We're in for the 10th Birthday Challenge

[[XC] Oj101]

XtremeSystems is now a participating team

http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/te...allengeId=6833

[Evantaur]

i'll have my haswell back up by then

[jeanguy2]

Well done XC, this new challenge will be fun. We will be competing against some very good teams.

Having nerver partaken in one of these before, I could certainly use all pertinent gamesmanship tips to maximize my contribution to our XS team. (ie.:How & when to load cache & delay reporting prior to event, which WUs to select to maximize credited points, and the likes...)

[yojimbo197]

Well done XC, this new challenge will be fun. We will be competing against some very good teams.

Having nerver partaken in one of these before, I could certainly use all pertinent gamesmanship tips to maximize my contribution to our XS team. (ie.:How & when to load cache & delay reporting prior to event, which WUs to select to maximize credited points, and the likes...)

I usually have a 5-8 cache so I don't worry about loading per se. I never tried the delayed reporting thing though. I(or rather my computers) always went balls to the walls for a week. Last year I donated a week to the Chicago WCG team. I think they were shocked to see a new member eclipse them so much. But I had a lot of firepower and the HIV WU's weren't so farked up points wise then.

This should be a lot of fun, especially if I manage to get some CPU's I want in time. Moar cores!

[[XC] Oj101]

Moar cores!

I read that in Jeremy Clarkson's voice. MOOOOORE POWEEEEER!

[Evantaur]

I read that in Jeremy Clarkson's voice. MOOOOORE POWEEEEER!

[OldChap]

Gamesmanship:

Normal thing to do is get the maximum cache possible at around the 8-9 days before start day so you might want to be running at 4 days cache then up it daily for the 5 days before.

if you are running a 4 day cache then 14 days before competition start, up it to 5 days then 6 then 7 ,8 and 9. 9 days before start date (if your cache is full) turn off network comms. gradually building up works better than having all your deadlines on the same day.

On day one (possibly early on day two) Revert your cache to the original 4 days, or whatever you prefer then turn on network comms again and you will upload a shed load of wu's but only download your normal amount.

In the run up to start day the project you build up the large cache of must have a 10 day deadline.... I think that is MCM1 as it is not fa@h or UGM. Again before uploading switch to your preferred work type.

Points:

Best points on Linux are with Vina wu's (=+30%) but only FAHV is vina. so to get top points you would need to micromanage your rigs and abort faah wu's at least daily preferably twice daily if using a 7 day cache

Once you start caching results you cannot move to the higher paying work until day 1 after uploading.

I know squat about windows wu's so, if there are advantages there, someone else will have to pipe up

Overall you might do well to reduce writes to disk to 15 or 30 minutes and play with the <no priority change>1 setting in cc config so that you know which works best for you FOR EACH PROJECT prior to the start of this.

If you run Boinctasks then you can observe the change in cpu%. You will also find that the difference between cpu time and real time can be adjusted this way. I have reduced from over 3 minutes per hour of runtime lost to around 30 seconds lost. Sounds like not a lot until you multiply it by the number of threads hours you run in a day.

Anyone wants more clarity on any of this then just ask

Edit: If just today's pie eaters used the above guide and each scored similar figures to yesterday in the run up to day one the resultant score on day 1 would be over 3,000,000 BOINC

[OldChap]

Gamesmanship2:

Everyman and his dog that you know that has a rig no matter how old (either rig or person) can be roped in to this for 10 days.... who knows they might decide to stay. If they need help loading/running Boinc/WCG then do it for them.

Ask your boss if he minds supporting this with work computers. It is just 10 days after all and you might appeal to his more giving side..... remember if anyone has qualms about it using too much cpu resource then it can be timed to only work out of hours.

If the above folks can't be bothered then run on your account....If they want to see how they are doing (getting interested maybe?) then set them up with their own boinc/wcg account

[OldChap]

Gamesmanship3

Remember that this challenge has sub challenges relating to totals for each of the 4 projects

MCM1 and CEP2 are both candidates for the 10 day cache needed before the start date (a mixture of the two would help avoid the heavy load CEP2 puts on memory and disk subsystems). Having a head start on those might allow the better chance of winning those sub challenges. FA@H and UGM only allow for a 7 day cache so some emphasis should be put on these during the 10 days if we are to balance the work/results over the whole period.

In the past I noticed that CEP2 seems to like whole cores and plenty of memory. If you have a machine like that run a quick comparison beforehand against a machine with ht

[OldChap]

If you really are keen to produce as much as possible here is a schedule

Up until the 28th October fine tuning ....preferably with similar work loads to those you will be loading then you will know what settings to use

October 28 move to MCM1 and or CEP2 projects and 1 day cache. Starts to use up any previous work and fill with required projects
October 29 2 day cache Depending on how many days cache you ran previously you may not gey the new work yet
October 30 3 day cache Once old work is used up or the days cache setting is greater than before correct wu's will load
October 31 4 day cache Notice that this delay in loading assists in not over running deadlines on the 16th Nov
November 1 5 day cache
November 2 6 day cache
November 3 7 day cache
November 4 8 day cache
November 5 9 day cache
November 6 10 day cache Abort any wu's that have deadline earlier than 16Nov and switch allow network communications to no when cache full. Abort any wu's that will be late
November 7 1 day cached wu's complete
November 8 2 days cached wu's complete
November 9 3 days cached wu's complete
November 10 4 days cached wu's complete
November 11 5 days cached wu's complete
November 12 6 days cached wu's complete
November 13 7 days cached wu's complete
November 14 8 days cached wu's complete
November 15 9 days cached wu's complete
November 16 switch to 6 day cache, switch to other projects and then allow network communications to yes. Should dump 9-10 days of work and reload work for the next 6 days
November 17 Maximise points or balance projects from here on in
November 18
November 19
November 20
November 21
November 22
November 23
November 24
November 25
November 26 Superior planning and preparation FTW. You are a winner !!
The 10 day challenge the XS way only takes 30 days

EDIT: Remember that you will be using UTC time for this so you will need to adjust the time that you pull the trigger to upload work accordingly

[jeanguy2]

Thanks OC, above info and schedule is exactly what I was looking for.

[Charles Wirth]

I just uploaded the original psd for Ashraf, he said he could if he has psd.

Getting things done, sorry for the delay.

[OldChap]

Thanks again FUGGER

Gamesmanship 4:

This one is theory only now as the way that points are claimed/awarded may be different since I last tried this.....

If you are able then set cache to 2-3 days and overclock your rig in the period leading up to filling a full cache. In theory WCG then sees your rig as capable of x plus any overclock% wu's per day and sees your rig as being a certain speed.

doing a run benchmarks then dropping the overclock before starting the work that is held from being uploaded should mean 2 things

1. the amount of work in cache is greater than it would be if you did not do this thereby giving you a bit of a buffer in case the calculation is off.

2. the rig expects to complete a wu in x time but takes overclock% longer. it calculates that as claiming a few more points for any given wu. which SHOULD give you a higher score.

My expectation is that this will start to auto correct again after you upload the work when network communications is resumed.

try to keep the overclock to around 10-15% absolute max in order not to fall foul of the anti-cheat mechanism..... which some might feel this sort of tuning is. Rather than cheating I consider this "working the system"

[Evantaur]

Best points on Linux are with Vina wu's (=+30%) but only FAHV is vina. so to get top points you would need to micromanage your rigs and abort faah wu's at least daily preferably twice daily if using a 7 day cache

^this will be only for intel cpus, AMDs are all over the place depending on arcitechture

[OldChap]

Thanks, I had no idea. I know so little about amd since I only ran 1207 opterons for about 4 months

[D_A]

Yes, AMD systems seem to be quite variable. If you want to know what your system is good at you have to play. I have an A6-3600 based system here on 64bit Linux that likes VINA units but there's not as much of a gain as there is for the Intel Q6600. This A6 is the newest thing I have so I don't know about the more recent ones.

[D_A]

Ok, fight tips.

For those who plan to bring additional hardware online for the challenge it's suggested to start about three days early, a week if you can manage it. It takes that long for the whole validation system to crank up for a new or returning device and you won't hit full points production till at least three days after you get it rolling.

[yojimbo197]

Ok, fight tips.

For those who plan to bring additional hardware online for the challenge it's suggested to start about three days early, a week if you can manage it. It takes that long for the whole validation system to crank up for a new or returning device and you won't hit full points production till at least three days after you get it rolling.

Does this apply to new/used CPU's put in an existing rig as well?

[Otis11]

Does this apply to new/used CPU's put in an existing rig as well?

Yes - any changes to the system can take as long as 7-10 days to take full effect in the points system depending on which projects you run...

Also - be sure to set the flag to report immediately once finished in the final days of the project!!!

[hendermd]

I thougth I had missed it, was not sure of the dates, so this is a reminder.

Start Date: 11/16/2014

[[Ion]]

Well, we can't possibly hope to match you, but I think I can speak on behalf of TPU! when I say that we're looking forward to the challenge

[stoneageman]

Oh no! He's seen the big board

[PoppaGeek]

Well, we can't possibly hope to match you, but I think I can speak on behalf of TPU! when I say that we're looking forward to the challenge

Always nice to hear from a dedicated WCG cruncher like yourself.

[D_A]

Now you've done it. I've gone and cranked up the Nexus.

[Charles Wirth]

lol stonageman,

We need a new plan.