F@H -chimp challenge

[bmwbaxter]

I was wondering if anyone would be interested in taking a 6 week break from rosetta to take part in the Folding @ home chimp challenge in May.

The F@H team is only going to do it if their members are interested so I figured I would offer our help too if you all want.

So post if you want and feel free to also list what HW you would use F@H also uses GPU's.

[PenguinsPal]

I would be interested. I have a pair of GTX460's and a 1090T.

[Adak]

We really enjoy the Rosetta team working with us, throughout the Chimp Challenge race.

Final race rules haven't been set for 2012 yet, but in the past:

1) The race lasts for about 10 days only.

2) Folding@Home has no RAC. When you return the work unit, you receive the credit for the work unit, in an hour or two.

So "run up" is limited to the time it takes to fold your first work unit. A change of folding client programs is necessary. F@Home uses their own folding client, and it's a bit more complex than BOINC to set up. More info on this later.

3) There is no caching of work units. You receive one work unit only, at a time.

The teams competing are handicapped now - and one year that might favor the smallest teams, and another year it might not. There is no limit to the number of teammates you can add for the race - the more the merrier, actually! "Sandbaggers" with racks of servers they want to test, or strong PC's, are *welcome*!

The teams competing are some of the most prolific teams in F@H:
EVGA, OCNET, TSC! Russia, Custom PC and Bit Tech, OCAU (Aussies), Hardware Canucks (last year's winners), MaxPC (magazine), and little old us at Overclockers.com.

Results are tallied and updated every hour or so, around the clock.

Last year we had a *very* poor start, quickly winding up in last place. With the help of our Rosetta and SETI crunchers joining us, along with a few strong F@H folders getting into the race, we pulled out a nice mid-field finish.

I have a status type thread of our team's doings, here in the F@Home forum, and everyone jumps in with their thoughts, as well. It had about a dozen pages and well over a thousand views, last year.

This year, we have a question regarding the race, that needs to be answered by every one reading this post:

Do you want to race, this year?

To me, it's the funnest thing you can do in Folding, with your clothes on, bar none. But it's not fun to do a lot of preparation, and then when the race starts, your team isn't at the starting line. :shock: :shock:

Like last year. As RipD posted at that time:
The individual points tell a story here. Less than 15 out of our top 50 folders are all in. Trends for many show they're not in at all. If any of you know any of these guys I'd reach out with a personal request. I get that a few can't or don't want to play, but surely we can do better.

By preparation, I mean a lot of our team folders have multiple PC's, and every one of them has to be re-set to the new team name, and the new team passkey, for the race. After the race, they again need to be set back. While most folding PC's are local, some are not.

So I'm putting up a poll Do You Want to Race?. Please vote in the poll. The results will figure strongly in deciding whether we participate in the race, or not.

FYI:
Our traditional rival in the race, has been MaxPC. We have each won the race, in the past (neither has won recently however). The last two years we've beaten them handily. :clap:

We've also come from behind in the last day of the race, to beat the strong TSC! team, two years in a row. :burn: :burn: :burn:

[Bobnova]

I will definitely join in! I'll have a 2600K at 4ghz or so, and either a FX8150 or a PhII 955 at 3.xGHz.

I'll need a cheat sheet as to what client is best for what these days, I have to admit that I haven't been paying a lot of attention to state of the art in FAH :chair:

[Adak]

We have a brand new folding client v7, which was just released. It's getting easier to run FAH all the time (finally!).

More details, as we see how this version performs.

[Tbrooks]

I will chimp in my 3930k at 4.7 with 2-GTX560ti's and maybe my 2500k with a 6970. I might even switch them over to linux for that.

We should get all the Rosetta people crunching under the same name then our stats might look a bit better.

[Insane Scyth]

The F@H members have always been helpful to rosetta, so I would be more then happy to join in the Chimp Challenge. I'll jump over to your thread on the F@H forum and answer the poll.

[muddocktor]

Unless I get stuck at work and have no access, you can count me in, Adak. I have some decent machines and should be able to help out a bit on the Challenge.

BTW, did Hardocp bail on doing the challenge? I noticed that you didn't include them in your listing above.

[Adak]

Year before last, they joined the race, for the first time. Only to find out that a lot of their most productive teammates, did NOT join the race - and they weren't doing well in the Chimp Challenge, because of it. Sank to last place, actually.

The dissension got so heated, that the admin or mod there closed the CC threads, quit the race, and banned any more threads about the Chimp Challenge. :shock:

Last year, they had a race with EVGA, just the two of them. [H] lost, but raced well.

Haven't heard any word about them wanting to join the CC this year, but maybe they will request entry.

[HankB]

Count me in for a GTX-460 (as long as F@H/CUDA sill runs under Wine in Linux) and three of four 2.8 GHz Phenom II cores. And my PS3 is still crunching since last year except when it's time to watch a disk or play guitar hero. :D

[TsunamiJuan]

I was talking with ed about this a few weeks ago, when the time comes i am gonna make sure i have all my sb's and probably a few xeons operational and ready to run to the max.

[Adak]

Sounds like a racer to me -- thanks!

Mark your calendar - May 4th we change over to the race handle (if needed). May 5th, we race! :burn: :burn: :burn:

[bmwbaxter]

so chimp challenge is a go fosho?

[Adak]

I expect yes, but the final rules for the race haven't been set yet.

Of those who answered the poll however, about 80% replied that they wanted to race this year. That's good enough for me. Hopefully between now and then, we can show people that the race is not just for fun, but also gives FAH a huge boost in folding, and in word of mouth buzz. The buzz part is quite valuable for FAH, although it's an intangible.

[TsunamiJuan]

I am glad that your getting it planned out now, before it happens not at the last minute

[Tbrooks]

It was all the buzz on the forum here that got me started folding.

[Adak]

I am glad that your getting it planned out now, before it happens not at the last minute

Yes, it doesn't always happen this way!

@TBrooks - you'd be amazed at how much buzz FAH gets from the race alone.