strange seti oddness... <update>under performing p4?</update>

[manwithplan]

hey guys,

im having a few wee niggles with seti at the moment and wondered if you could shed any light on them...

a) my stats havent been updated on the main set page or smokeballs stats page for about a day or so but my setilog.csv file shows me as having 10 more wus completed than the stats show...

I have been playing with what queue im using a wee bit (switched between orangekids q and the main team queue) but have now gone back to getting wus direct from berkely.

b) dad just got a new rig which i dutifully installed seti on straight away unfortunately it doesnt seem to be crunching as quick as id expect. its a p4 2.53 with 512 rdram but onyl seems to crunch as fast as my xp1800 512 ddr rig, is this about right or is something amiss?

thanks everyone
c.

<update>
Ive got the queue niggles sorted now (thanks smokeball ) but my dads new p4 is still doing wu's only about maybe 15mins quicker than my xp1800 rig. I know that clock for clock the xp will crunch quicker than a p4 but for a full 1ghz more clock and having rambus i woulda expected a bit more than 15 mins advantage, any suggestions guys?

thanks again
c.
</update>

 

[Wiz]

p4 2.53 with 512 rdram but onyl seems to crunch as fast as my xp1800 512 ddr rig,


heheheh... you just hit it on the head - the AMD chips are grossly under rated

 

[manwithplan]

theres really that little a difference in times for the respective speeds, amazing!

 

[MoFunk]

That's about right. I am no intel expert but the 1.8's I have at work use 100x18@1800mhz.....the 100 FSB is what slows them down! I do not know about those intels, but that is the first thing I would check. About the stats, sometimes you have to just wait them out because you never know when there are little issues with berkely.

 

[manwithplan]

ta guys, i remember reading that seti loves high mem bandwidth which is why i assumed the p4 would be blistering (its one of the 533 fsb models)

 

[Smoke]

Mucman's Queue

If you will look closely you will see that you have 19 WUs waiting to be submitted to Berkeley.

manwithplan jSeti Stats Page

 

[titanmiller]

I love the title.

 

[manwithplan]

cheers smokeball, that clears it up nicely

 

[Assimilator1]

Re WU times ,hmm ,that P4 should hose the XP1800 ,especially seeing as it has RDRAM. ,I know MHz 4 MHz the XP is way faster but not that much faster!

Add something like 'P4 WU times........' in your thread title & I'm sure you'll get some P4 owners piping up

 

[manwithplan]

thanks assim, updates now in my first post!

 

[OhioDude]

Wouldn't RDRAM actually hinder SETI performance when compared to DDR because of its higher latency?



Just a thought. I'm probably just talking out of me arse...

 

[Rattledagger]

Well, I've resently upgraded to 2400+ and this is performing like an 1.6 GHz in seti.... so AMD isn't much better...

 

[CraigRT]

it's normal.... P4's really do suck compared to AMD's, clock for clock.

my XP1800 was doing well under 4 hour WU's and my P4 is like closer to 3 hours even and it's almost 1.5GHz faster! that's the speed of the XP1800 itself!! :Q

I am gonna go back to AMD soon for my main rig and swap out my P4 to my other system. I miss AMD.

 

[RaySun2Be]

Considering some of the fastest WU times have been turned in by P4s lately, I don't think they suck that bad at SETI.

Have you gone through the basics? Any ScreenSavers being used? What other processes are running? Any PowerSaving options set? How heavily is the PC being used for other things? Any print manager software running (some of the HP combo unit managers really suck up resources), any file sharing apps loaded that may have also loaded spyware and adware programs? ie Kazaa?

 

[Smoke]

2003 Apr 16 12:56pm 7.264,17.23 0.419 Smoke #9 Epox EP-8RDA 2400XP 2:19

2003 Apr 16 03:15pm 15.485,17.15 0.419 Smoke #9 Epox EP-8RDA 2400XP 2:19

2003 Apr 16 05:34pm 19.059,17.15 0.419 Smoke #9 Epox EP-8RDA 2400XP 2:19

2003 Apr 16 07:53pm 18.782,17.15 0.419 Smoke #9 Epox EP-8RDA 2400XP 2:19

2003 Apr 16 10:12pm 22.745,17.15 0.419 Smoke #9 Epox EP-8RDA 2400XP 2:19

2003 Apr 17 12:42am 24.65,25.69 0.395 Smoke #9 Epox EP-8RDA 2400XP 2:28

2003 Apr 17 03:01am 24.319,17.15 0.419 Smoke #9 Epox EP-8RDA 2400XP 2:19

2003 Apr 17 05:19am 16.651,17.15 0.419 Smoke #9 Epox EP-8RDA 2400XP 2:19

2003 Apr 17 07:39am 16.539,17.15 0.419 Smoke #9 Epox EP-8RDA 2400XP 2:19

I don't think you can get a P4 1.6GHz to match the WU times that my 2400+ XP above is putting out.

 

[Wiz]

Yes, I agree with the general sentiment here.

For instance: How many AMD systems does it take to match a top end P4 in seti?

Cost of a AMD 1700+ "Tbred b" = about $50.00
Many of us here have that cpu and are putting out WU's in 2.0 - 2.5 hours per

Cost of a Pentium 4 2.4GHz 533MHz that maybe you can overclock to the point of getting the same WU's = $150.00

Cost of 2 AMD crunchers that could produce WU's in 1.0 - 1.25 hrs combined = less money than one P4 3 ghz that can do WU's in 1.5 hrs

**********************************************************

If you want a single machine that can do the fastest WU's currently then you should spend the extra money and build a P4 3ghz.

**********************************************************

That is, until AMD comes out with it's next big thing, whenever that is -

The performance gain of the highest end Intel box just isn't worth the cost IMHO.

 

[Assimilator1]

Going back OnT ,surely a P4 2.53GHz should be faster than an XP1800?

OD
P4's work best with RDRAM (except maybe dual channel DDR or very high OCed DDR) ,its down to pure bandwidth ,this has been shown in SETI too as well as other apps.

 

[manwithplan]

at the mo im going by the times in setiDriver, smokekeball; are those reulst from your setilog or a different prog? ive looked through my results and cant find and actual times for each wu completed.

 

[Spacehead]

Originally posted by: manwithplan
at the mo im going by the times in setiDriver, smokekeball; are those reulst from your setilog or a different prog? ive looked through my results and cant find and actual times for each wu completed.

SETI Spy works nicely with SETI Driver & keeps a log with WU times, among other things.
SETI Watch is a great program for keeping track of WU times & averages for all computers on your network.
Both are available on the S@H add-ons page for Windows.

The times in Smokeball's post are from his SETI Queue i'd bet.

 

[Assimilator1]

yes they are

manwithplan
setilog has the WU times in seconds ,I think the column is just labelled 'cpu time'

 

[mechBgon]

Perhaps your dad's rig has some antivirus software slowing it down? Not that I'm suggesting you remove it, but it's nice to get to the bottom of things