Lets have a race!!!

[NeoGen]

Hey guys!

I think it's time for us to have another AMD Users Race, and since we had some offers to be used as race prizes recently, it's more of a reason for it.


The Contest Plan
So, the initial planning is a 4 race event in boinc projects, in two categories, 2-cores and 4-cores. But there's a twist here, anyone can participate because there isn't really a need for a dual-core or quad-core processor. You can register for example two single cores for entry on the 2-cores race, or 2 dual-cores in the 4-cores race. Any number of hosts as long as it matches the required (maximum) number of cores.
The special case of the Phenom X3, the only cpu out there with 3 cores, makes it odd for any of the races. It wouldn't be fair to run against dual-cores, and it wouldn't be fair to run against quad-cores. So in all fairness, the best chance for it is to add up another single core to it, making the total of both 4 cores, and have it running in the 4-core race.
NOTE: HyperThreaded Intels count double if hyperthreading is active. A single core hyperthreaded intel will count as a dual-core because it's running as dual-core. (Altough I know it doesn't have the performance of a real dual-core)


How to participate
For participation in the race, you'll have to "sign up". That just means that you need to post here to tell me that you want to race and give me the host IDs of the machines that will be running.
But guys, I can only accept people that have been registered in the forums for at least three months and crunch for the Team. If you are reading this but are not registered, don't feel bad because we organize races every now and then. Just register here, keep crunching with us, and keep an eye on the boards for the next race.
Now to sum up the rules in a nutshell, each participant can only submit one entry for each category. You can race on both categories, but only with one entry on each, and with different hosts on each. So choose wisely the best host(s) for each category that you can, it can make the difference.
NOTE: The hosts that you apply for each race need to be publicly viewable. That means that if you have your hosts hidden, you have to set them to show on your boinc preferences.
NOTE 2: Remember, you can sign up and participate on both 2 and 4 core categories, but not with the same hosts. Each host will only be admitted in one of two categories.


Race Projects and calendar
The plan is a 4 race event on different projects. Each race should fit in a week, 6 days long race and the 7th day free for making preparations and switching projects. The measurement unit will be the total credits, and at the end of each race the top 5 participants with the most credits will receive a number of points from 5 to 1 according to their final ranking. The contest champions will be the participants with the highest number of points awarded in each category, after the 4 races. In case of a tie, the next factor will be number of race victories. And if still it remains a tie, the last tie-breaking factor will be the total ammount of credits of the 4 races, which I don't believe any two people will do equal.
First race should start May 18th, and will be on Rosetta@Home. Following projects are still to be defined. A preliminary calendar should be like this:

May 18th - May 23rd - Rosetta@Home
May 25th - May 30th - (undefined project)
June 1st - June 6th - (undefined project)
June 8th - June 13th - (undefined project)

June 14th - Final results display & NeoGen's Birthday!

The missing projects will be defined at most before the start of the contest.


Prizes
This is the part everyone was anxious to read. We have received two offers to be used as contest prizes.

For the 4-core race the prize is one EVGA GeForce GTX-260. This monster gpu will give you both incredible graphics in games, and incredible points in gpu crunching! You do not want to miss this chance of getting one for free!

For the 2-core race the prize is one Intel Core2Duo E8400. Altough we're an AMD oriented team, we recognize a good cpu when we see it, even if it's of the competition. This bad boy dual-core runs at stock speed of 3GHz but has been successfully pushed beyond 4GHz.




I hope everyone understood the general idea. Any questions, comments, or ideas, post them below!
This is still the preliminary plan, subject to change, the final specs of the contest will be published in the following week.



Participants listed so far:
(moved to the Race thread)