June Competitions

[Dirk Broer]

Part 1: Ranting Hardware
Me: We're at the beginning of the monthly Simap challenge and I am interviewing some of the contenders and members of the audience. You sir, you don't look happy, why?
Harris 286-20: They wouldn't wanna have me! Too old they said! Can't run a decent OS! Your mobo only supports 1 Mb of RAM! Your not fast enough... 1Mb was enough in my days, sonny, I was the second fastest 286 of all time, only my brother Harris-25 could beat me, and I even have an old Intel 287 friend of mine on my mobo. Sons of b&*^%es....
Me : Sorry to hear that pops, but you have a nice seat so have pleasure watching. I go on to an other oldster with a slightly happier expression, You sir can you tell us who you are?
AMD 386-40 I son am the fastest 386 without fancy tricks, and I am collecting other hardware to be able to run.
Me: So you're not expecting problems like Mr. Harris?
AMD 386-40: No, I can run Windows 95 or Linux, that's enough for a BOINC client.
Me: No memory problems either?
AMD 386-40: Eight sticks of four Mb each, that's 32 Mb, how much more do you want?
Me: My cell phone has more memory, sir!
AMD 386-40: It's all them fancy graphics that eat too much memory, now in my days....
Me: Sorry, I have to go on, who is this? You look like a 486 to me?
IBM 486sLC2-50: Fooled you! I am actually a 386SX2-50!
Me: So you are faster than the 386DX-40?
IBM 486sLC2-50: Marginally, but my brothers 486DLC2-50 and 486SLC3-75 are the fastest 386's of all time.
Me: But they are not here?
IBM 486sLC2-50: Nope, have to do it all by myself, 386-wise, management does not support me, all goes to the newer guys, they don't even know me anymore nowadays at Lenovo...
Me: Success! I go on! You sir look exactly like mr 486SLC2, how's that?
AMD 486DX5-133: Upgrading can do that to you son, plus a hardware company that uses the same casing for various models.
Me: Looks sturdy IBM quality to me.
AMD 486DX5-133: Yep, I started out as a 486DX-2 66, but my owner exchanged the original CPU for me
Me: Enough RAM?
AMD 486DX5-133: 64 Mb and an original 1 Mb IBM XGA card! I can run OS/2, Windows98, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Linux.
Me: Impressive! I go on, there's a rather modern looking case, who are you?
AMD K6III-400: I am the second best CPU that ever went into a socket 7 board!
Me: And what happened to the fastest?
AMD K6III-400: Unavailable at the moment.
Me: Too bad. Do you think you can stand up to the other competitors?
AMD K6 III-400: Why not? It's a CPU contest, isn't it?
Me: Yes, but there is quite some competition, look at that big guy left of you for example, who are you sir?
Pentium Pro 200: I man, I am a Pentium Pro 200.
Me: You look not like Pentium Pro's I know, they're all shiny and golden, and you are..
Pentium Pro 200: Black, yes, say it.
Me: Rather dark, yeah..
Pentium Pro 200: It's because of the aluminium heat spreader instead of the fancy gold ones.
Me: Aha, never knew that. Do you think you can perform?
Pentium Pro 200: I don't know, my hardware is pretty hard to get at the moment, but when it's up and running I can do any good 32-bit OS.
Me: Won't the 200 Mhz be a bottleneck?
Pentium Pro 200: We'll see, if so my nephews might be better suited for the challenge.
Me: Holy chips! And I thought you were big! Sirs who are you?
Dual Xeon-III 700: We are a pair of Xeon-III 700s.
Me: Oh I see, it is stamped on your casing..
Dual Xeon-III 700: Black, like our nephew and our cousins over there.
Me: Family reunion?
Dual Xeon-III 700: We are just watching, we are not allowed to compete, too hungry (points at two power cables protruding from its casing), but our cousins run.
Me: I'll go and speak them! Sirs, who are you?
Pentium III 550: We are slotted Pentium II and IIIs
Me: Quite a bunch of you here, will you all compete?
Pentium III 550: No. we're looking for the best combination of hardware, have to try and finish before the AMD K6 III otherwise the family will make us an offer..
Me: Can't refuse such an offer, can you?
Pentium III 550: But we have a family member who will beat the K6 III!
Me: Who, tell me?
Pentium III 550: It's Pentium III Tualatin over there!
Me: Thanks, I'll go and speak to him! Sir, you seem a pretty beefed up P3 to me.
Pentium III-1133 Tualatin: I sure am, my brother Pentium III-1400 even kicked the s#$%t out of the next generation, those stupid P4's!
Me: You do not seem to like them?
Pentium III-1133 Tualatin: They are bad architecture man, and power-hungry as well..
Me: Any AMD competitor you fear?
Pentium III-1133 Tualatin: Them Athlon guys, it took our family the trick to combine Xeon architecture with the original P III to produce us Tualatins, and we could take on the original Athlons, but later Athlon XPs still kicked the living daylight out of the P4's, especially them with the socket 423, what a loosers those were....
Me: Now you mention it, don't see those around. I go on. First we have a commercial break though.

The ultimate 286 chip:
http://www.chipdb.org/data/thumbnails/927/Harris_CS80C286-25.jpg
One of the FPUs that was able to keep up with the Harris-25 (FPU ran at 2/3 of the speed of the CPU on most 286 boards, or, if you were lucky, independent)
http://cdn.cpu-world.com/CPUs/80287/L_IIT-2C87-20.jpg

[Dirk Broer]

June 1 to June 8 - The June 2012 SIMAP scramble
The monthly Simap scramble! You may have read the interview I had with some of the contenders and members of the audience
The next part is in the making! I'll be interviewing some odd ones out, and actual contending machines of mine.
We are currently #32 of the world and 17 of our members are active out of a total of 133 with results for this project.
http://boincstats.com/en/stats/challenge/team/chat/210


June 8 to June 15 - test new Astropulse apps on GPU
Team Columbia has an interesting challenge, testing a new GPU app for Seti. This is for the SETI@Home Beta project.
We do quite good at this project: A 6th place world-wide and 4 of the 39 members with points are still active, some 10%.
http://boincstats.com/en/stats/challenge/team/chat/213


June 8 to June 13 - EURO Crunch 2012, Stage 1: SETI@home
At the same starting date Crystal Dream begins with stage 1 of the Euro Crunch, doing the production version of Seti@home.
As a team we only have a #138 word-wide position, even though 400 members have a Seti score, 48 of which are still active.
And that #138 position is even under threath from team Virginia Tech!
http://boincstats.com/en/stats/challenge/team/chat/215


June 14 to June 19 - EURO Crunch 2012, Stage 2: SAT@home
Stage 2 brings us SAT. As team we have a #14 position world-wide, but Vaughan and me are the only active members at the moment.
Looking back a little bit further there is also activity by Dr. Iggy, Stefan and lazykiller, and all in all thirteen members have points for this project.
http://boincstats.com/en/stats/challenge/team/chat/217


June 20 to June 25 - EURO Crunch 2012, Stage 3: Einstein@home
Stage 3 is Einstein@Home, so ready your CUDA hardware and/or your HD 5xxx's or later, as there is an OpenCL application too.
Team wise there is a #48 world-wide position to defend, and 52 of our members are currently active, about 10% of those with a score for this project (521)
http://boincstats.com/en/stats/challenge/team/chat/219


June 26 to July 3 - EURO Crunch 2012, Stage 4: ClimatePrediction.net
Last stage of the Euro Crunch (As the financial crisis goes on: Will there still be a Euro left to crunch at all?) takes us into the month July, and does work for ClimatePrediction.net. As team we are #81 in the world, and of the 221 members with points for this project 20 are active at the moment, another case of 10%.
http://boincstats.com/en/stats/challenge/team/chat/221

[vaughan]

It is unusual but I'm not able to get our team registered for the 4 Stages of the Euro Crunch. I don't know why. When I click on join it doesn't occur.

[Dirk Broer]

Hi Vaughan,

When you tried it in IE, try Chrome or FireFox instead. Works with me (sometimes).

[AMDave]

After their recent stats pages upgrade I cleared my browser cache and created a new 'remember me' cookie at login. Give it a crack.

[vaughan]

Hi Vaughan,

When you tried it in IE, try Chrome or FireFox instead. Works with me (sometimes).
I tried using Chrome instead of FireFox but no go. I posted after yours at BOINCstats. I get this when I try to confirm I am founder by following the instructions and going to the profile pages in their link:
http://page/profiles.php

Oops! Google Chrome could not find page

EDIT:
Solved using Google Chrome incognito mode. :)

[Dirk Broer]

Hi Vaughan,

I see we're entered in al all four stages now, thanx!

[AMDave]

There's a WCG challenge from 1 June - 30 June
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/team/challenge/viewTeamChallenge.do?challengeId=4919

Thanks to Michael at Rechenkraft for the email :)

[Dirk Broer]

I received the mail as well. A whole month! Chance to earn some badges here...

[vaughan]

Has WCG done anything to improve the points they award or are they still as stingy as they used to be?

[Jason1478963]

I believe they improved some, but I'm not sure where that puts them compared to the rest. The server update can be seen in this graph (http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q210/Sekerob/WCGProjectPointsPerHour.png) by the change in points.

[SuicideCabbage]

Based on our team's current output, we should be able to hold 12th place in the WCG challenge without even trying.

I am kind of interested in assisting with EURO Crunch, however I have not ran SETI or Einstein in awhile, it is my understanding they now have GPU apps. Like the rest of the projects with GPU apps does this make crunching on CPU obsolete when competing for points? As I understand for Einstein BOINC 7.0.27+ is needed, as well as a 5000 series or higher card, what is needed to crunch SETI?

[Dirk Broer]

I am crunching both Seti and Einstein with my Llano at the moment, and it goes quite well.
Seti needs a Lunatics application in order to run on a Ati card, and the card must be OpenCL capable for some of their applications.
There is a hybrid CPU/GPU application that runs on older cards though. Astropulse WUs still pay off, even when done on a CPU.
Einstein needs a fully OpenCL capable card (they seem to think the HD 47xx/48xx series is not), HD 5xxx or higher.
For nVidia, whether doing Einstein or Seti, you can use all CUDA capable cards. Me personally I do not see the point in using your CPU for Einstein, credit-wise.

[Ramjet]

12th place? I don't even see our team entered in the WCG challenge, unless I'm missing something. :icon_confused:

[AMDave]

Jason1478963 just pointed out in IRC chat that we don't appear on the list for the WCG June challenge.
https://secure.worldcommunitygrid.org/team/challenge/viewTeamChallenge.do?challengeId=4919
Vaughan, can you check on our join-up, please. Thanks.

ed - I see Ramjet spotted the same thing. Those fellas will keep us on track :)

[AMDave]

Vaughan just said he has fixed it.
We should show up in the next update.

[Dirk Broer]

Last update was by now 20 hours ago, we're not yet at the challenge's page (https://secure.worldcommunitygrid.org/team/challenge/viewTeamChallenge.do?challengeId=4919), but you can see the challenge at our teampage at WCG (http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/team/viewTeamInfo.do?teamId=Z95RSMBR9N1) and our challenge history at WCG (http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/team/challenge/viewTeamChallengeHistory.do?teamId=Z95RSMBR9N1)
There's actually pretty much going on at WCG, challenge-wise (http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/stat/viewAllTeamChallenges.do), that does not seem to reach e.g. Boincstats.

[Ramjet]

Ok, we now appear in the challenge, and are currently in 17th place. Not bad for a late start.

[Dirk Broer]

My 3rd gold is to appear today, and the 4th won't take long

[Dirk Broer]

Ok, we now appear in the challenge, and are currently in 17th place. Not bad for a late start.

13th now, and my 3rd gold is there, on to the 4th!

[Ramjet]

13th now, and my 3rd gold is there, on to the 4th!

Congrats on the 3rd gold Dirk, looks like you are acquiring a nice collection already.

:qgreenjumpers::qgreenjumpers::qgreenjumpers::qgre enjumpers:

[Dirk Broer]

Thanks Ramjet,

There's two more bronze in the making, but I'll never catch that string of sapphire that you've acquired!

[gamer007]

I've decided to hop into this competition.
I haven't been around much, but since I upgraded my computer, I'm back in action. :icon_mrgreen:

[Dirk Broer]

I've decided to hop into this competition.
I haven't been around much, but since I upgraded my computer, I'm back in action. :icon_mrgreen:

Any fancy new hardware that you have tips about?

[NeoGen]

Welcome back gamer!

What upgrade did you do? Did you get one of those big bad Radeon 79xx GPUs? :)

[gamer007]

Welcome back gamer!

What upgrade did you do? Did you get one of those big bad Radeon 79xx GPUs? :)

Intel i5 3570k CPU
ASUS P8Z77-V motherboard
8GB DDR3-1600 RAM
Visiontek HD 7870
120GB Patriot Pyro SE SSD

Old build was:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
4GB DDR2 RAM
Radeon 4850

I've had the SSD for a couple months now, but I wish I got it with my other stuff since they've become quite cheap now. :icon_mad:
I didn't get the 79xx cards since they're out of my price range. I was hoping to get a 7870 from another brand like Gigabyte, but the Visiontek one was around $70 off, so it was close to a price of a 7850. I couldn't resist.

My old rig lasted me around 5-6 years. This should last me just as long, if not longer. :icon_mrgreen:


Any fancy new hardware that you have tips about?

Hmm.. nothing really. My rig is mainly for games, so I picked an i5. Sometimes I wonder if I should've went with an i7 so I can crunch more at once. :icon_razz: Hence why I picked a 7870 as well. Then looking at benchmarks, the 69xx cards do better in crunching stuff....

[NeoGen]

Now that was a big leap from what you had to what you have now! :)

To last 5-6 years the only things I can think of maybe is adding another 8Gb of RAM to it (you know how the future Windows 8, 9 and 10 are going to be memory hogs :icon_razz:), and another 7870 in crossfire mode for those future GPU hungry video games. Oh, and a second Pyro SSD to be set in RAID 0. :icon_mrgreen:

That would get your machine faster than ever :)

[Dirk Broer]

The combination SSD and Z77 chipset should be good for Smart Response Technology,
is this a real-world phenomenon, or just a marketing gadget?

BTW: Windows 8 is no memory hog! I'm Running a Win8 Dev and a Win8 Consumer preview at the moment,
the latter on my Llano 3870K, using Boinc 7.0.27, so I'm on the cutting edge of progress.

[NeoGen]

BTW: Windows 8 is no memory hog! I'm Running a Win8 Dev and a Win8 Consumer preview at the moment,
the latter on my Llano 3870K, using Boinc 7.0.27, so I'm on the cutting edge of progress.
I have not tried Windows 8 at all yet, just extrapolating from previous version leaps. :)
Even though Microsoft's minimum requirements show really low values (128Mb for WinXP, 1Gb for Win 7) I don't recommend anyone less than 2Gb of RAM for XP and 4Gb for Win7. I'm thinking Windows 8 ideal values would be between 4 and 8Gb. This of course to be able to run OS, applications and games comfortably without constantly accessing swap file.

[Dirk Broer]

I build systems with 8Gb as minimum nowadays -using my rule-of-thumb 2 Gb per core rule-, and on 8Gb Win8 performs quite well, even when I've donated a full 1Gb to the HD 6550D.

[gamer007]

Windows 8 works surprisingly well. I'm trying out the Release Preview on my laptop since it's also a tablet. I find it runs faster and smoother than Windows 7. The touchscreen seems more responsive than before too. My only issue is how the laptop was built since the frame surrounding the screen has a slight rise, it kinda makes it hard to do some of the gestures on the touchscreen.


The combination SSD and Z77 chipset should be good for Smart Response Technology,
is this a real-world phenomenon, or just a marketing gadget?
I'm not using SRT with my SSD. It's being used as my OS drive as well as programs I want to load quickly.

[Dirk Broer]

You just need to reserve a part of the SSD (20 to 64 Gb) in order for SRT to work.
But if you do not have a SATA disk, SRT might be at work already without you even knowing it!