MacOSG: Folding@home statistics sites
Posted by Dave Merten 
Nov 12, 2007 at 1:45pm
By Susato of Team MacOS X
Whether you’re new to Folding@Home or a long term contributor, it’s always interesting to see how your folding points are progressing. Well, OK, it’s nearly irresistible! You can check your progress (and your friends’ progress) at several Folding statistics sites online.
This original stats site for Folding@Home is the data source for all the other stats pages. Teams can be searched by name or number, and each page of team stats links to the team’s website, a nice feature. Individual users can be searched by name (exact, or begins-with) to identify their team and output. Each user page shows the point count, the time and date of the last work unit submitted, and the number of CPU’s contributing for each individual within the last 7 and 60 days. The individual page also records the project numbers of all work units completed. You can even print out a certificate of points or units completed for your last milestone. One drawback of this site is that it is unavailable for around 15 minutes every hour during database updates.
If you like a little competition, this site will satisfy that urge with its predictions of “conquest” and “threat.” EOC Folding covers the top 2000 of nearly 40,000 active F@H teams. From the trend of each team’s progress, it predicts when your team will surpass rival teams ahead of you, or be overtaken by teams behind you. The excellent member search function in the left sidebar covers members of the top 800 or so teams. EOC stats shows its data as intuitive, easy to read line graphs. The display can be sorted by each column’s data (e.g. number of work units, points in last week etc.) by clicking on the column heading. Member names are color-coded by average daily output. The active member interval is considered one week; members failing to submit a work unit in this interval are “grayed out.”
This site specializes in comparing users inside the same team. Based on past performance it predicts users’ team and project ranking over the next week and month. You definitely get a sense of urgency if you see someone closing in fast. Thus you had better pick up the pace! The active member interval is between 8 and 9 weeks though a folding donor is grayed out if no units have been submitted in the past week. Kakaostats is a good place to see your folding output, update to update, going back two entire weeks. It’s a great tool to track new folders’ progress, and team members who might run into trouble during client updates and other changes.
Love graphs? This is the site for you, with performance graphs for individuals, teams and even the entire project. Daily and weekly points totals are kept for longer than any other Folding site. One fine point – the “Last update” time is based on Stanford’s actual last update time rather than a standard 3 hour interval, because Stanford deviates from its regular update schedule during network problems. [H]ard|Folding’s color chart displays team threat level from “safe” to “red alert!” and details on both Points and Work units. The “list by” function lets you browse statistics for several measures of performance and to view them as line, bar or pie graphs. With the “find member” function you can browse to a screen showing the member’s overall team rank, points, and work units, in a wide choice of graphical formats. Next comes the attack plan/threats list indicating whom you can overtake, who is threatening to take your spot, and predicted overtake dates. Clicking on a rival member name in either your attack plan or threats list brings up a member comparison chart listing both folders’ stats on the same page. The list of “new folders” on a team has ALL the team’s folders in reverse order of signing up. In short, the [H]ARD|OCP site features lots of eye candy and data overload for your ultimate stats cravings!
Fahinfo.org Project and Hardware Stats
This hardware-oriented page parses a database of Folding@Home work unit completion times and point values submitted by donors, along with details about the CPU on which the units were run. It’s intended to highlight which work units run most (or least) effectively on specific processors, and differences between the different computational cores (Tinker, Gromacs, Amber, etc.) on the same CPU type. As this is a donor driven database, the more data collected and added, the better. Click on the site stats and average scores to view the data gathered to date. The graphs/buyers guide displays head-to-head comparisons of Intel, AMD, and PowerPC processors, nice for planning ahead to your next computer purchase or build. Feel free to sign up for an account and add your project data, and while you are there, take the time to look up your currently running unit to see how well it is expected to run on your processor.
There you are – enough statistics to satisfy any Folding enthusiast! Any of these will give you a good idea of how fast your machines are folding, and satisfy those deep, dark competitive cravings. Let us know your favorite stats sites in the comments feature here, or at the Team MacOSX Folding Forum!
Good people and good fun in a good cause – check it out!
Team MacOSX home page
Team MacOSX International Forums
Folding@Home Project Home page
Email us: team.mac.osx at gmail dot com
Team MacOSX is one of several Mac-centric teams in the Folding@Home distributed computing project. Established in February 2002 by Sean Kennedy and Noah Johnson, it is now ranked 8th of over 60,000 Folding teams and is known for its high quality technical advice, excellent folding support software, friendly and inclusive atmosphere, and international membership.
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Dave Merten
Dave was one of the founding guides at ‘The Mining Company,’ now known as About.com, in February 1998. Dave was their ‘Focus on Mac Support’ guide. In 2004 he started ‘G5 Owners Support Group,’ and in 2005, renamed it ‘Mac Owners Support Group.’ In 2006, he started the ‘MacOSG Support Corner’ column here at Macsimum News.
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