Folding@Home Contest - Contest Complete - Fold for Free $$

[thurst0n]

FINISHED. Thanks to those who participated. Check your PM to receive your prize!

All Users (except me) Listed below have won - please contact me for details. Thank you.

Final Standings
Report generated on    09:14:06 July 15, 2013

Standing	User	Points	WUs
1st	DaMorgue	171,287	22
2nd	thurst0n	154,116	31
3rd	Glod	125,043	33
4th	Calmb4tehpwn	41,751	15

Original Post:
Intro
I would like to help bolster the Geekhack Folding@Home team. It has been very lackluster as of late.

Please hop over to http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=40979.0 and http://folding.stanford.edu/ or http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Learn for more information. I could go into all the reasons you should fold but that's not the point of this thread; there are many reasons please take some time to understand why this project is important on your own. Stanfordhas already published quite a few papers with their results.

Getting Started
If you're ready to get started I think this is the best link to go from. http://folding.stanford.edu/English/HomePage
I highly recommend setting up a passkey as it's required to earn bonus points.


Show me the Money
In order to do this I plan to donate at least $50 dollars via paypal, giftcard, cashiers check or whatever other (legal)method the winners desire.

Date: July 1st, 2013 - July 14th.
Duration: At least 1 week, possibly 2.
How to Qualify: Simply contribute at least 1 work unit to Stanford's Folding@Home distributed computing project during the contest period under the geekhack folding team (224030) Note: Only workunits submitted under the Geekhack Team will count towards the contest.
How to Win There will be at least 2 categories - hopefully more to come (suggestions anyone?)
1) Most Points (possibly 1st and 2nd place (and beyond) if we get enough people)
2) Random winner selected from active donors. (This category will likely have multiple winners, it all depends on participation)

Other Categories I'm still deciding on:
- Most work-units submitted.
- Most points in a single update.
- Most "active clients". (CPU + GPU = 2, plus your laptop, sister, and mom's computer?... think of the possibilities)

Confirmed Prize Pool:
- $50
- SP cherry PBT RGB dyesub in 1.25 or 1.5 (Donated by boost)

Update:
Prize Pool Breakdown:
1) Most Points Contributed: $35
2) Random Participant: $5 x 3 winners (If not enough participants, money will be given to first category)
[checking with boost on how he wants his price distributed]

Breakdown if we reach 20 Contest Participants - $100 Prize Pool
1) Most Points Contributed $40
2) Second most Points $10
3) Most Work Units $10
4) Biggest single Update $10
5) Random Winner $5 x 6
[You can win in multiple categories. So the same person could easily win #1, 3, 4, and 5 if that's the way the cookie crumbles]

The more people that are interested the more willing I'll be to increase the prize pool. I'm prepared to go as high as $250 total but this won't happen unless I am blown away by the increase in active folders. I reserve the right to increase the prize pool after the contest is over and scores are being tallied.

Why?
There are plenty of reasons to fold.
This thread is meant to be an announcement as well as gauge interest and get feedback to make this contest more fun.

The point of this is to get people interested and active in folding for Geekhack, even just a couple work units by small majority of us would be awesome - you do not need the newest, best, fastest computer to contribute or participate. My main goal is to see more active users. I definitely want to see Geekhack move up the team ranks but I'd much rather see more active Geekhack folders than see one guy with a folding farm getting us a few million points per day. (though this would be sick!)

I recently switched over from folding for OCN (overclock.net) after donating ~5 million points to them (OCN Folding Millionaire :-)). If you already fold for another team, please consider folding for Geekhack during this contest period AND BEYOND!

If you have any questions about getting started I will do my best to help, feel free to PM me.

What do you guys think?

Folding@Home Stats Sites:
http://kakaostats.com/
http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Stats (Official)

Mod: If there is a better place for this feel free to move it!

[thurst0n]

Suggestions:

GET STARTED NOW! before the contest so that as soon as it starts you have a work unit (WU) delivered to Stanford right away and you'll have points right away. Some of the multi-core WU's take 24+ hours to complete depending on your system.

Bonus Points
If you plan to fold these large WU's you definitely want to get started.
Bonus points - points play a big role in scoring these  http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-Points scroll down to the portion on QRB - Quick Return Bonus..
Here is a very important bit

What are the qualifications for the QRB?

The bonus is applied for users who use a passkey, have successfully returned at least 10 bonus-eligible WUs, successfully return 80% or more of assigned WUs, and return the unit before its Timeout (formerly Preferred Deadline). Bonus points do not apply to partial returns.

This means you need to submit 10 "big" work-units before bonus points kick-in. That would take me almost 10 days....

If you're folding the SMP work units (4+ CPU cores) be careful when changing the settings from idle/light/medium etc. If you move from say 6 cores to 8 cores, or from 8 to 6 (or 8 to 4, etc etc etc), there are times when it will re-assign a new WU and this is very frustrating after you've been working on a WU for 10+ hours already (40-60% and then it resets to 0%).
Instead of moving the slider around I would suggest simply pausing the work unit as long as you're confident you will be able to finish within Stanford's deadline. I believe if you're not within Deadline of an assigned workunit 2 things happen 1) you don't get points. 2) Stanford is way less likely to assign you those "good" work units.

Other:
I recommend NOT installing as a service (this is opposite what the client/Stanford recommend) - Reason being, I typically leave my computer on all the time and so I just manually start it each time. Also sometimes I don't want it to fold as soon as my OS boots up - if I am restarting/booting my computer then typically I have either been gone for a while or I'm testing an overclock, or doing my twice a month reboot.. either way I prefer to start the client manually. Understand why I do my way before you make your decision.
If you choose to do what I do then simply run the folding@home program and it should open directly to the FAHControl. If you open FAH Control first, it can't connect to anything and won't start the cores. Also damorgue has reported that sometimes your GPU's won't run if it's run as service.


If you are a power user then I highly recommend manually setting the number of cores to use on your CPU based on your needs. If you go with default then you'll get the problem described above where your progress is reset - no one wants this. (This also means Stanford will never get results for that WU that was reset because you'll never finish it and deliver it to them, though i think they can sometimes do things with partial work)
If you're folding on an 8-core CPU and also want to fold on a GPU, or want to have system performance for normal tasks you may consider putting the folding cores to 6 or 7. It all depends, you have to play with it and see what's best.

Folding is a game of patience. It's fun to watch the points add up and after a week or 2 you'll have a nice graph to look at with overtake data etc. It's even more fun when there is competition among the team.

Good Luck, get to folding!

[inteli722]

Awesome. Time to retake my coveted 3rd place!

[wiredPANDA]

Just joined up.  Let's see what my ancient battlestation can dish out.

[boost]

Depending on the amount of people that join I might give away a aluminum keyboard

[inteli722]

Depending on the amount of people that join I might give away a aluminum keyboard

[damorgue]

I built this PC to render with, and have been thinking of setting up a folding client on it for quite some time. although back then it was for another team. Just set it up, but their standard client seems to fail on 580s. 2500K at 5GHz seems to do fine for now though. Is it known that their client doesn't work well with GPUs or does anyone have any idea why it fails there?

[thurst0n]

I built this PC to render with, and have been thinking of setting up a folding client on it for quite some time. although back then it was for another team. Just set it up, but their standard client seems to fail on 580s. 2500K at 5GHz seems to do fine for now though. Is it known that their client doesn't work well with GPUs or does anyone have any idea why it fails there?

2500k at 5GHZ is going to be a beast. What is your time per frame(TPF) for the big WU's? You'll know they're big because TPF will likely be in the 3-10 minutes range. These are the A3 Cores. My i7 920 with almost no OC is at 11.5 minutes TPF currently..

For your 580's could you post the log just for the failing slot? Probably best to set your log verbosity to level 5 just in case. Go to configure, then advanced then it's near the bottom.
I'm not promising I can help but I had a similar issue on my 660M on my laptop and am trying to remember how I fixed it.. I am pretty sure I had to backdate my drivers.. something to do with the OpenCL version, which is quite annoying to say the least.

If I'm not mistaken you will get considerably more points with your 2500k and the GPU's will likely just take away CPU clock cycles from your CPU anyways. (your points per day may be higher without using the GPU's.. not 100% on this)

EDIT Found the bit about bonus points...: http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-Points scroll down to the portion on QRB - Quick Return Bonus..
Here is a very important bit that I'm going to put into my suggestions section..

What are the qualifications for the QRB?

The bonus is applied for users who use a passkey, have successfully returned at least 10 bonus-eligible WUs, successfully return 80% or more of assigned WUs, and return the unit before its Timeout (formerly Preferred Deadline). Bonus points do not apply to partial returns.

[damorgue]

It says memory error, and when I googled it I get a bunch of people saying that this error always occurs when you attempt to use GPUs when the client runs as a service.

[damorgue]

2500k at 5GHZ is going to be a beast. What is your time per frame(TPF) for the big WU's? You'll know they're big because TPF will likely be in the 3-10 minutes range. These are the A3 Cores. My i7 920 with almost no OC is at 11.5 minutes TPF currently..

I have no idea what constitutes a big WU, but I think my estimated TPF is at 14 when gaming and 9 when idle.

[thurst0n]

It says memory error, and when I googled it I get a bunch of people saying that this error always occurs when you attempt to use GPUs when the client runs as a service.

Were you able to get it all working by re-installing NOT as a service?

I have no idea what constitutes a big WU, but I think my estimated TPF is at 14 when gaming and 9 when idle.

That must be a big WU. If you open task manager while folding it will likely say FahCore_a3.exe this is the "big" WU. a4 is the smaller 'regular' ones. These are CPU WU's. In my experience the A4 cores process in about half the time but they only give you maybe a quarter of the points because of no bonus.

[damorgue]

Mkay, now I have one with about 1 minute TPF. I take it TPF doesn't mean anything if it varies so greatly depending on the size of the WU?

[thurst0n]

Mkay, now I have one with about 1 minute TPF. I take it TPF doesn't mean anything if it varies so greatly depending on the size of the WU?

TPF is a good indicator for which WU you have but really it's just a benchmark. If we are folding the same WU on the exact same architechture with the exact same clock speed then we should have similiar TPF. One frame is 1%. so 1 Minute TPF is going to take that WU approximately 100 minutes (1 hour and 40 minutes to complete) It's basically a good benchmark.

I remember seeing some people with access to Xeon server racks and they would fold on 64-128 cores and they could fold those A3 WU's with about 1 minute TPF, but in your case I'm guessing it's the A4 unit if you look at the details in FAHControl or check the core in your task manager.

I believe I was originally confused on the bigadv units, and actually assuming any SMP client was running bigadv.

Note: Stanford refers to their folding client as a core, and so this can be confusing for multi-core CPU or GPU folding. I should probably say 64-128 threads instead of cores. My i7 folds on 8 threads, there are 4 cores on the CPU.
Here is a list of the Stanford "cores" and projects.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Folding@home_cores

[thurst0n]

Update: If we have 20 active folders I'll bump prize pool up to $100.

[damorgue]

For some reason, my poiints stopped counting towards GH. If you click my name, you'll see that they only count for me now. I have no idea why. The team number remains the same and is still written in that field.

?

[thurst0n]

For some reason, my poiints stopped counting towards GH. If you click my name, you'll see that they only count for me now. I have no idea why. The team number remains the same and is still written in that field.

?

http://kakaostats.com/usum.php?u=1887613
http://fah-web2.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=userpage&username=DaMorgue
it looks good to me. If you're going off of folding.extremeoverclocking.com I have also noticed they doesnt update correctly for our team.

edit: nice point drop dude!

I'm going to use a combo of the official stats and Kakaostats to do the contest scoring.

[damorgue]

Thanks. I stopped using the computer there for a while... National drinking holiday and all that

[damorgue]

Loving the a3 ones, they are pretty sweet point-wise.

[damorgue]

To anyone who like me have thought about joining for a long while but just never bothered to try, it is really easy and takes a minute to get up and running at the most. I was also surprised to see how well it load balances and I can have it running in the background without making the computer unusable.

On another note, I am coming for you thurst0n

[thurst0n]

To anyone who like me have thought about joining for a long while but just never bothered to try, it is really easy and takes a minute to get up and running at the most. I was also surprised to see how well it load balances and I can have it running in the background without making the computer unusable.

On another note, I am coming for you thurst0n

This is so true.

  Bring it on man. I've been getting some decent WU's and just put my GPU back on folding after redoing my overclock. besides I can always turn my laptop to folding if someone gets too close.. haha

[thurst0n]

Prize Pool Breakdown:
1) Most Points Contributed: $35
2) Random Participant: $5 x 3 winners (If not enough participants, money will be given to first category)

I hope there are some lurkers round these parts.

[damorgue]

Guys? Anyone? Bump for good cause and to remind people that it is really easy to set up.

[Sniping]

I've never participated in folding before. Do I have to be folding all the time or do I just do it when I want to? If I were to fold then I would like to do so while I'm away from the computer or not gaming.

[thurst0n]

I've never participated in folding before. Do I have to be folding all the time or do I just do it when I want to? If I were to fold then I would like to do so while I'm away from the computer or not gaming.

Great Question.
Nope; you can fold whenever you want to!

You can completely turn close the client OR you can simply tell the client to pause 'work'.

I generally fold all the time unless I'm playing BF3 or Laddering 1v1 Ranked on SC2 or playing a clan match in Sc2. If i'm just playing 3v3 4v4 etc.. I leave it on. I should probably always pause it for gaming but whatever.

Folding is designed to use idle clocks. So basically everything else on your computer will always have priority unless you specifically set it up not to which I don't recommend unless you have a very good reason.

[Tym]

Can I just explain why I stopped? My PC was useless at this haha! I have a decent rig but not compared to any of you guys! Had 2 accounts on the go and could barley make a dent. Good luck too all though!

[thurst0n]

Can I just explain why I stopped? My PC was useless at this haha! I have a decent rig but not compared to any of you guys! Had 2 accounts on the go and could barley make a dent. Good luck too all though!

Drop one workunit for the team and you can win the random $5 prize.. what are the parts of your rig? Every little bit helps

[thurst0n]

Shameless Bump. 1 Week Left everyone. 

[damorgue]

This needs more attention. I will pass intelli772 and take the third place in 3 days at this rate.

[thurst0n]

Current Leaderboard Posted.
Just 4 days left. This is embarrassing, no one wants my money?

Report generated on    04:52:23 July 11, 2013

Standing	User	Points	WUs
1st	DaMorgue	126329	17
2nd	thurst0n	108139	26
3rd	Glod	49487	20
4th	Calmb4tehpwn	2407	2

[damorgue]

Whopee

If I can do it so can YOU

[thurst0n]

Whopee

If I can do it so can YOU

Show Image

Haha I love it!

Maybe I should extend the contest to be the entire month, I'll sleep on it..

[Leslieann]

Not to be a downer on this, but I really dislike distributed computing, despite the claims, it's actually super inefficient. Not only are they offloading the workload, it's offloading their electricity bill, and it's MASSIVELY higher for a bunch of small computers than one large supercomputer. Environmentally, it's just a stupid idea. Back when computers didn't idle down as far, it wasn't such a big deal, but today, a gaming system can idle down from 300+ watts to around 30. That can means (about) a $30 difference on your electric bill per month.

Add in more computers and it only gets worse.
Take me for example, I could make a decent dent in this, unfortunately, it would cost me over $70 in electricity for a single month, and that's not even if I used every system at my disposal. If I threw everything at it that I have access to, I would probably consume about $500 worth of electricity in a single month. Throw in every system I could without customers knowing and it would easily triple that.

Load up F@H onto a small business and their bill will skyrocket. At least one guy was caught loading it on every system he worked on in a large corporation and it ran their electric bill up thousands of dollars a month. This went on for a couple months before they figured it out.

I'm not saying don't do it, just be aware of what it can cost you.

[thurst0n]

Not to be a downer on this, but I really dislike distributed computing, despite the claims, it's actually super inefficient. Not only are they offloading the workload, it's offloading their electricity bill, and it's MASSIVELY higher for a bunch of small computers than one large supercomputer. Environmentally, it's just a stupid idea. Back when computers didn't idle down as far, it wasn't such a big deal, but today, a gaming system can idle down from 300+ watts to around 30. That can means (about) a $30 difference on your electric bill per month.

Add in more computers and it only gets worse.
Take me for example, I could make a decent dent in this, unfortunately, it would cost me over $70 in electricity for a single month, and that's not even if I used every system at my disposal. If I threw everything at it that I have access to, I would probably consume about $500 worth of electricity in a single month. Throw in every system I could without customers knowing and it would easily triple that.

Load up F@H onto a small business and their bill will skyrocket. At least one guy was caught loading it on every system he worked on in a large corporation and it ran their electric bill up thousands of dollars a month. This went on for a couple months before they figured it out.

I'm not saying don't do it, just be aware of what it can cost you.

You bring up an excellent point.

People need to be mindful of the increased electricity usage. Also be very mindful of the temps on your components.

[Glod]

yeah...... i have stopped folding with my monster rig starting today. Folding, just on idle setting, was costing me $45-55 a month to my power bill and I can no longer ignore that. I can't imagine what it would be if i set it to high 24/7

http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=40979.msg962109#msg962109

[CalmB4tehPwn]

I figure I should show my face here eventually.

Being in the military, and currently housed in Army Barracks, I've not no problem running full 24/7 on my bad boy. The Army can do some good and put up for the cause.

[damorgue]

I am away and apparently my PC back home crashed a few days ago. Lucky me I had enough to win still. This competition didn't seem to gather much interest. It is unfavorable to those with worse electric fees as brought up before. Hopefully more people will slowly be joining in though.

[CalmB4tehPwn]

Did we not extend to the 31st? Also, I'm interested in seeing up to date numbers

[thurst0n]

Did we not extend to the 31st? Also, I'm interested in seeing up to date numbers

Sorry Mate. I have been going through a transition period (going back to school this fall, grandmother has cancer and broke her arm, work full time, girlfriend, pets, car seems to like being in the shop more than on the road so all this has taken away from my time)
Instead of giving you B.S. Excuses let me address your concerns.
Officially I didn't really extend it. I'm calling the last posted #'s the finals. I'll post updated numbers just for fun though because you asked.

Also P.S. You won the random prize so check your P.M. So I can get you your prize :-)!

Everyone who participated ended up winning because of the numbers so it worked out. Still need boost to dictate his prize. I'd take it but that doesn't feel right so it'll probably be raffled or something we'll see :-).

Current "Would-Be" Standings
06:35:01 July 31, 2013

Standing	User	Points	WUs
1st	DaMorgue	308,153	47
2nd	Calmb4tehpwn	297,869	51
3rd	thurst0n	215,980	41
4th	glod	183,863	47
5th	inteli722	4,880	2

[inteli722]

Well then. I wasn't folding for most of that time, because my folding computer was taken over!

[CalmB4tehPwn]

My consolation prize is definitely going to charity, but I'm certainly interested in a keyboard! Consider me staying tuned.

I'm working on rubber domes at the moment (like a 15 dollar Logitech K120) because my BWU shat the bed. So I'm wholeheartedly interested in that.

edit: Is it bad that it's still under warranty, but I feel like it's worth more to me as a pile of blues than as a working keyboard, even though I have nothing to use those blues on.

[CalmB4tehPwn]

Oh, I just re-read the first post. Boost donated a keycap set, but mentioned -maybe- donating a keyboard to the cause.
Well, I'll have to keep stalking the classifieds, and wait for the right deal to call my name.

[damorgue]

I got a nice 18,459 drop while away. Did everyone just stop?

How does it feel like down there in third place thurst0n?

[compgeke]

I stopped as I needed to dedicate my system to be a real server, I had some friends that needed some power and I'm the only one that had it.