Join the Retromags Folding@Home Team - Win $250!

[Phillyman]

For over 10 years Retromags has contributed to the Folding@Home project. Each day our computers sit for hours powered on doing nothing but sitting idle. What if we could leverage those unused CPU cycles to put towards finding cures for Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson’s and Cancer? This video explains how your computer can assist in finding cures (much better than I ever could).

 

 

Anyhow, for the past 10 years I have sat at the top of the leader board for our Team Stats page. No one has been able to dethrone me and thus I am issuing a challenge....

The first person to unseat me from the number 1 spot on the Retromags Team Stats (54458) page, will win a $250 Amazon Gift Card (Digital Delivery). I don't think any of you guys will even get close, but it will bring me great amusement to watch some try

The stats are stack-able, so if you install the Folding@Home client onto all your home computers and enter our Team #54458 into each client, all of the work units will be counted towards your username. There are only two rules....

1. Your username must match the username you use here.
2. You can not install the Folding@Home client onto workstations you do not own! It would be cheating if you were the IT staff for a huge company and just installed the client onto 250 workstations.

You can see our stats page here..

http://fah-web2.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=54458

Good Luck!

Start Folding!

[Phillyman]

@Data has moved into third place very quickly

[Phillyman]

Looks like @Data will move into 2nd position by this weekend

[lostfirst]

Count me in  Not sure I can beat Data at this rate but we'll see.

[Data]

I'm using my old RX480 which according to this spreadsheet puts me somewhere between 250k - 300k points per day.
This same computer has an I7 6700k that produces 40,000 points per day.

My laptop which is considered an entry level gaming laptop from 2014 has the following processors.
CPU - I5 4200M @ 10,700 PPD
GPU - GT 740M @  14,000 PPD

I'm considering stopping the laptop because it uses 120 watts which is inefficient.

When I started folding on Sunday February 25 2018 my RX480 was getting about 360,000 PPD but I had it over volted and clocked to the max.  This card only has a single 8 pin power connector which means it only receives  150 watts and the motherboard slot adds another 25 or so.  This means I have to keep the total wattage going to the graphics card at around 200 watss or it becomes electrically unstable .  If I had a motherboard that provided 150 watt from the PCI E slot I'm sure I could pull 400,000 PPD but it doesn't seem worth it.  Not to mention electricity here is 13 cents per Kw/h.

I learned it's best not to mess with overclock settings while working on a live WU because it punishes you heavily if one fails.  Something of use I found is the program Fah Bench .  It's  useful because it is emulates an actual protein while rating the speed of  different processors.

Good thing I bought a graphics card in 2016 because of the inflated prices caused by this cryptocurrency gold rush.  Sadly though, I don't see it changing anytime soon.

[Data]

Good morning folks, we're back with another update for Team Retromags.  Data overcomes some technical hurdles to move into 2nd place after only 1 week of folding, surpassing the 5 year reign from the now dormant MBJ.  At this rate Data should be able to overcome the current leader Phillyman who prefers compounded interest over a longer period by approximately May 23 2018.  That's only 81 days!

We we're expecting to see Lostfirst  move up the scoreboard but after one day seems to have all but fallen from the race.

We also have a new contender that I can't seem to find a record of named TaiWolf.  In the week since this race began mr Wolf has accelerated to 4th place and is likely to take 3rd place by the end of March.

Team Retromags

[Phillyman]

5 hours ago, Data said:

Good morning folks, we're back with another update for Team Retromags.  Data overcomes some technical hurdles to move into 2nd place after only 1 week of folding, surpassing the 5 year reign from the now dormant MBJ.  At this rate Data should be able to overcome the current leader Phillyman who prefers compounded interest over a longer period by approximately May 23 2018.  That's only 81 days!

We we're expecting to see Lostfirst  move up the scoreboard but after one day seems to have all but fallen from the race.

We also have a new contender that I can't seem to find a record of named TaiWolf.  In the week since this race began mr Wolf has accelerated to 4th place and is likely to take 3rd place by the end of March.

Team Retromags

You may overtake me quicker than that, my main PC died today. Looking like either a bad mobo or cpu at this point :(

[Data]

12 hours ago, Phillyman said:

You may overtake me quicker than that, my main PC died today. Looking like either a bad mobo or cpu at this point :(

If it's an intel board then you won't be able to find replacements or upgrades and if it's AMD and not  Polaris or Vega then you need to upgrade without question.  When you decide you're ready to build a new machine and are looking at graphics cards, know that retailers are offering deals with combos.  Instead of the regular 150 - 200% markup on graphics cards, some merchants offer it at retail if you purchase a motherboard, cpu, and ram from them.

Do you vacuum the case out regularly and replace the fan every other year?

[Data]

The RX480 launched in June 2016 for $250 USD with the 8 GB onboard ram.  The RX580 replaced it a year later in July 2017.  It was intended to retail between $230 - 250 USD.  What many soon realized is the RX580 is a rebadged RX480.  The differences are an aggressive bios which made the 580 run fast and hot using more voltage.  This is something the 480 can do by simply using MSI Afterburner software and achieve similar performance.

Look at the prices of the RX580 today, these should be going for $250 USD , instead they are going for $550 USD

The Vega 56 and the GTX 1070 are the same performance at folding.  The 1070 would carry a higher value because it uses up to 50 less watts so if you want to let this thing fold 24/7 then you would certainly look at the power saving advantage the 1070 offers but for gaming it should be more important to consider the price because they both crush 1440P   These are also overpriced by $300 USD

This must be the retro computer website judging by the fossils that filled this scoreboard.  I guess I should be happy though considering there is still time for some crypto-miner to come along and take the prize.

Another graph I made to show how the folding rate would compare between potential cryptominers or just someone with a better card.

[TaiWolf]

yea....I'm dead in the water, I have three PC's and my single rack (dell r610 that i use for rendering) dedicated to this cause, however my rack is experiencing hardware issues currently so not sure when i will get it back up. Also i forfeit my right to claim the prize even if i had won, i just like the cause.

[Data]

If I was to upgrade my card I would be looking for something which provides 10 times the performance I have in my 480.  It would need at least 3.0 M PPD at 150 watts.

Nvidia will soon release a dedicated cryptocurrency card late 2018 on a new node of 12nm.  Rumored to be called Turing or Ampere, this card is expected to produce 2.0 M PPD.  
A gamer version will soon follow early to mid 2019 to replace the current 1080 with the 2080.  The 2080 is only expected to produce up to 1.7M PPD intead opting for features that gamers need in a graphics card.

July 2019 AMD will release Navi which will use the 7nm node size and is expected to produce 2.1 M PPD at close to 150W power draw.

May 2020 AMD will release it's "next-gen" platform which will likely use the 7nm node with a new design which focusses on vertical stacking of the transistors.  This will likely achieve 3.0 M PPD but with a heavier power foot print of at least 225 Watts.

2022 will see a huge jump in PPD with the release of 3D stacked carbon nanotubes on graphene wafers as well as AMD releasing it's 5nm node size.  For the rest of this decade these new techniques will compete to reach levels of around 64 M PPD by the end of the 2029.  This is likely where my ideal card sits.

The 2030's are going to be the time where quantum computing or biological computers will be profitable enough for continued investment.   Rough estimates are 100M PPD in 2030 to 1.0B PPD by 2038. 

 

[Areala]

My PC is 7 years old so I've no way to win, but have entered the fray just to move us up a few slots on the overall team top list. I can get roughly 6,000 points per day with my i5 cpu and Nvidia GT640 card. Pocket change in the grand scheme of things. 

*huggles*
Areala

 

[Data]

You may wish finding out the daily cost if you let it run.  The first thing you need is the wattage rating.  For instance my intel cpu is rated 145 watt at 4.0 Gigahertz.  Multiply this by the hours it ran approximately in one day.  

145 watt * 24h = 3480 watt hours per day.  Next divide by 1000.  3480 / 1000 = 3.48 kwh per day.  Most cities as far as I know have a rate they charge by the killowatt hour for instance here it is 13.9 cents so I would multiply 3.48 kwh * $0.139 = 48 cents per day.  So $15 a core per month should be something to be aware of.

I stopped folding with my cpu because at the same wattage 240,000 points per day more with my GPU than my CPU  I feel like 15 dollars a month would be wiser spent on a private super data center rather than 40,000 my cpu achieves.

I will only turn on my cpu again if someone starts gaining on me by exactly 1 less than 40,000 ppd or more.  Or if Phillyman starts leading by 340,000 PPD.

[Areala]

16 minutes ago, Data said:

You may wish finding out the daily cost if you let it run.  The first thing you need is the wattage rating.  For instance my intel cpu is rated 145 watt at 4.0 Gigahertz.  Multiply this by the hours it ran approximately in one day.  

145 watt * 24h = 3480 watt hours per day.  Next divide by 1000.  3480 / 1000 = 3.48 kwh per day.  Most cities as far as I know have a rate they charge by the killowatt hour for instance here it is 13.9 cents so I would multiply 3.48 kwh * $0.139 = 48 cents per day.  So $15 a core per month should be something to be aware of.

I stopped folding with my cpu because at the same wattage 240,000 points per day more with my GPU than my CPU  I feel like 15 dollars a month would be wiser spent on a private super data center rather than 40,000 my cpu achieves.

I will only turn on my cpu again if someone starts gaining on me by exactly 1 less than 40,000 ppd or more.  Or if Phillyman starts leading by 340,000 PPD.

Good call, Lieutenant Commander. I'll let the CPU job I'm on now run its course, then pause it and let my GPU take on the struggles. It's more valuable points-wise, as you pointed out. I'm only folding on Medium, so it's drawing on 2 cores. Full bumps it up to 3 cores, but that seemed excessive and I didn't want to strain my older computer.

The PS3 used to have the Folding@Home app installed on it, but one of their updates must have taken it off, as I just checked and didn't find it. I'd used it in the past when I was folding for a different team, and it was an order of magnitude better than my PC at the time (something like 670 PPD as compared to 45-ish).

*huggles*
Areala

[Areala]

Cracked the top 10! *waves her pom-poms around*

*huggles*
Areala

[Data]

Areala should be able to take 5th place.  Seems Taiwolf may eventually take 3rd place from MBJ.  It seems to me that it would be fair if rather than spend$15.00 month on electricity to get 8.7 M points per month that if I could I would lease the use of a rack of 1080 TI which did the same work in 12 hours for a one time fee of $15.00  Imagine if I thought I had this contest cinched in 12 hours but somebody beat me in 7 hours 30 minutes for only $37.00

[perfinpuz]

The team total is now more than twice phillyman's top score. The team ranking was 999 on May 7. Today, May 8 , it is 997.

Question for folders : Up until now my jobs had 250,000 steps. I just started jobs on both computers with 2,500,000 steps, 10 times the size. Is this normal ?

[Data]

2 hours ago, perfinpuz said:

The team total is now more than twice phillyman's top score. The team ranking was 999 on May 7. Today, May 8 , it is 997.

Question for folders : Up until now my jobs had 250,000 steps. I just started jobs on both computers with 2,500,000 steps, 10 times the size. Is this normal ?

If you change any settings in folding at home client like changing the sequence of cores, I sometimes have to reinstall the program which sucks.  If a work unit is taking abnormally long I would cancel it and restart the computer and reinstall the client. Normally the program will fluctuate in points by a margin of 20%.

[twiztor]

i've broken the top 10 on the retromags team!

that means i've passed Phillyman2 and Phillyman3, and all three Hidingers!  i've only got a measly 130,000 credit, but i'm happy to be contributing!

[perfinpuz]

Data returned a few weeks ago, at about 22,000,000 and is closing in on Phillyman.

Date of last work unit	2019-02-28 15:45:37
Active CPUs within 50 days	9
Team Id	54458
Grand Score	107,161,495
Work Unit Count	45,894
Team Ranking	729 of 228438

 

Rank	Name	Credit	WUs
7,089	Phillyman	46,396,311	31,747
8,266	Data	36,062,810	1,121
16,191	Toad	12,378,661	159
30,364	perfinpuz2	4,317,942	948
28,076	BMan	3,977,690	57
43,979	MBJ	2,119,250	9,156
66,096	TaiWolf	952,283	180
129,772	Areala	219,788	45
149,723	twiztor	159,220	146
125,105	kuaneos	139,127	722
166,269	Hidinger2	125,928	699

[perfinpuz]

Team: Retromags.com

Date of last work unit	2019-04-17 13:00:33
Active CPUs within 50 days	23
Team Id	54458
Grand Score	130,681,392
Work Unit Count	46,689
Team Ranking	672 of 228540
Homepage	http://www.retromags.com/
Fast Teampage URL	https://apps.foldingathome.org/teamstats/team54458.html

Team members

Rank	Name	Credit	WUs
6,917	Data	48,911,725	1,479
7,075	Phillyman	48,249,316	31,954
16,474	Toad	12,378,661	159
21,647	RENDERRAPIDLY.com	8,092,388	105
28,310	perfinpuz2	5,043,531	1,073
28,472	BMan	3,977,690	57
44,490	MBJ	2,119,250	9,156
66,740	TaiWolf	952,283	180
130,619	Areala	219,788	45
150,617	twiztor	159,220	146

[perfinpuz]

Team: Retromags.com

Date of last work unit	2019-05-27 21:20:03
Active CPUs within 50 days	14
Team Id	54458
Grand Score	132,408,951
Work Unit Count	47,023
Team Ranking	677 of 228615
Homepage	http://www.retromags.com/
Fast Teampage URL	https://apps.foldingathome.org/teamstats/team54458.html

Team members

Rank	Name	Credit	WUs
7,133	Phillyman	49,190,672	32,142
7,049	Data	49,070,284	1,486
17,265	Toad	12,378,661	159
22,847	RENDERRAPIDLY.com	8,092,388	105
27,909	perfinpuz2	5,671,175	1,212
30,021	BMan	3,977,690	57
46,973	MBJ	2,119,250	9,156
69,630	TaiWolf	952,283	180
134,173	Areala	219,788	45
154,305	twiztor	159,220	146
129,462	kuaneos	139,127	722

[perfinpuz]

Team: Retromags.com

Date of last work unit	2019-07-02 15:34:45
Active CPUs within 50 days	7
Team Id	54458
Grand Score	133,419,019
Work Unit Count	47,311
Team Ranking	683 of 228675
Homepage	http://www.retromags.com/
Fast Teampage URL	https://apps.foldingathome.org/teamstats/team54458.html

Team members

Rank	Name	Credit	WUs
7,268	Phillyman	49,667,654	32,306
7,231	Data	49,070,284	1,486
17,702	Toad	12,378,661	159
23,374	RENDERRAPIDLY.com	8,092,388	105
27,220	perfinpuz2	6,204,261	1,336
30,614	BMan	3,977,690	57
47,637	MBJ	2,119,250	9,156
70,385	TaiWolf	952,283	180
135,156	Areala	219,788	45
155,347	twiztor	159,220	146
130,448	kuaneos	139,127	722
172,146	Hidinger2	125,928	699
178,387	Hidinger	111,892	483
188,352	bickman2k	102,645	44

[perfinpuz]

Team: Retromags.com

Date of last work unit	2019-10-25 16:30:16
Active CPUs within 50 days	8
Team Id	54458
Grand Score	134,987,892
Work Unit Count	47,763
Team Ranking	699 of 228865
Homepage	http://www.retromags.com/
Fast Teampage URL	https://apps.foldingathome.org/teamstats/team54458.html

Team members

Rank	Name	Credit	WUs
7,712	Phillyman	49,948,257	32,499
7,681	Data	49,070,284	1,486
18,906	Toad	12,378,661	159
24,530	RENDERRAPIDLY.com	8,092,388	105
26,056	perfinpuz2	7,431,503	1,585
32,377	BMan	3,977,690	57
50,051	MBJ	2,119,250	9,156
73,401	TaiWolf	952,283	180
125,458	Areala	280,816	55
159,795	twiztor	159,220	146
134,541	kuaneos	139,127	722
176,758	Hidinger2	125,928	699
183,059	Hidinger	111,892	483
193,128	bickman2k	102,645	44

[perfinpuz]

Team: Retromags.com

Date of last work unit	2019-12-16 04:00:33
Active CPUs within 50 days	10
Team Id	54458
Grand Score	175,786,006
Work Unit Count	48,217
Team Ranking	617 of 228946
Homepage	http://www.retromags.com/
Fast Teampage URL	https://apps.foldingathome.org/teamstats/team54458.html

Team members

Rank	Name	Credit	WUs
5,175	Phillyman	89,982,267	32,835
7,924	Data	49,070,284	1,486
19,367	Toad	12,378,661	159
25,227	perfinpuz2	8,195,607	1,703
25,116	RENDERRAPIDLY.com	8,092,388	105
33,126	BMan	3,977,690	57
51,206	MBJ	2,119,250	9,156
74,841	TaiWolf	952,283	180
127,370	Areala	280,816	55
161,727	twiztor	159,220	146
136,501	kuaneos	139,127	722
178,702	Hidinger2	125,928	699
185,021	Hidinger	111,892	483
195,120	bickman2k	102,645	44
N/A	perfinpuz	29,494	39
N/A	classic80sarcader	15,075	31
N/A	Phillyman3	10,364	89
N/A	elmaman	8,707	19
N/A	cool3865	8,060	28
N/A	Kinagi	5,613	34
N/A	Metalbrain	5,352	43
155	PS3	3,091	14
N/A	kenny8373	2,400	41
N/A	Phillyman2	1,940	8
N/A	Szewczyk	1,580	5
N/A	farmdoggg	1,567	10
N/A	zoneout5	1,434	4
N/A	harrypmgaga	1,199	6
N/A	Hidinger3	703	8
N/A	lostfirst	400	2
N/A	classic80sarcader2	314	1
N/A	branochilly	225	1
N/A	CrunchyOne2	171	1
N/A	MaverickHunter40245_on_machine_1	165	1
N/A	triverse	47	1
N/A	john_ron1681	47	1