More on the RAC Increase

I think I stopped slightly short of making my point last time, or possibly the post title slightly overstated my point.

Anyhoo my point was that despite a fairly severe pruning of my hardware, my RAC has not dropped much and certainly, seen through the longterm prism of Boincstats-RAC, is remarkably steady. (The surge then drop in raw RAC is mainly due to Milkyway giving me lots of credit in a hurry and then stopping rather than due to the hardware depletions.)


In part this is because I have kept the most efficient bits of the farm. A contibuting factor of course is that GPUGrid has improved it's credit for those who return their results early. Whatever my efficiency is hugely improved which is nice: As well as less noise heat & cost there are far fewer wires which looks much neater and must be much safer!

The Downsizing Continues - The RAC rises!

I'm doin' it, I'm doin' it!

Against all predictions I'm successfully downsizing the farm and I've got more plans to become yet more sustainable.

After the last downsize I slipped back a bit, tempted by the charms of Milkyway optimised for top end ATI cards, and acquired an HD4850 card. With up to 70K per day this bagged me a useful 1,000,000 credits before the supply of WUs all but ceased. Within the last 24 hrs I sold this to one of the TSBT young turks.

Also sold in the last week, again to another TSBT bod, complete with the rest of their system gubbins including cases, were two Quads one with a 9600GT and one with a non-boincing GPU (how legacy can you get?). This entailed carting two huge boxes weighing a total of 23kg down to my local Parcelforce depot. Leaving aside the damage to my hernial orifaces, the feng shui of the principal field of the farm has been significantly improved as did the climactic tolerability, my 'lecky bill, my carbon footprint &, with any hope, the noise, both in terms of fans & drives & the PSCAF (persisant spousal critical acoustic factor). The room feels almost empty and my KVM has only half of its 8 ports occuppied.

The reason one of the Quads was sold with a boinc-free GPU was that I discovered that my Phenom sytem supported up to 4 PCI-E cards so, from being a prime candidate for retirement, it got up graded to running two 260s and should, given the recent improvement in GPUGrid credit, be able to return 20K per day and become the Jewel in the Crown of the farm.

So that's the hoose with:
1x E6600 Hopefully soon to be sold as it brings little to the boinc party.
1xQ6600 with 1 x 260 [I think this is upgradable to take another GPU but it will need a better case first]
1xPhenom 9600+ with 2 x 260 [Imagine this with a Nehalem processor & mobo]
1x Q9450 with 1 x 260 [a better mobo allowing another GPU would be a great thing].
1xQ6600 with 1 x 280 [if only it could take another GPU]

Also I have two laptops and a work machine but they don't really matter.
So, despite some radical downsizing I still have a significant croft which, with some modest upgades, signposted above, should, even just running 4 machines, be enough to keep me in the top 200 for weeks to come, and in the top 500 for the foreseeable.

Boinc smarter not harder!

The Downsizing Begins

I spoke about downsizing last time but what with winter the thermal imperative was never there. Then when FlyingFocRS sold of most of his farm I just had to bag 3of his PCs mainly for the 260s that 2 of them contained. This got me back up to 8 PCs upstairs! It is obvious as the temperatures outside nudge double figures and those inside head towards 30degC that something has to give. I have therefore decided on a Bill Gates style spree of philanthropy and am giving away my farm, or at least some of the less productive fields, to anyone that will have them. Let me know if you are interested!

The plan will be to be left with 5 quads, 4 with 260 GTX cards and one with a 280 GTX. This, augmented by 2 laptops and my work machine, should be enough to pump out 40K per day. This will be a lot less than the 60K+ I had been managing but still enough to keep me in the top 300 overall individuals for a long time. And at least the lost credits will only have been redistributed within the team.

Already I have dismantled my semi-permanant caseless "test rig" for spares and rid myself of an E6600+9600 which is already propelling another member up the ranks. The drop from 8 to 6 machines means a drop from uncomfortably hot to pleasantly toasty. The roar has also dropped from Heathrow main runway to wind-tunnel which is a big improvement

It's hardly minimalism yet but it feels significantly more sustainable.

Despite some major setbacks - Buster's retiral because of ill health & Nightlord having to downsize severely because of redundancy - TSBT are managing to maintain an RAC above 1/2 a million and have moved up to 40th overall! So no overall downsize.

If you want to score for a buckshee PC let me know- if there is enough competition I'll put the stuff up to a charity auction.