Bitcoin Utopia vs. Collatz?

[cineon_lut]

In looking for a place to point my GPUs, I have to ask the crunchers actively crunching BCU what they like better for credits per hour or credits per day? I can get quite a bit out of my 7970 on Collatz, which is:

1. great for overall points
2. good for Formula Boinc
3. good for badges
5. good for reliability
6. nVidia friendly

Bitcoin Utopia on the other hand:

1. points? how does it compare to collatz? I'm seeing 1800cred/wu but with @Zombie and @JPM's machines, I'm seeing output similar to what I'd expect out of Collatz.
2. not good for Formula Boinc -- but we're OK on FB for now
3. meh for badges
5. unknown for reliability. Do you like it? Easy on the GPUs like Collatz? Or will it fry them like Einstein?
6. is it nVidia friendly (570s?)

Thoughts for the team?

[Mumps]

Well, I had been running BitcoinUtopia (pre-Pentathalon) on a single Q6600+5870 and getting around 800K daily with it. Which is about 2.5 times the points I get on that same system on Collatz GPU alone. I haven't seen any reliability problems, but seem to recall there may be problems with some 7000 series GPUs.

[FourOh]

I have reliability issues with Bitcoin Utopia. Running a 7950 I have hanging units on a nearly daily basis. It pays less for me than Collatz; about 500k vs 800k. It's a pretty big difference; I only intend to run BU to 25mil and then retire if the project doesn't stabilize. It used to run well on my 7790; now will not run at all.

I like the concept of BU, which is why I'm willing to put up with some of the headaches. Plus, when it shut down a few months back I was a few mil short of a good stopping point :p

I know some folks have had luck setting up BoincTasks to abort any work units that run longer than, say 500 or 600 seconds. I might take a run at this, I think it would greatly improve my production.

[zombie67]

I don't think BT can abort tasks, but you can set up a rule to suspend tasks. That is what I do. Every day I usually have one or two.

[FourOh]

I don't think BT can abort tasks, but you can set up a rule to suspend tasks. That is what I do. Every day I usually have one or two.

Dumb question, but does BoincTasks run over Boinc Manager or should I be able to run BT alone?

[zombie67]

BT is just a better boinc manager. And it can display/control your local client *and* your remote clients all at once. So you see all you tasks across all your machines in one window. Very cool.

FWIW, normal boincmanager is running on all my machines like normal. I just have BT running on my main desktop, to monitor and control them all at once.

[John P. Myers]

BU runs far cooler than collatz optimized. Difference of 18C on my 7990

Sent from my Galaxy S4 using Tapatalk Pro

[Bryan]

There are 2 things you can't do with BT. You can't start/stop a remote BOINC client and you can't automatically ABORT a WU. You can manually abort any WU you wish on any machine. For several years I've been asking for them to add "abort" as one of the rules options. Right now the best you can do is setup a rule that if a WU takes longer than X amount of time then you can SUSPEND it. If you have a good sized cache this works well. If you have a project that only issues a few WU then it doesn't help that much.

[FourOh]

Right now the best you can do is setup a rule that if a WU takes longer than X amount of time then you can SUSPEND it. If you have a good sized cache this works well. If you have a project that only issues a few WU then it doesn't help that much.

It's working ok for now, but I'm going out of town for a week and I don't want to have to log in daily with a remote session to abort the suspended units. I'll probably run something else while I'm gone. That abort rule function would be nice.

[Fire$torm]

The messy way to abort a wu using BT is to run a batch file containing boinccmd.exe commands to detach then attach to the project.


C:\Program Files\BOINC\boinccmd.exe --project http://www.bitcoinutopia.net/bitcoinutopia/ detach

CHOICE /N /D Y /T 20

C:\Program Files\BOINC\boinccmd.exe --project_attach http://www.bitcoinutopia.net/bitcoinutopia/ auth

Like I said, it's messy...

Btw, CHOICE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choice_%28command%29) is a Windows only program. the /T 20 is a command line switch that instructs CHOICE to wait 20 seconds before continuing.

[Slicker]

AFAIK, detaching doesn't actually abort the tasks. Rather, they just get abandoned and until the timeout on the server they don't get resent. If you want to do that, why not use boinccmd.exe to abort the task. Does BT allow you to send the WU name to the script?

[Fire$torm]

AFAIK, detaching doesn't actually abort the tasks. Rather, they just get abandoned and until the timeout on the server they don't get resent. If you want to do that, why not use boinccmd.exe to abort the task. Does BT allow you to send the WU name to the script?

Nope, not directly. Someone smarter then me could most likely write a batch file that would, using boinccmd.exe. Loops, arrays, variables and whatnot are beyond me.

[cineon_lut]

Ok I'm starting to like bitcoin utopia. However it's easy to get ati wus but my nvidias are dry. I have the latest boinc, but the server status only has about 300 unsent cudaminer tasks. Anyone here have trouble feeding their nvidias?


Vic (mobile)

[zombie67]

See their message boards. No one can get cuds tasks. he has been working on the problem for months now.

[Slicker]

nvidia has never been as good as ati for bitcoin mining so it wouldn't pay as well with them anyway. mVidia has fewer processors but can do more complex algorithms whereas AMD has lots of processors but they excel as simple algorithms. Think mini-van vs school bus. The mini van can't haul as many people as the bus but the acceleration, handling, and top speed are much better. A CPU is like a rally car with excellent speed and handling but can only carry one or two people.

[cineon_lut]

Good analogy. Thanks. Maybe back to gpu grid for a while for FB


Vic (mobile)

[John P. Myers]

They almost have the Nvidia problem fixed. Seems you can only get work if your GPU is exactly CC 2.0. Anything higher and it fails to send work. Derp