PrimeGrid: The Winter Solstice Challenge

[TroubledBunny]

PrimeGrid's final challenge of the year is a prime sieving task.
It's a 3 day challenge running:
19 December 05:30 UTC – 22 December 05:30 UTC

It runs on cpu and gpu but gpu performance vastly outshines that of cpus. I would never run these tasks on a cpu.

My two GTX570s each take c.11 mins per wu and each wu gives 2251 credits! It must be in the top 5 credits/time wu's in the whole of BOINC.

I'll be there, sieving away as usual, follow the link for details.
http://www.primegrid.com/forum_thread.php?id=3812

Peter

[Barrie]

Unless DistrRTgen comes back it's what my GPUs run anyway, so I'll join in.

[UBT - Rick Horn]

Unless DistrRTgen comes back it's what my GPUs run anyway, so I'll join in.

DistRTgen will not be back  until January, so I will be joining in too.

[TroubledBunny]

My two GTX570s each take c.11 mins per wu and each wu gives 2251 credits! It must be in the top 5 credits/time wu's in the whole of BOINC.

It now looks like WUs will grow by 50% as will the credit.
They are simply trying to mitigate the stress on their servers.
Peter

[Zydor]

I'll pitch in ... performance will not be that great though, as the AMD app over there is written in OpenCL, so will be markedly slower than NVidia cards.

I've been offline for a couple of days doing a major upgrade rebuild on both machines .... but its a bit slow going, due to other things happening at home. However, I hope to complete the main builds by Friday night, and that will give me the weekend to settle them in before this one starts ... so it should be ok as long as nothing unexpected / major happens meanwhile.

Regards
Zy

[Woodles]

Count me in, just CPU though, not much of a contribution but every little helps eh?

[TroubledBunny]

Count me in, just CPU though, not much of a contribution but every little helps eh?

Agreed, every little helps. I'll try to find out how long one of these beasts take to crunch on a cpu. Be prepared for bad news...
Peter

[TroubledBunny]

Count me in, just CPU though, not much of a contribution but every little helps eh?

Agreed, every little helps. I'll try to find out how long one of these beasts take to crunch on a cpu. Be prepared for bad news...
Peter

Could be c. 25 hours on an older 2.4GHz core and that's on a 64bit OS.
It will be considerably longer if you are using 32bit.

Please read this PrimeGrid message http://www.primegrid.com/forum_thread.p ... true#45023.
As I said in my previous message, I personally would never crunch one of these on cpu.
Sorry.
Peter

[Woodles]

Ah but I'm already running them, it's just a case of not changing any settings.

For reference for anyone else contemplating running on CPUs:  ~29 hours at the moment on a hyperthreaded 2.8GHz i7 with 32 bit OS and turbo boost on.

WU's gave 3371 credits so I assume these are the longer ones? I should manage to complete 16, maybe squeeze another four in if I turn hyperthreading off.

Mark

[TroubledBunny]

Ah but I'm already running them...

Remember that only WUs downloaded and returned during the challenge period will count in the challenge. Ones you are already processing at the start time will not count although you will of course receive normal BOINC credits.
Peter

[hgblade]

Ah but I'm already running them...

Remember that only WUs downloaded and returned during the challenge period will count in the challenge. Ones you are already processing at the start time will not count although you will of course receive normal BOINC credits.
Peter

If, like me, you're already running gpu wus the simplest thing to do will be to abort them at the start of the challenge - then they'll simply be recycled (you might even get them back!  :D  )

[UBT - Rick Horn]

Ah but I'm already running them...

Remember that only WUs downloaded and returned during the challenge period will count in the challenge. Ones you are already processing at the start time will not count although you will of course receive normal BOINC credits.
Peter

If, like me, you're already running gpu wus the simplest thing to do will be to abort them at the start of the challenge - then they'll simply be recycled (you might even get them back!  :D  )

Hope you guys are going to get up at 5-30 tomorrow morning to empty those caches and and fill up with eligible WUs, like me!  

[UBT - Rick Horn]

We`ve made a good start and lie at 22nd position with 488,795 credits.

[UBT - Rick Horn]

A little over a third of the way through and UBT is in 26th. place.
Our top cruncher is J. Sheridan with 957,364 credits. Well done to him!

[UBT - Rick Horn]

1 day to go, and we`re still in 26th. place. Our top cruncher is still J. Sheridan, with a massive 1,793,372 credits.

[UBT - Rick Horn]

The challenge is finished, and it appears that UBT finished a creditable 24th. position. Our best cruncher was J. Sheridan with a massive 2,548,476 credits, so very well done to him, and well done to all who took part.

I noticed that during the crunch, my credits dropped by about a third, and I know that some WUs  I updated were were not credited.
If other people have had the same experience, then there may be some adjustments to the final tally.