PrimeGrid: The Equinox Challenge in 5 days

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PrimeGrid's Challenge series (http://www.primegrid.com/challenge/challenge.php) continues with the "Equinox Challenge". Come join us as we usher in the fall and cooler temperatures with a 13 day marathon on the Woodall Prime Search project. The challenge will begin on the autumnal equinox, 23 Sep 2011 18:00 UTC, and end 06 Oct 2011 18:00 UTC. For more information, please see this forum post (http://www.primegrid.com/forum_thread.php?id=3611&nowrap=true#40422).

More... (http://www.primegrid.com/forum_thread.php?id=3612)

[trigggl]

I may actually participate in this one. I don't have that badge yet, anyways.

[Fire$torm]

so should the rest of us participate? What say ye team?

[Fogle]

I think we should do this challenge in a big way. This will give a sharp contrast to the boycott of the last challenge. Also it's in our sweet spot since it's CPU only, and we can leave our GPU's on the higher paying projects. Let's do it!

[DrPop]

Sounds good to me, I will be in with ya'll then. ;)

[Cruncher Pete]

I am sorry to say that I can not participate in this one. I will be away at the beginning of it, therefore it is not a challenge if I can not participate fully. Apart from that 13 days is too long for me to run all my machines flat out. The truth is I can not afford to run all of them that long.

[Fire$torm]

I think we should do this challenge in a big way. This will give a sharp contrast to the boycott of the last challenge. Also it's in our sweet spot since it's CPU only, and we can leave our GPU's on the higher paying projects. Let's do it!


Sounds good to me, I will be in with ya'll then. ;)

OK. So much for my personal resolve to stay away. More like dissolve........


I am sorry to say that I can not participate in this one. I will be away at the beginning of it, therefore it is not a challenge if I can not participate fully. Apart from that 13 days is too long for me to run all my machines flat out. The truth is I can not afford to run all of them that long.

It happens. Have no fear. You will not be drawn and quartered or keel hauled. Oh, well, maybe just a little bit for the fun of it.......... j/k

[Ron Shurtz]

I'm in with 4 cores.
Maybe 2 more if the old dogs don't burn up crunching these long work units.


535

[Fogle]

OK, I'm all in with 11 cores which includes my wife's lappy. Don't know how long I can keep that one crunching but any amount is better than nothing. I started just 15 mins after the hour not too bad since I was at work. :-bd

[trigggl]

OK, I'm all in with 11 cores which includes my wife's lappy. Don't know how long I can keep that one crunching but any amount is better than nothing. I started just 15 mins after the hour not too bad since I was at work. :-bd

Three words: start up script

Everyone make sure to check your preferences on the project. It looks like they reset them again and the 25% rule is back in place. Also, it looks like my cache setting was changed. Maybe that was just me. :-??

[Fire$torm]

Oooops. Forgot to setup my comps for this. One box has some half finished Prima to chew through but the others are now digital termites.

[Fogle]

Ahhh ... Hopefully the remain time left is way off all my Wu's are saying 400 hours left. What are you guys seeing? :(

[Fire$torm]

One box is showing 94+ hours to complete but the average wu is ~3.1% complete at ~2.5 hours of crunching. That comes out to about 80 hours each.

[Ron Shurtz]

7.5 hours in and a Russian has over 112,000 points turned in?

He running a Super Cray? 536

[trigggl]

7.5 hours in and a Russian has over 112,000 points turned in?

He running a Super Cray? 536

My fastest box (3 GHz) is only a third of the way done at 18 hours. Usually, the fastest participants get their first one done when I'm at about 60%. I have no idea how someone would have points already.

[Tomis]

Started late and I am at 13 hour with 56% :( wish I remembered to set it up on time.

[krackedpress]

My fastest box (3 GHz) is only a third of the way done at 18 hours. Usually, the fastest participants get their first one done when I'm at about 60%. I have no idea how someone would have points already.

I forgot about this till yesterday when I saw a notice on a new BOINC manager install for a Windows system.

My quad runs at 2.3GHz. I did the math a few minutes ago and there is no way I will have any WUs done BEFORE the time is up. I have over 250 hours to go. The site shows that the "average user" takes under 65 hours to run. Well, I do not have a slow system. It was in the top third of the fastest ones out there when I bought it last year. So unless people are all running super-speed CPUs, the "average" figures are not correct. They should start looking at average speeds for each class of CPU. If I knew yesterday that I would not complete a WU with this challenge, I would not have started any. I am still still running 2 WUs, but the other two that was running were deleted after 18 hours of crunching. Believe it or not, PG had 8 more in my queue. I have it set for .25 days worth of work. When it would take 3 days with their average time and 6 days for the estimate in the queue, the system gives me 2 more per core with the "give me a quarter day's worth of work in the queue" setting.

This seems to be the way PG is going. PPS Sieve use to run so I could run over 8 or more per day. Now I am lucky to run 4 of them in one day. I use to run it most of the time and earned over 2M credit in it over the past 2 years. Now I will not. Running PG projects are not worth the time for the amount of credits it takes. 3 times the time needed to crunch and half the credits is what PG seems to me now.

If this is the way PG is going, I may not do any more challenges. The last one found me having the second set of WUs finish several hours after the time was up. That was when I found out that PPS Sieve no longer was going to work for me.

[Cruncher Pete]

Thank you krakedpress for your insight. I am sure it will be a very helpful post for a lot of people. I think PrimeGrid is following the path of the greedy corporate sector who need to maintain their profit margin for the benefit of their sharholders. As the price of the product increases, less and less people can afford to buy it which leaves them no choice but to yet increase the price again. Eventually, they wake up that nobody can afford their product so they declare bankruptsy, change the name of the corporation and start again selling the same product.

Keep on crunching and have a nice day...

[Cappy]

just got onboard now,,,, sry for the delay but forgot all about it :P