Topic: SETI Thread

[The Postman]

In other news, I think we are having an outbreak of 403 errors (can't upload). I can download fine but can't upload(yes I know it is Tuesday but it should be fine by now).

[Nemesis]

On the other hand the heat is over powering my air conditioner and the just repaired machine is acting up.  I hope its just the heat.  If it is just the heat it will be up as soon as temperatures drop.

Finally the 4th machine is back up.  It didn't function properly with lower temperatures so on a whim I plugged the power into a power bar rather than the UPS and its stable again.  The odd thing is that the power bar is plugged into the same UPS.  I might just have a bad socket on the UPS.

I'll run it overnight with the stock client before updating to the enhanced Linux client.   I should be heading back up past 1000 RAC barring down time due to excessive heat or laptop use .

[Nemesis]

Well I guess it is time to start the "friendly" jibes...

Still waiting for your "push" Postman 

I should have my new machine on Friday...

3.2 Ghz... DDR2 memory... MMMMMM  fast!


GE-Raven

Raven, My RAC has been in first for a while now. If you can tear your self away from Mrs. Raven and Baby raven, you might want to kick start some of your machines

Now that my 4th machine is back on line I've joined you in out running Ravens RAC.

1) The Postman          431,460.65      1,320.15      United States
2) IKV Nemesis           287,965.78        948.16               Canada
3) Raven                  1,822,992.10        944.91      United States

RAC is still rising again.  I expect to pass 1,100 I just don't know by how much.

[Tus-XC]

finally got my machines back up, summer tends to lead to much stuff getting packed in the storage room... to include my rig.  now to wait for my rac to climb back up...

[Nemesis]

Welcome back.  See you soon in the top 5?  Higher?

[Tus-XC]

o higher of course, need to break my last max rac

[Nemesis]

o higher of course, need to break my last max rac

Good thing I'm not planning on resting on my laurels then. 

[Tus-XC]

slight rac drop last night, spent 4 hours tweaking my computers performance.  I managed to bring the proc up to 3.44 from 3.2 and dropped my timings on my memory to 2-2-2-5.  basically gave me a 10-15% performance boost on my system performance.  from the looks of that for seti it has basically cut an average of 1 hour off of all my work. so now to see where that gets me on the rac

[The Postman]

You guys are going to make me go broke. If you keep this up, I am going to have to up grade my cpu's and ram. It is a good thing I didn't take thes things to the wall on the first build.

[Tus-XC]

you won't like me in feberuary.... i'm upgrading and from the looks of it i'll have a quad core sitting in my rig

[Nemesis]

you won't like me in feberuary.... i'm upgrading and from the looks of it i'll have a quad core sitting in my rig

I'm watching the AMD 4x4 in case I feel like upgrading my ancient dual Athlons (I'd love to do that with dual quad cores ).  I'm sorely tempted to upgrade my gaming machine to the Athlon 64 5000+ dual core but will wait a month or so to decide.  There are rumours that AMD has released the 5200+ without announcing it so maybe some price adjustments are around the corner.

I have a couple of experiments in mind for this weekend that just possibly will up my RAC a little.  Every little bit helps.

[Tus-XC]

might go 4x4 though it depends on intel.  The conroe (core 2 duo) is beating the pants of the amd procs right now.  now i know that 4x4 is supposed to out do it (and it should... especially w/ 2 top end amd chips... else that would be some stupid marketing)  current timelines have intel releasing a quad core come dec/jan time frame.  If that beats the 4x4 in benchmarks i'll be going intel.  but in 6 months alot can happen (and considering i'll have 5k to put into a rig, top end is what i'll be aiming for) so we will see.

[Nemesis]

I'm waiting to see Conroe results on retail motherboards (its also not available locally anyhow yet).  Its one thing to get great test results on motherboards chosen and provided by Intel another to do it in the real world.  I expect good results but wonder if they will live up to the Intel configured models.  Especially the memory controller as it (I believe) was responsible (due to low latency) for a good part of the performance boost.  I believe that older chips will fit in a Conroe board, I wonder how their performance will be affected by the low latency memory controller?  Could be a significant performance boost.

As to Intel 4 core they have 2 problems as I see it.  First it is 2 dual core chips repackaged into one chip not fabricated as one chip.  I have to wonder how that will work out as when they did the same with the early dual core chips they ran very hot.  The second is memory bandwith Intel hasn't substantially improved that and increasing demand 2 fold could be an issue that could substantially impact potential performance.  AMD has a higher memory bandwidth ceiling that quad core will not likely hit (part of the reason for DDR2 for AMD). 

The 4x4 I have yet to see an absolutely clear definition of.  Whether the 2 chips share one memory bank or separate in a NUMA configuration is unclear so is what chips it will work with, X2?  FX?  some new designation?

[Tus-XC]

actually nem, the benches for conroe have been out for quite sometime, and they weren't intel built systems.  go check out toms hardware and see for yourself .  i also agree w/ the intel quad core, but thats how intel has always worked, they'll start by slapping 2 chips together then follow up by making it on one die.   so i will wait for the benches to see.  I will go w/ whoever gives me the most bang for my buck .

[Nemesis]

actually nem, the benches for conroe have been out for quite sometime, and they weren't intel built systems.  go check out toms hardware and see for yourself .  i also agree w/ the intel quad core, but thats how intel has always worked, they'll start by slapping 2 chips together then follow up by making it on one die.   so i will wait for the benches to see.  I will go w/ whoever gives me the most bang for my buck .

The benchmarks I have seen have all been from the NDA time frame with machines Intel provided.  Which is why I specified retail motherboards.  I want to see what results I would get if I bought and built a computer with that motherboard.

Toms Hardware (IMO) says good things about whoever gives the higher ad revenues which is why I stopped going to that site. 

[The Postman]

.

[Nemesis]

I hope it is an accident but The Postman is not showing up on the team.

SETI@home member since   4 Jan 2003
Country   United States
Total credit   443,450.01
Recent average credit   1,547.38
SETI@home classic workunits   14,951
SETI@home classic CPU time   71,949 hours
Team   None

[Nemesis]

I've read through the Conroe links you sent me Tus.  Quite interesting.  Thanks again.

The review pointing out that the memory controller is not new but the enhanced latency is due to the CPU prefetch changes kills my speculation that older chips would get a performance boost from the newer motherboards though unfortunately.

Finally the Core2Duo is starting to show locally as well which is good (at least as special orders).  I think for SETI I'd want the 2x2MB L2 myself which means buying toward the high end, which I tend to do anyhow.

On the motherboards I would not go for the ATi Crossfire based ones as Intel pulled the license from ATi after the AMD/ATi merger and the Crossfire on Intel is going away so significant driver debugging there is likely to be lacking.  On the otherhand with Intel opening up the source for their own onboard video and WiFi (and possibly other features) for Linux Intel mother boards are looking very good to me.  Hopefully AMD/ATi and nVidea will be under enough pressure from this to open their own as well so Linux video performance (and WiFi though that doesn't interest me the same) will improve.

[The Postman]

I hope it is an accident but The Postman is not showing up on the team.

SETI@home member since   4 Jan 2003
Country   United States
Total credit   443,450.01
Recent average credit   1,547.38
SETI@home classic workunits   14,951
SETI@home classic CPU time   71,949 hours
Team   None

It was not an accident but I didn't do it either. Somebody got access to my account through the work computers and trashed my account. I am allowed to use them so long as I leave full access in case Seti interferes with their normal operation. My general preferences are now messed up and I don't remember what they should be. I have also been banned from the Seti/boinc boards for a post I didn't even make. For the short term I have been allowed to password protect my accounts but I may wind up losing 3 of my faster machines over this.

[Nemesis]

I hope it is an accident but The Postman is not showing up on the team.

SETI@home member since   4 Jan 2003
Country   United States
Total credit   443,450.01
Recent average credit   1,547.38
SETI@home classic workunits   14,951
SETI@home classic CPU time   71,949 hours
Team   None

It was not an accident but I didn't do it either. Somebody got access to my account through the work computers and trashed my account. I am allowed to use them so long as I leave full access in case Seti interferes with their normal operation. My general preferences are now messed up and I don't remember what they should be. I have also been banned from the Seti/boinc boards for a post I didn't even make. For the short term I have been allowed to password protect my accounts but I may wind up losing 3 of my faster machines over this.

Some people just have to be twits and cause trouble.