Should we be overly concerned about our dropping team PPD?

LuvToGame · Nov 14, 2012

Hi team,

I'm just a little concerned with the Aug-Sept drop in team PPD. There appears to be no historical correlative to explain this great of a drop despite the high temps. Is this a product of new cores/wu's we are receiving or did some team members throw in the towel?

Arkaine23 · Nov 14, 2012

Maybe somebody's cluster had to be put to other uses for awhile...

BrotherJohn · Nov 14, 2012

Ding, Ding, Ding... We have a winner!
Ramonetb had to quit testing a cluster: http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=714491

LuvToGame · Nov 14, 2012

Ok, that explains it. Thanks for the ride; hate to lose that asset. I suppose we are still increasing from last year.

moz_21 · Nov 14, 2012

I had to drop out a few months back. Times are tough and a lot of people are struggling, myself included.

Is_907 · Nov 14, 2012

I've just added about 25-30k PPD this week... pebbles, I know, but it's better than nothing. I had to take a long hiatus from F@H (about a year) again but I'm back in.

LuvToGame · Nov 14, 2012

moz_21 said:
I had to drop out a few months back. Times are tough and a lot of people are struggling, myself included.

Man, I totally understand. We are feeling the hurt too. However, winter is a wonderful time to fold for the heat you would otherwise have to burn fuels. I will undoubtably have to pause my folding when the a/c comes on next year, but I'm givin it all I can while the opportunity is here.

LuvToGame · Nov 14, 2012

Is_907 said:
I've just added about 25-30k PPD this week... pebbles, I know, but it's better than nothing. I had to take a long hiatus from F@H (about a year) again but I'm back in.

That is a big "pebble." I wish we had several dozen just like you willing to give what they have. I'm never going to fold like the "pros" on the team who are Folding@Work. But there are a number of powerful teams whose average contribution is far below team 32. I wish we could engage the little guys out there who feel less than relevant.

BrotherJohn · Nov 14, 2012

Is_907 said:
I've just added about 25-30k PPD this week... pebbles, I know, but it's better than nothing. I had to take a long hiatus from F@H (about a year) again but I'm back in.

LuvToGame said:
That is a big "pebble." I wish we had several dozen just like you willing to give what they have. I'm never going to fold like the "pros" on the team who are Folding@Work. But there are a number of powerful teams whose average contribution is far below team 32. I wish we could engage the little guys out there who feel less than relevant.

I agree, that is not a small pebble.
All those "pebbles" add up to BIG points for the team.
My former main folding boxen was only getting about 22k on a good day.
My daily driver only gets about 1.5-2k so it doesn't fold currently.

I'm not liking my power bill but I am trying to up my ante.
Hopefully soon I will have another boxen up and can shut down 1 of the 2 that I currently have running.
In these times it is hard to come up with the $$ to get more efficient equipment.

Is_907 · Nov 14, 2012

Hah, well my average will be a little less than that 25k apparently. Can't knock the WUs out as fast when I'm working from home, multi-tasking on the desktop.

I might consider using my MacBook Pro for F@H too, but I can't guarantee it'll be up enough to finish within deadlines, with it being very portable, and all.

Arkaine23 · Nov 14, 2012

Is_907 said:
Hah, well my average will be a little less than that 25k apparently. Can't knock the WUs out as fast when I'm working from home, multi-tasking on the desktop.

I might consider using my MacBook Pro for F@H too, but I can't guarantee it'll be up enough to finish within deadlines, with it being very portable, and all.

Mine does around 10k/day. I do lose a little time when driving around or if I forget to hook it up overnight.

BrotherJohn · Nov 14, 2012

Is_907 said:
Hah, well my average will be a little less than that 25k apparently. Can't knock the WUs out as fast when I'm working from home, multi-tasking on the desktop.

I might consider using my MacBook Pro for F@H too, but I can't guarantee it'll be up enough to finish within deadlines, with it being very portable, and all.

That's nothing to sneeze at.
40 people adding 25k a day would give 1 million points a day to the team.

Arkaine23 · Nov 14, 2012

LuvToGame said:
That is a big "pebble." I wish we had several dozen just like you willing to give what they have. I'm never going to fold like the "pros" on the team who are Folding@Work. But there are a number of powerful teams whose average contribution is far below team 32. I wish we could engage the little guys out there who feel less than relevant.

I think we lost a lot of guys because of how Stanford has handled SMP, QRB, and BA as new hardware came out and new cores to take advantage of it. It used to be that SSE/SSE2 & advmethods gave the edge on production, but the edge wasn't nearly as big as BA and QRB are now. Those past contributions from dozens of CPU's can be outpaced by a single modern system relatively quickly. It took years with nearly 100 CPU's folding at times for me to get my first 3M points, but only a few months to push up to 40M. That kind of thing turned a lot of our old team members away from folding. And then when BA requirements changed, a lot of people soured on taking a big hit on what their i7's could do.

BrotherJohn · Nov 14, 2012

Things do change, I remember when it was 1 point per WU (Tinker?).

Is_907 · Nov 14, 2012

Arkaine23 said:
Mine does around 10k/day. I do lose a little time when driving around or if I forget to hook it up overnight.

Not bad. I guess I could always have it fold *only* at night and days I work from home. Wouldn't do much at all on days where I'm driving to meetings and lunches, etc.

BrotherJohn said:
Things do change, I remember when it was 1 point per WU (Tinker?).

Yeah, when Gromacs was a new thing that really seemed like a revolution.

In the end, I donate CPU and GPU cycles because I believe the project is useful. That trumps the stress-testing, points-gaining, fun team stuff. (Although all of those things are *very* important and fun

)

BrotherJohn · Nov 14, 2012

Is_907 said:
Not bad. I guess I could always have it fold *only* at night and days I work from home. Wouldn't do much at all on days where I'm driving to meetings and lunches, etc.

Car charger would cure the drive time issue.

LuvToGame · Nov 14, 2012

Arkaine23 said:
I think we lost a lot of guys because of how Stanford has handled SMP, QRB, and BA as new hardware came out and new cores to take advantage of it. It used to be that SSE/SSE2 & advmethods gave the edge on production, but the edge wasn't nearly as big as BA and QRB are now. Those past contributions from dozens of CPU's can be outpaced by a single modern system relatively quickly. It took years with nearly 100 CPU's folding at times for me to get my first 3M points, but only a few months to push up to 40M. That kind of thing turned a lot of our old team members away from folding. And then when BA requirements changed, a lot of people soured on taking a big hit on what their i7's could do.

Yeah, well I'm still sore from the BA16 changeover; I had bought a 2600k that I didn't need for my modest computing needs just two weeks or so before the BA dried up. But I'm still sticking with the project where else you gonna go? The other initiatives seem unrealistic or plain silly; just one opinion.

BrotherJohn · Nov 14, 2012

LuvToGame said:
Yeah, well I'm still sore from the BA16 changeover; I had bought a 2600k that I didn't need for my modest computing needs just two weeks or so before the BA dried up. But I'm still sticking with the project where else you gonna go? The other initiatives seem unrealistic or plain silly; just one opinion.

Yup, I am still moving forward on another 4P even though the new planned GPU QRB will have made the money spent not worth as much ppd wise.

Arkaine23 · Nov 14, 2012

I was shopping around for a 2600K system when they switched BA to 16 and decided to hold off... Was also waiting to see what PD would do. I'd wanted to put a 4P together, but then I just picked up a motherboard, i3570K, and 212 EVO at Microcenter for $290 and decided that was better than dropping $1500+ and finding a place for a caseless 4P in my little apt. Besides with GPU QRB coming, I can pickup a decent video card on Black Friday and make up some of that ground.

Can two video cards fold in a SLI-incapable system... or should I do the necessary hax to make SLI work? What's a good value video card to fold on anyway?

BrotherJohn · Nov 14, 2012

Arkaine23 said:
I was shopping around for a 2600K system when they switched BA to 16 and decided to hold off... Was also waiting to see what PD would do. I'd wanted to put a 4P together, but then I just picked up a motherboard, i3570K, and 212 EVO at Microcenter for $290 and decided that was better than dropping $1500+ and finding a place for a caseless 4P in my little apt. Besides with GPU QRB coming, I can pickup a decent video card on Black Friday and make up some of that ground.

Can two video cards fold in a SLI-incapable system... or should I do the necessary hax to make SLI work? What's a good value video card to fold on anyway?

Yes, as far as I know you can't fold in SLI mode anyway.
Right now the best card is up in the air as Kepler hasn't been optimized yet.
I'm just running a GTX-460 Fermi for folding when I run GPU. I do have a GTX-260 but only use that boxen during contests.

Should we be overly concerned about our dropping team PPD?

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