Top Genome-crunchers 11-18 march 2001.

[Jorden]

Fred, I told Mark to go to HIGH only if he weren't using his PC for anything else. The same goes for WinME, don't set it to LOW if you plan to play a game. Best thing is even to kill G@H.

Although in Win9x/WinME the crunching only takes IDLE times of the CPU. So, even in a D3D game you can let it rip at low... it won't spoil much of your game, and neither will your crunch go bad

Jord.

[Rattledagger]

For Genome, the best is to hit PAUSE while in the genome-window, since it will pause execution next time it tries to print something to the display. As paused, it will use negligible memory & cpu-power. The only it still uses is nearly 50 MB swapfile.

If you kill it, you will as average lose half a sequence.

[Guyver]

Good tip Rattledagger...

I hadn't thought of that....

Hmmm... How many halves have I halved (lost) by having to have to ? (Close the window)

Sorry couldn't resist...

Guyver

[Guyver]

OK - 4 was overkill on the Dual processor, and 3 was overkill on the 1Ghz...

Production fell a long way...

To counter that, I've upped the FSB a point or three on the dual and the 1ghz.

BTW - Way to go RocketManX - You are the high flyer now, dude!

[-=Narcissus=-]

First of all, congrats to Mark on the pass...

I keep thinking that you need *a lot* of ram in order to run multiple client windows... I can't say that my productivity has increased (let alone double) since running 2 instances of the program.
I have 128mb of ram running on my c466.

Fred

[Seaspray]

I have been running two instances of G@h for the last few days and have noticed no increase in performance, if anything a decrease. Before I was getting <6 hours per 'gene'. Now it seems one instance runs as the 'primary' (for want of a better word). This seems to be about half the speed it was before. (say about 12 hours per unit). The second runs very slowly, if at all (up to 24 hours per unit).

The only advantage seems to me to be that when one instance is up or downloading, the other can be crunching. I guess this is most relevant when there is a delay in up or downloading, which has happened to me several times.

If I had to make a guess, I would say that overall my performance has gone down since running two instances, but this could be because I am using the computer more for other things.

I also find that G@h doesn't interfere with the running of other programs, including games, this is one of the reasons I like it better than SETi. However, genome production slows to a crawl when doing anything else.

How do you guys manage to run two instances without speed loss? Give me some tips!!

All times on a 1000Mhz Athlon with 128Mb Crucial Cas2.

Thanks
(spykey) - currently 18th!!

[Guyver]

256MB PC150 HSDRAM on the Ghz
256MB PC133 HSDRAM on the Dual 933
128MB PC133 (Crucial, CAS3) on each of the Linux Boxes (850 & 866).

The linux is more efficient, needing less memory. (less services, no X running, etc)

Guyver

[TomNuttall]

I also have a 1000mhz Athlon with 256mb memory.
I have been running 2 instances of G@H for the past few days and I thought I was running slower, so I tried an experiment.
With one instance running I timed the intervals between each 10% and it averaged 1min 40secs. That would make that particular unit take 8hrs and 20 minutes I then started another instance of G@H and timed the original again. I got an average of 3min 28 secs.
So I was losing 4 seconds extra, asuming the other G@H was taking 50% of the time away, if you get my meaning. I reckon that would have made each unit 8 hours and 40 mins.

So I foung that running 2 instances had a performance hit.

I will be going back to using only the one instance, unless someone convinces me that I am wrong.

Tom


[This message has been edited by TomNuttall (edited 24 March 2001).]

[Rattledagger]

Guyver, have you tried locking the affinity and running only two instances on the dual-machine? Maybe this would be faster than running 3 instances?

TomNuttall, on NT the default is that the foreground-application gets more cpu-time than background-applications... if you're not running a server-version...

[Guyver]

RD (Come on Dude, doesnt RattleDagger get to be a bit much to type all the time? ),

I've given it consideration, however, since there does appear to be some slack time in the processes (filter/ghclient), having the 3rd one running appears to have had very little impact.

I can try with just 2, and set the affinity, and see what happens...

Guyv (I even truncate my handle)

[Jorden]

OcUK, please step aside Coming through...

[Liquid Snake]

Hehe! I think we will probably pass DSL sometime soon. [H]ardOCP has formed a folding team, and they are only 8 days old, yet already in 13th place! DSL is scared, and moving their machines back to Folding

[rocketmanx]

MarkF-
It sucked having to give up the little battle we had going but I had better things to do I had to go to San Francisco for a Business convention the week of the 11th and on Wednesday slipped up to the Napa Valley with my Wife for some Uuuuhhhh.... relaxation? Yeah... Consequently I had to kill all my machines here at home while away. But I WILL catch back up. I just changed my Asus A7M266 machine from a 1gig to a 1.2 gig 266 FSB- it screams with genome. I am going to take some spare stuff plus a Gigabyte A7zx I have and use it with the 1 gig Athlon for Genome only- I couldn't use for much else as I'm out of monitors and will have to switch with other Genome only machine to transmit. My wife doesn't understand what I need 5 computers in one room for so a fifth monitor might be imposssible to explain.
Happy Crunching
Pete

------------------
Stuck in Indiana with a bug in my banana.....

[This message has been edited by rocketmanx (edited 25 March 2001).]

[Guyver]

Hey Rocketmanx - Ever considered a KVM switch? (Might help out for those systems that you only check out occasionaly) - Free up some space for additional systems....

What am I saying? You already outproduce me, but what the hey? It's all for a good cause.

Got my dual 933 now running @ 1008 (144 fsb - will try higher later) , the 1Ghz @ 1035 (138fsb), and the 650 is now at 904 (138) fsb)

Guyver

BTW - RD, it appears to be working with the single process per processor. Thx Dude.

[rocketmanx]

Yeah Guru,
I have one and am going to use it as that is my only 2 machines I I don't actually use. I could put together 3 more Dually machines if I had a Xeon compatiable case and 2 mid-towers- but I would have to stack them in my basement and start-up a backup generator
I may out produce you in Genome but only because you obviously still have a lot of machines devoted to SETI. I used to do all I could with 4 duallies and couldn't even come close to you. But lets keep pushing each other wiih the friendly competitions and we stnad a good chance a t being in the top 5 in Genome.
Pete