LTT Official Folding Month 2020!!!

[Guest]

I'm beginning to notice a trend of me getting crappy WUs whenever Roddy has hardware problems....

[Intrinsic]

3 hours ago, Giantpickle said:

How good of hardware would you need to qualify

 

I've been playing with low end stuff, so I have a pretty good guess. Assuming your PC is run 24x7 and you have minimal issues getting\sending WUs:

 

Confirmed too slow:

GT 710 -  Won't complete enough work units or meet the "20 days of activity" requirements

Core 2 CPU - Won't generate enough points in 30 days

 

Guessed Minimums:

First gen i5 or better. The CPU should easily complete enough work units, but the points will be close

AMD RX 550 \ Nvidia 1030 or better. The cards will easily make the points limit, but the required number of WUs and 20 days of activity will be close

 

Seeing as that was just an educated guess, and stuck or empty work queues seems to be a thing during these events, one step up from those minimums, or running both the cpu & gpu minimums together would be recommended...

 

[LAR_Systems]

Noticing my mid day production is down due to the WU issues.

Don't suppose the GATEKEEPER is having similar issues?

 

[GOTSpectrum]

1 minute ago, LAR_Systems said:

Noticing my mid day production is down due to the WU issues.

Don't suppose the GATEKEEPER is having similar issues?

 

I'm expecting Macaw to have shifted many people down in ranks for the next update. Just cooking dinner so thought I'd jump on and say hello and see how everyone is doing. 

[LAR_Systems]

1 minute ago, GOTSpectrum said:

I'm expecting Macaw to have shifted many people down in ranks for the next update. Just cooking dinner so thought I'd jump on and say hello and see how everyone is doing. 

Sometimes I forget you live in the future.

Best wishes for your group tonight btw.

[marknd59]

Forget about the top 10 I'm just trying to stay in the top 20

[Egg-Roll]

1 hour ago, LAR_Systems said:

Sometimes I forget you live in the future.

Or are we stuck in the past

[LAR_Systems]

1 minute ago, marknd59 said:

Forget about the top 10 I'm just trying to stay in the top 20

I want back in to the 10... but... man... the competition.

[GOTSpectrum]

Just now, LAR_Systems said:

Sometimes I forget you live in the future.

Best wishes for your group tonight btw.

The group is tomorrow(Tuesday) on Zoom urgh, today was just me handling admin and things that I have been putting off due to covid, still have some bits to do but looking like it will all get done 

[LAR_Systems]

1 minute ago, GOTSpectrum said:

The group is tomorrow(Tuesday) on Zoom urgh, today was just me handling admin and things that I have been putting off due to covid, still have some bits to do but looking like it will all get done 

I feel you on the putting things off.

With Covid (IT) panic over and leveling out to crappy normal more less, I'm revisiting tasks I had on the list from Feb now.
 

[marknd59]

looks like macaw has a steady output

 

[LAR_Systems]

Just now, marknd59 said:

looks like macaw has a steady output

 

This is what a nightmare / brown out looks like in box scores

 

[GOTSpectrum]

Just now, LAR_Systems said:

I feel you on the putting things off.

With Covid (IT) panic over and leveling out to crappy normal more less, I'm revisiting tasks I had on the list from Feb now.
 

Well we had to go from 100% in person work, the board, our supported events, even funding bids were in person events to doing everything digitally, so it was more important to spend the time teaching our members how to connect with us digitally and trying to find funding to cover the unexpected costs associated with zoom and getting me and the other guy set up for it. But, we may be getting a windfall in regards to our new mental health group that should more than pay for everything. We don't take wages you see, but we still have costs and it was looking like we'd be out of money in about 4-6 months. It's been stressful to say the least

[marknd59]

Just now, LAR_Systems said:

This is what a nightmare / brown out looks like in box scores

 

At least it doesn't look like he is ramping up his output.

[d0ks]

6 minutes ago, marknd59 said:

At least it doesn't look like he is ramping up his output.

Yet :))

[Favebook]

41 minutes ago, Intrinsic said:

 

I've been playing with low end stuff, so I have a pretty good guess. Assuming your PC is run 24x7 and you have minimal issues getting\sending WUs:

 

Confirmed too slow:

GT 710 -  Won't complete enough work units or meet the "20 days of activity" requirements

Core 2 CPU - Won't generate enough points in 30 days

 

Guessed Minimums:

First gen i5 or better. The CPU should easily complete enough work units, but the points will be close

AMD RX 550 \ Nvidia 1030 or better. The cards will easily make the points limit, but the required number of WUs and 20 days of activity will be close

 

Seeing as that was just an educated guess, and stuck or empty work queues seems to be a thing during these events, one step up from those minimums, or running both the cpu & gpu minimums together would be recommended...

 

Not really, you can hit 20 days of activity with even core 2 duo. 1 day of activity = at least 1 WU done in those 24h.

And minimum points requirement is even easier to hit with QRB, even on less powerful cards than RX/Nvidia1xxx.

[Intrinsic]

16 minutes ago, Favebook said:

you can hit 20 days of activity with even core 2 duo

My E5400, when both cores are used, will complete a work unit each day, but it runs about 3K points a day. 3K points x 30 days in the event = 90K points which is far from the 500K point minimum. Why I pointed out the points minimum as being a problem for this type of CPU and said nothing about WU issues.

 

My RX 550 on the other hand takes about 16 hours to do a work unit. 30days x 24 hours / 16 hours a unit = 45 units, barely fast enough to exceed the 40. A GT 710 is much slower and would not put out 40 units in 30 days (when I tried a GT710 it gave me a 3 days ETA to complete one work unit). I didn't say anything about points issues here as the GPU work units seem to be worth a lot more points (the rx 550 does over 70K a day)

 

When considering ALL the event's requirements a Dual core E5400 or GT 710 will not make it.

[LAR_Systems]

29 minutes ago, GOTSpectrum said:

Well we had to go from 100% in person work, the board, our supported events, even funding bids were in person events to doing everything digitally, so it was more important to spend the time teaching our members how to connect with us digitally and trying to find funding to cover the unexpected costs associated with zoom and getting me and the other guy set up for it. But, we may be getting a windfall in regards to our new mental health group that should more than pay for everything. We don't take wages you see, but we still have costs and it was looking like we'd be out of money in about 4-6 months. It's been stressful to say the least

Glad to hear things are coming around from a funding perspective.  Mental health services have probably never been more important than they are this year.

[Macaw2000]

37 minutes ago, GOTSpectrum said:

I'm expecting Macaw to have shifted many people down in ranks for the next update. Just cooking dinner so thought I'd jump on and say hello and see how everyone is doing. 

 

I'm not sure how effective my folding will be mid-week. During the weekend, there were a handful of interruptions but now that the work week is here, the spot instances are largely unavailable. 

 

 

In the last folding contest, I saw very few interruptions. GPU cloud computing must have really taken off. 

 

[LAR_Systems]

1 minute ago, Macaw2000 said:

 

I'm not sure how effective my folding will be mid-week. During the weekend, there were a handful of interruptions but now that the work week is here, the spot instances are largely unavailable. 

 

 

In the last folding contest, I saw very few interruptions. GPU cloud computing must have really taken off. 

 

 

The Forum...

[GOTSpectrum]

3 minutes ago, LAR_Systems said:

Glad to hear things are coming around from a funding perspective.  Mental health services have probably never been more important than they are this year.

That's why we have started now, it should have been the end of Q1 2021 for the mental health group to start. The downside is we don't have everything in place that we wanted. But we do have in person counselling and in person support session available free of charge through a third party(up to 12 sessions), along with weekly welfare calls, where you will get a call once a week just for a chat to see how you're getting on. that will have to do for the time being. This is also partly who it was put off, as we were expecting to only start the gritty leg work after new years. 

[Favebook]

18 minutes ago, Intrinsic said:

My E5400, when both cores are used, will complete a work unit each day, but it runs about 3K points a day. 3K points x 30 days in the event = 90K points which is far from the 500K point minimum. Why I pointed out the points minimum as being a problem for this type of CPU and said nothing about WU issues.

 

My RX 550 on the other hand takes about 16 hours to do a work unit. 30days x 24 hours / 16 hours a unit = 45 units, barely fast enough to exceed the 40. A GT 710 is much slower and would not put out 40 units in 30 days (when I tried a GT710 it gave me a 3 days ETA to complete one work unit). I didn't say anything about points issues here as the GPU work units seem to be worth a lot more points (the rx 550 does over 70K a day)

 

When considering ALL the event's requirements a Dual core E5400 or GT 710 will not make it.

I could hit all requirements with my R9 380, so I am not sure what you are talking about or how you come up with such conclusions. WUs differ, and some can take few hours while some can take few minutes, it's just the way it is.

[Intrinsic]

15 minutes ago, Favebook said:

I could hit all requirements with my R9 380,

I would hope so (see below). I was hoping, as a technical community, people would realize that some older high end hardware could be more powerful than more modern slower hardware. Rather than just thinking "it must be newer than ___ hardware . I was giving ___ hardware as a relative performance point people could compare against.

 

 

[NetoriusNick]

4 minutes ago, Intrinsic said:

I would hope so (see below). I was hoping, as a technical community, people would realize that some older high end hardware would be more powerful than more modern slower hardware. Rather than just thinking "it must be newer than ___ hardware . I was giving ___ hardware as a relative performance point people could compare against.

 

 

I can attest to that R9 Nano gets about 500k a day

[LAR_Systems]

3 minutes ago, Intrinsic said:

I would hope so (see below). I was hoping, as a technical community, people would realize that some older high end hardware would be more powerful than more modern slower hardware. Rather than just thinking "it must be newer than ___ hardware . I was giving ___ hardware as a relative performance point people could compare against.

 

 

Some might talk in terms of "newer than" as F@H will not even run WUs on a certain age of hardware at this point.

For relative performance there is cost of card vs ppd, cost of electricity to run F@H vs PPD, a blend of the two, resale value vs ewaste later etc.

And some hardware, brand, GPU architecture and generations runs F@H better than others regardless of age which is also why someone might recommend some hardware, and recommend avoiding others.

 

Combine this with the luck of the draw of performance with PPD etc. on different work units and causes which again can vary in performance by different work unit types you will get experienced folders recommending certain tings over others that might not align at all with gaming performance benchmarks etc.

Recommend you look at folding specific benchmarks if your talking hardware comparisons for folding https://folding.lar.systems/folding_data/gpu_ppd_overall then draw your own conclusions for what hardware you feel is worth it to fold on in terms of costs, performance etc.