Cullen birthday challenge 2016

[vaughan]

Hey team,

We are part way thru the Cullen birthday challenge for 2016 at PrimeGrid. There are both Cullen (n2n + 1) and Woodall (n2n - 1)tasks to crunch using LLR. If you have a modern Intel CPU please consider joining me in this team challenge. Currently AMD Users is 14th. The Cullen tasks are a little faster to run than the Woodall tasks. They take about 1 day 20 hours (let's say 2 days) on an Intel Haswell i7 4770S with hyperthreading disabled.

The challenge runs until April 28 18:00 UTC.

[Dirk Broer]

I've got four Woodalls awaiting validation...and there's two more -plus a Cullen- in the pipeline!

[Brucifer]

I've got 8 Cullens going on a 5960x with hyper-threading turned off. I haven't messed with the prime world in years.... So anyway will see how this goes. :-)

[AMDave]

5 in progress @60% (mix of CUL and WOO) and 5 more waiting to start which I thought I might get finished before the close but now I'm positive they won't, looking at the countdown clock.

ed- I moved some things around. I should have 7 or 8 done by the close.

[Dirk Broer]

My oldest Woodall awaiting validation was completed on March, 24...

[AMDave]

Different rule for the challenge period though:
"A quorum of 2 is NOT needed to award Challenge score - i.e. no double checker. Therefore, each returned result will earn a Challenge score. Please note that if the result is eventually declared invalid, the score will be removed."
So fingers crossed they are all validated in the end.
I am running everything at stock so no reason for errors.
I just have to hope there are no power blips or storms during these long Wus. Those have always been my biggest impactors on long work units.

[AMDave]

Dang it. I just remembered that my fastest RAM is in the resident gamer's machine. I should have swapped it for the challenge. :P

[Dirk Broer]

Buy even faster RAM for the resident gamer that he/she can use after this challenge!
RAM is 'dirt cheap' at the moment: for under 150 Euro (1 Euro equals 1.46 Australian Dollar) I can buy 32GB of G.Skill DDR3 2133 RipjawsZ RAM (https://www.alternate.nl/G-Skill/32-GB-DDR3-2133-Quad-Kit-Werkgeheugen/html/product/1102598?tk=7&lk=9330)...
https://www.alternate.nl/p/230x230/i/G_Skill_32_GB_DDR3_2133_Quad_Kit__Werkgeheugen@@if ifghe7.jpg
In Oz you can get as much DDR3-2133 RipjawsX RAM for the same price (http://www.techbuy.com.au/p/314788/MEMORY_MEMORY_DDR-3_RAM/G.Skill/F3-2133C11Q-32GXL.asp)

[Brucifer]

well, I had 364.51 nvidia driver that they said was no good so changed to 361.91 and all 7 are at the 24 hour mark with 17 left to go.

[vaughan]

well, I had 364.51 nvidia driver that they said was no good so changed to 361.91 and all 7 are at the 24 hour mark with 17 left to go.
PrimeGrid recommend dropping back to the Nvidia driver version 362. There have been many reports of 364.xx causing problems.

In my case I had one PC out of dozens that continually went to a BSOD after I installed one of the 364.xx drivers. I was unable to backdate it to 362 as the machine would BSOD as soon as it loaded the Windows 7 screen. I could boot to Safe Mode but that wouldn't allow a graphics driver to be installed. In the end I had to re-install Windows 7 and update the Nvidia driver to 362. Since then it has been OK.

[Brucifer]

getting down to the nitty gritty, just a little over an hour to go and the cullens will be completed assuming nothing goes wrong.