Christmas Race 2010

M

metallicafan

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - May 2010
Joined
Mar 30, 2005
Messages
2,205
OK everyone. Its that time of year again. December is the month when the powerhouses of WCG come together to have a 24 day race for the great WCG projects in the spirit of the holidays. I had waited to make this post to make sure that we were going to be able to get entered in the race but Im now quite confident that this wont be a problem. Below I have posted links for the WCG and the BOINC software that you will need. I will probably be reworking this post over the weekend to try and keep it updated with need to know stuff and helpful info. If you have any questions or need some help setting up the client, just post in this thread and there will be plenty of people around to help. I am very confident that the Horde can be VERY competitive in this competition. The race starts on Dec 1st and ends on Dec 24th.

WCG Homepage: http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/index.jsp
BOINC Download Page: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php
Christmas Challenge 2010 page: http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/team/challenge/viewTeamChallenge.do?challengeId=3743
WCG System Requirements: http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/help/viewTopic.do?shortName=minimumreq

Ave PPD on Dec 1: 578,219

Install Instructions
1. Go to this webpage to Register for an account and Select your projects: http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/reg/viewRegister.do
Dont forget the joing the HardOCP team.
2. You can download the software from the WCG page but i would recommend getting it from the BOINC Download page listed above.
3. Once you have downloaded the software, go ahead and install the software. I would select all the defaults in the installer except I would select Advanced options and unselect the "BOINC Screensaver" option. You guys know the drill here regarding screensavers and performance. This is the [H]ardforum after all.
4. Then it will probably ask you to reboot and then the software will launch upon the reboot. Go to the Advanced View of the software, click on Tools and Attach to project. Select the WCG project and then enter your username and password when asked.
5. Thats it. The client should then go ahead and runs checks and performance benchmarks, download the client apps and WUs and start crunching.

I have also assembled a list of quorums for some of the projects.
Quorums:
Computing for Clean Water Project - 1
Human Proteome Folding - Phase 2 - 15
Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy - Phase 2 - 2
Help Conquer Cancer - 2
Help Fight Childhood Cancer - 1
Clean Energy Project - Phase 2 - 2
 
Last edited:
Looks like we are off to a great start. Thanks to all who participate in this great project.

Here is the link to our WCG team page.

Client Optimization Check - If you are installing BOINC for the first time make sure to use the advanced view as it will give you more info. Make sure to go to Advanced | Preferences | Processor Usage Tab and check the "use at most ___% of the processors" option and the "Use at most ___% CPU time" options. Set both to 100% for maximum crunching!

Side challenge - the HardOCP team is also participating in the WCG Cannonball Run!! 10 since it overlaps with the Christmas Challenge. :) No special config is required. The points you generate on Dec 16 - Dec 25th will also go toward our team total in this secondary challenge.
 
Last edited:
I don't see us on the list?
 
i can swap my 1090T and my Q9450 over to my WCG again(joining the 5000+), and help you guys out for the month :D

Ill only be doign HCC and HCMD though
 
edited**** incorrect information on my part.

other note, ill have my phenom II 940 running this once i finish this damn p6701 WU on F@H.
 
Last edited:
What sub projects in WCG on average return the most points/hour?
 
Razor_FX_II said:
What sub projects in WCG on average return the most points/hour?
Click to expand...
i think they are all about the same now. the AID's project they were running for a while took the longest to run but even its higher point value matched all the other WU's when you compared the time and points. thats the one thing WCG's done right is that they are all worth about the same points. but points are also determined by the other people running the same WU. if you get some one that runs the WU faster then you. then you get more points out of the WU. but if some one ran the WU much slower then you, you get less points.
 
What would be the best project to run on a 3.8ghz hex core Xeon?
 
well IIRC it runs one per core no?
 
FLECOM said:
well IIRC it runs one per core no?
Click to expand...


correct 1 WU per core. think F@H uniprocessor client on roid's for multi-core processor's. thats the best way of explaining it for boinc newbies that run F@H.
 
oh i see this is just for WCG. I was thinking it was open to all of BOINC.
 
the part where I don't get any bonus for running the client on my multi core CPU!
 
jebo_4jc said:
the part where I don't get any bonus for running the client on my multi core CPU!
Click to expand...


welcome back to the old days when bonus points didnt exist. back when it was all about brute force and endurance.


note: im one of the many people that hate the pos bonus points in F@H and think its ruined everything F@H was about but thats of course another discussion for another time that will never happen.
 
what? I don't have time for this. I got distracted after you said "welcome back to...." something something

oo look! puppies!
 
The only problem I see on BOINC is that it is capable of pushing much more data through my network. Somebody was running Einstein@Home (I think) and pushed 1 GB through the network in less than an hour (we're limited to 5 per day) Meanwhile I barely notice the bandwidth use on F@H, but that could be because it takes about 12 hours or for my CPU to finish a WU, and my GPU isn't always on. :-|
 
kirtar said:
The only problem I see on BOINC is that it is capable of pushing much more data through my network. Somebody was running Einstein@Home (I think) and pushed 1 GB through the network in less than an hour (we're limited to 5 per day) Meanwhile I barely notice the bandwidth use on F@H, but that could be because it takes about 12 hours or for my CPU to finish a WU, and my GPU isn't always on. :-|
Click to expand...


yeah it depends on the project. depending on what your working on theres some that the final output is well over a gig but those projects take days or weeks per WU. then there are some that are only a couple megabytes that take 30 minutes to an hour to run.

nice thing about boinc is you have more control over your network usage and how it uses it. you can set it so it only uploads data every .3 days or set it to upload/dl everything once a day. you can set it to ask you to upload/dl. so you can personally control the amount of data it uses and when it uses it. bunch of different options in there.
 
ok officially running WCG now.. yay!!! debating if i want to kill my 9 week uptime to put my overclock back to 3.5ghz.
 
Join us in the ragged edge
Posted via [H] Mobile Device
 
jebo_4jc said:
Join us in the ragged edge
Posted via [H] Mobile Device
Click to expand...


lol im at and well over the ragged edge with this POS motherboard. i cant even let my cpu idle otherwise i might risk damaging my cpu. idle voltage = 1.57v full load voltage = 1.49v. yay go asus!
 
One thing people need to do is go into the advanced preferences and uncheck the confirm before connecting to internet option.
 
Switched over my home computer to WCG till the end of the competition. Will do the computer(s) at work on Monday.

Does anyone know which of the projects has the huge uploads? I want to opt out of those on the work computers. I have the client set up at work to connect at night (and slowly at that) but I'd still rather not bog down the system or use up their bandwidth. We have a particularly shitty internet connection.
 
dunno. so far the largest file its downloaded was 12mb and that wasnt a WU. it was a file needed to precess a WU. i think most of the WCG WU's are under 1mb.
 
Thanks for helping Briliu! The upload numbers can be found in the system requirements link in the first post (make sure to scroll down). most of them are pretty small. Thanks to everyone who has joined the effort!
 
In the process of switching all my gear over from F@H and i have a couple of ??s

1) Are the projects listed in the quorum the only ones that count for the race?
2) Can any of these projects use my GPU (AMD 5750)?
 
What does the quorum represent?


Have we ever won this deal in the past?
Posted via [H] Mobile Device
 
Recruited a family member last night. He was getting tired of MilkyWay and QMC and was looking for something different. CEP2 interested him and now he's onboard.
 
nitrobass24 said:
In the process of switching all my gear over from F@H and i have a couple of ??s

1) Are the projects listed in the quorum the only ones that count for the race?
2) Can any of these projects use my GPU (AMD 5750)?
Click to expand...

1 - Nope any of the projects currently running on the Grid will count for the challenge and I would encourage people to run the projects that they have a personal stake in or WANT to contribute to. I just posted the quorums there for people who dont have a preference in what project they run. Obviously if people run a project with a high quorum some of their units might not get credited until after the race is over, whereas a project with a low quorum will get credited to their account rather quickly. Thats really the only factor of the quorums. But all projects count toward the challenge. If you run a project that I dont have the quorum for let me know what he quorum is and I'll add it to the list. I just havent had time to run all the projects to make a complete list yet.

2 - WCG is CPU only so sorry no GPU WUs at this time.

Thanks for helping nitrobass!
 
So if I sign up for Help Fight Childhood Cancer it will give me more points than if I sign up for Human Proteome Folding?

I still don't understand the premise of the quorums
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
no we have never won that i know of. we came in second last year about 2 million points short i think.

ahh nvm the last time we did it was in 2008 and we came in 4th..

http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/team/challenge/viewTeamChallenge.do?challengeId=1721
Click to expand...

We also participated last year and there were many more strong teams:
https://secure.worldcommunitygrid.org/team/challenge/viewTeamChallenge.do?challengeId=3086

We finished in 11th last year with 20M WCG points. In 2008 we finished in 4th with 13M WCG points. So hopefully we can surpass 20M points!
 
heck we can beat 20m

I don't even remember hearing anything about this last year.
 
jebo_4jc said:
So if I sign up for Help Fight Childhood Cancer it will give me more points than if I sign up for Human Proteome Folding?

I still don't understand the premise of the quorums
Click to expand...

Lets say that I Project A has a quorum of 2 and Project B has a quorum of 10. For every WU of Project A I crunch only 1 other computer has to crunch that same WU whereas in Project B 9 other computers have to crunch that WU. Credit isnt awarded for a WU until the quorum has been met. So in Project B, if I crunch a WU on Dec 20th, I may not get credit for the WU until say Dec 27th if the other replicating WUs are still sitting is someone's queue for a couple days. Cliff notes: The higher the quorum value the longer (on average) it will take until credit is awarded for the WU.

I hope that make sense, and really this is only a big deal if you are looking to points chase. Otherwise just pick the projects you are interested in and crunch away! :)
 
That's cool.

Isn't the Christmas Race by definition a points chase? :) Of course, a points chase with good intentions.
 
well getting my garden onto BOINC for CPU usage (gpu's ofc with F@h since WCG cant use em), should be swapping over to [H]ard within a day or so

edit: wow HCMD is loving my threads i guess.....6 of em atm lol
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top