In Which we discuss the next folding at home competition

SiriusB · 17 Dec 2006 at 02:07

Would it be fair entering both sides of the competition? Even though P4s are apparently generally better than A64 I think everyone with a GPU who decides to fold for AMD would be giving the AMD camp a MASSIVE boost. The only way it would be fair is if both sides had equal numbers, and we can't guarantee that at all.

I think it should be GPU or CPU. If you are running a GPU your stats can go towards whichever camp you prefer. At least this way the GPUs are more likely to be balanced as you aren't forced to decide which team to be on by manufacturer.

So... assuming we go with the above we have so far:

High End League - Core 2 Duo/Quadro, AMD FX-series, Equivs

Medium End League - Athlon 64 X2, Dual Core Opteron, Equivs.

Low End League - Athlon 64, P4

GPU League - X19xx series GPUS

Each of the leagues can be further sub-divided into Intel vs AMD.

The only issue I can see is the High End League... only Intel CPUs can compete... even if you had the fastest FX CPU going odds are someone with an E6400 or above will tan your hide.

Joe42 · 17 Dec 2006 at 02:09

Yep ok.

So lets say we have an Amd team and an Intel team. Everyone uses their forum nicks with something after it... it was CS02 last time... what did that stand for again?

joeyjojo · 17 Dec 2006 at 02:11

SiriusB said:
Low End League - Athlon 64, P4

What the hell?

Meh, I'll own the "Low End" league then

Joe42 · 17 Dec 2006 at 02:12

SiriusB said:
So... assuming we go with the above we have so far:

High End League - Core 2 Duo/Quadro, AMD FX-series, Equivs

Medium End League - Athlon 64 X2, Dual Core Opteron, Equivs.

Low End League - Athlon 64, P4

GPU League - X19xx series GPUS

Each of the leagues can be further sub-divided into Intel vs AMD.

The only issue I can see is the High End League... only Intel CPUs can compete... even if you had the fastest FX CPU going odds are someone with an E6400 or above will tan your hide.

Yeah, problem competing in the high end league and, what, 8 prizes? So we can't do 1st 2nd and 3rd prizes.

What you end up with is a medium league consisting of amds and a high end league consisting of intels... may aswell call it an intel league and an amd league.

I'm concerned that if we did have an intel and amd league the amd league would loose out big time... or would it?

SiriusB · 17 Dec 2006 at 02:15

Err.. can't remember lol.

We can think of our own... Maybe your usual nickname with [FaH_[LEAGUE]_[CAMP]

LEAGUE:

HEL = High End League
MEL = Medium End League
LEL = Low End League

CAMP:

INTEL
AMD

So as an example: [FaH_MEL_AMD] SiriusB_[OcUK]

Pretty self-explanatory and you can see at a glance who each person is... makes doing the stats much easier too.

SiriusB

Joe42 · 17 Dec 2006 at 02:17

Yep, that looks like a good idea.

I still don't buy the low/med/high thing though, epecially not combined with intel/amd. Its one or the other imo.

Need a census of who owns what so we can see if an intel/amd would be well balanced.

SiriusB · 17 Dec 2006 at 02:17

joeyjojo said:
What the hell?

Meh, I'll own the "Low End" league then

Nothing is set in stone. Obviously it needs tweaking but you get the idea. We have to separate Dual-Core from Single-Core though, wouldn't be fair at all otherwise.

We could have more leagues... but we can't please everyone... we will need a cut-off point... say nothing below A64 or equivalent.

I still don't buy the low/med/high thing though, epecially not combined with intel/amd. Its one or the other imo.

Need a census of who owns what so we can see if an intel/amd would be well balanced.

Yeah I'm not happy with it either. Unless we had about 10 leagues I can deffo see some people being in leagues they have no chance in, or in a league where they have a big advantage.

I think I am starting to prefer just Intel vs AMD. But a census of CPUs would be great - perhaps a poll in GH or CPUs.

Not entirely happy about GPUs though. Not that many of us have them and if they all end up on AMD or Intel its going to skew the results big time.

SiriusB

joeyjojo · 17 Dec 2006 at 02:18

Joe42 said:
Another idea... everyone should have a competition sig to wear, one for the intel league one for the amd league with nulls user stats on them.

Something like this?

Plenty of space for stats, recognisable and loud, and it gets the fanboys going. Maybe intel should be black, the dark side and all that.

divine` · 17 Dec 2006 at 02:19

Maybe...

AMD - Actual Prize for winning this
Dual Core - Signature Prize for winning this
Single Core - Signature Prize for winning this

Intel - Actual Prize for winning this
Dual/Quad Core - Signature Prize for winning this
Single Core - Signature Prize for winning this

Joe42 · 17 Dec 2006 at 02:20

Nice sigs. Very nice, should work a treat.

I'm thinking, if we allowed quad cores and such we could have a prize for the highest production but also for other things such as fastest dual core so the slower processors don't loose out.

Edit: Beaten.

divine_madness said:
Maybe...

AMD - Actual Prize for winning this
Dual Core - Signature Prize for winning this
Single Core - Signature Prize for winning this

Intel - Actual Prize for winning this
Dual/Quad Core - Signature Prize for winning this
Single Core - Signature Prize for winning this

The quad cores would still make all the core 2 owners loose out though.

SiriusB · 17 Dec 2006 at 02:23

Not entirely sure about a signature as a prize to be honest. I mean people need only ask in Graphics and someone will have one whipped up for them within a day or two. I should know, I still see half of my sigs around

SiriusB

Joe42 · 17 Dec 2006 at 02:26

SiriusB said:
Not entirely sure about a signature as a prize to be honest. I mean people need only ask in Graphics and someone will have one whipped up for them within a day or two. I should know, I still see half of my sigs around

SiriusB

I don't know, 'winner of the ocuk folding competition 2006 intel league' would be a nice thing to have in a sig. Better than nothing.

divine` · 17 Dec 2006 at 02:29

Joe42 said:
I don't know, 'winner of the ocuk folding competition 2006 intel league' would be a nice thing to have in a sig. Better than nothing.

Yeah, it would be one signifying they won their group, not just a random sig that they could ask for in graphics

SiriusB · 17 Dec 2006 at 02:30

I suppose, but personally I don't see it as a great incentive. I could have course be mistaken, the fact I can make my own superb* signatures whenever I want probably dulls any kind of incentive of winning one of someone else.

*Soothes the swelling in head

SiriusB

Mattus · 17 Dec 2006 at 02:35

Not sure about the high/medium/low end stuff. The high-end league will be basically an Intel league. You've got AMD FX in high-end, but your average FX processor is no faster than the dual-core Opteron, seeing as it's the same thing with an unlocked multiplier and a different name!

SiriusB · 17 Dec 2006 at 02:44

Mattus said:
Not sure about the high/medium/low end stuff. The high-end league will be basically an Intel league. You've got AMD FX in high-end, but your average FX processor is no faster than the dual-core Opteron, seeing as it's the same thing with an unlocked multiplier and a different name!

I edited my post up there a bit in which I say I agree that High/Mid/Low leagues would be a nightmare given the huge range of processors around.

Straight-cut AMD vs Intel is probably much easier with subdivisions for Dual- and Single-Core. It would be daft not to split them up as it would mean anyone with a single core CPU is automatically out of the running.

Right, I am going to bed now. Nobody else post in this thread until I get back!

[This thread is gonna be huge by tomorrow afternoon

]

SiriusB

FreeStream · 17 Dec 2006 at 10:04

I don't see how single machine competition would work.

Its either going to be me with my X1900XTX + 3.6ghz C2D or some dude with two X1900s folding... :/

Pretty much forgone conclusion for high end Intel.

The rest of the bands might have more to go on tho...

Mr. Brightside · 17 Dec 2006 at 10:50

I'm up for it so long as there's a category my skt478 P4 3.0E will have a chance in.

Also, while I won't be doing any modification to the existing system, I can provide copies of the statistics files I keep for my sig system. Not sure if it's any use but thought I would let people know, just incase it is for keeping track of things.

Sample extract:

FOLDING@HOME TEAM STATS: Team # 10

Sat Dec 16 15:00:00 PST 2006
team teamname score wu
10 OcUK 27651487 201279
Team rank: 41

Team members:
rank team rank name credit total team avg
204 1 LigerZero 2258644 12062 10 11561.2857143
297 2 sculptor(OcUK) 1847875 6746 10 9055.71428571
325 3 DarkendViper 1760426 12214 10 799.571428571
395 4 Sammael(OcUK) 1551789 18053 10 230
1401 5 Bigstan 643264 3531 10 4841.42857143

Anyone familiar with the team10.txt provided by Stanford will see it is pretty much a copy except all white space characters are replaced with tabs (i.e. not spaces), and the 24 hour credit average is added to the end of each user line.

If anyone does have a use for this I could give you the parser script which loads all the data into an array too.

null

A.N.Other · 17 Dec 2006 at 11:56

Unless there's a way of standardising the results, e.g. dividing someone's output by the GHz of what they're competing on, I can't see very meaningful competition. Natrually, if people leave their PCs on 24/7 for the competition, the person with the fastest CPU (although I guess cache is a factor too) will win hands down. This will be the case in each category, if there are sections for A64s etc.

I realise that even the GHz thing doesn't really hold any more either.

polomint · 17 Dec 2006 at 12:00

Is there a category for borged company pc's (mostly P4 1.7-2.0) that are on from 9-5 Mon-Fri?