Folding@Home Coronavirus Race, AnandTech vs. Tom’s Hardware: Two Week Check-In
by Ryan Smith on April 3, 2020 1:00 PM EST
As many of us are stuck at home these days and are slowly quickly going mad, a couple of weeks ago we kicked off a race of sorts with our loyal opposition, Tom’s Hardware. Challenging each other to put an end to the very thing that’s keeping us at home – the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 – we have been racing to see which team can contribute the most work towards the Folding@Home project’s coronavirus distributed computing research efforts. The popular project has already passed an exaFLOP per second in compute performance thanks to Team AnandTech, Tom’s Hardware, and numerous other contributors over the world, and there is still much work to be done for its important research tasks.
Meanwhile, as we’re now at just past the half-way point in our four-week race, I wanted to stop and take stock of things. To see how the humble Team Anandech was faring against the boastful brutes that are the Tom’s Hardware team. And after two weeks, it looks like things are coming up great for Team AnandTech.
Since the race started on March 18th, Team AnandTech has generated 2.45 billion points in work for the Folding@Home project. In the same time period, the Tom’s Hardware team has generated a sizable, but not quite as massive 2 billion points of work. This has put Team AnandTech 445 million points ahead of Tom’s Hardware, or to put this in terms of the ongoing rate, Team AnandTech has been turning in 1.2 points’ worth of work for every point that Tom’s Hardware turns in. Which in the big picture, is actually a rather close race.
As such, with two weeks to go, this race is far from over. Our loyal competition could still turn things around, and so Team AnandTech cannot rest on its laurels. That means we still need you! Both to help Team AnandTech cross the finish line, and to hopefully get out of our homes just that much sooner.
So please stop by the AnandTech Distributed Computing forum to see how you can download the Folding@Home client and join Team AnandTech.
Ultimately this race is for fun, but it’s also for a good cause. The SARS-CoV-2 virus is a world-changing event, and, along with the immediate medical risks of the virus, the containment measures it requires are intense. The Folding@Home project is working on several simulations to improve humanity’s understanding of the virus and the disease it causes, with a goal of jump-starting new treatments and to bring the virus under control. It’s a worthy cause, as a result I’d like to encourage everyone to take part in what’s left of our race over the next two weeks.
Carousel Image Courtesy of: CDC/Alissa Eckert, MS
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leexgx - Sunday, April 5, 2020 - link
You should try using anandtech site without a adblocker it's badembedded video adverts inbetween articles, even when you press print to show all Pages as one, and recantly when my adblocker stopped working you probably wouldn't even recognise that this was anandtechs website (also click jacking when you click anywhere on the page it launches a new page just for the advert)
svan1971 - Sunday, April 5, 2020 - link
Toms has not been Toms for a very long time, its the last site I view if at all. "Just buy it"bill.rookard - Friday, April 3, 2020 - link
I'm wondering how so many points are going up on the board when it's hit or miss as to getting work units. I have 6 clients running and they're sitting more often than not. :(blckgrffn - Friday, April 3, 2020 - link
Come to the thread in the forums. We have ways of getting WU's! (most of the time)cfbcfb - Friday, April 3, 2020 - link
Same here. I have some pretty heavy iron but its not getting WU's. Some things I found out that might explain why. Some researchers will specify 16 cores or more, require an nvidia card for a gpu load, or willl only let the project run as a cpu load.All that having been said, I have a 3700x machine with an RX590 in it, and two 6700K's heavily OC'd (around 5GHz) with very OC'd nvidia 1070's (gpu clock at 2000MHz) in them. I catch a lot of cpu WU's with the 3700x machine as it registers as 16 cores due to hyperthreading. However as I've learned, the 3000 series amd cpu's have some serious heat issues when exposed to sustained loads. As I've come to understand it, the use of 'chiplets' or large chips has caused heat spikes all over the surface of the cpu, where traditionally most of the heat came from the middle of the package. So heatsinks that are round and aren't as big as the die don't disperse heat well. I replaced mine with a heatsink the size of a brick with a larger fan and was still hitting almost 90c on a f@h cpu load. I also tried an Aidos big tall radiator with a big fan, not much better. This morning I looked to find lots of people struggling to get the cpu under 50c at idle (mine is 46), and having frequent issues with the cpu overvolting and over bursting. Seems only folks with the big huge water coolers are getting the idle and load temps down to ~30 at idle and 65 at load.
So I just have one of the 6700K machines dedicated to it now, hooked up to a solar generator and a couple of 100w panels powering it so the electricity is free at least. Still doesn't catch much.
Chaser - Friday, April 3, 2020 - link
Anything else?blckgrffn - Friday, April 3, 2020 - link
A lot of the F@H folks are using GPUs only for that, the CPU is likely better served on Rosetta (also Covid research) which cannot using GPUs for the foreseeable future.eek2121 - Sunday, April 5, 2020 - link
To be clear, it isn’t chiplets that are causing the heat. It is actually a combination of factors, many of which are related to node shrinks. For example, transistors are becoming exponentially more dense, but power requirements have barely changed. This means more heat. Heatspreaders help, but not enough.silverblue - Monday, April 6, 2020 - link
My 1600 and slightly undervolted 590 (max. 1.1V, -8% power limit) were getting the occasional work order, but something changed over the past few days which means they're being fed more consistently, so perhaps the same will happen for you.Temps can get a bit toasty when both are working and left on automatic fan profiles, with the 1600 getting to 79°C and the RX590 hitting 72°C right at this moment (case has one intake fan, one exhaust fan). I had been thinking about replacing the venerable 1600 with a 3600 and using the money saved off a 3600X for a better cooling solution, and it sounds like I'd definitely need it if the 3700X suffers so much. I use headphones a lot so I'm happy to ramp the fans up if required, but I'm not seeing any throttling as of yet.
PEJUman - Friday, April 3, 2020 - link
I think this is Johan DeGelas lab tiling the balance to Anandtech.