I want to go faster in (SETI) - 2

[Swing]

I must be doing something very wrong. I have a PIII 600E overclocked to 800MHz and 256MB of RAM at 133MHz CAS2.

It takes between 6.5 and 7.5 hours to finish a WU. I have SETI@home version 2.04 running in the background. Nothing else is running except Rain and BlackIce, both of which use almost no resources.

My motherboard is an ASUS P3V4X (latest VIA chipset) with the latest BIOS revision.

Any suggestions to help me speed this up? Command lines? I am new to this forum.

Thank you.



[This message has been edited by Swing (edited 22 June 2000).]

[Brian R.]

If you've optimized the memory settings in your BIOS and are using the most recent BIOS version, that's probably as good as your going to get.

My PIII 600 Klamath at 672 is quite a bit faster than my PIII 650E at 806 MHz. Apparently has to do with the 256 vs 512 KB cache sizes.

Some versions of SETI run better for some people than others. Try the varions versions over 3 or 4 WUs and see what happens.

Oh yes, there is hope in modification. Rags has an incredibly fast coppermine (WUs in ~2 hours). He is not inclined to reveal his method for optimizing his computer. Maybe someday he will and we may be able to take advantage of his experience. I haven't a clue.

[This message has been edited by Brian R. (edited 22 June 2000).]

[MegaManX4]

Oh yeah, a coppermine which only needs 2hrs per WU. It aint possible....

Mega

[Brian R.]

I have seen where he states he has run a 550E at 165 MHz fsb (908). This is outside my experience.

[Swing]

Thank you for the replies. I guess I'm stuck with slow computations. If SETI@home code is optimized for 512K L-2 cache, I wish the code could be written for 256K, as most of small computers will end up with this amount.

I doubt that Intel or AMD are going to give us back that much L-2 unless we pay a premium. Unfortunately, most small office and home computer programs do not require larger L-2 cache.

Anyone have a cheap Coppermine Xeon?

[Manex]

Swing, the code isn't optimized for a 512KB cache. The problem is that the data sets can approach 1MB according to the folks over at SETI@Home. They say that SETI runs fastest (clock for clock) on machines where the entire data set can fit into the L2 or L3 cache. So, you ideally need at least 1MB of L2 or L3 cache to get the best relative performance/MHz...

Eric

[Rattledagger]

Swing, try the cmd-line.
The graphic version is for most people slower.
Another thing, the cmd-line reports cpu-time, while the graphic-version reports the time it have been running. So it's very easy to get very long times with the graphic version.

[Rags]

Mega,

Mine does WU's between 2 and 3 hrs. Get yer FSB high, load into win2k, or win98 with the original GUI, run in background the whole time, disable the screen saver under display properties, disable unnecessary fonts/ drivers/ utilities. All of these useless things that load are put into your l1/l2 and add time to your WU's. FSB plays a mighty big role in WU times. Believe me you can do it if you tweak enough. I don't know what the exact thing I did to get my WU's down so well, but I kept tinkering and tinkering, and so far my wu's are flying by. Just so you know, I have a new install of win2k I have tried crunching with, and my WU's are around 5 hrs without the tweaking.

Rags



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[paulcs]

Swing, just as a point of reference, it takes me between 4:55 and 5:25 to process a WU. I'm using the command line version 2.0 with a PIII 600E @ 800 MHz, Asus P3V4X, and 256 MB CL2-rated PC133 RAM (timings set by SPD to 2-2-2).

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Brian R.]

Rags - I noticed for a while, you were running WUs a little over an hour per WU. Did you try anything differently then? What programs are necessary to keep running in task manager? I would like to delete stuff, but there is so much crap going on...

Any advice?

[Rags]

I dunno about the times that were around 1 hr or so, maybe I just got a string of easy WU's. Just try disabling stuff out of your startup, use msconfig to select the stuff you don't want to use in win98. This way it's easy to turn it back on when you find out you don't really want to disable it.

Rags



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Partnership for an idiot free America

[Maggi]

Excellent response Rags !

I really thought Mega-Phone would get his head shaved because of his (pretty annoying) statement ...

Anyway, my personal fastest WU (that I recognized) was 360 seconds ...
and that was on my former Cel333@500 !!!

So there are very vast differences in crunching times in each single WU.

Could you do me a favor, Rags ?
Boot into safe mode and try to crunch there ... I bet your times will be even lower, if it does run.
At least the cmd version runs flawless, don't know about the old GUI version though.



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Cheers,
Maggi

Despite my nickname causing confusion, I am not female ...

Celeron 566 @ 952MHz
Asus P2B-S @ 112MHz FSB
2x 128MB olden PC100 SDRAM
G400 32MB DH Vanilla @ 150.8/201.0MHz core/mem

[Maggi]

Heck !

What's your prob, Swing ?

You're on rank #20 in the lkist of Fastest seti@murcers Jun 15-22 ...

I know what you mean though ... gotta go faster no matter how fast you already are.



Cheers,
Maggi

[MegaManX4]

Hehe, my head is shaved Maggi on the left and the right side.

Thanks for the response Rags. Sorry for my "angry" post, it wasn't meant as Maggi understood it . If you say it runs so, than I believe it.
The said thing is that my good ol' K7M doesn't go over 112Mhz FSB stable. Of course I tried it with that setting, but it wasn't much faster (~10min). Also it seamed that games run slower with 7x112 than 8x100.
Probably the DDR-SDRAM will do it in the future.

Mega

[Maggi]

No prob Mega ...

but you must admit it sounded offensive, didn't it ?