BOINC, Burp, and Benchmarks......Oh My!

[Nflight]

There is a lot of dissention among the ranks here with BURP and I don’t think people will stay long without a change. I’m all for BOINC, I think the idea behind it is great, but like many others have said here, without credits, without something to show for your work, it’s just not that appealing.
What’s been the best project for an AMD anyway?

CarcinogenX It has been nice to see you take such an effort in an alpha project, these are the worst Projects to delve into without knowing whats out there in the rest of the 60 or so projects Boinc has to offer. The BEST BOINC project to become involved in for the AMD's is really any project that is out of Alpha Status and Beta Status as well. There are even some Permanent Testing Status ones you find.
Here is a list of Beta. Alpha and Permanent Testing Platforms any others not mentioned here are in Full active projects.

Beta Projects: QMC@Home, MalariaControl.net, Nano-Hive@Home, Spinhenge@home, RieselSieve, Proteins@home, Rectilinear Crossing Number, Project Neuron, Lattice Project, PS3GRID, Superlink@Technion

Alpha Projects: PrimeGrid, uFluids, TANPAKU, Leiden Classical, XtremLab, Docking@Home, Chess960@Home, BURP, Cosmology@Home, DepSpid, HashClash, Distributed Rainbow Table Generator, vtu@home, APS@Home, WEP-M+2 Project, Zivis Superordenador Ciudadano, RenderFarm@Home, Gerasim@home, Belgian Beer@Home, SciLINC

Permanent Testing Projects: SETI@Home Beta, Rosetta@Home Alpha (RALPH), BOINC Alpha, ABC@home Beta, Pirates@Home, LHC@Home Alpha

Everything else is considered open season for crunching.

As for AMD preferred projects let someone else assist you with determining that factor of crunching, say NeoGen or AMDave are experts in that realm.

[AMDave]

Excellent post there Nflight!

I don't see much BURP dissent. There are some firm opinions from those who prefer more stable projects which is understandable as BURP is an Alpha project, but allowing for the rough edges of an Alpha project, BURP does alright in the grande scheme of things.

As far as AMD advantage goes, I still cannot go past Riesel Sieve Classic (Unless you have a Mac-G5 using JoeO's custom compiled client)

As far as BOINC goes I have found the current BURP credit awards to be comparable with some other projects for my middle-of-the-market CPUs [EDIT] on closer inspection some CPUs do seem to be disadvantaged on BURP currently [/EDIT]. Otherwise RieselBOINC is giving some decent credit and uFluids is on the kinder side as well.

It simply depends on your CPU type and available RAM. If you have and AMD64 based CPU (either single core or SMP) then you want to head for the BOINC projects that have specially compiled clients for AMD64 rather than those projects that simply allow the server to send a 32-bit client to an AMD64 CPU.

Augustine has been following (and championing) this 32-bit to 64-bit adoption and you can follow his updates on the BOINCstats forum here
http://www.boincstats.com/forum/foru...ad.php?id=1774

I will not run a system under 2GB RAM anymore so I don't tend to hit any RAM issues very often although I run a lot of services on my box that I run linux on so every once in a while it rejects a WU that needs more RAM than what is available, but the other boxen just plod along now.

[AMDave]

Welcome to the forum CarcinogenX and thanks for getting in with the questions up front.

Now is a great time to explain my previous comments from a programmers' point of view in something like laymans terms...I hope I do it justice.

Firstly, each project contains a weights table that evens out the credit distribution across CPU platforms.

Whilst a project is going through development those weights may be altered to help balance out points allocation.

Some CPUs finish certain types of functions faster than others and that can directly affect the amount of credit that gets claimed for a work unit.

When a project's core client is modified (the bit of code that does the real work - not the BOINC client itself) a chunk of code that gets used often may get changed from being Integer to Float dependent or SSE to SSE2 optimized (for example) and that may change the CPU platform that best suits it.

In Alpha and Beta projects, core clients may get recompiled often so it is hard for the project-lead to keep the weights table updated (more so in the case of an Alpha project).

During this development stage it is the focus of the project team to get the project core-client to perform it's task as well as possible. Later on in Beta they are able to focus more on the BOINC platform balance that will keep most members happy and coming back for more work to do to further the cause.

As the project becomes more stable and the client updates become less frequent, the weights table may be more accurately assessed and updated.

Many of us have (or have had) fairly "interesting" investments in hardware that we have dedicated to our Distributed Computing commitments. Some more than others. Hence it is to be expected that those with the greatest investment will be drawn towards the projects that are past Beta or are at least fairly well advanced in their Beta stages so that the amount of human time and computer time is used to the greatest advantage and an absolute minimum of effort is lost. (Note that - Efficiency does not always equal effectiveness)

Committing to Alpha projects does pose risks to the aim of "recorded" contribution as from time to time mistakes happen and points can be cleared or simply "lost" due to process / hardware / software configuration failure. It happens. Some of us have lost 50K, 100K or more credits in the quest to help test and develop these projects, but doing so knowingly of those risks. Like I said - it happens.

So, when choosing projects, if you have expectations of stability, you should always do a bit of reading first before selecting and jumping onto a project. That way you are less likely to be disappointed.

For me, I like DC'ing on the edge and contributing in the early stages of a project. That's just the way I am.

Well, I guess this is mostly opinion rather than information, but I hope it helps you to achieve your expectations in the DC-quest.

Once again, welcome to the AMD Users forum.
We look forward to getting to know you.

[PoorBoy]

I don't see much BURP dissent. There are some firm opinions from those who prefer more stable projects which is understandable as BURP is an Alpha project, but allowing for the rough edges of an Alpha project, BURP does alright in the grande scheme of things

Dave, BURP has been Online now for over 2 years, yet Janus is still using the Prehistoric Credit Granting Method of using the middle of 3 or out with the High & Low. That Method is so Passé anymore, BURP may be the only Project that even uses that Method anymore.

Heck anymore any of the new Projects Developers can be talked into within a few weeks of going to Fixed or Sliding way of Granting Credit yet Janus still plods along with some 18'th Century way of Granting the Credit after over 2 years.

I don't know, I guess my Quads have spoiled me in some way, I used to think if I could do 3000 Credits a day I was doing great, now if I can't hit 30,000 Per day or close to it it's been a bad day ...

[CarcinogenX]

Thanks for the reply guys. It’s a lot to soak up. I guess it just seems kind of unfair in a way but, that is life. And I did see someone else here ( I forget who) who was consistently getting even less credit per WU than me. I vented, and now I am better.

I kind of worry that I one night I will wake up to a mushroom cloud of what was once was my “work” computer. Probably not the smartest thing to run it 24/7 @ 100% for weeks straight. I just want to get the max throughput I can while it is still alive. I’m thinking I should probably build another unit and use this one a little less. At work I use 4 computers (all non AMD) and I used them for BOINC…….that is, until the company tattle-tale found out. Before that he made a grand scale attempt to get me fired for using a MAC to transfer an album to an employees Ipod. He is a real interesting character.

My devotion to BURP is simply because we are banding together to come from behind and overtake the Intel team. That’s enough for me to stay. And BOINC gives me one more thing to ponder in my car, where I spend a lot of time.

The photo was taken on a Saturday afternoon. No accidents, no construction, just lots of people.

I’m thinking of buying a ThinkPad T61 with a C2D. Does this make me a bad person?

[Strongbow]

I-15b.jpg

I feel much better now that your steering wheel is on the 'right' side!

[Nflight]

Strongbow you have left our merry men of Burp crunchers, I suppose you had enough of the turmoil of running a project that has a major maladjustment! I am going to tolerate it just a little bit longer, and go back and visit an old friend I left many many months ago!

[Strongbow]

I have! ...got bored with it, I don't normally bother too much with points but I do like to see a fair RAC rating and they just haven't tuned it yet so got out after a few weeks stint with them to see what I've been missing.

[liuqyn]

I just shut down on burp again for awhile, one of my other projects is coming to a close soon and I'm trying to chase down 1st place (in the team anyway) before then. I'll be back.

[Strongbow]

CarcinogenX, apologies but I didn't even say hello to you as a new joiner!

Hello and a big welcome to the team!

I’m thinking of buying a ThinkPad T61 with a C2D. Does this make me a bad person?

Errr, possibly, depends what you're gonna do with it! ...I've always thought the ThinkPad's were well made but a bit over priced and under spec'd! will it be for personal use or work?