Hi Dirk,

It's not clear why the benchmark was made Susceptable to influences of other processes running at Normal Priority, which is what the BOINC.exe benchmark runs at (see Taskmanager). To me given that credit is computed on CPU time and not even includes the slowing due i.e. science related disk i/o, the 'computational power' captured in the benchmark should be standard at a optimal level and not at a level impacted by everything else going on.... that's my opinion.

Here's a link from the Help section explaining things: http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/help/viewSearch.do?searchString=benchmark
It includes some link through revealing that the foundation is in part still based on SETI logic How benchmarks are calculated . What Keck said on the redo of the benchmark is new to me (see nothing in the 2007 CVS log to date)....can't say 5.8.11 or 5.8.12 done anything for me (5.8.14 test version is out). Was only aware of it being reworked so that linux would get a matching value to windows.... an old sore i think more or less resolved.

BOINCview actually tells u in one of the tabs for all the computers you've linked, when the next benchmark is due. Get up middle of the night one time, force the benchmark and it will always run that time of the night... until one day you did not have the machine running at night ;O

That figure and the WU crunch time are used to calculate your credit claim which may turn out to the amount awarded or allocated. You are essentially correct though I wouldn't use the word allocated where you did, that's all.

You are also correct about ensuring the benchmark in use is the best that can be obtained, however it isn't necessary to run it repeatedly. More on that below.



The benchmarks do rerun automatically and you can penalise yourself if your benchmarks are not what they ought to be. That sword has 2 edges and cuts both ways. You get penalised if they're too high as well as if too low.

Since WCG insists on sticking with the broke-the-day-it-was-implemented-and-never-will-work purple dinosaur benchmark based credit system and the BOINC devs will never really fix the problem, you need to McGyver it. Here's how...

1. Set all projects to "no new WUs".

2. Drain your WU cache of all WUs except for 1 WU for each project you crunch. To do that, suspend 1 WU from each project and allow the rest to crunch, upload and report.

3. Shutdown BOINC and backup your client_state.xml file in the BOINC directory.

4. Open client_state.xml file in Notepad. Use Notepad or some other plain text editor, not Wordpad or Word because those editors try to put text formating commands into the file you are editing and you definitely don't want that in your client_state.xml.

5. About 10 lines from the top find lines that start with:

• <p_fpops> - this is the floating point benchmark
  
• <p_iops> - this is the integer benchmark
  
• <p_calculated> - this tells BOINC when to re-calculate the benchmarks
  

6. Alter the numbers following <p_fpops> and <p_iops> to whatever they should be for your CPU. Sorry, I don't have a clue what the numbers should be for your CPU because I don't even know what CPU you use. You'll have to find that info on your own but it won't be too hard if you ask around in various BOINC related forums.

7. Alter the number following <p_calculated>. Initially, it will be something like 1171776064.343750 which tells BOINC to re-calculate the benchmarks every 5 days. Increase the 3rd digit by 1 to tell BOINC to re-calculate something like every 30 years. OK, it's not exactly 30 years but it's a very long time and your benchmarks will stay the way you set them until that time.

8. Now check your typing carefully. When you're satisfied, save the file and exit Notepad.

9. Now you must let the remaining WUs in your cache crunch before you allow more new WUs to download or else BOINC will download too many. Actually, if you blow this part it's not a big deal, you can just abort whatever you know you can't finish in time.

BEWARES and GOTCHAS:

• I think maybe each number you edit must be followed by 6 decimal digits but i'm not sure, play it safe and make sure there are exactly 6 digits to the right of the decimal points in the 3 numbers you edit.
  
• If you make the <p_iops> and <p_fpops> numbers too high then your credit claims will be classified as extreme outliers by WCG's validator and you will be penalised. Do take the time to find out what those numbers should be and don't cheat too much or you'll burn forever in Outlier Hell ;-)
  

Would it be OK to just change the <p_calculated> part so that it doesn't run benchmarks every 5 days?

I have 3 machines with Intel P4's with HyperThreading. You probably already know what kind of problems they cause.....

We strongly discourage you from modifying and adjusting the results of the BOINC benchmarks. Although the benchmarks are not perfect, they are significantly better than everyone choosing their own particular performance number and using that.

The long term improvement to the benchmarks /credit scoring system is going to becoming in the future - possibly the 5.12 BOINC client (the 5.10 client will be a relatively small release that largely only includes an auto-update feature). The general gist of the change is that instead of just running a general benchmark - everyone will actually run a short workunit using the actual science application. Thus your computer will be measured on how long it takes for you to run the actual science project - which is the most accurate way to measure your computers performance for running that particular science project.

Also - BOINC is open source. The above feature is on the schedule to be implemented - but if you want it done sooner - than dig in! Look at the code, figure out how it works, start working on the change. Check out: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/boinc_dev.php to learn more.