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So, after about a 1-year hiatus, I've started folding again. I started out a bit slow; crunching a unit here and there when the weather was cool. (used the -oneunit switch so I only run one unit then stop.) But last night it was actually somewhat chilly out, so I took the switch out and let her rip. In the morning I surfed over to the folding.extremeoverclocking.com site to check out how many points I had accrued overnight. The results kinda surprised me.



I'm running the SMP client, but still I don't think Stanford gives out many 7K point units, or even 4K point ones. So, I checked what units I ran, and looked what their official scores should be on this page here: http://vspx27.stanford.edu/psummary.html
The last four units I ran were Projects: 6014, 6066, 6072, 6701.
Stanford says they should be worth: 484, 481, 481, 921 points.
What I got was: 4372, 4468, 4444, 7745 points.

So, what the hell is going on? I did set up a "passkey" which Stanford says will get me some bonus points, but somehow I doubt I'm supposed to get almost 10x more points...

I've already returned another unit for Project 6024 that extremeoverclocking hasn't posted results for yet, and currently crunching a Project 6060. These should be worth 474 and 481 points respectively. Anyone wanna take some guesses at what points I get??

I'm not complaining, but this is weird. Anyone have any ideas? Has this been happening to anybody else?

Update: the Project 6024 unit gave me 4426 points. That's a lot more that 474.

Welcome back to folding. Well with the passkey your entitled to obtain bonuses the faster you fold the units. The more cores and the faster your cpu is the higher the bonus is.

Sazaneyes wrote an excellent guide explaining the Bonus calculations over at hardforum. http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1542103 (sorry if this is against thread rules linking to another site. I will edit this post if it is)

What is your CPU that your folding with & speed? This will allow us to see if your in the range of what you should be getting.

Occasionally there will be a server glitch which delays the crediting of points for some WUs. When the glitch is fixed, the (backlogged) WUs get credited all at once. That's probably what you're seeing here.

I don't think I'm seeing the glitch you're describing JBI; I've only been folding for a handful of days so far, and I've got credit for every one of the units I've returned.

Thanks for the link Donuts. Apparently it's the passkey bonus that's doing it. The huge scores started on my 10th unit just like that thread said they would, and I have been returning those units pretty fast. The bonus is just crazy high though; if this keeps up I'll be one of TR's top 10 producers, with only a single CPU. It makes me feel a bit, I dunno, cheap.

Yeah, that'll teach me to read your original post better before replying; the EOC stats clearly shows the huge point awards for single WUs.

Yes, the early turnaround bonus can be significant if you're running on a fast (especially quad-core) system. What are your system specs, pray tell?

(I'm running a few older/slower AMD SMP boxes here; while the bonus points are significant, they're nowhere near what you're seeing. Hmm... those AMD Phenom IIs are getting pretty affordable... and supposedly work in AM2+ mobos... )

This is just crazy. The bonus is too big, IMO. Not that I'm complaining.

My system is a Gulftown i7-980X, with 12 GB of DDR3 1600. I have it lazily overclocked to 3.8 GHz, which is as high as I could get it stable without monkeying with voltages. I had planned to tinker with it and see where the real megahurtz ceiling is later in the fall when it's cold out, because it's much more pleasant being in a room with a hot computer when you're shivering. But this chip runs surprisingly cool even under load. Real Temp 3.40 (which amusingly calls my chip a "Core i9") right now says it's running at 48°-51°C with plain-old air cooling. (it's about 22°-25°C at idle) So maybe I'll tinker with it sooner rather than later. But not today; my weekend just started, and I'm lazy.

My system is a Gulftown i7-980X, with 12 GB of DDR3 1600.

That is an incredible system. You should definitely think about putting in the -bigadv flag if you leave your system running (it takes a lot longer to compute but your bonuses are huge). You should net around 50k ppd if you do that which would easily put you in the top 5 on this team.

Hmm, I've never heard of -bigadv. I thought -advmethods was the switch that gave you big work units? I guess this is what happens when you're out of the loop for a year.
I think tomorrow I'll spend the day throwing volts and prime numbers at my computer, and see if I can whip those 6 cores into shape. I'll try that -bigadv switch in a few days, after It's proven itself to be stable.

The -bigadv flag was started probably close to a year ago now, (I could be wrong though) and it can only be used on PC's with more than 8 cores. There is a caveat to this though and that hyperthreading cores also count. Since the 980X has 12 threads you will be tossing out a massive amount ppd and it is one of the most energy efficient ways to fold.

Upgraded one of my systems to a Phenom II quad last week. The non-linear nature of the bonus points really does magnify the effects of having 4+ cores; I think the Phenom II is producing nearly as many PPD as all my other systems put together. My other systems are a mix of older AMD systems, mostly Socket 939/AM2 dual-core plus one slower quad-core (Phenom 9550).