In Which we discuss the next folding at home competition

[Joe42]

So it is settled, GD it is. I think we should definitely point out that it is not a thread about the merits of Folding or any other DC project. Last thing we need is a bunch of people moaning how it is a waste of time etc

We all remember the pimping thread...

...that's a point, better make sure Joe42 stays out

SiriusB

Heh... i promise not to get involved in a flame war this time.

I'm still in favour of putting it in gh because its not a pimping thread, its a competition which will be measured on the merits of your hardware.

Excellent. I feel like we have reached a milestone - let's party!

*strips off and runs around nekkid*

Ahem...

*averts gaze*

Yes, i think we have the basic formula mostly sorted.

 

[Joe42]

Are we going for 4 prizes then? Overclocker, blockbuster, eco-warrior and random? Seems to make sense.

Yes i think so.

Do we want one for the highest points aswell or will that just be bragging rights?

Edit: Sorry thats blockbuster isn't it.

As for prizes, I got a spare £40 LoveFilm voucher the other day. 3 months free DVD rentals. I am willing to donate that as a prize.

Thats a pretty impressive donation. I say we offer that one as our raffle prize as it would probably be the best prize we have and its not pc related... but as its your prize, you should decide.

 

[Joe42]

Sounds impressive but it isn't really. I went on a 2 week free trial with lovefilm and then cancelled. Then right out the blue two £40 vouchers turn up. One for me and one for a friend. So, it hasn't cost me anything and I haven't lost out.

Win win situation then.

 

[Joe42]

Plus i think a lot of people are either building new systems or doing upgrades, my main system is in bits atm so i'm certainly not ready.

Its certainly going to happen though, just not immediately.

 

[Joe42]

Time to get moving with this i think.

What does the phone confirmation do in paypal for account validation? Does it just ring you and you have to press a button or do they ask you questions or what?
Trying to get a paypal account set up for donating prize money mainly. [Edit: nvm, finally found the relevant info on the paypal website.]


Sirius are you still up for dealing with the prizes and donations?


I'll do a little summary of the rules at some point just to save everyone reading through the thread.


Edit: Can someone remind me how the ecowarriors league will work, i take it we aren't just going to use tdp...?
Its a while since i had my mind on this and i've forgotten a few things.

 

[Joe42]

I'd rather not set deadlines, i prefer to say when its finished its finished and then we can roll whenever we like. If its not done by 1st of feb then it should start 1st of march if you think its best to have it at the beginning of the month. Or maybe even we should wait for a holiday. But one way or another i think we should finish it first and get everything prepared and ready, then decide when we're having it.

Its requiring a lot of preparation because its the first really serious competition we've done, but once this has all been done we can re-use things like competition sigs and such.

And i'm sure the news can always be moved to coincide with the competition, and i expect the competition will have its own news.

I hope someone will upload a set of sigs for the competition to nulls sig generator, or i will if someone can do the images, then we can just hand them out to all who want them and just change the user for the stats. Or people can do their own.

Are we going to allow people to enter into multiple leagues with one machine?
I think if people can only enter into one league that would make it complicated for them to choose which league to join, so i think the league should simply be the prizes on offer and the way that we categorise the stats, rather than separate competitions. Thus the folding name format wouldn't include the league, except amd/intel league of course.

Are we going to let people enter multiple machines?
I think we should, because the more the merrier, but if this results in one person receiving multiple prizes what do we do?
I think we should have a rule that a person can only receive one prize ,excluding the raffle prize which is of course random. And people would still be able to win in multiple leagues, just they would only get a prize for one of the league, any others they win the prize would go to whoever is 2nd.

Presumably a person entering several machines would have to have a unique folding name for each machine...

 

[Joe42]

On a different note, make sure it doesn't coincide with the Kings Int. Gauntlet, as a fair few folders were planning on switching over to SETI for those three weeks...

Good point, will have to keep an eye on that.

 

[Joe42]

<snip>

No hurry, but if you can deal with the prizes thats great.

One person per league sounds like a good idea except what if someone enters in one league but ends up being the best in another? Or is this very unlikely?

I'm also very worried about all this mention of PayPal and whatever. I haven't read the thread enough to know what's going on, but I suspect anything involving money is going to get a 'no' response, and for good reason giving the forum rules. Prizes given freely are one thing, but chucking money around is quite another. Please bear this in mind.

The plan was that one person will buy prizes and collect any donations for those prizes, all via paypal. Its not going to be a massive thing, i'd say only 3 or 4 people need to donate some money to get a couple of decent prizes. Does any of this violate the rules?
I wouldn't have though so...

 

[Joe42]

Its certainly no worse than the mm surely?
I think this has already been discussed in this thread, i'll check.

 

[Joe42]

<snip>

So the issue is, you're liable if its discussed on the forums?
I didn't think you were liable, i thought mm transactions are solely the responsibility of the buyer and seller...
Can you still be liable even if its done privately via email?

There are no risks for donators as far as i'm concerned, it would be small amounts, not more than £10 i would have thought per donator, most likely less.
In other words, trusting a respected fellow folder and forumite of 5,000 posts with a tenner is not an issue. And its really not the end of the world if that tenner were to vanish (although it might be the end of SB's account ).
But if ocuk being held liable for problems is an issue then we'll have a disclaimer.

So all we need is a simple disclaimer that any donations are non-refundable and ocuk cannot be held liable for the world suddenly vanishing in a puff of acrid black smoke should such an event occur?
Or must it be done via email?

I'll leave it up to you but hope you have fun in the end.

Thanks, i'm sure we will.

 

[Joe42]

I know I've said it before but I really think all rigs should be listed in all of the rankings. Not only will this increase compertition / banta (Mr A - I'm stomping you and all your amd buds left right and centre! Ms B - That may be but your bottom of the ecoleague with that iluminated room heater of yours, etc etc.

But most importantly it will also make entering a rig easier and more user friendly. It will also make it is easier for the stat's stackers to 'manage' the admin / tables via spreedsheets. If all, are in every we just need to re-order by coloumn for each league and cut and paste the results.

Thats an excellent idea... problem solved.

One rig per person is a good idea I must say - also gives reason for the comp. sig as the data can only be linked to a single user name.

As to winning multipule prizes I really don't think one machine will do it, but a simple rule that says only one prize per entrant (their choice) is stright forward and acceptable to all, included just incase it does happen.

Date - i think your right joe, let's get the comp all sorted first and then roll out the PR.

Finally money / prizes - I understand Mr B conserns but it's just an extension of the freecycle above. Just instead of one person offering an item (lets call it a prize) it's 3/4/5 people clubing together to offer 3 items or prizes. Money changes hands - yes but it's all pre-comp. (mind you - does open one menber up to claims of miss us of funds etc. which is why the rules are their in the first place )

I agree with all of that.

 

[Joe42]

The MM Dons have enough trouble sorting out MM, so I can understand their reluctance go et involved in this - indeed that's why I brought it to their attention in the first place.

Undoubtedly, thanks for taking the trouble to bring these things up even though you aren't on the mod team any more.

I would simply say, regardless of what happens the mods need not ever get involved. As i said, the money is small amounts and we'll have a disclaimer that its non refundable. Neither the mods nor the forum will be held liable if anything goes wrong, the forum is simply being used as a communications medium.

Is this ok, or must we use email?

As mentioned this is the same as the freecycle sticky... if there are problems with that the mods are not expected to get involved in any way. In the same way this is not payment, this is a donation, so the same rules should apply...

 

[Joe42]

How about stomp 2 extreme?

 

[Joe42]

Those are very valid concerns, i don't infact myself have a clear idea of what's going on, and for that reason i shall be writing a set of rules for this competition as soon as i can. I just need to collate everything together, so we can identify what's left to decide and so we can see easily what this is actually going to involve.

Teams within a team is definitely the way to go, and teams + prizes = success.

 

[Joe42]

Right, i'm still in the process or writing a summary of this competition and what it will involve, and i've come across some questions that require an answer. These may have been asked before but its simply taking too long to read the whole thread.

Are our average ppd figures for a variety of cpus accurate?

What figures are we using for cpu wattage, or are we using system wattage, do we have accurate wattage figures for all cpus?

I've decided that i think expecting people to choose a league when they join is far too complicated, just putting myself in the position of someone joining the competition, i found it hard to think of which league i would enter for any of my machines.
So there will be one competition, everyone will compete with everyone else. There will however be prizes for each league and stats for each league, but no actual divisions. Is this ok?

As soon as i've got definite answers to those two questions i shall post a summary of the competition and all the particulars. Apart from those questions its actually looking quite simple.

 

[Joe42]

SMP client won't be allowed, that was decided before. This is one of the reasons, the other is that anyone joining the competition would be at an unfair disadvantage if they didn't use the smp client, and setting it up is far too complicated for casual competition participants.

Now i just need a detailed explanation of how we will get the wattage data for cpus. I'm happy with the methodology for overclocked cpus.

 

[Joe42]

Well you can't really expect casual competition goers to install an entire new operating system just for a 2 week competition.

 

[Joe42]

Here is a summary of everything as it stands now. I may well make up some things as i go along, either to fill gaps or where needed. If there's anything you think could be improved, please say so.



The Great Folding at Home Competition 2007


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.


Problems:
-Incomplete cpu + typical system wattage data, we need a full list for all cpus.
-Wattage data includes a typical system, is this fair?
-Have we got average ppd data for all cpus?
-If we are taking either wattage or ppd data from multiple sources, is this fair, are these sources using the same measurement techniques?
-What are we doing about different ppd figures depending on the wu, is someone going to produce a list containing average ppd data using data for all wus for all cpus?
-Is mandating that forumites may only enter one machine counter productive to the aim of getting more machines folding for the team?
[Edit01]-What about people on macs, will we let them compete or is this an extra complication, are there enough people to make that worth while?



I've probably missed a load of stuff but that's taken long enough.
Discuss, comprehend, resolve, understand.

 

[Joe42]

In terms of dates, should we be talking late feb/early march?

Yeah i reckon so. I'd really like to go before the kig, certainly we'll need to know when thats going to take place.

All we need is wattage figures, average ppd figures and prizes, and we're done. I'll write the thread if thats ok although i'm not sure who should post it... i will if you want me to.

I think i may do some rewriting of the quick guide for this, or write a new one for this thread that makes it really simple to set up.

 

[Joe42]

Good work.

We have to draw the line somewhere, and if you've got all recent amd and intel cpus in there i think it wouldn't be a problem if we have to say to the odd person 'sorry you won't be eligible for a prize in this league and you won't be listed in the stats for this league because we don't have data for your cpu'.

Regarding the stats, we will probably want rich to put the competition stats in the weekly news at the time but how do you fancy being in charge of the overclockers league, dealing with all the stats and posting stats updates in the competition thread whenever you fancy it?

I think its better to split things up a bit, so you could be in charge of stats for the overclockers league and SS could do the stats for the ecowarriors league if he wants to do that...?

And then you can give the stats to rich for the weekly news each week, and basically post an update in the competition thread whenever you feel like it. I think thats probably better than posting massive bulk updates of all the stats at once.

what do you reckon?

Edit:

Well is it worth catering to the Mac market? In terms of people we might actually get folding is it that likely that more than....5 of them might have macs? If so then i guess we better try to accomodate them, but if the numbers are as small as they often seem then it seems silly wasting our time.

I think the official line will be 'you can compete, but we won't be able to cater for you in the overclockers league or the ecowarriors league, so you won't be eligiable for prizes in those leagues. But if you compete you're still in with a chance in the power league and you still get put into the raffle'.
And also i don't think i'll be catering for mac owners in the setup guide i put in the thread, but its still fine for them to compete and join the team and i'll do all i can to help, i'm just not willing to clutter up the setup guide for the benefit of a tiny minority. I think thats fair...