Gridcoin - What is the most profitable project to run?

How to pick projects from Boinc that give you the most Gridcoin ( GRC )

This is one of the most frequently asked questions in Gridcoin. Unlike Bitcoin ( BTC ) which uses a single focused, specific target (mining bitcoins), Gridcoin is based on using Boinc, which can contain multiple target projects. 

First and foremost is - Know your machine!

How detailed you get in your calculations all depends on how close to maximizing your Gridcoin returns you want to get. Some of the most important items to know about your machine when it comes to researching for Gridcoins are :

1. What Processor do you have? What are the processors capabilities?
2. Do you have a GPU ( Graphics Processor Unit ) and what are its capabilities?
3. Cooling - extremely important as using Boinc to process science WUs ( work units ) can produce a lot of heat. 
4. How much, the type and the capacity of your memory.
5. Do you know about overclocking, and do you know the limits of overclocking on your particular machine? ( This is a separate subject too big to be included in this article.)

The Second thing to consider is the Boinc Work Units and how your machine works with them.

There are a wide variety of different projects and work units from each of those projects in the Boinc world. Gridcoin is rewarded for doing those research projects. Gridcoin has a limited number of those projects that will give you credit called Whitelisted projects, which are maintained on the Gridcoin WIKI.

Gridcoin Wiki Whitelisted Projects

How to find the differences between Boinc Projects.

1. From the wiki page you can see each project has WUs that work on specific types of platforms, Windows, raspberry pi, Mac OS, Linux, Android, Free BSD, etc. In addition, you can see if and what GPU each project supports, Nvidia, AMD, or Intel. 
2. Each project often lists a sponsor and describes the goal. 
3. Find out specific information about your CPU and how it compares to other project participants CPUs. This can be a lot of work. Many of the projects in BOINC list individual machines and display processing characteristics about those machines. Asteroids@Home for example have This List of machines working on their project. From that list you can determine, roughly how well your CPU will do against how many other CPUs already working on that project.
4. Once you have selected a few projects based on how well your machine should do with them, I suggest that you open boinc, connect to a couple of those projects, then let them run. Let them run until they become stable and consistent. It may be a day, or even a couple days. If you have your gridcoin wallet set up, and your boinc running, then eventually you can see stable data graphed out in the Neural Network. To see an example of one individuals NN history, click here. You can look at your own information by taking this address - http://www.gridresearchcorp.com/gridcoin/?cpid_dashboard&CPID=    <<< put your CPID from your wallet behind the equals sign.
5. Eventually you will have a list of projects you have tested, and have data for the magnitude you were given, and the RAC that it took to get that magnitude. If you calculate the ratio of Magnitude/RAC for each project you have run on your machine, then you will get a rough idea, which project will give you the most Gridcoin over time, on your machine. 

The big but, if, or however to this is, when someone else researches the same project you do, your magnitude is reduced or increased, depending on how well their machine generates RAC. 

The Third thing to consider with Gridcoin, is which project has how much participation already in that project. 

This is very important if you are interested in gaining the maximum amount of Gridcoin for your boinc 

processing. The reason for this is, your contribution, or magnitude is rewarded, based on your percentage of the contribution to the project, versus what other gridcoin 'ers have contributed. 

Gridcoin whitelisted project leaderboard

On the chart from above, each whitelisted project is listed, along with columns for number of researchers, the Gridcoin Team RAC ( resent average credit ) and the AvgRAC ( average rac ). If you click the title in each column it allows you to list each project by whichever sorting your prefer, low to high, high to low.

Putting it all together

1. Have a stable machine - find out what you are working with.
2. Find out which boinc projects work best with your machine. *Note - Make sure that when you are deciding on my project, if it has both GPU and CPU WUs, decide which is best for your machine and use that option. More information can be found here about CPU vs GPU. 
3. Follow the work of other people on the projects that you work on, consider changing projects if it gets too populated by other researchers.

In conclusion, the simple answer to the question " Which Boinc projects should I run to earn Gridcoin ( GRC ) ? "   is. . . it depends. Unlike Bitcoin where there is only one target and the biggest variable is how much your electricity costs and how many ASIC processors you can run at the same time, Gridcoin is full of possible variables. 

One important thing to consider also. Why are you joining Gridcoin? Are you wanting to contribute to the science community by donating your spare computing power? Are you trying to set up a rig to gather as many Gridcoin as fast as you can to make big money?

Gridcoin was never intended as a method to generate money, it was created as a method to help compensate citizen scientists donating their spare resources, to help the common good, by solving complex problems through distributed computing. 

Cheers!!