Current challenge: GFN-18, 19, and 20, December 21-31 (13:21 UTC)
I see clearly now that it's time to post the list of PrimeGrid challenges for 2020:
What you need:
What may help LLR (all but three of the challenges):
What won't help (but won't hurt either):
What won't help (and will hurt, sort of):
Welcome and good luck to all!
P.S. If no one has posted stats lately, try tracking your stats with my user script. With that installed, visit the current challenge's Team stats link for TeAm stats.
I see clearly now that it's time to post the list of PrimeGrid challenges for 2020:
Code:
# Date Time UTC Project Duration Challenge
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1 24-25 January 00:00:00 321-Sieve 1 day International Education Day Challenge
2 12-17 March 06:00:00 SR5-LLR 5 days Year of the RAT
3 1-4 April 12:00:00 SGS-LLR 3 days Sophie Germain's Birthday Challenge
4 23-26 June 22:00:00 PPS-Sieve 3 days Alan Turing's Birthday Challenge
5 24-31 July 20:00:00 TRP-LLR 7 days Katherine Johnson Memorial Challenge
6 3-6 September 00:00:00 PPSE-LLR 3 days International Bacon Day Challenge
7 20-25 October 06:00:00 PPS-DIV 5 days 2020 World Expo Challenge
8 18-28 November 18:00:00 CUL/WOO-LLR 10 days Magellan 500th Anniversary Challenge
10 21-31 December 13:22:00 GFN-18-20 10 days Great Conjunction ChallengeWhat you need:
- One or more fast x86 processors, preferably with lots of cores. (Even slow ones might do!)
- Windows (Vista or later 64-bit, or XP or later 32-bit), Linux, or MacOS 10.4+.
- BOINC, attached to PrimeGrid (http://www.primegrid.com/).
- Your PrimeGrid Preferences with only the above project(s) selected in the Projects section.
- Patience! All of these projects run long, slow WUs, at least on your CPU. As a result, no challenge is less than five days long.
What may help LLR (all but three of the challenges):
- PPS
- An Intel Sandy Bridge or later ("Core series" other than first-generation) processor with AVX may be 20-70% faster than with the default application. Sadly, that does not include Pentium or Celeron processors, or AMD processors.
- In most challenges - probably all of these since their WUs are so large - it helps to enable multi-core processing in your PrimeGrid Preferences.
- Faster RAM might help on some challenges, as long as it's stable.
- A GPU helps in two challenges.
- Juggling in some extra WUs may help in challenges where you run more than one WU on the CPU at a time. (Or, switching to use all cores on one WU at the end may work equally well.)
What won't help (but won't hurt either):
- A large amount of RAM.
- Any Android devices.
What won't help (and will hurt, sort of):
- Unstable processors. (Invalid work will be deducted! If Prime95 worked recently on your processor, it should be stable.)
- Work not downloaded anduploaded within the challenge. (It's not counted.) Should you not be able to be in front of one or more computers at that time, there are several options:
- You can often set BOINC's network connection preferences to wait until a minute or two after challenge time.
- And for short work units, you can just set the queue level very low (0.01 days). This also makes it more likely that you will be a prime finder rather than a double-checker. But you might want to raise their queue size after the challenge is underway.
Welcome and good luck to all!
P.S. If no one has posted stats lately, try tracking your stats with my user script. With that installed, visit the current challenge's Team stats link for TeAm stats.
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