How long should seti work on one unit?

[DeviousTrap]

I have recently signed up for Seti and Team Anandtech and I have a quick question. I was wondering how Seti@Home should take per WU on my P4 2.26 with RAMBUS. The main reason I'm asking is because it is taking approximatly 14 hours per WU.

Thank You, any help is appriciated.
~Eric

 

[paf077]

Hi Eric.
Glad to have you aboard!

your rig should average around 2:30-3:00 HRS/wu. Are you runing the screen saver version? the command line version is alot faster.
but no way should it take so long!

Give us more detail on your setup and i'm sure we'll get you up to speed!


Paf

 

[Baldy18]

This is just a guess but that pc should be doing WUs in or under 4 hours. Make sure that power saving options such as turning off the hard drive are turned off, turn off screen savers, lower the CAS rating of your RAM in the BIOS as low as it can go and stay stable, and use the command line client and not the graphical client.

 

[Evadman]

You should be right around 3 hors or so. You are probably running the GUI (screensaver) version which is why it is slow.

 

[deerslayer]

Originally posted by: Evadman
You should be right around 3 hors or so. You are probably running the GUI (screensaver) version which is why it is slow.

 

[Wolfie]

Again I do believe he is running the screensaver client. It's perty. But it doesn't help on the stats...

Computer89,
If you need help with installing the command line version I am sure a lot of people would be willing to help you...

Wolfie

 

[CyGoR]

But even when he Is using the screensaver, no way he would do 14hrs on a WU
I'm owning a PIV 2.0Ghz and slow DDR 266Mhz and a wu is completed in 3:30hrs average..
The screensaver version will use almost 50% cpu power for the nice graphics leaving the other
50% for the reasearch. But everyone will first install the screen version. So if you like them
very much, you could leave 'm installed a few days and when you get tired of it, just install the
CMD-client
What OS-version do you use? Not that its a big different on such a fast pc..

My estimate is that your rig will be able to score times lower then 3hrs. Thanks to the
super duper fast Rambus!
/me jelous...

 

[Factor5]

Originally posted by: LyNx01

Originally posted by: Evadman
You should be right around 3 hors or so. You are probably running the GUI (screensaver) version which is why it is slow.

 

[Confused]

Hi Eric,


It does seem as if you are using the GUI (screensaver) client. However nice and pretty this is, it is much slower than the Command Line client. The graphics can on some computers use as much as 50-70% of your CPU time, time which could be better used for doing the science bit. Even with the GUI totally optimised (never show graphics, hard drive set to not spin down) it's still about 25% slower than the CLI!


For instructions on how to set up the CLI, along with one of it's most popular companions, SetiDriver, take a look here


Using the CLI client should drop your times down to about 3-3.5hrs


Confused

 

[Adul]

well if you areusing the GUI let us know we will help you use the command line, seti driver, seti hide and all the other fun tools

 

[DeviousTrap]

Ok I am using the GUI version so I guess it is time to go and try the command line version. I'll tell you how it goes soon.

BTW: Specs:
p4 2.26
768 RAMBUS PC1066
Gigabyte 8IHXP
WD 80 SE Harddrive.
Oh, and a GF4 TI4200
Edit: Forgot Windows XP PRO

Thank You
~Eric

 

[CyGoR]

Wow! That's a very nice rig your owning!!!
Should perform very well with Seti! Especially the 533Mhz FSB really speeds things up..

 

[DeviousTrap]

Just set it up and everything works perfectly. The part I am inpressed by however, is that Seti Driver displays that the estimated total time for a work unit is 2 hours and 23 minutes So, are there any interesting Add-ons I should try other than Seti Driver and SetiSpy?

BTW, Confused thank you for your link as it explained everything.

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: computer89
Just set it up and everything works perfectly. The part I am inpressed by however, is that Seti Driver displays that the estimated total time for a work unit is 2 hours and 23 minutes So, are there any interesting Add-ons I should try other than Seti Driver and SetiSpy.

BTW, Confused thank you for your link as it explained everything.

Excellent time.. glad to see you got it running right.. that certainly IS right. even a little fast!
good work!

 

[Confused]

Originally posted by: computer89
Just set it up and everything works perfectly. The part I am inpressed by however, is that Seti Driver displays that the estimated total time for a work unit is 2 hours and 23 minutes So, are there any interesting Add-ons I should try other than Seti Driver and SetiSpy?

BTW, Confused thank you for your link as it explained everything.

The estimated time is not accurate until it reaches about 25-30% through the Work Unit (WU).

Confused

 

[DeviousTrap]

Originally posted by: Confused

Originally posted by: computer89
Just set it up and everything works perfectly. The part I am inpressed by however, is that Seti Driver displays that the estimated total time for a work unit is 2 hours and 23 minutes So, are there any interesting Add-ons I should try other than Seti Driver and SetiSpy?

BTW, Confused thank you for your link as it explained everything.

The estimated time is not accurate until it reaches about 25-30% through the Work Unit (WU).

Confused

It is at 55.36% now. It has been working for a little over an hour, but i just got to posting it.

 

[CyGoR]

:Q:Q:Q

I thought it was fast, but This fast???
That Rambus is really doing it's job right for the PIV!!!
My brother has a PIV 2.53Ghz with DDR and it takes about 3+ hrs / wu..

Nice add to the TeAm! Computer89!

 

[Jeff7]

I was using the screensaver version, and I did WU's in about maybe 4-5hrs on an XP 1900. Important thing is to have the Blank Screen option enabled, after some amount of time, preferably 2 min or less.

 

[Smoke]

Are these guys giving you enough help?

Good work, TeAm!



And just for clarification to those who like to keep up with this sort of thing:

"computer89" on the AT Forums = "Eric" on TeAm AnandTech SETI

oops ^

 

[DeviousTrap]

Originally posted by: Smokeball
Are these guys giving you enough help?

Good work, TeAm!



And just for clarification to those who like to keep up with this sort of thing:

"computer98" on the AT Forums = "Eric" on TeAm AnandTech SETI

Thank you very much guys and now I have 4 computers for with my Seti@Home account. And btw smokeball, its computer89.

 

[DeviousTrap]

After looking at some of the addons I found a couple utilites that create RAM drives. Im now wondering what kind of advantage do you get when you use a RAM drive. Also, since I dont use all of my 768 Megs of RAM I'm wordering whether Seti@Home could use more than 15 Megs of RAM which would increase its speed even more?

Thank You
~Eric

 

[CyGoR]

Here is a quik warning for something I don't know very much about.
I once thought the same you do now, and created a Ram drive for like 10MB.
I installed the client, setidriver and a couple of wu's. It will of course, in addition use the 15MB for usual memory it requires.
But, the problem I had that the results were not accepted.. And the times were even higher than running from HD.
Though I'm not sure if it was my computer causing that.
You could try ofcourse, I mean, if it only takes a few ours
Anyway, the client doesn't write much data to your hd when it crunches, so it might speed up for a few seconds but really not much.
And when the power goes down, or the computer restarts, the Ramdrive will be emptied..

Good luck experimenting!

 

[Confused]

As CyGoR said, there are no real advantages to running Seti in a RAM drive. The client itself writes rarely to the hard drive, that is by no means the bottleneck here.

The main problem comes from the fact that if your computer crashes/loses power, then all the progress of the WU is lost. Yeah, some RAM drives write data to HDD every now and then, but then wasn't the point of the RAM drive to stop it accessing the hard drive? Kinda a Catch 22 here!

As for speed/WU time, it should be the same, maybe a little slower, due to the RAM now being used for 2 things rather than one.

That's some VERY nice times there on that P4 My P4 2.4B@2.88 with DDR does WUs in about 2:30


Confused

 

[Assimilator1]

Computer89
Welcome to The team & The search

Damn fast PC you have!:Q

 

[JWMiddleton]

Welcome computer89, great to have you on the TeAm!!

Nice rig!