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Thread: Now that HCC and HCMD2 are ending... |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 11
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Hi.
Most of my computers are very old P3/P4 and represent an important amount of my contribution to WCG. They’ve been crunching reliably for many years, since the grid.org and pre-BOINC SETI@Home times. Here at WCG they have been doing the lighter jobs (low memory requirements and short running times) with aplomb. Lately it has been only HCC and HCMD2. But now that those projects are near their ends, I’m lost in what to do. I'm pretty sure many of you will say that they are not worth the electricity they use, and I agree, but that’s what I have. It’s painful in my country to buy technology because the newest available is obsolete and incredibly expensive. It’s like paying Ferrari prices for Lada cars. So it’s either use them or turning them off for good, replacing them for something new is not an option for me. My question is this: "if life gives you lemons, make lemonade"? or, is there another project (here at WCG or elsewhere) where I can put those old PCs to good use? I see from SekeRob charts that C4CW has the shortest average run times for WU (not counting DDDT2 and Beta). But the requirements specify 400MB of memory as a minimum for this project and that would be a problem for some of my machines. Next in line would be GFAM and HFCC. Does anyone use a P3 or low end P4 for those projects? I appreciate your comments, but please leave the electricity/efficiency dilemma to myself to meditate  . I do want to contribute as much as I possibly and realistically can. |
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deltavee
Ace Cruncher Texas Hill Country Joined: Nov 17, 2004 Post Count: 4888 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I use a P4 on c4cw,but it also has 2gb RAM.
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
If HCC is supposed to be ending, why are they talking about introducing GPU for HCC?
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marvey11
Advanced Cruncher Germany Joined: Apr 2, 2011 Post Count: 89 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Hey bono_vox,
----------------------------------------the list of my crunchers includes a P4 @ 2.8 GHz. Though, from what I read, yours might even be a little slower than that. I also have 1 GB of memory in that machine, and you seem to have less of that as well. The device runs on Ubuntu Server, i.e. without a desktop environment/GUI to save memory and CPU cycles. I can only say that I'm letting that machine crunch everything, including CEP2. The results are great; efficiency is usually above 99%. So if replacing the computer itself is out of the question, perhaps adding memory is an option? I'd say that here at WCG C4CW is probably the best-fitting project for you machines. But if you look at SekeRob's dashboard, you will see that this particular project might soon end as well. And after that? I'd probably try the VINA-based projects (DSFL, GFAM and the upcoming one). -- MW  |
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Falconet
Master Cruncher Portugal Joined: Mar 9, 2009 Post Count: 3295 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Hi. Most of my computers are very old P3/P4 and represent an important amount of my contribution to WCG. They’ve been crunching reliably for many years, since the grid.org and pre-BOINC SETI@Home times. Here at WCG they have been doing the lighter jobs (low memory requirements and short running times) with aplomb. Lately it has been only HCC and HCMD2. But now that those projects are near their ends, I’m lost in what to do. I'm pretty sure many of you will say that they are not worth the electricity they use, and I agree, but that’s what I have. It’s painful in my country to buy technology because the newest available is obsolete and incredibly expensive. It’s like paying Ferrari prices for Lada cars. So it’s either use them or turning them off for good, replacing them for something new is not an option for me. My question is this: "if life gives you lemons, make lemonade"? or, is there another project (here at WCG or elsewhere) where I can put those old PCs to good use? I see from SekeRob charts that C4CW has the shortest average run times for WU (not counting DDDT2 and Beta). But the requirements specify 400MB of memory as a minimum for this project and that would be a problem for some of my machines. Next in line would be GFAM and HFCC. Does anyone use a P3 or low end P4 for those projects? I appreciate your comments, but please leave the electricity/efficiency dilemma to myself to meditate . I do want to contribute as much as I possibly and realistically can.Hi, I had a P4 2.4GHZ that crunched a GFAM Wu in 22 CPU hours. It was marked invalid but since the PC died a week later I don't think it's something that might happen with yours. It had 1.7 GB of RAM. C4CW shouldn't finish anytime soon. HCC will be back with GPU and CPU versions. I would put those PC's in C4CW and HCC when it returns. If they have enough RAM then try other projects. Btw, have you tried second hand stuff? If you could find, say, a cheap dual core to replace 1(or 2) of the P3's it would pay off(in electricity savings and in the WCG output) I used to think like you. I was going to have the current system I have crunching and also keep my P4 crunching. The P4 died, and with the new system, I save between 10-15 euros per month while staying the same amount of time turned on. The system is an AMD Sempron 145 2.8GHZ unlocked to an Athlon II X2 445 and overclocked at 3.6GHZ, 4GB RAM, Hd5450 1 GB, Asrock N68-UCC had a cost of 181 euros. Just something for you to think about....  AMD Ryzen 5 1600AF 6C/12T 3.2 GHz - 85W AMD Ryzen 5 2500U 4C/8T 2.0 GHz - 28W AMD Ryzen 7 7730U 8C/16T 3.0 GHz [Edit 2 times, last edit by Falconet at Feb 11, 2012 6:51:17 PM] |
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Sgt.Joe
Ace Cruncher USA Joined: Jul 4, 2006 Post Count: 7677 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Hi. Most of my computers are very old P3/P4 and represent an important amount of my contribution to WCG. They’ve been crunching reliably for many years, since the grid.org and pre-BOINC SETI@Home times. Here at WCG they have been doing the lighter jobs (low memory requirements and short running times) with aplomb. Lately it has been only HCC and HCMD2. But now that those projects are near their ends, I’m lost in what to do. I'm pretty sure many of you will say that they are not worth the electricity they use, and I agree, but that’s what I have. It’s painful in my country to buy technology because the newest available is obsolete and incredibly expensive. It’s like paying Ferrari prices for Lada cars. So it’s either use them or turning them off for good, replacing them for something new is not an option for me. My question is this: "if life gives you lemons, make lemonade"? or, is there another project (here at WCG or elsewhere) where I can put those old PCs to good use? I see from SekeRob charts that C4CW has the shortest average run times for WU (not counting DDDT2 and Beta). But the requirements specify 400MB of memory as a minimum for this project and that would be a problem for some of my machines. Next in line would be GFAM and HFCC. Does anyone use a P3 or low end P4 for those projects? I appreciate your comments, but please leave the electricity/efficiency dilemma to myself to meditate . I do want to contribute as much as I possibly and realistically can.I used to run some P3's and still run some p4's at 1.6ghz. They run Win 2000, but will take some Linux distros. I would just check off everything that is available and then see what WCG sends you. I would also keep my cache down to a minimum so any long running jobs get a chance to finish. That is what I will do when HCC and HCMD2 are done. I have had up to 40+ hour jobs on the P4's in the past. I don't know what the availability of additional memory is in Venezuela, but that is probably about the cheapest alternative for you. Good luck. Cheers
Sgt. Joe
*Minnesota Crunchers* |
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Coleslaw
Veteran Cruncher USA Joined: Mar 29, 2007 Post Count: 1343 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Yeah, it is hard to really suggest something for you if you have a ram issue on old hardware. It really isn't worth buying ram for those systems because the entire system isn't worth what you would need to pay. If they are left turned on 24/7, then I would just let them crunch whatever WCG throws at them. I used to run P3's and they still completed work on time even though they took forever. The good news is that if they meet requirements for BETA work, then you can get a lot of run time toward a badge. Also, you still have time on HCC. If you keep up on their forum, you will see the intent to continue adding work for a little while longer. We also have not been told the requirements of the new project they are currently BETA testing yet.
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kateiacy
Veteran Cruncher USA Joined: Jan 23, 2010 Post Count: 1027 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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My guess is that C4CW would run ok on your machines despite the nominal memory requirement. I can run four C4CW WUs simultaneously on a dual-core Atom with 1.5 GB of memory available to the CPU, so there is less than 400MB available per WU.
----------------------------------------This is under Linux, by the way. I've been thinking along the same lines as you -- I have really enjoyed running HCC and HCMD2 on my Atom, and I am hoping that a new WCG project will have similarly short run times. But I'm lucky that my Atom is capable of running the projects with bigger WUs if necessary, and that I live where I have been able to purchase more powerful machines at reasonable cost. Edited to add this: If you decide to try Linux, you might look into Lubuntu or Xubuntu. Those are versions of Ubuntu that have lighter-weight user interfaces and leave more RAM available for applications while still offering similar ease of use and easy access to applications as Ubuntu itself.  [Edit 1 times, last edit by kateiacy at Feb 12, 2012 12:46:49 AM] |
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Coleslaw
Veteran Cruncher USA Joined: Mar 29, 2007 Post Count: 1343 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I haven't tried it with WCG, but I know on some other projects outside WCG that if you don't have the minimum requirements they have set, you wont receive work at all. I used to see this a lot in the older days of BOINC. YMMV
----------------------------------------kateiacy, the reason you still get work even when not having 400MB per unit is because BOINC sees that you have at least 400MB and thus meets the requirement to run that science. From there, the system manages the RAM actually being used and then kicks in the virtual memory that is needed to compensate. The downside to not having enough ram and relying on virtual memory at this point is a slow down in actual performance. So, you could put 1GB of ram in a quad and still get 4 work units that need 1GB. But, you could not get any work from those same projects with less then 1GB in the system. Just a flaw in the BOINC code I guess. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Thank you all for your comments. I'll try several options to see what's better and post my findings, they may be useful for others in my position.
I know times move on and computers become obsolete pretty fast, but I'd like to always have an easy to crunch project available. I'll be a little bit nostalgic the day I have to turn off those old P3 and P4. I miss my first crunching machine, a P2-400, still functional but way too slow for today's tasks (but back in the UD days was very fine!). |
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