April Competitions

[Dirk Broer]

Darn, April has already started and so have it's competitions. As a matter of fact there are three challenges going on right now! And some already started in March! What do we do this time?

March 28 to April 4 - * Moo`nRock! *
Sicituradastra had that much success last Moo! challenge (that with the missing final scores) that they organised one themselves!
http://boincstats.com/bam/challengeChat.php?chid=201
http://boincstats.com/signature/team_96_challenges201.gif


March 31 to April 3 - The April Collatz Challenge
Russia has a concurrent GPU challenge for Collatz. Bad timing, but not the fault of Russia, they were first.
http://boincstats.com/bam/challengeChat.php?chid=199
http://boincstats.com/signature/team_65_challenges199.gif


April 1 to April 8 - The April 2012 SIMAP scramble
BOINCStats organized the monthly Simap challenge, and Simap actually had WUs ready and going before the challenge even started!
http://boincstats.com/bam/challengeChat.php?chid=196
http://boincstats.com/signature/team_48_challenges196.gif


April 12 to April 16 - Gagarin's flight
Russia team (another Russian team than Russia) has organised a challenge for Constellation@home. The challenge is organized in memory of the first manned flight into space. On April 12, 1961 at 9:07 the Moscow time Yury Gagarin made the first piloted flight in space. The flight lasted 108 minutes. Therefore, their Challenge begins April 12 at 09:00 (AM) in Moscow and lasts 108 hours.
http://boincstats.com/bam/challengeChat.php?chid=203

[NeoGen]

Lets go guys!! :)

I am pushing with all I got on SIMAP and Collatz. Don't remember the last time I tried Constellation, or even if I have an account on it but I will get ready for it! :)

Do you guys also have tons of pending WUs on SIMAP or is it just me? :icon_neutral:

[Dirk Broer]

Pending credit
SIMAP: 1,543.66
Collatz: 78,000.00

[Brucifer]

I've got a couple amd gpu's on collatz. Not much, but it's better than nothing! :-)

[NeoGen]

I have my (weak) GPUs working on it so I only have 18k credits pending on Collatz... how many pending do you have Brucifer?

[vaughan]

I signed us up for the Constellation challenge at BOINCSTATS too.

[AMDave]

Published and I'm still crankin' some cow :P
An' The Old Sourdough is performing a Pheonix manouver an' a risen from the ashes.
Good to see you on the board again, chappie ;)
We have 9 active participants today. Rock-on!

[AMDave]

It's not official yet but NPLB will be rallying this month too:

PRPnet rally Apr. 18th-25th 2012
START: 2012-04-18 19:00 GMT (14:00 CDT) FINISH: 2012-04-25 19:00 GMT (14:00 CDT)
GB-2000 running at CDT (GMT -5)
Rally stats will be here: http://www.noprimeleftbehind.net/stats/index.php?content=gauntlet&rally_date=20120418

Just waiting for the official announcement from señor Barnes just in case there are any last minute changes.

[Brucifer]

I have my (weak) GPUs working on it so I only have 18k credits pending on Collatz... how many pending do you have Brucifer?

136,875.00

[NeoGen]

Well... SIMAP is dried out of work. I guess the current standings in the challenge will be the final ones even though there are a few more days left

[Dirk Broer]

Dried out of new WUs. Only some 65% of them is proccessed at the moment,
so we can see yet changes from types who know how to bunker Simap...I don't, I am out of Wus.

[Brucifer]

Added a couple more ATI's to collatz. Tried putting some nvidia's on it but they keps erroring out so swapped out the cards and dropped a couple 5770's in instead.

[Dirk Broer]

Good cards, 5770's !
For a time being even the best cards without Double Precision capability, but with a solid 1360 GFLOP Single Precision,
which is about GTX 480 level, but at a far lower rate of watts per GFLOP -or higher rate of GFLOPs per Wat, depending
on how you look at it.

Thanks to its realtively low power needed for a card of that performance (108 Watt),
the HD 5770 reaches 12.59 GFLOP/Watt tdp, while the GTX 480 does 5.38 GFLOP/Watt tdp,
owing to the 250 Watt needed to feed it (I take the tdp value as estimated DC consumption).

[Brucifer]

Speaking of cards, I was in the process of shifting things around. Previously I had purchased a couple GTX560ti's, along with a GTX460, and had been running them on F@H. The 560ti's do a real good job on F@H, but they SUCK power and in turn shove out a lot of heat. So I popped them on milkyway at home to see what would happen. They crunched along at what I though was okay, and then put them on collatz. Well I started getting errors out of them on the mini-collatz unitz now and then, plus the time sucked, so I pulled them out and popped the 5770's in. Naturally the 5770's run circles around the560ti's on collatz. Well I started feeling bad that I wasn't doing anything for millkyway, so I popped an old 4850 in a system and put that on milkyway. I about crapped myself as the 4850 is twice as fast as a 560ti on milkyway. Don't know why, but it just really surprised the dickens out of me. So now I'll have to dig out another old 4850 I have sitting on a shelf and get another one going on milkyway. Proly could have put them on collatz for the competition thing but I have a soft spot for milkyway and what they are trying to do. So just because those 4850's are 55 chips doesn't mean that they are useless yet! lol

edit: So now I have a couple GTX-560ti's and a GTX-460 sitting on the shelf. I doubt I'll go back to using them as summer is on the way very shortly and the heat is just too much for my electric bill having to run the A/C unit to keep the room tolerable with the other stuff running. Sux though since those cards cost a penny or two to buy. :-)

[Dirk Broer]

Well, that doesn't surprise me. nVidia s**ks major bigtime when it is about Double Precision, which is what MilkyWay wants.
When it comes to DP, nVidia wants you to buy a Quadro card, or even worse: a Tesla (look up the prices and you get my point)

Double Precision is where Ati/AMD shines: a mere HD 4830 kicks ass to nVidia's latest flagship, the GTX 680!

The only downside of things is that while the 3000 and 4000 Radeon series had DP capable cards from the mid-range level (if only financially),
AMD decided to handle DP as a premium in the 5000 series (only 58xx and 59xx) and as a super premium in the 6000 series (only 69xx).
Fortunately the new 7000 series is there to totally havoc nVidia's market share in the DC world.

DP power starts at HD 7750! And it totally crushes the GTX 680, let alone the 460 or 560....and all at a mere 55 Watt tdp.

PS: You can use the 560Ti and 460s for PrimeGrid's PPS Sieve, they do that really good.

[Brucifer]

PS: You can use the 560Ti and 460s for PrimeGrid's PPS Sieve, they do that really good.

And then one is right back at a wad of heat..... If I was going to mess with it anymore it would be for F@H. But I'm happy output wise with where I am on collatz and Milkyway. Maybe one of these days when I get some spare bucks I'll get some of the new technology amd gpu's but that stretches my budget a tad too much at present.

[VALDIS_001]

Dirk, thanks for the honorable mention in the moo competion, but I wasn't even running it with my machine, only a friends. I see that you are a fountain of knowledge, I have a few questions and need a bit of advice. Presently I run a 1100T processor, but would like to go to the bulldozer 8150, are they any improvement over what I have now or should I wait a bit more? And the other question is about GPU's, I have a pair of GTX570's, not bad....a bit hot 65C running at 100%(air-cooled). I am looking to pick-up a pair of 7870's or 7970's, to run on the non-nvidia jobs. Which pair would give me the best bang for a buck? And how hot would they run at 100%(air-cooled)? I am going to try to be more active in the competions and would like to have another pair of cards to swap out, depending on the game.

[Dirk Broer]

Hi Valdis,

Even more active? Well, The 1100T can still, depending on the task, beat the Bulldozer, so I'd watch the performance figures at WuProp, if I were you.
There you can see whether a Bulldozer will suit your specific needs. It might be wise though to wait for Piledriver, the 2nd generation of the Bulldozer design,
given the strength of the 1100T. If you'd still be running duallies or tri-cores, the Bulldozer would be better.

The 7770 runs at 80 Watt tdp, scoring 16.00 GFLOP/Watt tdp SP and 4.00 GFLOP/Watt tdp DP
The 7870 runs at 175 Watt tdp, scoring 14.63 GFLOP/Watt tdp SP and 3.66 GFLOP/Watt tdp DP
The 7970 runs at 230 Watt tdp, scoring 16.47 GFLOP/Watt tdp SP and 4.12 GFLOP/Watt tdp DP

I don't know who pays your power bill, but for 24/7 I think a 7770 might be the better choice. Even a 7750 is better for continious performance:
The 7750 runs at 55 Watt tdp, scoring 14.89 GFLOP/Watt tdp SP and 3.72 GFLOP/Watt tdp DP

GTX 570 runs at 219 watt tdp, scoring 6.42 GFLOP/Watt tdp SP and 0.80 GFLOP/Watt tdp DP

[VALDIS_001]

Thanks Dirk,

Thank god, I don't pay hydro, it's included(suckers). You think if I go with four 7770's(cheap $180 each) my 1250W power supply can handle the load? Oh, if your wondering what I use for a motherboard, it's a Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD7(6 PCI-E slots). If I went to watercooled GPU's I could put in six, but then I would need a bigger power supply, ya think? The 1100T is water cooled, so going to water cooling wouldn't be a problem, except that to cool each GPU, it costs $125 for the water block(Koolance). Well, got to go, I have great weather and it's time I got my nitro burning RC truck out for a rip.

HAPPY CRUNCHING............Val

[Dirk Broer]

If you don't trust a single PSU to handle 4 GPUs + mobo, why don't you use a separate PSU for 4 GPUs?
I bet the rest of the Mobo can do with a 500 Watt PSU or even less. 1250 Watt would sure be enough
to handle 4 GPUs doing BOINC. Two PSUs can also easier give you enough cable to plug into the GPUs.

[VALDIS_001]

Well that was a fun challenge(DistrRTgen). I managed to finish a respectable 67th and catapulting the team to 24th. Now where is the next challenge?

[Dirk Broer]

There's the upcoming Constellation challenge and after that you can try Primaboinca

[AMDave]

Well that was a fun challenge(DistrRTgen). I managed to finish a respectable 67th and catapulting the team to 24th. Now where is the next challenge?
Oh, Shazbot! That's another one I missed. Sorry guys. I'll try and turn the gear around for the primaboinca challenge. Where's the details?

[Dirk Broer]

I just updated the challenge information for April and added the Primaboinca challenge.
The reason why you might have missed the DistrRTgen challenge is that it is a project challenge and not a team challenge.
As the project challenges are pretty much 90% PrimeGrid and a bit too often to my taste I tend to ignore these in my
overview. I should have mentioned the DistrRTgen though.

[AMDave]

"Race for Freedom", I like the name. That alone is enough to make it a MUST DO item.
4 days away is enough to wind up some other efforts AND power-up. I'll tune the boxen over the weekend.
Thanks very much for the addition.
Never mind about DistrRTgen. :) I already got my 1M there on 15 Feb. Any more is just a bonus. ;)

[Dirk Broer]

Both the Constellation team as the Primaboinca team now have one member more on the list.
10k's to score, 25k's even maybe, perhaps 50K's, who knows?
As a precaution I edited my signature so that the two extra projects fit better....

[AMDave]

NPLB Rally dates confirmed - 18th - 25th Apr.
http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=16694

[Brucifer]

Thought I'd be cool and increase the output for Collatz, so went and picked up a 6870 and fired that off for a bit this afternoon. Man is it a NOISY bugger, not to mention it really throws out some heat. Wife started complaining about the howling. So out it came and back in went a 5770. A little over a third slower, but very quiet compared to that 6870. I guess it would be good out in the garage if I had a place to stick it with some power, but I don't. Bummer.............. So that's my progress attempt for the day. lol

[Dirk Broer]

Try exchanging it for a HD 5850, a tiny bit more SP performance and also DP capable, so you can use MilkyWay as back-up.
But they don't make them anymore, and which shop still stocks them? Or invest in a
http://cdn.overclock.net/6/61/600x600px-LL-6194d8cd_e3f686158c1957c21d3356af1d119f8a_0.png
These guys promise lowest temperatures for air cooling and the three fans ought to be quieter than the cooler you now have.
Or try water cooling, Antec 620 Or Corsair H60.

[Brucifer]

Yup, the thought of water cooling crossed my mind. However that will have to wait a bit as between getting the 6870, and also picking up one of the new iPods I sorta blew my availability of peso's for a few weeks. I know, lol, the iPod doesn't do anything for the DC endeavors, but it's handy for the short trips to be able to get online and keep up with the world. :-)

And another option is to put the 6870 in another system I have around that isn't running, buy a copy of win7, and then just run the thing during the waking hours. The real problem was night time as it made so much noise that I could hear it in the next room (bedroom) which is what ticked the wife off at night trying to sleep......... Sometimes you just can't win for losing. :-) It's a shame too cause those puppies do put out some work quickly.

edit: Or another option is to just stick it in one of the boxes running a 4850 that is presently on milky way, and cut my meager milky way production in half........... but don't think I really want to do that. Exchanging it would prove a bit problematic.

[Dirk Broer]

I'd try to get rid of it. Exchange it for a 5850 or 5870, or for a 7850 or 7870 (all might cost extra...6870 only costs around 150 Euros/Dollar now)
All four of them are more interesting, DC-wise. The 6870 is good in Single Precision, but has no Double Precision capability.
Besides that, it is noisy and has a high wattage/hour ratio. A 7770 might even be a better long-term investment, costs more-or-less the same and
it is less noisy and has a superior wattage/hour ratio.