AMD and Seti@home

[alphateam]

I've got a friend who just got an AMD Athalon 900 and it takes him about 20 hours to do one WU. I've got a dual celeron 433 and i'm only using it on one processer and it takes me about 12-13 hours. He is running the windows client and I'm using the text client, but still I didn't run that slow when I was using the windows client.

What client should he run? Is there a special one for AMD processers?

thanks
Alpha

 

[Guest]

If he has the latest version of seti@home. (vers 3.0 i believe) they changed the algorithm to better support the amd processors, With the older version of seti it was taking me about 24 hours per work unit on my athlon "classic" 550. after the new version of seti my work units average about 6-9 hpwu, but i do occasionally get one that takes 12-30 hours.

So have you friend check to make sure he has the latest version installed.

 

[alphateam]

Ya he just installed it yesterday. And I think that version was 3.03. And that is the newest version. He has only completed 2 WU, but he has an average of around 20 hours.

 

[Kodiak]

the newer versions are better optimized, but they usually also have more science to process too, so they actually (in my experience) tend to be slower than older ones...
plus the GUI really slows it down...

 

[alphateam]

It just seem that my celerons are half the speen and they almost do it twice as fast... is the text client THAT much better?

 

[Kodiak]

50% difference seems to be a regular sight among users who've switched between GUI & text-only. Plus, you may gain some performance by switching OS from Win9x/ME to Win2k or Linux...

 

[FUGGER]

WOOT AMD =) HEHE

Tell your friend RAM is cheap and upgrade from his dismal 16mb chip.

Hard to believe a celeron out performs Athlon at seti. has to be RAM/disk cache issue. Does his machine do alot of drive access while running seti? how old is his hard drive?

 

[Kodiak]

According to SETI statistics, average Athlon return is around 5 hrs. I don't know how much that info is worth, it probably has quite a margin of error -- but 20hrs is nevertheless way too much

 

[alphateam]

He just built the system. He has like 256MB of ram 30GB HDD.
So I don't know what the heck his problem is...
thanks for the help though guys

 

[Lowlypawn]

Can some one tell me how to switch my seti 3.03 from the windows98 one to the text only?
Will it still work as a screen saver?
Thx

 

[jclw]

The text client is WAY faster.

No it won't work as a screen saver. Use power management to turn off your screen and save $$$ on your hydro bill.

If you run the text client try using SETIdriver ( http://home.sprintmail.com/~obermd/SETIDriver/ ) to run it and SETIspy ( http://pages.tca.net/roelof/setispy/ ) to monitor it.

- JW

 

[lrmv]

So did anyone of you find E.T. yet?

 

[Tormented]

I though I did, but that was that smilley...
I get 7 hrs on my p3-500 katamai ... (sloooooow)



<b>-----------------------</b>
-<font color=red><b>R.K.</b></font color=red>

 

[Kodiak]

just installed seti on my brand new Tbird 1100, I'm running it as we speak in a text client... I finished 4% in about 8 minutes, so I figure about three, four hours for the whole run, I'll keep you guys posted.

You can't easily run the text version as a screen saver (without messing around with 3rd party utilities and whatnot).
You can just download it from Seti@home, instead of downloading the windows version with gui, select the Unix text version, and then find one that's for your machine, probably something like
i386-winnt-commandline.exe
or something... good luck

 

[Kodiak]

ok, I'm new to the text clint business, two questions:
1) why would I need the "driver", the text version works fine by itself, does it not?
2) why do I need setiSPY, when I call the text client with -verbose option, I get all I need to know, i.e. what's it doing and what percentage its at...

thanx!

 

[Kodiak]

also, how do I stop the text client? I don't wanna just ctrl-break it, I don't know if I'll loose the data...

 

[Kodiak]

Anybody? I gotta stop that thing!

 

[necroscope]

1) why would I need the "driver", the text version works fine by itself, does it not?
SETI Driver is a program that "cache's" work units. If the SETI server goes down you can still keep going. Yes it will work fine by itself.

2) why do I need setiSPY, when I call the text client with -verbose option, I get all I need to know, i.e. what's it doing and what percentage its at...
You don't need it. SETI Driver and SETI Spy both have graphical percentage bars however.

also, how do I stop the text client? I don't wanna just ctrl-break it, I don't know if I'll loose the data...
Just exit it by clicking on the x, or alt-f4. No you won't loose any data.

The reason why his computer is taking so long is probably because he the new seti version, and you have the old one. The new version runs slower to get more science and because they can't handle all the people sending them work units back so quick.

 

[Bubba]

I have a Duron 600 @ 950 and 256MB of Crucial ram on an A7V.
I just downloaded Seti last night to see what everyone was talking about.
I let it run all night.
In 7.5 hours I only completed 20% of 1 WU. This just doesn't seem right. What's going on?

 

[Guest]

Nothing is going wrong Bubba. My Duron 650@850 (thanx again for that advice Bubba ) takes 41hrs and 46 mins to complete one work unit. So I read all the postings above and thought: Uh, what's wrong with my system?

So I also installed Seti 3.03 with GUI on my other Duron 650@650... I went REALLY fast until it hit about 5%, then it went just as slow as my Duron 850. So I guess Duron/Tbirds will take 30 to 40 hours to complete a WU when using the newest Seti@home in GUI version. The statistics on the Seti@home pages are of the old versions which can be completed in 2 hours with the current hadrware.

Keep it cool!

 

[Guest]

I have an AMD 750 (not o/c yet)on a Asus A7V with 128MB of RAM. I run the i386-winnt-cmdline.exe v3.0 on Win98 and get on average 5.78 hrs per WU.

 

[Kodiak]

ok, updated results: I'm running the newest text version, 3.03, which should have all the same science as the 3.03 version of the GUI. I complete in about 6 hours on Athlon 1.1Ghz in WinME command box (meaning full OS is ticking in the background and 256MB RAM. I thought it would only take 3-4 hours, but I forgot that it does the first part faster then the last part. 6-7 hours steadily across 6 units now though (100 hours on my previous K6-233, no L2 Cache, 64MB RAM

necroscope: Thanx for the explanations!

 

[jclw]

That sounds about right.

TBird-900: 5hrs
PIII-600: 6.5hrs
Cel-500: about 10-12hrs <-this is a laptop so it's hard to tell
486-100: 150hrs

It would be great if Intel and AMD would donate some time and write some optimized code. If they'd do it for FlaskMPEG benchmarking you'd think they might do it for a good cause. SETI@Home in itself would be an interesting benchmark but you'd have to average it out over 50 workunits or so.

BTW: seems to run a little faster in NT then Win9x.

- JW

 

[novice]

Hey, What does that program do? Does it do any good to your computer? Can anyone please explain it to me? Thanks!

 

[Guest]

I don't know where the difference is, but my duron 650 (actually still running AT 650mhz) on a DFI AK76sc motherboard and 128mb ram does a packet using the windows 3.03 client in 8 hours and 20 minutes.

deviating only slightly each packet.