What could we do? It would be great to introduce folks to the spoils of Crunching and how much easier it is to manage, the nearly countless options/types/combinations we can run. And even a 10 year old laptop can crunch without overheating!
 
What do you think? How doe we do it?

I don't have much time for trying to figure out and organize everything, but possibly hosting a WCG challenge would be easiest.  
I've tossed around the idea before, maybe having custom Crunching@EVGA sigs for the various forums could help in a way.  Using sigs from the different stat sites don't catch someone's eye if everyone has a similar one.  
 
But these are more geared towards recruiting those who already crunch.  I've mentioned folding and crunching to a few friends at work before, the idea didn't exactly catch on.  I even pushed the EVGA bucks and donations and the fact that I'm working on building a second system with really only spending about $100.  That kind of sparked some interest, but there is the skepticism about putting components under that much stress and having to balance folding/crunching time and gaming and lately, we just haven't had much time to do much after work between school and classes for work and family trying to get ahead of the game since the Marine Corps is working on this big draw down and nobody wants to be told they can't reenlist. 
 
I haven't even been on here as much as I would like because of everything at work and the classes and school.

Im interested in this. How do I crunch? Is there some sort of guide for this?

First, check out the World Community Grid setup thread.  With crunching there are many projects to choose from, with WCG being just one of them (there are even sub-projects to choose from within a project like WCG).  You can choose to participate in any and all projects that interest you.  That setup procedure is the same for all other projects that run from the BOINC manager.  Pay attention to the hardware you want to use, as some projects can use CPU, GPU, or both and must be configured to do so.  
 
Once the manager is installed, you go to Tools > attach to project, choose the project you wish to participate in, enter your email address (use the same one for all projects!) and make a password.  You can then run the project from the BOINC manager and configure preferences for the project using the project's website.  You can run multiple projects at once using the BOINC manager to allocate threads to each one.  This is just a rough summary for getting started but there are many helpful individuals here if you need further assistance.  Any projects that don't use the BOINC manager usually have a thread here explaining how to set them up.

JaskarnSidhu


Im interested in this. How do I crunch? Is there some sort of guide for this?

 
Here is a list of all the available BOINC projects. Some projects support GPUs including AMD and NVIDIA GPUs. Depending on your hardware setup, you may be able to take advantage of both your CPU and GPUs.
 
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php
 
Here is a link to the latest BOINC client available for Windows 64-bit:
 
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dl/boinc_7.0.25_windows_x86_64.exe
 
 

I started posting our team details on the BOINC project forums. So far I posted in the team recruitment thread at Einstein this evening. Hopefully this will help with bringing online some new members with Crunching. We have 91 active members so far which is a very good start overall.

Very cool idea man! Thank you 

this is what we should be doing on both teams
 
way to go guys

This idea is along the same lines as linuxrouter's post above...
 
I think it would be cool if we had a standard slogan (and graphic?) for the EVGA DC team.  We could then put this in our signatures at other forums with a link pointing back to the umbrella DC forum here. 
 
Then we get out there and start posting in other forums by contributing to existing threads or starting new threads with news items, etc.  Posts should be relevant, and not spamming just to be seen.
 
Others see the sigs, come check us out and get hooked once they see we have many DC options with a fun, helpful and active community to boot.
 
Having a standard sig would make possible recruits say, "hey, i've seen that sig around here before, what's this EVGA team all about? oh look, here's a handy link."
 
Also, this is less about "poaching" users from other teams as it is finding users that have not yet joined a team.

planetclown


This idea is along the same lines as linuxrouter's post above...

I think it would be cool if we had a standard slogan (and graphic?) for the EVGA DC team.  We could then put this in our signatures at other forums with a link pointing back to the umbrella DC forum here. 

Then we get out there and start posting in other forums by contributing to existing threads or starting new threads with news items, etc.  Posts should be relevant, and not spamming just to be seen.

Others see the sigs, come check us out and get hooked once they see we have many DC options with a fun, helpful and active community to boot.

Having a standard sig would make possible recruits say, "hey, i've seen that sig around here before, what's this EVGA team all about? oh look, here's a handy link."

Also, this is less about "poaching" users from other teams as it is finding users that have not yet joined a team.

 
I like the idea. I know some of the members here post on WCG's forums and I personally spend time posting on Einstein's forum. This could help get our team name out there across the various BOINC projects. I would guess there are plenty of users out there that are not currently joined to a team. I know that with the exception of Seti, I was not joined to any teams before the EVGA team was setup.

Time to dust this thread off... 
 
Had an idea pop in my head while painting today...
 
Let's have a contest to "3000". Yes the same idea of the original 300. By my calculations if we had 3000 members being productive we could be in the top 10 overall in the world in about 21 months... My estimate is a fat hairy one, not small, but I figure things balance. One heavy counter 100 light...
 
The idea is all DC for the 3000 number. In other words, a drive to have 3000 active members... My concern for this idea though is the lack of any overall tracker that captures all of DC. It is rather frustrating TBH. 
 
Why do I say that? Simple. I do not want to have a line in the sand on our team. This is not a F@H vs Chrunching as a handful like to soap box.
 
This is our domination of the DC world regardless of a persons preference or desired project.
 
If a person likes huge numbers, GPUGRID/PrimeGrid is for their GPU's or build a server and F@H.
 
If a person wants to help because of a family situation, fine, we have a project for that.
 
Just a thought... Back to painting... (Yeah)

People just don't see anything (outside of the personal experiences) to motivate them.  It's one of those situations where, if there isn't instantanous results then it's not worth the time.
 
All who Crunch\Fold do it for a reason... either we have experienced through family and friends this problem, or in my particular case I worked as a Sys Admin in a retirement home (read that as you wish, you'd probably be right). 
 
I've seen how diseases work.  I know how they kill, slowly...
 
This is why I do what I do when I disovered EVGA and Folding about a year ago. 
 
I need to learn more... find a way to grow the team.  I'm working on that but I think we all need to have some way of showing what we do.
 
We do not have proof yet.  We do have vim, vigor and above all the will.  Grow it we shall. 

Afterburner

I do not want to have a line in the sand on our team. This is not a F@H vs Chrunching as a handful like to soap box.  

 This is our domination of the DC world regardless of a persons preference or desired project. 

How open is management to a community-submitted news article?   That could clarify the above, acts as a recruiting tool, and getting started guide.  Something like the Precision X article seems like a nice format since it has the tabbed box at the bottom which could include some FAQ and setup type info.

Col323

Afterburner

I do not want to have a line in the sand on our team. This is not a F@H vs Chrunching as a handful like to soap box.  

This is our domination of the DC world regardless of a persons preference or desired project. 

How open is management to a community-submitted news article?   That could clarify the above, acts as a recruiting tool, and getting started guide.  Something like the Precision X article seems like a nice format since it has the tabbed box at the bottom which could include some FAQ and setup type info.

Sorry for the delayed response... reeeeeeeally busy the past few weeks and next...
 
I think that is a great question! Might help our thinking here as well... http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=1651204

Another thought...
 
What about organizing a contest for Signature badges? Three of them...

• F@H
• Crunching
• EVGA and Distributed Computing

We could have no prizes all the way to contacting EVGA and see if they have any left over swag or what not. 
 
Of course we could expand this idea... But there it is...

hi all i dont want to ask a silly question but what is crunching? i cant seem to find out much about it

Crunching is a term used to describe what we do when we dedicate our hardware to distributed computing.  In a similar fashion to folding, crunching uses our CPU's and GPU's to compute all sorts of things... from protein folding to prime number searches.  A good list of projects can be found HERE.
 
The software used to run the many different applications is called BOINC.  When you want to run a specific project you sign up for it at their website, create the user credentials, then just load up BOINC and enter the info.  Each project is customizable and you can dedicate different pieces of hardware to different projects even in the same machine.  I typically fold and crunch at the same time.
 
Two of my favorite projects are GPUGrid and World Community Grid.  Within those projects you can select different areas of research to crunch.  The easiest way to get started is to get things set up and use default settings until you get familiar with how things work.
 
BE SURE to join the Crunching@EVGA team within each project before starting though

^^ Outstanding BR for you 

Thanks AB...