Originally posted by: Thump553
I'm amazed the difference hardware makes. I have 4 machines (24/7/365) running F@H, sometimes up to six machines, but all are ancient by today's standards-avereage machine age is probably four years. Only one machine is even dual core and I had to limit F@H to one core there because it slowed me down too much. I average 400-650 points a day, MadMurph-the next user to blow by me-is well over 10,000 per day.
Here's the fodder to support your point:
My original SMP cruncher was an Asus P5B Deluxe, C2D E6400, 2gb DDR2800, X1950Pro, stock settings. It would crunch a standard 5mb packet in 34 hours, or about 20min/unit.
This same machine, overclocked to 3.0g, HyperX DDR2 800, 23.5 hours, 14.1min/unit.
Some others:
Asus P5N-E Sli, E6750, 2gb DDR2 800, overclocked to 3.1, 23.3 hours, 14min/unit.
Asus Blitz Formula (HTPC), Q6600, HyperX DDR2 800, X2600Pro, overclocked to 2.8g, 17.5 hours, 10.5 min/unit
Asus Blitz Formula, Q6600, Dominator DDR2 8500, X1950Pro, overclocked to 3.6g, 12.6 hours, 7.5 min/unit.
Finally:
I've got two (of the late great "overclockers") Pentium D805's, on ECS throw-aways, pushed to 3.2g with DDR400, they each take just over 53 hours @ 32 min/unit!!!
These are all rock stable, but as
Insidious pointed out ^^^ the software does have flaws that make things "hiccup" every now and then, for no apparent reason, though apparently sometimes on purpose. At stock timings, this would probably be to no ill effect, but for these rigs, it usually causes a restart. For the two 805's, they will miss the work unit deadline. However,
Insidious should go easy on the Stanford boys, since their project performs remarkably well in comparison to other software authors (MicroBlunder) that have huge staffs, billions of dollars, years of research, yet still can't seem to produce a piece of software (ME II) with a fraction of the stability and functionality the Stanford team has achieved.