Bigadv program announcement

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cmh
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Location: Lexington, MA USA

Bigadv program announcement

Post by cmh » Mon Nov 14, 2011 8:09 pm

Just wanted to make sure everyone saw this:

"Big Advanced (BA) is an experimental type of Folding@home WUs intended for the most powerful machines in FAH. However, as time goes on, technology advances, and the characteristics associated with the most powerful machines changes. Due to these advances in hardware capabilities, we will need to periodically change the BA minimum requirements. Thus, we are shortening the deadlines of the BA projects. As a result, assignments will have a 16 core minimum. To give donors some advance warning, we are announcing this now, but the change will take place in 2 months: no earlier than on Monday January 16, 2012.

We understand that any changes to how FAH works is a disruption for donors, and we have been trying to minimize such changes. For that reason, we are not changing the points system at this time.

However, we want to emphasize that the BA program is experimental and that donors should expect changes in the future, potentially without a lot of notice (although we will try our best to give as much notice as we can). In particular, as hardware evolves, it is expected that we will need to change the nature of the BA WUs again in the future."

http://folding.typepad.com/news/2011/11 ... -2012.html

cordis
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Re: Bigadv program announcement

Post by cordis » Wed Nov 16, 2011 10:11 pm

Wow, that's going to suck. Well, so much for upgrading to x79 boards, have to look into Xeon boards. Or gpu folding. Time to refigure ppd/watt ratings again. Sigh. :(

KansaKilla
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Re: Bigadv program announcement

Post by KansaKilla » Thu Nov 17, 2011 11:37 am

you said it. I think am going to have to also rethink whether or not I want to get another processor.

KansaKilla
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Re: Bigadv program announcement

Post by KansaKilla » Thu Nov 17, 2011 11:39 am

the funny thing is, this might actually make me more likely to by an AMD 8 core processor. much less of a big advantage due to bigadv folding.

cordis
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Re: Bigadv program announcement

Post by cordis » Wed Nov 23, 2011 12:07 am

Ah well, maybe I will get an x79 board. Current xeon boards are all 1366 based, and still pretty expensive. And all the new sandy bridge xeons are coming out early next year, apparently (according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_bridge anyway), so no point trying to get a dual socket board now. So, for now, I've decided to just crank up all my gpus, turn back on the machines I took out of the farm, and make as many points as I can, and then see about more major upgrades when the new boards and cpus show up. And while the weather is cool. In the meantime, I may just get an x79 board to upgrade one of my htpcs, maybe some new gpus. Eh, wouldn't hurt, might help a little until I can get a new dual socket board. Ah well, the more things change. :roll:

aristide1
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Re: Bigadv program announcement

Post by aristide1 » Tue Apr 03, 2012 3:37 pm

Cordis,

Sent you a PM.

Aris

cordis
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Location: San Jose

Re: Bigadv program announcement

Post by cordis » Fri Apr 06, 2012 12:32 am

Hey, so I put some pics of my quiet dual xeon system over in the gallery, it's a really great folder. I've managed to overclock the bclk up to 103, it just wrapped up a 6903 at 365kppd. I've shut down folding on my windows machines (except for some gpu folding on the bedroom system for the heat) and now I just have 3 bigadv linux systems going. The dual xeon is running at 575W, and a big part of that is the 10 hard drives, but even counting that it's still 634 ppd/watt. Gotta like that. I have one more system to update, but after that, I'm hoping to have more time for forums. Great work everybody!

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