Bigadv Shortage?

[Platinum]

Just checked the stats and it seems for the past few days the numbers have dropped a lot, I know a few of us fold the Bigadv units, perhaps there is another shortage of them?
Need to check my boxes tonight to see what there folding.

[Tattysnuc]

I've not received any BIGADV units since powering back on last night...

A little digging shows:

http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.ph...198054#p198054

Other sources on [H]ardOCP's forums have the reason down to the SMP units being in short supply.

It seems that prior occasions when this has happened it has indeed been due to a shortage, or problems at Stanford's end with the servers, however there is plenty of talk also on [H] about there being an announcement due by Vijay himself....

It's all a bit too mystic for me. I just hop that there's no changing of the minimum hardware spec for the BIGADV units, which is what some people are implying, otherwise my output will be cut by over 25k ppd on my 2 rigs. Sandy-E might be the driver in this, but I must add that this is nothing but speculation at the moment.

[Platinum]

Yea I heard that they may be upping the requirement to 12 cores and using the BIGBETA units instead?

[Tattysnuc]

Well, if that;s the case, I for one will not be upgrading just to fold. Sandy is fine for everything else, and I don't need 12 cores. Might try using ubuntu in a virtualised environment with the "pretend" cores to see how that goes if it does get changed....

[Platinum]

Well, if that;s the case, I for one will not be upgrading just to fold. Sandy is fine for everything else, and I don't need 12 cores. Might try using ubuntu in a virtualised environment with the "pretend" cores to see how that goes if it does get changed....

They do advise against that as because the unit is not designed to run on a 8 thread CPU it may skew the results.

[Tattysnuc]

yeah I know that.

Stanford used to advise that hyperthreaded cpu's are not supported either, but as people started using heavily overclocked i7 9XX's they became common and are now recognised.

Personally I reckon that NVidia's people have been bending Vijay's ear or something - Stanford adjusted the points a while back to level the playing field a little as the BIGADV units were changing the bias of work units from GPU to CPU. No more GPU's are due for a while, and with a new Intel architecture coming out soon, someone's going to lose out....

[Tattysnuc]

I'm still pumping out 80k ppd despite there being a shortage of BIGADV units, so I'm just waiting for my average to recover. I have a 3rd 2600K that's been leak testing the past 2 days, and then an i7 950 which I'm going to have running in the hall as a folding "heater" for the house.

[Platinum]

Big spike on the stats suggest that someone has received and done a Bigadv unit

[Tattysnuc]

I've been through the top 20 producers, and it looks like that's not a BIGADV, just a lot of units being returned at the same time - I can't see a spike of that magnitude for a specific user, please correct me if I'm wrong though.

1stRaven has had something processing over the weekend, it might be the cumulative effect of me coming back online, 1stRaven and yourself bashing out the smp units. I was showing 80k points knocked out in the prior 24 hour period yesterday, and I've definitely not had or got any bigadv's...

[Tattysnuc]

I've removed the -BIGADV flag from the properties of my CPU folding clients so that they revert to just SMP, and I've seen the production rate climb.

2 of my rig's clients were looking for BIGADV units for some time, so were NOT actually processing for large portions of the day, thus running at a lower production rate that theoretically possible.

What's everyone else doing with their CPU folding clients? Anyone running ADVMETHODS for instance?

[shbris]

never had any luck with advanced flags, running on windows means i can't run bigadv (right?) and found instability with advanced methods flags. so always stuck strictly to SMP

[Tattysnuc]

never had any luck with advanced flags, running on windows means i can't run bigadv (right?) and found instability with advanced methods flags. so always stuck strictly to SMP

BIGADV usually works on Windows.

BIGBETA doesn't work under windows - just Linux I believe.

#Correction. If you have 8 cores, then you can run BIGADV under windows#

[Tattysnuc]

I'm going to try this in the absence of BIGADV units....

http://www.overclock.net/t/1048365/u...edicated-2600k

Will have a go on one of my rigs on Saturday and feed back how I get on.... It may not be worth it, or kill the machine, but I'll try it...

[Tattysnuc]

NEWSFLASH

http://folding.typepad.com/news/2011...y-16-2012.html

...the bs@tr@d$!!!!

Oh well. SMP it is for me. Wonder if they are still doing the ADVMETHODS.... anyone?

[Platinum]

16 core? So sandy bridge e isn't even enough

[Tattysnuc]

As I'm sure you've spotted, it will be, there are 2 cores missing from the top end model



so while there's not one now, there will be, and 8 cores plus 8 hyper threads means it will just reach the criteria. HOWEVER, they do say:

"...In particular, as hardware evolves, it is expected that we will need to change the nature of the BA WUs again in the future."

which (I think) basically means if NVIDIA start knocking at the door again because Intel's components are getting too much of the investment from the general public involved in the folding fraternity, then they'll up the limit again putting it back out the reach of the average user.

I knew I should have gone for an SR2 rig. If I do EVER get a bonus again, I'll be investing in a SR3 or whatever the next one is.

IF.


You still looking at Sandy Bridge E now? It's looking less and less like an option that'll give you real benefits.