# Formula BOINC 2020



## mmonnin

I am very surprised the 1st sprint is not SETI has the voting came out after the shut down news. It is WCG though. SETI might be it next week.

03/12/2020 13:00 (UTC) - 03/15/2020 12:59 (UTC)
World Community Grid


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## tictoc

I haven't ran WCG in quite some time. Moving some threads over to WCG now.


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## bfromcolo

I was already running WCG on my old server, will add more to it. This is a tough project for us to get points in.


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## Finrond

Oh good I've been crunching along on WCG for a long while now, don't need to change anything over!


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## mmonnin

Don't dump yet. There are issues getting stats for FB
http://formula-boinc.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=157&start=10#p1239


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## tictoc

Sprint stats are up now, and it looks like the baseline stats must have been pulled yesterday. Our numbers are roughly in-line with Free-DC and BOINCStats. :thumb:


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## tictoc

We finished about the same as last year. WCG is always a tough project for us, but we did double our average output during the Sprint. :thumb:


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## mmonnin

The next Sprint project will be announced at 21:00 (UTC) today.


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## bfromcolo

I hope they give SETI one last go, even if we would never have a chance at points there.


Looks like Universe
03/19/2020 21:00 (UTC) - 03/22/2020 20:59 (UTC) 
[email protected]


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## mmonnin

I am surprised at that. There is plenty of work. There are several teams with SETI in their name. Figured SETI would get some votes.

There are even ULX tasks available at Universe.


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## mmonnin

There are some bad ulx tasks that have a disk limit error at the end of processing. Watch out for _2, _3 tasks with a lower batch ulx_500_#### vs ulx_500_#####.


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## bfromcolo

330 hours of CPU time for 0 points, 85 error out and 11 got rejected when they were uploaded, another 100 complete that aren't uploading. This is on 4 different computers, Linux and Windows. I give up.


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## mmonnin

Yeah several rounds of bad batches. But check the FB stats before uploading. It should have had stats for several hours but still nothing.


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## franz

Should I download the client with Virtualbox for my Windows rig? Up to this point I was only using my ubuntu rig for BOINC, which I switched over to [email protected] today.


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## mmonnin

VBox can always be installed later if needed so either option (with or without vbox) is ok.

Looks like davidBAM was banking up Universe tasks again as he dumped 34m. That crap doesn't help the bandwidth issues.


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## bfromcolo

Finally got some points, the BHspin seem to be running OK and they generated a bunch of them.


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## mmonnin

They were slowly gaining on our 9th place all of yesterday but now we're 500k behind in 11th. I've been able to keep the PCs busy with work but I'll be idling out of [email protected] tasks.


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## bfromcolo

Yes plenty of work, and no failed tasks since switching to BHspin only. But I have a bunch of uploads with problems.


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## franz

So I was wondering around the interwebs and found this https://universeathome.pl/universe/team_members.php?teamid=1028&offset=0&sort_by=expavg_credit

Just out of curiosity, what kind of hardware are you guys using? Especially interested in the top 5 average producers. Trying to get ideas for my next dedicated BOINC rig.


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## mmonnin

All my CPUs include 1950x, 2700x, 2x 2670v1, 3770k and 3570k. the 2670s were not running Universe and the RAC isn't as high it could be if running all the time without upload issue.

AMD Zen CPU all the way for BOINC only rig. The CPU performance per $ is just better than Intel offerings.


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## bfromcolo

I agree with the Ryzen recommendation, I have 2 1700x and a 1600 I bought at Microcenter as motherboard bundles. They were cheap ($139 and $79 for the CPU) and work fine on inexpensive B450 motherboards since you don't need a lot of features for BOINC. And the included cooler with the 1600 is adequate at stock clocks for 12 threads of you don't mind some fan noise.

If I was building a cheap BOINC/[email protected] machine today I would probably be looking at the 1600AF, 12 threads with a serviceable cooler for $85. 

And yes the RAC after this Sprint is meaningless, the ULX tasks were a mess (I had 386 fail and another 54 invalid) and then the download/upload issues.


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## franz

Yeah my ULX projects were just as bad 19 attempts 2 valid, 2 pending, 3 invalid, 12 error....I never ran this project before and my OCs have been 100% solid on all other BOINC projects and [email protected]

Thanks for the input on your setups. I have been not done any major upgrades on my PCs in quite some time and my BOINC/[email protected] rigs are usually just hand me down parts or stuff I can grab for a steal. Its pretty amazing the progress AMD has made since I built this Sandy Bridge rig. Now I have to decide if I am going to build a couple cheap rigs and keep my sigrig for a bit or go all in on a new sigrig. Thanks


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## mmonnin

Wow, we pulled back into 9th. scole and stoneageman dumped on the last day. They must have been our wingman.


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## franz

Sweet we are in the points!

Looking over the AMD chipsets today and determined I would probably go with the X470 for a dedicated rig unless I find a really good deal on the B450s. I feel the B450s would really bottleneck a second GPU at PCIE 2.0x4 and for efficiency I would like to run at least 2 GPUs per system.


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## bfromcolo

This weekends scheduled Sprint is cancelled.


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## franz

Well that sucks....not a lot of positive comments in this thread http://formula-boinc.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=156&start=40 and I cant find a reason for the cancellation.


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## tictoc

Yes, that is a bit of a bummer. Hopefully it gets sorted out and FB continues.


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## franz

The poll is up for the next sprint, hopefully this one stays on schedule.


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## mmonnin

Suggestions?


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## tictoc

I'm down for anything. A CPU project would be best for me, since most of my GPUs are tied up at the moment.:thumb:


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## spdaimon

Hey, just checking in. I know it has been a while...


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## franz

Well I have [email protected] ready to go. Lets see what happens this event. I would rather not take my GPUs off [email protected] but I will figure that out as I see how the points are.


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## tictoc

I was skeptical that it was going to happen, but the sprint project has been announced. :wheee:

The Sprint starts in t-minus 15 hours. https://www.timeanddate.com/countdo...=Formula+BOINC+Asteroids+Sprint&font=sanserif
Time to start stockpiling Asteroids WUs.


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## mmonnin

I didn't see it was [email protected] until this morning. I paused uploads until now. A bunch verified during the day.


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## franz

Is anyone getting nvidia GPU projects on a linux(ubuntu) rig? My windows rig is getting them and they both have the same GPU and latest drivers for both. Double checked that allow GPU compute was enabled.


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## mmonnin

Per watt, CPUs give better points at [email protected] I've only been running CPUs.

11xx/2xxx NV GPUs aren't supported in Linux yet. They are very slow at providing support for new GPUs.


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## franz

Well ironically my GTX1070, started crunching shortly after I started running [email protected] on it.....

I noticed the points were the same for either CPU or GPU. The 3 cores on my Sandy Bridge are basically producing as much as my other 1070. 

Another question, for ubuntu users, why does the BOINC manager allow new tasks for projects I told it to stop crunching? I turned off Rosetta and WCG, but came home today and had projects running for them while asteroids was on standby. Did the same on my Win10 rig and it hasnt pulled any other projects.


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## bfromcolo

If you set it to "no new tasks", it will still process what you have already downloaded. It should switch back and forth between projects until all the queued work is complete. To handle work already downloaded you could suspend until after the Sprint, or cancel them altogether, but you have to do this on individual work units.



If it is in fact downloading work after you told it to stop, thats a bug I have not experienced.


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## franz

@bfromcolo I guess I never looked at the projects that closely before. I assumed that the projects that showed up as pending, in manager, were the only ones that were pre downloaded, but these had been pulled days ago and are due tomorrow, so that's probably why they showed up today. Thanks for the info.


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## mmonnin

franz said:


> @bfromcolo I guess I never looked at the projects that closely before. I assumed that the projects that showed up as pending, in manager, were the only ones that were pre downloaded, but these had been pulled days ago and are due tomorrow, so that's probably why they showed up today. Thanks for the info.


I guess 2xxx are supported. Min driver version is 440.33 which is pretty recent.
http://asteroidsathome.net/boinc/forum_thread.php?id=800


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## franz

That was a pretty good fight for 11th. I was able to crunch around 850 projects. I have some new hardware coming in, so I should be able to step it up a bit for the next sprint.


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## franz

Did we put in a vote for the next Formula BOINC project? Starting in 2 days


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## mmonnin

Not for this week. What's a suggestion?


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## franz

It starts tomorrow, Collatz was chosen.

EDIT: I dont really care which project we run, I still dont know enough about them to know what we might be competitive in. I currently have an i5 2500K, i5 4790K, and now a Ryzen 1700X. I have 2 GTX1070 and a RTX2060 to go along with those setups.


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## tictoc

Collatz is a GPU project that gives out pretty high points. I ran the crap out of it every BGB, which is pretty much how I got so many points in Collatz.

I will throw a few GPUs at it, since I don't think I've ran Collatz in quite some time. :thumb:


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## franz

tictoc said:


> Collatz is a GPU project that gives out pretty high points. I ran the crap out of it every BGB, which is pretty much how I got so many points in Collatz.
> 
> I will throw a few GPUs at it, since I don't think I've ran Collatz in quite some time. :thumb:


Running it on my GPUs and CPUs, but just noticed CPU projects are super slow...2 projects with 3-4 day estimated completion lol


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## mmonnin

You'll need the config file too if the project still uses that. It's been a long time since I've ran collatz.


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## tictoc

The config file is still used, and I actually had to remove and then re-add Collatz since I haven't ran it since they updated the app after the cheating shenanigans.


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## franz

tictoc said:


> The config file is still used, and I actually had to remove and then re-add Collatz since I haven't ran it since they updated the app after the cheating shenanigans.


What is the config file? I did a new setup since I haven't run this project before. I also disabled CPU processing, because too slow.


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## tictoc

franz said:


> What is the config file? I did a new setup since I haven't run this project before. I also disabled CPU processing, because too slow.



The config file is a blank file that will ship with the rest of the project files. The config file can be used to tune the application for maximum performance. Word of warning, if you max out the performance your GPU will run very hot and be under a very heavy load. 

I just crashed my system, because I used my normal max performance config and didn't think about the fact that my 5700XT is running on the stock blower cooler. Needless to say it rapidly warmed up to throttling temps, and then crashed the driver. :doh:

Here is a link to the thread on the Collatz forum with example configs. https://boinc.thesonntags.com/collatz/forum_thread.php?id=8
There are also quite a few examples in the last few pages of our Collatz thread: https://www.overclock.net/forum/180...ollatz-conjecture-project-support-thread.html


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## franz

tictoc said:


> The config file is a blank file that will ship with the rest of the project files. The config file can be used to tune the application for maximum performance. Word of warning, that is you max out the performance your GPU will run very hot and be under a very heavy load.
> 
> I just crashed my system, because I used my normal max performance config and didn't think about the fact that my 5700XT is running on the stock blower cooler. Needless to say it rapidly warmed up to throttling temps, and then crashed the driver. :doh:
> 
> Here is a link to the thread on the Collatz forum with example configs. https://boinc.thesonntags.com/collatz/forum_thread.php?id=8
> There are also quite a few examples in the last few pages of our Collatz thread: https://www.overclock.net/forum/180...ollatz-conjecture-project-support-thread.html


+ virtual rep

Finally found the file on the ubuntu rig, I will have to play with this tomorrow when I have more time to monitor temps and usage.


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## franz

I plugged in the recommended values for the 1070s in my ubuntu rigs. I saw a decrease in project time from around 14-15 minutes to 8-9 minutes, with little impact on GPU temps. Its actually throttling a bit because its hitting the power limit, so temps dropped 1-2c.

I used the same values for my 2060, but Im tweaking it here and there to see if it can push a little harder with the extra L2 cache and improved turing architecture. FYI dont try to run threads=9 on a 2060.........


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## mmonnin

MW is the FB Sprint event.

Fire up those FP64 GPUs.


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## tictoc

Late to the party, but I'm rolling now.


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## bfromcolo

Doh! Will get something going.


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## neyel8r

recently found out about this & hope to contribute a smidge toward the next sprint :thumb:


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## neyel8r

looks like http://bearnol.is-a-geek.com/wanless2/ has been chosen for this upcoming sprint


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## tictoc

I didn't know WEP-M+2 was still around. It is a pretty long running BOINC project, but it is a one man show running on limited hardware so it could be interesting.


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## franz

tictoc said:


> I didn't know WEP-M+2 was still around. It is a pretty long running BOINC project, but it is a one man show running on limited hardware so it could be interesting.


Looks like its Linux only, so Im guessing VM in windows would work?


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## tictoc

franz said:


> Looks like its Linux only, so Im guessing VM in windows would work?



A Linux VM should work fine.


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## neyel8r

oh no... it appears their servers have crashed & my finished tasks aren't uploading


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## franz

neyel8r said:


> oh no... it appears their servers have crashed & my finished tasks aren't uploading


Sounds about right lol. They probably got hit with a few thousand uploads at once.


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## tictoc

Not too surprised. The project actually shut down for a few days earlier this year to let the servers "cool down" after an influx of new users.


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## spdaimon

Speaking of VMs, I was wondering how the performance of VMs was. During the Pentathlon I had used VMs to sandbag. Afterward, I ran a few Rosetta tasks in a Vmware Player VM (host: Win10, guest: Win10 on an E5-2680), one in an ESXi VM (guest: Win10 on an E5-2670) and ran a few on Win10 on both the E5-2680 and i7-4960X. CPU times seemed to be all about the same. It's hard to tell with the variance of tasks. I had let the VMs run out and just ran physical during the event. I was a little worried because the VMs in VMware Player would say 1000 ops/s in the BOINC benchmarks, where the others would say like 13000+.


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## neyel8r

i guess WEP-M+2 might finally be back online soon http://bearnol.is-a-geek.com/wanless2/server_status.php with 3 hours to go lol

(server status page showed all servers up recently but now i can't access the site)


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## bfromcolo

All my wanless2 tasks are still right here and are now all past the due date. But at least its just a couple hundred, one guy on the forum was claiming to have 12k.


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## tictoc

I had a few hundred queued up to release, and they are just sitting in the transfer pile. 

Not too much lost time for me, and I generally don't get too worked up over hiccups in projects. I crunched through thousands of bad MilkyWay WUs, to help clear their servers when they had a bad round of tasks a few years ago. lol


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## mmonnin

GPUGrid this week.


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## mmonnin

There is plenty of GPUGrid work now and its pretty stable. We could get a point with some more users.

WEPM2 event was canceled.


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## bfromcolo

mmonnin said:


> There is plenty of GPUGrid work now and its pretty stable. We could get a point with some more users.
> 
> WEPM2 event was canceled.


Running what I have, is there any benefit messing with multiple WU per GPU?


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## mmonnin

bfromcolo said:


> Running what I have, is there any benefit messing with multiple WU per GPU?


Na, these should provide high GPU util as long as there is a CPU to feed it. No need for any kind of swan_sync environment variable any more. I think there's still a 24hr bonus so def don't want to run over that to get a bit higher util. These are much smaller than the Long tasks GPUGrid used to have.

Still NV/Cuda only and there has been no CPU work for awhile.


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## tictoc

A little late to the party. I've been neglecting GPUGrid, so I'm throwing some GPUs at it now.


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## neyel8r

*extremely* late to the party but i'll surely do much better on the next one


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## mmonnin

06/25/2020 22:00 (UTC) - 06/28/2020 21:59 (UTC)
[email protected]


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## neyel8r

crap... late again & it's Rosetta so probably not gonna do better


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## bfromcolo

speaking of late....


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## mmonnin

07/02/2020 22:00 (UTC) - 07/05/2020 21:59 (UTC)
[email protected]


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## tictoc

Excellent.  I'll give Einstein a run for a few days. Might have to hold off on testing MilkyWay in Windows on the VIIs.


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## mmonnin

https://einsteinathome.org/content/upcoming-ssltls-security-updates-old-boinc-client-support
Minimum BOINC version as of May 25th 2020: 7.10

Back to MW for me.


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## mmonnin

07/16/2020 23:00 (UTC) - 07/19/2020 22:59 (UTC)
Moo! Wrapper

I had just switched over my Radeon VII to that after I hit 500m in MW.


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## neyel8r

where's everybody at? i can't believe i've contributed nearly half of our team's points so far in this sprint.....


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## neyel8r

mmonnin said:


> 07/16/2020 23:00 (UTC) - 07/19/2020 22:59 (UTC)
> Moo! Wrapper
> 
> I had just switched over my Radeon VII to that after I hit 500m in MW.


congrats! :thumb:

& thanks, now maybe we can rack up some real points in the sprint


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## bfromcolo

I'll get something up and running now.


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## tictoc

Unless some teams above us are sandbagging, hopefully I can add to our total, and bump us up into the points for this Sprint.


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## tictoc

The Radeon VII can really crank out the Moo! tasks. My VII that is capped at 170W and runs at an average of 1695 MHz, is about 12% faster than my 2080 Super at 245W 1905 MHz. 

A VII running at similar clocks and power as the 2080 Super is about 28% faster.


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## neyel8r

nice, we're in 10th. hopefully we can hang on :thumb:


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## tictoc

Sprint starting tomorrow on 7/30 at 2200 UTC is [email protected]

I was going to throw some CPUs at this Sprint, but I'll have to reconfigure some things since I always run ATLAS native. Not sure how I could stockpile those tasks, so I'll just have to run some sixtrack.


**Edit** Not sure how that's going to work out, since there are very few sixtrack tasks available. It's been awhile since I ran sixtrack, does anyone know if the tasks come in batches or are they constantly created?


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## mmonnin

09/17/2020 16:00 (UTC) - 09/20/2020 15:59 (UTC)
PrimeGrid


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## tictoc

Just got back into town after a few weeks away. I plan to do a big push on whatever the next sprint is


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## mmonnin

09/24/2020 21:00 (UTC) - 09/27/2020 20:59 (UTC)
[email protected]


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## tictoc

Pretty sure I registered for that project at some point in time. Firing up some gear for the Sprint.


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## tictoc

*Edit* Project website is back up and I got a load of tasks.



Spoiler



Well this is a bummer.










I'm not that surprised, given the size of the project, and the shenanigans that tend to happen a bit more regularly with FormulaBOINC now.
When I took a quick stroll through the message board, after the project was announced, this seemed inevitable. The project is pretty much a one man show with the researcher handling everything.


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