WCG Christmas Race 2015

Gilthanis

Gilthanis

[H]ard|DCer of the Year - 2014
Joined
Jan 29, 2006
Messages
8,860
WCG Christmas Race 2015: Dec 1-24

If you are already crunching for team [H], you don't need to do anything except add more cores... ;)

Every year in December a team hosts a Christmas Race for a fun holiday challenge between WCG teams. This year it was created by the team called Special: Off-Topic. The challenge is run through the WCG grid website and through their own stat updates so bunkering was permitted and does happen. This year's race is a Points Challenge meaning that a team's score will be the total points from the teams completed work units, just as you would expect.

Team [H] has participated in the race since 2008 and has always had great support from the DC subforum.

Here is the challenge link for the 2015 Challenge. http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/team/challenge/viewTeamChallenge.do?challengeId=7595 Keep in mind that personal points are updated twice a day but team points and challenge points are only updated once a day.

Here are some links for further information:
WCG Homepage http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/index.jsp
You can register a WCG account here http://join.worldcommunitygrid.org?recruiterId=338542

Our Team's page at WCG http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/team/viewTeamInfo.do?teamId=BP5XNJBR9N1 Please note that we have a few unofficial teams. Please use this link to verify you are attached to the correct one. If you still aren't sure, please ask in the forums or via PM and we will be glad to get you set up.
BOINC install guides: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1768558
Optimized Ubuntu client for multi socket rigs http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1805578

I hope that [H] members will consider participating, even if its only a couple cores. BOINC can run well on even old hardware or even ARM devices. There will be some tips, and configuration information in the post below soon. Thanks to everyone who participates! Post below if you are planning on helping out, or if you have any questions.

And yes we are getting a very late start on this one. The challenge is 1/3 of the way over already. Hopefully with the upcoming changes to how team captains is going to be handled, we will eliminate future issues with challenges.


teamdaily.php


2008 - 4th
2009 - 11th
2010 - 7th
2011 - 12th
2012 - 11th
2013 - 2nd
2014 - 3rd
 
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For those with old G34 multi-socket rigs that are sitting cold or looking for a good home, WCG is still a great project for these old beasts. Since the apps aren't always taking advantage of the newest SSE or AVX instruction sets, these boxes can still compete with some of the newest hardware. Just food for thought.
 
I'm already running WCG on my 64 core box. Do I need to do something to join this challenge?
 
I have the same question. I am running WCG continuously. It is disheartening to be 15 mil points behind though...
 
No..you don't need to do anything if you are already crunching. We just weren't signed up until today.
 
Gilthanis said:
No..you don't need to do anything if you are already crunching. We just weren't signed up until today.
Click to expand...
This should have been the first line in your lengthy post with multiple links. I was pretty sure that was the case.
 
We have already jumped from last to 7th.
 
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I tossed in a 2P E5 - that should get my points from pretty much dead to poor. I'll see about more soon.
 
We made it to 6th and should easily take 5th. Great progress so far everyone. Good to hear others jumping back in.
 
If we can keep up this traction, we stand a good chance of reaching #1 by the end of the challenge. If anyone has anything they can fire up, it would be a great help. We could be in second place within a day or two with a solid enough push. That just means a strong follow through for the rest of the challenge to catch EVGA.
 
I now have all of my piddling number of cores dedicated to WCG, to include my Android devices.
 
I'm not folding on any of my CPUs. How efficient are quad core Sandy Bridge CPUs with WCG? I might throw two or three of them on it if it's easy to set up.

edit
I think I got it setup on my main rig. Hopefully it doesn't take away any of my GPU slots for F@H as I couldn't figure out how to force it to use the CPU only. If that's even an option. Also joined the team, I think.
 
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It is pretty easy to set up, but then again I could be biased. The BOINC client has tons more customization potential options that scare a lot of people but once familiar many like the client a lot more. Efficient is a hard question to answer without a comparison. However, those should still see some good output.
 
How can I get into the advanced options to disable any GPU computing on my boxen? I don't mind running the CPUs full tilt until the 25th, but I don't want to take away from my GPU F@H computing.

Edit
I left clicked the icon in the system tray. Clicked snooze GPU. Will this do the trick to keep it off my GPUs? lol
 
How do I see everyone's contributions? I can see the teams contribution in the Christmas Challenge, but can't find individual contribution lists or team member contribution list. Does it not exist?
 
There is no GPU for WCG so as long as WCG is your only project, it will not use it.

However, the snooze option you are using only lasts for 1 hour at a time. To disable it entirely, you need to go to advanced view, (screenshot in the setup guide here: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1768558 starting at pic 10 for Windows systems and pic 9 for Ubuntu down in the Ubuntu portion), then click on Activity, click on disable GPU or whatever the terminology is. This will suspend any GPU processing until it is turned back on. Some clients may be slightly different depending on version but it is easy to find there.

WCG does not break down the challenge stats for us. So, unless someone is parsing the stats export file and keeping track of the numbers from beginning to end, then there is no way of knowing the challenge contribution numbers. You can see how many points each member has contributed altogether from the team's page. Or you can see people's contributions at BOINCStats or Free-DC but again, it won't break them down for this challenge. If the challenge were made using the BONCStats site, they would break it down.
 
I think I helped with one of these races last year, or maybe it was the year before....

?So do I just pick one of the projects in the list here: http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/team/viewTeamInfo.do?teamId=BP5XNJBR9N1 I installed the WCG Boinc Manager and did the FightAids Phase 2 project....

What does signing up for BAM! get me?

Plan on turning the heat down a few degrees and run this on 5 of my 6 cores. The tasks all say they'll take 11:50 to finish. Not sure if that is good or not.
 
Seems the Challenge page is down. Can't view the results right now.

I seem to have contributed 3340 points since yesterday though. Doesn't seem like a whole lot between my two clients; i5 4690k and a i3 5010U.
 
MN Scout, you only need to use BAM! if you plan on managing multiple host on more than one project (outside of WCG). If all you are using is WCG, then there is no need.

As far as sub projects to choose from, just pick one or more that you are interested in. Most work units should finish pretty quickly unless you have some seriously old systems or you are using Android. Android only has one option for sub projects right now anyways which is OET. I would make sure to check the box to send work from other projects... is selected in the event your preferred project runs out of work units temporarily.

Skillz, the challenge page comes up for me. However, it does say it was last updated 17 hours ago. They only update their challenge pages once a day. Not much fun I know, but that is the system they have.

WCG is known for being a low scoring project. They always have been. So depending on what you are comparing your points to... could make a big difference. Also, when you look at the points, are you looking at BOINC credit or WCG points from the site. WCG still hasn't updated to modern times and still reports their points based on the old UDP point structure which equates 7 WCG points = 1 BOINC point.

Edit: and double check to make sure you don't still have work units pending validation. You don't get points until they have made it through validation.

Edit2: appears that there are/were website issues today: https://secure.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/viewthread_thread,38691
 
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grim4593 said:
I have the same question. I am running WCG continuously. It is disheartening to be 15 mil points behind though...
Click to expand...

We are now only 10 million down from EVGA..making great progress for having a significant delay in starting. :)
 
Yeah the site started working shortly after I made that post. Forgot to edit it.

Between yesterday and today some information I calculated.

EVGA did 3,054,187 in that time frame.
HardOCP did 4,650,527 in that time frame.

This means HardOCP gained 1,596,340 on EVGA. At that rate we will pass them in a little less than 7 days. So about a week assuming nothing changes.
 
I have 5 tasks sitting in my list saying "Ready to report." Not sure why it isn't sending them in immediately. Will it do it automatically eventually? I guess my first results will be in soon.

I also figured out the CPU usage values. I had 80% processors and 80% time, so I was losing cyles. Changed it to 100% time and 80% processors and it is working as expected.
 
MN Scout said:
I have 5 tasks sitting in my list saying "Ready to report." Not sure why it isn't sending them in immediately. Will it do it automatically eventually? I guess my first results will be in soon.

I also figured out the CPU usage values. I had 80% processors and 80% time, so I was losing cyles. Changed it to 100% time and 80% processors and it is working as expected.
Click to expand...

Yes, it will send the results automatically unless you have restricted it under Tools>Computing Options>Network Usage. If you are impatient, you can click Projects>Word Community Grid>Update and it will send them immediately (unless their server is busy).
 
KMac said:
Yes, it will send the results automatically unless you have restricted it under Tools>Computing Options>Network Usage. If you are impatient, you can click Projects>Word Community Grid>Update and it will send them immediately (unless their server is busy).
Click to expand...

And if you don't want to manually update nor wait for the client to do it on its own, you can create a cc_config.xml file with the flag to report results immediately. There are examples in this thread http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1729016

Or if you want a simpler answer, the contents of the cc_config.xml would look like
<cc_config>
<options>
<report_results_immediately>1</report_results_immediately>
</options>
</cc_config>

and the file would go in your BOINC data directory.
 
lelliott731 said:
Throwing two machines at this, let's do this!!!
Click to expand...

Glad to have you on board :D


Oh...and we took 2nd place with the last stats update. And went from 10 million WCG points difference between us and EVGA to 7.4 million. That's some pretty good progress.
 
Wow that was a huge update for us.

EVGA had an update of 2,790,300 points.
We had an update of 5,306,017 points.

EVGA did 263,887 points less this update than the last one.
We did 655,490 more points this update than last one.

That means we gained 2,515,717 points on this this round which is 919,377 points more than the previous update.

At this rate we'll catch them well before the end of next week.
 
My calculation is you are gaining 2,515,717 points a day .
We are 7,406,745 points ahead.
You should catch us in three days. 2.5m x 3 = 7.5m

Good job ladies and gents!!!

Glad to see WCG getting so much love.
 
And today we are only 4.5 million WCG points behind EVGA. Shouldn't be much longer...
 
just noticed this! have some spare compute in the DC, added 4x 2630v3 into the mix, as well as my home machine. happy holidays, everyone.
 
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