wow

[artemis8]

Some of you have like a billion things crunched. How do you manage that? I feel all piddly in comparison.

[spingadus]

If you want more credits, the quickest way is to get a decent video card and crunch the gpu projects. Even a inexpensive card will probably double your total in a day.

[Slicker]

Some of you have like a billion things crunched. How do you manage that? I feel all piddly in comparison.

Don't feel piddly. Almost everyone started out with one computer crunching. For the majority of our members, that's all the still use. About 1% of the team "gets the crunching bug" and wants more credit, more projects, etc. For them, there are several options:

Option 1: Keep at it for years. You won't pass up the people with multiple machines, but you will certainly pass up those who only crunch for a few months and then quit.

Option 2: Purchase additional computers and upgrade existing ones. Don't throw out that old computer, just have it crunch 100% of the time while you use your new computer for work/play and then set it to crunch when you are not using it as well.

Option 3: Convince your boss that putting all the companies computers to work curing cancer, etc. rather than letting them sit idle. Then, set them all up under your account.

Option 4: For maximum credits, crunch with a video card (a.k.a. GPU or graphical processing unit) in addition to the CPU. Or, better yet, use two or more GPUs. A machine with two high-end video cards can earn 500,000 credits per day pretty easily.

[Beerdrinker]

I have combined the advises given by Slicker.

1. I only have one computer crunching.
2. Have been crunching for close to 10 years now.
3. My credit went straight up when I bougth a GPU. I have the GPU set to only work when I am not...But that still earns me anywhere from 8.000 to 30.000 credits per day.
4. I rarely upgrade - but when I do I buy energy efficient hardware to minimize the running costs.

This is the recepie I have been following for years - I am a relative small cruncher...But this way I can keep going for years to come...

[spingadus]

Before I joined SETI.USA I had a small farm of pc's at home and at work that I used for crunching. I crunched way back in the seti classic days then stopped, then came back again. I had only a small amount of credits. After I joined I went out and bought a fast GPU card to help the team. Within 4 months, I had 75 million credits. It's not hard to do if want to.

Edit: I forgot to add that the team has 'subteams' as well that focus on different things. I don't focus on highest credits most of the time as I'm in the [mm] group that focuses on getting mega-milestones on as many projects as possible. I'm not very good at it though, so I chase badges (see my sig)!
:End-Edit

Just determine what's important to you in the Boinc world and in the team. You don't don't need to get high credits to be a valuable member of the team. We are glad to have you either way.



P.S. This hobby is addicting. More credits get the competitive spirit up and makes you want more. I enjoy it a lot!

[DrPop]

So glad you joined the team, and please don't ever feel anything but great for helping science, humanity, and having fun doing some distributed computing (aka crunching!).

You have already done more than thousands of others on this team by actually coming to the forums, talking with your team mates, and joining your first challenge! Congratulations!

If and when the crunchin' bug bites, just follow Slicker's outline there on how to amass big credits. Things like which project you crunch on specific hardware can mean the difference between tens of thousands per day vs hundreds of thousands per day! That's why these forums can be so helpful. You can ask, what's the best hardware to use for xx project I would like to crunch, or the other way around, - I have computer x, and what is the highest credit projects to crunch on that specific hardware.

Hope these replies help a little, at least, and just remember we are happy to have you no matter how many credits per day you turn out. A credit for us is worth 2, actually, because it did not go to our arch rivals. Please have have fun with it!

EDIT: for the record, I only crunched SETI for years, and had just a couple hundred K to show for it. When I got into it really serious, I was able to amass most of my score in a year and a half. You could easily do the same someday, and the best credits are when your family and friends let's you load BOINC on their computers, because then you don't have to pay the electronic on them! Oh

[GalaxyIce]

My 200 million is not quite in the billions league, but I started with a slow CPU in a small slow PC. I had the thought that using my computing power to help out with scientific research is what really mattered. Nothing has changed.

[denim]

Just keep at it, and find projects you enjoy the science behind, because if not you can lose interest if it is something that you don't care about or have a connection to. When there is passion in it, the credits will come.

[Slicker]

Just keep at it, and find projects you enjoy the science behind, because if not you can lose interest if it is something that you don't care about or have a connection to. When there is passion in it, the credits will come.

Or.... just care about getting as many credits as possible. The credits can be used for..... I'm thinking.... Well, they are just as useful as the search for little green men.

[Cappy]

been crunching since 1998 started with searching for little green men ,,, then a few years later i joined SETI.USA then got bit by the BUG,,, had alot more machines running before but have cut back,,, lol was killing my budget lol.... electric bill was 50% of my bills.
so now i have 3 running 24 hours a day 7 days a week,,,, but the bug has creeped up on me again and just bought 2- 8 core servers
which will also run 24/7 . so that will be 28 cores total for now.... forgot about the lappy and 3 gpu's .

my advice is only crunch what you can afford,,, this can be very addicting and competitive hobby. and if ya dont watch can put ya in a hole very quikly