Bigadv Points Changes

[PeddlerOfFlesh]

Bummer. Guess we shouldn't have put all our eggs in one basket. I'm guessing 2600ks are still the best PPD/w though.

Only good news for me is that I saved for a new car instead of putting more money into folding, which would have made me pretty upset :-\.

 

[BEEAH]

Yeah, 2600's will still be the best PPD/w. I understand the change, levels the playing field a bit with the GPU's but a bummer overall. I am breaking my own rules and have started folding again with my AC on. /rolleyes.

 

[madhatter256]

I think this might weed out some of the short-term folders on some other teams as the incentive to get mega points is much smaller now.

I updated my HFM and am currently working on project 6900 and it shows 13000 PPD.... a drop from 23000 PPD. That's 1000 more points than doing regular SMP folding on my i7 930 OCed to 3.5ghz when I did some SMP folding a while back.

 

[augie1111]

I agree it was needed.. almost 100k per drop is pretty intense! Now those pesky 2600k's get left in the dust Hopefully the newer hardware comeing out will give us the points we are used to seeing.. Get yer checkbooks ready lol

I say to that pile of poop. Pesky 2600's eh? I bet you want one!

 

['Cuda340]

Change in the points system for bigadv work units

Thought i should also post Prof. Vijay Pande's comments from his Folding@home blog:

For new bigadv WUs, we have changed how the points are calculated to bring them back into balance with the rest of the points in Folding@home. There are more details in this post:

http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=19059

The main jist of the change is that we are decreasing the points associated with bigadv WUs, from 50% over SMP to 20% over SMP. As with previous points changes, this deals with only new WUs to go out, not with WUs that have be collected, etc. I want to stress that the bigadv program is still continuing, but that, as we've mentioned before, this is an experimental program and subject to changes.

It's clear that any change to the points system is controversial, but this one has been raised as a very serious problem by many donors. After investigating the issues raised, we agreed that this was significantly out of balance, and made this change. Moreover, the feedback we have gotten is that we make a change soon and do so quickly, like "removing a bandaid" rather than drag out the pain. I'm sorry to have to make any changes at all, since any change is disruptive, but we (and many donors) felt very strongly that this change was very important.

The other change that we have in mind to do is to bring all classic and GPU WUs into the Quick Return Bonus (QRB) system. This would help further bring all FAH projects into balance. There may be some issues with GPUs and QRB, so we are looking to see what we can do to minimize problems with that before making a change in the points for GPU WUs.

Finally, I would like to remind all that we do listen to donors and take their input very seriously. There has been extensive discussions about the problems with the points system with the huge PPD's seen with bigadv (sometimes reaching 500,000PPD) and the lack of QRB for GPUs being major shortcommings.

Considering the great variety of donor opinions on this matter, it is no surprise that we agree with some donors and disagree with others. Moreover, with points, there will never be any system which makes everyone happy, but our goal is to try our best to balance the project as a whole, taking donor input seriously, and making hard calls when we feel it is necessary. This was definitely a hard call, but hopefully in time donors who disgaree now will come to understand the issues raised by the other donors and appreciate their point of view.

Blog

 

[freeagent]

I quit folding -bigadv and went back to a3, and fired up my gpu's. Now Im makeing about what I made with just the cpu last week

And I need a kw psu I have to run my gpus at 875mhz @ 1.088v to stay at 830-840w, If I run 1.1v for 900mhz, wattage sits at 870.. Not sure how accurate this thing is, but it is sensitive enough to see clock changes without changeing voltages, so it must work..

QRB on gpus would be awsome

 

[augie1111]

Sigh, there went my last 85K WU. Bring on the 2011's Intel! The mobo's are already there, how come you're slacking off eh? It's not as if it's rocket science.

 

[Adak]

Sigh, there went my last 85K WU. Bring on the 2011's Intel! The mobo's are already there, how come you're slacking off eh? It's not as if it's rocket science.

Easy answer -- Bulldozer. What Intel will bring out, and at what price points, will depend on what AMD's new cpu will do.

 

[tuigi69]

Easy answer -- Bulldozer. What Intel will bring out, and at what price points, will depend on what AMD's new cpu will do.

Agree. Intels manufacturing/design process in recent years has been pretty good. There tick/tock strategy is also working pretty well (work on die-shrink w/ minor improvements on one generation, then after getting the kinks worked out on the manufacturing process, go for major improvements) After Intel crushed AMD's Athlon with Core 2 Duo, AMD hasn't been much competition so Intel calls the shots. 2011's were supposed to come out around the beginning of the school season, but since AMD delayed Bulldozer, Intel did the same thing. For the reasons Adak stated and plus to milk the cash cow. You notice that with Sandy Bridge the 2600k is the fastest processor that Intel put out. All the new processors have been slower than the 2600k. We all know that SB is well capable of going faster than 3.3Ghz.

From what's being reported on the web and more importantly NOT being reported about Bulldozer, I think that it is going to fall short. Delays, no speed announcements, not much trash talk.... only emphasis on number of cores. If AMD really had something with Bulldozer, they would have been dropping hints left and right and doing a lot more trash talking (advertising) than what they are doing now.

AMD is unfortunately going to continue to play the value card, more cores - less money, which will leave Intel in the upper end all to its own.

 

[ChasR]

Things change pretty fast when you go on vacation.

I'm glad to see the changes, but PG only treated the symptoms, not the disease. THe QRB is what needs fixing, eliminating the exponential formula and replacing it with a linear formula of much more modest proportions capped at no more than a 50% increase in the value of the WU. I'll fold whatever they do.

 

[ChasR]

I went visiting over on Overclock.net forums and found they have 20 pages of discussion (if you can call it that) on this subject. Reading their forum makes me appreciate overclockers.com that much more.

 

[augie1111]

I went visiting over on Overclock.net forums and found they have 20 pages of discussion (if you can call it that) on this subject. Reading their forum makes me appreciate overclockers.com that much more.

IDK, I skimmed the first 3 pages and the consensus is about the same as here, 'it's about time' and '$/PPD going up' and was civil. Over at f@h forums ya'll must have seen the raving points s raking the team over hot coals over every little outage showing absolutely no patience or respect, some thick skins over there for sure not to ban them outright!

EDIT: Oopsie, let's call them 'points mongers' then.

 

[BEEAH]

I wonder how much more PPD you can get with running CPU and GPU's now. The impact will be more than it was before as far as points I would imagine. Granted points/kwh will still suck *** but if PPD is all that matters...

I want to simply drop -bigadv I just delete that line in my config file right? I changed bigpackets from big to normal and left -smp at 8. Does this look correct? Showing TPF at 2:24 for 25.4kppd. If I do fire up my GPU I should drop to SMP 7 right?


NEW
*********************************************************
bigpackets=normal
extra_parms=-smp 8 -verbosity 9
local=24

[core]
priority=96
cpuusage=100
disableassembly=no
checkpoint=15
ignoredeadlines=no
nocpulock=0


OLD
**************************************************************
bigpackets=big
extra_parms=-smp 8 -bigadv -verbosity 9
local=24

[core]
priority=96
cpuusage=100
disableassembly=no
checkpoint=15
ignoredeadlines=no
nocpulock=0

 

[ChasR]

-smp 7 is no longer viable. Running it will cause instant EUEs on p7500, p7501, and a few more WU's I can't recall ATM. You will need -smp 6 or get the priority correct, smp idle and gpu low, and run -smp 8.

Personally, the reduction in -bigadv points isn't going to change how I run on a 2600K. The net gain from the GPU should remain the same and still be dismal in terms of points/KWh.

 

[GIXXERGUY6]

I went visiting over on Overclock.net forums and found they have 20 pages of discussion (if you can call it that) on this subject. Reading their forum makes me appreciate overclockers.com that much more.

What are they saying? "This change sucks?" Believe me I'm saying the same thing inside and off of the forums