in a row or simultaneously.


Sounds like it will be a wild 2 weeks!

 

[petrusbroder]

Yupp and it will be fun!
Would more people vote, please?