In Which we discuss the next folding at home competition

[Joe42]

It was recently agreed that another folding competition might be a good idea, for two reasons:
1. Top crunchers are getting a bit bored at the top and would enjoy some extra competition, and the competitions are good fun for all.
2. We could do with some more members, and its a good way to have a bit of fun and friendly competition with both folders and non folders even if they don't stay with the team afterwards.

So, this is whats been said so far:

we need to get some races going tbh!

This is true! The best way to get the banter and points flowing, IMO.

anyone up for another single machine comp, as of 3-4 months ago.

If we do lets make it public and bring in a few new folders while we're on. Put it in gh perhaps, invite people to compete even if they don't stay with us afterwards.
I'm up for it.
Perfect timing too with the Christmas holidays fast approaching.

Although i'm not sure if we should allow gpus to be part of a single machine in this instance, if we do theres not much point in me competing. Hell theres not much point anyway with these conroes but i'll do it anyway in the hope that some people with similar cpus compete to make it interesting.

We'll have to lay down some well thought out rules to make it fair and fun.

I'm up for it! It's probably gonna involve a few different categories, given that you could call a quad-core system with two GPUs one rig these days. Needs some thought... could make a rule of CPU WUs using the standard client only in the main category, if people were OK with that?

Agree about making it public as well - the aim should be participation

A category just for GPUs could be good - could be quite a close fight though could potentially get a bit dull with the consistant output

I was thinking i would probably be happy to donate £5 via paypal if someone else can deal with buying some prizes and paying for and dealing with postage to the winners. Even something like a set of cathodes would do as a first prize.

I'd be happy with a £5 donation, though I don't think it should be compulsory!

I'll make someone a sig as a prize (not first prize obviously )

Certainly wouldn't be compulsory. I'd still donate even if i wasn't going to enter.
I was just saying with a couple of small donations and someone willing to buy prizes and pay for postage we could offer some small but meaningful prizes and makes things much more lively.

So, any thoughts?
How will we make it fair?
Does offering prizes using a few small donations sound like a good idea?
Should it go in gh and be open to all?
Should we allow gpus and quad cores?
Will not allowing gpus and quad cores defeat the pont a little by not allowing those with the best hardware to win, bearing in mind this might be open to non folders in the gh with a view to retaining them after the competition?
Should we have a selection of categories, such as one for gpus (although this would require more prizes if we're doing prizes)?



Decided so far:

The Ranking & Prize Categories:
-Team AMD
-Team Intel
-The power league
-The overclockers league
-The ecowarriors league


-The prizes:
-Winner of the power league.
Person with the highest points over the duration.

-Winner of the overclockers league.
Person with the highest average ppd gain over the average ppd of their cpu at stock speed.

Average PPD data for the participants cpu type at stock speed is used and compared with the actual average ppd of the participant. This will be their average ppd over all the stats collected, so if we only used the stats from the weekly news in the two weeks of the competition we would use their average ppd out of these two figures. However there are likely to be more frequent stats reports, and the average ppd from all these stats reports will be the final figure.

-Winner of the eco warriors league.
The person with the highest ppd/cpu + typical system wattage.
Ppd is the ppd at the end of the competition.
Cpu + typical system wattage data is taken from reviews.

As to Oc I've been doing some research and come up with two simple ratio's as power/thermal output is liner to clock cycles.
Most Intel’s are between .098 and .093 watts/Hz. To keep it simple I'll call it .095
C2D and AMD's have a shallower line of between .078 and .084. so I'll call this .08.
Or to put it an other way, Intel’s have Oc factor of 95w per GHz, and C2D & AMDs have a factor of 80w per GHz
Are we all following ok - no! well let's give an example.

my [email protected]
= 185w (stock) + [(3.6-2.66)*95] (Oc in Ghz times 'intel Oc factor' above)
= 185+[.94x95]
= 185+89
= 274w

-Raffle prize.
All who enter will have their names drawn from a hat.

The Rules:
-No gpu clients
-SMP client not allowed
-Beta work not allowed
-advmethods set at users discretion
-Multiple machines not allowed under one username
-Username must be of the specified format.
-No more than 4 cores
-One prize per participant, if a participant wins multiple leagues they can choose a prize and any other prizes will go to the person who comes 2nd.
-One username (and hence machine) per forumite.
-Folding user names must be in the form: [F@H07_*forumname*_*cpumanufacturer/team*] e.g [F@H07_Joe42_AMD]


The Particulars:
-Will be posted in gh
-Competition will be two weeks long.
-There will be regular stats updates with all participants listed under each league in order of performance in that league.

 

[Mattus]

Does offering prizes using a few small donations sound like a good idea?

I think so. Nothing like a financial incentive to get people going, especially new folders.

Should it go in gh and be open to all?

Yes, although we'd need to advertise in GH in good time as people are bound to have problems/questions with installing the client, etc.

Should we allow gpus and quad cores?
Will not allowing gpus and quad cores defeat the pont a little by not allowing those with the best hardware to win, bearing in mind this might be open to non folders in the gh with a view to retaining them after the competition?

We should possibly put them in a separate category? I'm not sure how that'd work, though, as running a GPU effectively takes out a CPU core as well. It's not fair to put single-core GPU folders up against systems which have three other CPU cores spare...

 

[divine`]

Definitely need catergories if you're going to make a comp out of it.

No way in hell my 3500+ would keep up with a cranked C2D, and im sure a lot of people in GD would see it that way too. No point in dissuading people just cos they think they wont win

 

[SiriusB]

A competition sounds good. I'd be up for it at least, though I doubt I'll win anything

The categories is going to be very important as everyone has a different set up. As a case in point I crunch on a GPU and CPU. To stand any chance of winning with a CPU, I would need both cores crunching, which would mean my GPU has to stop... that would be a 800PPD penalty I have to pay every day for the duration of the competition.

The next issue is GPUs. I think after just a few days it is going to be clear who the front runners are as I think only a few of us crunch on our GPU full time, and I would say even less have their GPUs overclocked. As I have said my GPU gets almost 800PPD... quite formidable and I don't think there are many people who can match it, never mind supersede it [looks at Concorde ].

So, I stand a small chance of winning something in a CPU race, at a huge cost to my normal output or I stand a good chance of winning the GPU but can see the results becoming very predictable.

As for prizes, I am more than happy to donate a skydiver [no not you Freefaller!] for prizes and I am also offering to handle the prizes too.

The only problem with prizes is how much it will cost to post them. Locally wont be a problem, but I can imagine even a small package going the length of the country [and beyond] would cost a wee bit. Now multiply that by all the prizes...

Possible solutions are in order they entered my brain

1: Cash prizes - sent via Paypal, Bank Transfer or Cheque
2: Winners offer to pay some or all of the postage
3: Prizes kept very small/light [no PSUs people ]
4: Make prizes vouchers redeemable from certain websites [Amazon do online vouchers, I am sure other e-tailers do.]
5: Ask OcUK if they are willing to offer some one-off vouchers - long shot I know but could be great publicity for them and us
6: Tell the winners the prizes got lost in the post and us lot can spend the money on beer

SiriusB

 

[Joe42]

No way in hell my 3500+ would keep up with a cranked C2D, and im sure a lot of people in GD would see it that way too. No point in dissuading people just cos they think they wont win

Same. No way my 175 would keep up with a modern core 2.

So what would we have as categories? Can we do it with just a high end and a low end category?

 

[joeyjojo]

So what would we have as categories? Can we do it with just a high end and a low end category?

Core 2 duo
AMD 64
P4/other old systems

 

[Joe42]

<snip>

something i hadn't considered actually, having categories (particularly with gpus that need a cpu core to work) might actually be a bad thing for team production. Question is is it worth it in order to get more members or can we do this without reducing anyone's production?

Regarding the prizes, i don't think we should be aiming for anything like psus, i;m thinking a set of blue cathodes as a top prize. I don't think we'll be short of donations, but i don't think we should spend much on prizes even if we do get lots of donations. Save it for future competitions, stick to small but meaningful prizes.

I was thinking the best thing to do with postage was to have one person pay for postage and deal with prize buying and posting instead of making a donation, but if we have lots of prizes it will probably cost more than a donation would be for that person. So we could either split it between people or use donations to pay for postage. I think using donations to pay for postage is the easiest way.
Would it be better to order this stuff from ocuk and have it delivered directly to the winners i wonder?

I like the idea of teaming up with ocuk, what i'd like to see is perhaps some folding stickers for us to buy for prizes or something. They have been very involved in seti before so its possible. Have to ask 'zerker to post in the dr about it.

Vouchers are good too, but i'm not keen at all on cash prizes. You need more money to make a meaningful prize and as i said i think the money is better saved if we we get lots of donations for future competitions and events.

Making winners pay postage is a bad idea imo as its just more hassle for everyone.

 

[divine`]

Could maybe split it to some main categories and sub cats?


Prizes for main cats (ie. CPU only etc.) and maybe a sig or something for sub-cats, like AMD Single Core, AMD Dual Core, Intel Single Core, Intel Dual Core.

Because with just CPUs, the C2Ds would decimate everything, and P4s will rinse most A64s unless the A64 gets itself some nice work units.

 

[Joe42]

Core 2 duo
AMD 64
P4/other old systems

Actually, thats just remiinded me, i have an idea that we could have an amd category and an intel category and have the categories compete with each other for total ppd and total points. That would be a lot of fun and make things a lot more interesting.

As ATI are now owned by amd they would help make the amd team strong enough to take on the core 2 duos and would make up for the fact that more people have core 2s.

 

[divine`]

Actually, thats just remiinded me, i have an idea that we could have an amd category and an intel category and have the categories compete with each other for total ppd and total points. That would be a lot of fun and make things a lot more interesting.

As ATI are now owned by amd they would help make the amd team strong enough to take on the core 2 duos and would make up for the fact that more people have core 2s.

Where would allegiances lie for those running C2D and X1950s though?

 

[Joe42]

Another idea... everyone should have a competition sig to wear, one for the intel league one for the amd league with nulls user stats on them.

Where would allegiances lie for those running C2D and X1950s though?

Let them choose. Would have to disable the cpu or the gpu... shame, thats a big hole in a good idea.

We'll need some good custom stats, and perhaps a daily update thread. We will need some cleaver stats to make it easy to compare leagues, as eoc won't do that.

 

[divine`]

Another idea... everyone should have a competition sig to wear, one for the intel league one for the amd league with nulls user stats on them.

Let them choose. Would have to disable the cpu or the gpu... shame, thats a big hole in a good idea.

could fold the CPU core and the GPU core under different names surely?

 

[Joe42]

could fold the CPU core and the GPU core under different names surely?

Yeah, good idea. Only thing is it doesn't allow the combination of gpus and core 2s, but on reflection thats probably a good thing, as i said above it gives a decent advantage to the amd team to get all the gpus so it can compete with the intel team with xeons and core 2s and quad cores.

 

[divine`]

If we do split it into AMD vs Intel, then make sure it gets posted in CPUs/HG as all those lovely fanbois will relish the opportunity to prove they have the better machines

 

[Mattus]

And what about the SMP client? It does stupid PPD (1000+). Banned? Different category?

 

[Joe42]

If we do split it into AMD vs Intel, then make sure it gets posted in CPUs/HG as all those lovely fanbois will relish the opportunity to prove they have the better machines

Bingo.

Nothing like a bit of fanboyism to fire up the competition.

 

[Joe42]

And what about the SMP client? It does stupid PPD (1000+). Banned? Different category?

Because its beta and linux and therefore only accessible to a small number of people i reckon its best if its not allowed...

I'm just thinking since the gpu client is beta should it be allowed? Will it give the impression to new folders that its far more complicated than it really is and requires 24/7 operation? Will it give an advantage to the hardcore folders who can be bothered to set it up?

Whats the gpu client like these days, presumably you still have to run it 24/7 or keep faffing about with it as there's no service?

 

[divine`]

Might be easiest in the end to stick purely to CPUs. I don't have a GPU to fold with (X800 ) so i haven't looked into it much but it seems a lot of hassle having to fiddle with the clockspeeds and reboot the service every time the PC gets turned off/on :/

 

[Joe42]

Might be easiest in the end to stick purely to CPUs. I don't have a GPU to fold with (X800 ) so i haven't looked into it much but it seems a lot of hassle having to fiddle with the clockspeeds and reboot the service every time the PC gets turned off/on :/

Yeah thats what i'm thinking. The disadvantage is some folders will have to lower their overall output for a while.

 

[divine`]

Yeah thats what i'm thinking. The disadvantage is some folders will have to lower their overall output for a while.

If the competition garners a load more members though, it'll only be a few PCs dropping from 800PPD on a GPU to what, 500PPD on a CPU compared to how ever many extra 200, 300, 400 PPD machines being added.

Long term if some of them stick around it can only be benficial