[zombie67]

We've all seen it. Many projects just don't award credits equally for PPC Macs. Putting aside the validity of the reasons, which projects do G4 machines get better than average credits? G5s? Where should I spend their resources?

I assume S@H with alexkan's excellent applications will end up on top. But perhaps there are other project's I've missed? Or am missing the advantages of PPC? Or perhaps they would do more good on non-boinc projects?

As far as I know, these are the Mac-friendly BOINC projects:

Docking (Intel)
Einstein (PPC & Intel)
Leiden (PPC)
Pirates (PPC) (part-time work)
Predictor (PPC & Intel) (still coming back up to speed)
RALPH (PPC & Intel) (part-time work)
Rectilinear (Intel)
Rosetta (PPC & Intel)
SETI (PPC & Intel)
SETI B (PPC & Intel)
SIMAP (PPC & Intel) (part-time work)
SZT (PPC)
WCG (PPC & Intel)

[mduell]

G4s (and G5s) scream on the RC5 project @ distributed.net, and the workunits are all the same so you'll do very well in their stats... I know it's not a BOINC project, but you may be interested anyway.

[reader50]

Folding is very competitive on G4/G5 because the Gromacs client is heavily altivec'ed. zombie, are you sure about Rosetta PPC? I recently benchmarked the project for 10 days. 2/3 of the work units got zero credits, and 2/3 of the rest had reduced credits. This is with the stock BOINC client running on a Quad (Automatic performance setting). I've been meaning to ask the project people about it.

[zombie67]

Originally Posted by reader50 

zombie, are you sure about Rosetta PPC? I recently benchmarked the project for 10 days. 2/3 of the work units got zero credits, and 2/3 of the rest had reduced credits. This is with the stock BOINC client running on a Quad (Automatic performance setting). I've been meaning to ask the project people about it.

Not sure what your question is. Are you asking if Rosetta has a PPC application? Yes, it does. Here is one of my G5 machines:

http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/sh...?hostid=271444

Here is one of my G4 machines:

http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/sh...?hostid=270212

Take a look at the results. They work just fine. No errors.

[reader50]

Excuse me, I meant Predictor@home, not Rosetta. Oops.

I meant, if Predictor should be recommended for PPC at this time. Perhaps it was just the beta work as the project came back, but my 10 days of test crunching resulted in perhaps 10% of my claimed credit being awarded.

[zombie67]

Ah! I understand the question now. Predictor is still working out the bugs of the new application. Lots of failures currently, probably due to homogeneous redundancy issues. No real science being done yet. They have a few tests still to run.

Probably will always require at least 1gb of RAM.

[zombie67]

Thanks for the recommendations. Since no one suggested a BOINC project, I attached 3x PPC machines to Folding. I had crunched for them many years ago, so I already exist in the stats.

Looks like we're about to get passed by PC Club Folding@Home Team. Perhaps this will help prevent that.

[owlsoup]

I noticed this 3.16.07 announcement over at BOINC Synergy (which is fed from Predictor's site) "At some point we are going to start to require that you use boinc client 5.4 or newer. Please upgrade your clients to a recent version if you are older than 5.4. Homogeneous Redundancy has been turned on and a new set of workunits is being created."

What's the latest work on updating BOINC app for our Macs?

[arkayn]

I do believe that the latest version for Mac is 5.8.15, at least that is the version that I am running.

[macdude22]

Hands down RC5, one PPC mac is worth half a dozen intel or AMD based anythings on it.

[zombie67]

FYI, Docking@Home just added a PPC Mac application, in addition to the Intel Mac application.

[ChillyWilly5280]

Originally Posted by zombie67 

FYI, Docking@Home just added a PPC Mac application, in addition to the Intel Mac application.

Anybody got an invitation?

[zombie67]

I believe they are very close to removing the hold on account creation.

FWIW, my question about how to maximize my PPC machines back-fired. I was looking for a way to generate more points with my comparatively under-performing PPC machines. Reader50 suggested F@H. After testing the waters, I learned how multi-core machines (not including PPCs) make *way* more points than the non-SMP clients. So now all my multi-core (non-PPC) machines are on F@H, and I am moving my PPC machines back to BOINC running my old favorites, even though the points are low. Funny.

[zombie67]

Originally Posted by ChillyWilly5280 

Anybody got an invitation?

To request an account, email at dockingadmin at utep.edu.