When I first joined the team, Einstein paid very well if you were running their opt apps. When they upgraded to the new R5 applications, they basically built the opt app code into the stock apps and depending upon which type of CPU you had, they ran the appropriate code. That means people who spent more on better CPUs, CPUs which could do things older CPUs couldn't, were now getting the same credit as the older CPUs which weren't doing as much work. Because of that, the credit went way down and many long time crunchers left Einstein. That was several years ago. I think their support went up a little when SETI started snoozing for several days each week and the space freaks needed another project to crunch.

In the last couple years, they've added GPU apps which both require a lot of CPU and don't give good credits. That's hardy and incentive to crunch with them. Spend twice the electricity for even less credit. Before, you could crunch Moo for the big numbers and still use your CPU on Einstein or other bad credit projects and not hurt your RAC too badly. Now the push is to have GPU apps which, from the project's point of view does increase the work being done. From a cruncher's point of view, it sucks. As far as I'm concerned, projects which have GPU apps which also need a CPU should pay MORE than GPU only projects since they are using more resources. Instead, Einstein (and several others) pay less. POEM has it right -- or is at least closer. If it takes 2 CPUs to keep a GPU busy, you should get credit for the GPU and the 3 CPUs. That's only fair. Then again, credit new isn't about fair. It is about socialism.