Current race: GFN-21 (and only 21!), December 11-21 (22:23 UTC)
Now that Christmas is over, it's time to think about the new year...of PrimeGrid races! Here's the (tentative) list of all races for this year (thanks to @StefanR5R):
What you need:
What may help LLR (the first seven races):
What won't help (but won't hurt either):
What won't help (and will hurt, sort of):
Welcome and good luck to all!
P.S. If no one has posted stats lately, try tracking your stats with my user script. With that installed, visit the current race's Team stats link for TeAm stats.
Now that Christmas is over, it's time to think about the new year...of PrimeGrid races! Here's the (tentative) list of all races for this year (thanks to @StefanR5R):
Code:
Date Time UTC Project Challenge Duration
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 1-16 January 00:00:00 SoB-LLR Happy New Year Challenge 15 days
2 16-23 March 18:00:00 321-LLR Year of the Dog Challenge 7 days
3 3- 8 April 12:00:00 ESP-LLR Mathematics Awareness Month Challenge 5 days
4 14-19 June 00:00:00 SR5-LLR World Cup Challenge 5 days
5 10-13 August 18:00:00 PPS-LLR Solar Eclipse Challenge 3 days
6 15-22 September 18:00:00 CUL-LLR Oktoberfest Challenge 7 days
7 24-31 October 23:59:59 WOO-LLR Halloween Challenge 7 days
8 17-20 November 12:00:00 AP27 Conjunction of Venus and Jupiter Challenge 3 days
9 11-21 December 22:23:00 GFN-21 Winter Solstice Challenge 10 daysWhat you need:
- One or more fast x86 processors, preferably with lots of cores. (Even slow ones might do!)
- Windows (Vista or later 64-bit, or XP or later 32-bit), Linux, or MacOS 10.4+.
- BOINC, attached to PrimeGrid (http://www.primegrid.com/).
- Your PrimeGrid Preferences with only the above project(s) selected in the Projects section.
What may help LLR (the first seven races):
- An Intel Sandy Bridge or later ("Core series" other than first-generation) processor with AVX may be 20-70% faster than with the default application. Sadly, that does not include Pentium or Celeron processors, or AMD processors.
- In most races, usually those with longer WUs, it helps to enable multi-core processing with app_config.xml. Leave hyper-threading on if you do this!
- Faster RAM might help on many races, as long as it's stable.
- Turning off hyper-threading helps with shorter WUs on older processors.
- A GPU helps in the last two races.
- Juggling in some extra WUs may help in races where you run single-core WUs on the CPU.
- Turning on hyper-threading may help.
- A 64-bit OS may help.
What won't help (but won't hurt either):
- A large amount of RAM.
- Any Android devices.
What won't help (and will hurt, sort of):
- Unstable processors. (Invalid work will be deducted! If Prime95 worked recently on your processor, it should be stable.)
- Work not downloaded and uploaded within the challenge. (It's not counted.) Should you not be able to be in front of one or more computers at that time, there are several options:
- You can often set BOINC's network connection preferences to wait until a minute or two after race time.
- And for short work units, you can just set the queue level very low (0.01 days). This also makes it more likely that you will be a prime finder rather than a double-checker. But you might want to raise their queue size after the challenge is underway.
Welcome and good luck to all!
P.S. If no one has posted stats lately, try tracking your stats with my user script. With that installed, visit the current race's Team stats link for TeAm stats.
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