2012 slump?

[JimF]

I am on Team 0 (unassigned), and have noticed a strange phenomenon over the past few months. Whenever I pass someone, they are getting 0 points. Previously, they were getting at least some points. I don't know if it is due to the shift to handheld devices, or the use of internal graphics. If it is the latter, then at least they might choose to contribute CPU points. I know that I now devote an i5-3550 to Folding, and with the new Core a4 it gets almost as many points (at less power) than my GTX 560. Maybe the new Gromacs (4.6) will help things out, but it seems that times are a changing.

[P5-133XL]

There are far more people that have quit folding than are currently folding so I would expect as you move up the ranks you be passing a great many non folders. When you first started you were competing with others that had just started which is why you were passing non-zeros. Now that you've been running a while you'll be seeing a larger number of quitters as the new people have spread-out. Long-term folders still folding are going to be harder to catch because they are supplying a moving line to catch up to.

Keep adding modern HW and you will catch up to some eventually.

[JimF]

I think it was the opposite when I started several years ago. Then, I passed all the people who had quit. But having been at this for several years now, I was among the ones who had stayed long-term. It is only in the past few months that I have noticed this change.

[P5-133XL]

Well, I looked at all the people near me and a significant majority of them are still folding. What more can I say?

[JimF]

I only see a few at a time (the ones who are nearest me) on Free-DC, whereas you are looking at a larger group and may not notice the zeros as much. And I don't see any unassigned (Team 0) in your group. It may be that the group members stay longer. The question is then what is the relative contribution of the teams verses the non-team members?

[Zagen30]

The question is then what is the relative contribution of the teams verses the non-team members?

The top 500 teams on EOC earn about 233 million PPD combined, while team 0 earns a bit over 22 million PPD*, which works out to roughly 9% of the total contribution coming from non-team members.

*EOC only lists the top 2000 or so members of team 0, but the threshold to get into that range is just north of 1 million points total. Any statistically significant contributor will get there quickly, so there can't be very many largish contributors who aren't currently listed.

[JimF]

OK, this is what I see ("Top 10 Team Opportunities"). It didn't used to be that way.
http://stats.free-dc.org/stats.php?page ... e=Jim13480

And if people start out as unassigned, but drop out before they join a team, then it could impact future work. (And today is of course the future of six months ago.)

[P5-133XL]

You are going to see a bunch more till you get around 22,500,000. Team Anonymous user list. Of the next 15 people, 10 are quitters. You are in a bubble. After 22,500,000 there are only 5 out of the next 53.

I think the higher you go, the more committed the people are to folding and the fewer quitters you are going to see.

[JimF]

Thanks. I can just blow through the bubble.

[k1wi]

As expected, PS3 ppd is starting to decline.

But has anyone else noticed that ATI performance has halved? Does anyone know why?

[7im]

New AMD drivers that don't work for folding...

[JimF]

The new AMD drivers (12-10 and 12-11 beta) work great on BOINC projects, including POEM and World Community Grid/HCC. They increased the output of my HD 7770 at least 25% on POEM. So there is something about Folding that is different, but it might benefit also eventually.

[mdk777]

I noticed the same on LUXMARK V2....a 30% improvement from initial to latest drivers on AMD 7970.

However, FOLDING does more involved calculations, and there is no doubt that the latest drivers broke the existing cores.

Hopefully Gromacs, open CL, AMD, and PG cores can get on the same page soon.

For example, I've been doing this a long time...and when I tried to roll back drivers, my system no longer booted.
I can imagine, a great many people are just not willing to go through the aggravation, and simply stop FOLDING.
"I'll check back later when they have it sorted out."

[jrweiss]

I am still Folding, but will not go through the aggravation of trying to find an ATI driver that will both Fold AND work for everything else on the computer as well. It already took 2 RMAs and 4 driver releases to get my 7750 to work, and it won't Fold in the current configuration...

I don't "blame" PandeGroup or AMD or anyone else, but all involved will eventually have to come to a meeting of the minds if they want to continue to promote GPU Folding.

[JimF]

With the new Gromacs 4.6 being OpenCL, I think we will necessarily see a lot more support in that area. It will be interesting to see how AMD does in comparison with Nvidia at that time, especially with the new Radeon HD 8000 series coming out before too long.

I think this is an excellent time to not buy a graphics card for Folding.