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PrimeGrid: The Winter Solstice Challenge

Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 10:44 am
by 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

Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 12:30 pm
by Barrie
Unless DistrRTgen comes back it's what my GPUs run anyway, so I'll join in.

Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 12:34 pm
by UBT - Rick Horn
Barrie wrote: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.

Re: PrimeGrid: The Winter Solstice Challenge

Posted: Wed Dec 14, 2011 5:04 pm
by 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

Posted: Wed Dec 14, 2011 11:24 pm
by 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

Posted: Fri Dec 16, 2011 11:45 am
by Woodles
Count me in, just CPU though, not much of a contribution but every little helps eh?

Posted: Fri Dec 16, 2011 3:56 pm
by TroubledBunny
Woodles wrote: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

Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2011 11:32 am
by TroubledBunny
TroubledBunny wrote:
Woodles wrote: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

Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2011 2:23 pm
by 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

Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2011 4:56 pm
by TroubledBunny
Woodles wrote: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

Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2011 5:44 pm
by hgblade
TroubledBunny wrote:
Woodles wrote: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  )

Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2011 6:13 pm
by UBT - Rick Horn
hgblade wrote:
TroubledBunny wrote:
Woodles wrote: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!  :wink:

Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2011 11:23 am
by UBT - Rick Horn
We`ve made a good start and lie at 22nd position with 488,795 credits.

Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2011 10:04 am
by 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!

Posted: Wed Dec 21, 2011 9:05 am
by 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.

Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2011 10:00 am
by 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.