For Boinc Users - Tips, Tricks and FAQ - Updated Oct 2013

[iNothing]

Just joined

[Terminashunator]

yeaaaaah.. No way am I going to catch up to that. lol. Your daily is like 2nd highest on the team.

I'm only using a 3570k + 660Ti. Very reachable with a FX 6 Core+ or 7950 or Equivilant.

 

But I do have a nasty OC on my GPU, 1250/1750 Chomping. :3

[RaphYkun]

I'm only using a 3570k + 660Ti. Very reachable with a FX 6 Core+ or 7950 or Equivilant.

 

But I do have a nasty OC on my GPU, 1250/1750 Chomping. :3

It's more like I have to run some actual simulation work on my PC from time to time so it takes large chunks out of what I can allocate to BOINC. Still, I've been moving u and down in the top 25 for while so I might get up there soon.

[StormtrooperStu]

Yeah, just hit my 25000. 

[Terminashunator]

Is something wrong with Collatz?

I mean, I get about the same points, so I don't really care. But i found it odd.

[Whaler_99]

Sometimes a project server will go down for a bit - this may be why...

[alpenwasser]

Thought I'd pop in and say hi. I've actually been contributing to the team

for a while, but forgot to tell anyone. :rolleyes:

Anyway, in BOINC (and F@H, though I'm not really active there anymore) I

go by the name "discrepancy".

I'm currently running GPUGrid on my Titan as well as a few other projects

on my X5680s, a 2600k, and hopefully eventually also two X5630s once that

rig is up and running (though not all of them 24/7).

[Terminashunator]

Thought I'd pop in and say hi. I've actually been contributing to the team

for a while, but forgot to tell anyone. :rolleyes:

Anyway, in BOINC (and F@H, though I'm not really active there anymore) I

go by the name "discrepancy".

I'm currently running GPUGrid on my Titan as well as a few other projects

on my X5680s, a 2600k, and hopefully eventually also two X5630s once that

rig is up and running (though not all of them 24/7).

And I thought I had a high electricity bill with my Sig Rig and a i7m/GTX 460m laptop.

 

Glad to see some activity here!

[alpenwasser]

And I thought I had a high electricity bill with my Sig Rig and a i7m/GTX 460m laptop.

 

Glad to see some activity here!

Haha, yeah that bill is going to be significant. Since I still live with my

family (college student) and don't want to give my dad a heart attack when

he gets the next power bill I've bought a power meter to be able to measure

how much power my BOINCing draws and I'll pay that part myself.

At stock settings, the dual-X5680 rig draws about 500 W from the wall socket,

though since I intend to overclock the CPUs and the GPU that will probably

still rise a bit. Also, I am seriously considering getting a second GPU, the

Titan just looks a bit lonely in there (probably a 780, since I don't intend

to do SLI I don't need to have identical graphics cards, and the 780 would

be just a tad more than half the price of a Titan where I live). Haven't decided

yet though, it's not like I'm made from money, and even a normal 780 ain't

exactly cheap.

[tobben]

i recently turned my 4p machine towards boinc, just a picture for reference , i have been unable to get connect to the folding servers so i wanted to do something productive meanwhile, it's pointless to have my machine just sitting there doing nothing!

 

 

 

 

i might be going abit back and forth beetwen boinc and folding for a while but my switch to boinc over folding is innevetable, i honestly don't care that much about medical science anyway, sure it is vital and it certainly plays a part in achieving our scientific goals, and to understand the things around us we have to understand ourselves aswell, but it doesn't get me nearly as excited as the other distributed computing projects out there that is much more appealing to me. 

[alpenwasser]

i might be going abit back and forth beetwen boinc and folding for a while but my switch to boinc over folding is innevetable, i honestly don't care that much about medical science anyway, sure it is vital and it certainly plays a part in achieving our scientific goals, and to understand the things around us we have to understand ourselves aswell, but it doesn't get me nearly as excited as the other distributed computing projects out there that is much more appealing to me.

That's the cool thing about BOINC IMHO, you get to pick and choose what kind

of cause you donate your energy bill to. On the downside, the credit system

is even more broken than F@H's, but c'est la vie.

[tobben]

That's the cool thing about BOINC IMHO, you get to pick and choose what kind

of cause you donate your energy bill to. On the downside, the credit system

is even more broken than F@H's, but c'est la vie.

even more broken? how so?, well yes obviously, at first i didn't even connect a credit system with boinc at all, i instantly realised how broken it would be considering that you can choose beetwen like 30 different projects, some for cpu's some for nvidia and some for amd, obviously it's going to be bloody broken! im more curious about specificly how broken it is from someone who actually knows .

[alpenwasser]

even more broken? how so?, well yes obviously, at first i didn't even connect a credit system with boinc at all, i instantly realised how broken it would be considering that you can choose beetwen like 30 different projects, some for cpu's some for nvidia and some for amd, obviously it's going to be bloody broken! im more curious about specificly how broken it is from someone who actually knows .

Well, first I should probably define what I mean when I say I consider F@H's

credit system to be broken (at least at the moment). Primarily, this concerns

the lack of bonus points for folding on GPUs. I looked into it this week, and

apparently the powers that be have said that they are aware of it and would

like to fix it, but it's not a big priority at the moment. For some people this

might not be a big deal though.

As for BOINC: As you said yourself, all the different projects get you different

points for the same amount of processing work done. You can compare the credits

between different projects with this list.

As an example, at the moment about 11% of my credits come from Rosetta@Home

(a project known for comparatively low credit gain), and about 16% come from

GPUGrid.net. However, I have been computing for Rosetta for several months,

whereas I only joined GPUGrid this week, and already it has overtaken Rosetta

in my personal stats.

So in the end, all you can really compare are credits from within the same

projects, global BOINC rankings are pretty much meaningless (at least IMHO),

because it is easily possible that somebody who has done significantly more

computing work on low-credit projects has much fewer credits than somebody

who has done less actual work on high-credit projects.

I have read quite a bit about this problem and so far I have not come across

any ideas that could fix this and which are actually feasible from a technical

POV. Some have suggested just actually counting the integer and floating point

operations which have been performed, but it appears that there is no truly

realiable way to count them.

However, since my primary motivation are not the credits, this is not a deal-

breaker for me. I am a bit of a stats whore, and therefore I would consider it

really nice to have a meaningful and reliable credit system, but I suppose this

is just the price one pays for the heterogeneity of the BOINC ecosystem.

[tobben]

eally nice to have a meaningful and reliable credit system, but I suppose this

is just the price one pays for the heterogeneity of the BOINC ecosystem.

and it is well worth it , well honestly im not to fussed about stats, uhm well.. admittedly maybe abit of a stat whore myself but ... science goes above all else!, i figured it would be nice to go to boinc and maybe have less focus on the points compared to folding, well .. i guess that goes right out the window , i honestly don't care that much about the points, the only thing i appreciate are these pretty badges we get on the forum as a proof of our efforts .

 

as for gpu folding and bonus points, well i don't find them that necessary to be honest.. if you finish projects faster you get more projects done thus you obviously get more points, just maybe not as much as you might expect, in the end im happy as long as my systems can contribute towards awesome science projects.

[alpenwasser]

science goes above all else!

Agreed. In general, aside from being able to pick and choose what kind of project

I wish to support, what I draws me to BOINC more than to F@H is just the project

culture in general. Sure, BOINC might be a bit messy and overwhelming for a newcomer,

but F@H has a closed-source client (do not like that at all) and they took for-

freaking-ever to enable GPU support on Linux (yeah, yeah I know, limited resources

blablabla, I still think we should have had GPU support on Linux years ago).

BOINC's culture is just more open, and I kind of dig that.

[tobben]

BOINC's culture is just more open, and I kind of dig that.

if you stop and think about it for a moment, we live in a time where you can still contribute to science in some shape or form, help advance our species and gather knowledge, even though you don't have a long long education have dedicated your life to it or perhaps you weren't even wired for it in the first place, i think that's amazing , you might not be helping as much as many people think but i still think it's cool.

 

and yes.. ofcourse you could always donate money but that isn't nearly as fun is it, doesn't really make anyone feel that they are a part of the process.

[Terminashunator]

Parents forbade me from running BOINC at home due to the power bill being $200 this month.

Sorry guys.

[alpenwasser]

Parents forbade me from running BOINC at home due to the power bill being $200 this month.

Sorry guys.

That's... not insubstantial.

I have the same problem. To get around it, I've bought a power meter and measure

how much juice my BOINC rigs are drawing, then I can pay for that part of the power

bill myself (this of course assumes that you can afford to do so).

[Sharif]

maybe i will try it out seems interesting 

[darkshadow]

R7 260x says app version needs cal but gpu doesnt support it. What could be wrong?

[alpenwasser]

R7 260x says app version needs cal but gpu doesnt support it. What could be wrong?

Based on these two threads about the issue (link 1, link 2), it

seems that AMD has stopped supporting CAL in their drivers recently.

You probably need to switch to a project which uses OpenCL, or maybe

reverting to an older driver would work (though in the end that would

only be a temporary fix I suppose).

[Kayn]

Just joined, been in a giving mood lately because I have my old S2 doing computing job and also my M8 when it's charging, I might just use Boinc for my CPU and GPU for F@H. 

[alpenwasser]

Just joined, been in a giving mood lately because I have my old S2 doing computing job and also my M8 when it's charging, I might just use Boinc for my CPU and GPU for F@H.

Excellent, welcome to the club!

When you have enough points for your first badge, be sure to

message Whaler_99 about it, he's responsible for that.

[CowsGoRoar]

Just started it, so it might take a day or two to get going.

You gotta start somewhere right? 

[lr5t]

I started a few days ago and already over 34k points