Hey, Bok, Keep crankin'

[Paratima]

I just built myself a major new box for my photo business:
Athlon 64 X2 6000!
4 GB RAM
dual Seagate 250 GB SATA 7200 drives
etc, etc.
Well, obviously, it also makes a great cruncher. So, I need someone else who runs an Athlon 64 X2 with Windoze XP 32 bit. That's so I get credit with that funny homogeneous redundancy thing they do. That's you, baby! You process mine and I'll process yours.

(OK, it's a wee bit more than I need for Photoshop, but hey... ) :whistle:

[Digital Parasite]

What OS are you running with that machine? Only 64bit versions of Windows can handle all 4GB right?

[Bok]

I thought XP and Vista could handle 4Gb? Obviously they can address 4Gb in 32bit mode and I know '98 could only do 3Gb or so but I thought XP was fine..

[Paratima]

Actually, it comes to ... hang on, I'll look ... 3.25 GB. Yep, I'd have to go to 64-bit to get the rest.

What it is, is that Photoshop CS3 will use up to 2GB. I never go THAT far, but sometimes when I'm merging 5 shots in a panorama, it goes right up. Also, it saves a ton of stuff in its History cache. With a couple of DC projects crunching in the background and RAM being pretty cheap these days, I figured I'd plug in the 4 gig and see how it went. Also, I may want to use some for a RAM-disk. Not sure about that yet.

If I really NEED all 4, I'll switch to XP-64. Damn, but it sure is fast! :thumbs:

No Vista for me! :mad: If there's anything I DON'T need, it's some dumb POS software asking me every two minutes if I'm Really, Really Sure that I want to do something! This box is fast enough to last me a while. If I ever outgrow it, I may switch to Apple just to avoid Vista.

[jasong]

No Vista for me! :mad: If there's anything I DON'T need, it's some dumb POS software asking me every two minutes if I'm Really, Really Sure that I want to do something! This box is fast enough to last me a while. If I ever outgrow it, I may switch to Apple just to avoid Vista.
I think what would be really cool would be a huge box-like thing that basically was about 5 cases put together, made for being run from one point. It would be made to run on either Linux or Apple computers(definitely NOT Windows) and one computer(or core) would be in charge of sending work out. Each box would have a dedicated flash drive with just enough stuff on it to allow it to be a slave to the main cpu. You wouldn't necessarily be running the same project on each computer, but you'd be able to track things to see how they're progressing.

Setting it up would be a bit of a hassle because you'd have to wade around in the installed programs directories to figure out what needed to be tracked, and there'd be a lot of forum and email in the name setting it up properly. But it would be magnificent.

[LAURENU2]

:looney: .....:umm: forget it

[Paratima]

:looney: .....:umm: forget it

Thank you. :lmao:

[Digital Parasite]

I thought XP and Vista could handle 4Gb? Obviously they can address 4Gb in 32bit mode and I know '98 could only do 3Gb or so but I thought XP was fine..

Nope. The OS reserves 1GB of address space (out of the 4GB of 32bit addressable space) for itself so with a hack you can get it to use 3.25GB I think but the rest is lost. Same with Vista, you need the 64bit version to fully use your 4GB of RAM.

[Bok]

ah, ok, well I don't have any windows boxen with more than 2Gb anyway :)

[LAURENU2]

Nope. The OS reserves 1GB of address space (out of the 4GB of 32bit addressable space) for itself so with a hack you can get it to use 3.25GB I think but the rest is lost. Same with Vista, you need the 64bit version to fully use your 4GB of RAM.

OK what if you made a bat file to make a 1 Gig RamDrive at Bootup
:umm: Would you then be useing all your 4Gig's

[PCZ]

The maximum address space for 32bit computers is 4GB.
The top of the address space is used by the OS for mapping roms and video memory amongst other things.
How much of this address space is used depends on your hardware config.

A machine with no add on cards and basic video could have more than 3.5GB
available for mapping memory.
A maxed out gaming rig with a pair of 8800gtx's could have as little as 2GB.

Answer to this problem seems clear enough go 64bit but it isn't quite that simple.
The key here is compatability, would all your apps work on a 64bit OS ?
Got drivers for everything ? probably not.

During it's lifetime the PC has encountered many barriers all of them have been circumvented.
This is just another bump in the road.

Couple of years from now we will be all using 64bit OS's and the 4GB barrier will be a distant memory.
Of course we will have found another limitation that the early PC designers couldn't possibly have forseen. :D

640k it's all anyone would ever need. :)

[IronBits]

Everything you wanted to know about memory and 32bit OS, almost. ;)

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778.aspx

[Paratima]

Thanks, IB. As usual, you have the best info. :thumbs:

I may play around with the /3GB switch to see how it affects the system. As I said, Photoshop is my big application. Memory demand has to do with slices, layers, filters, image stacks, history depth and working cache. I photograph with a Canon 1Ds Mark II, so I start out with big files: 16.7 megapixels. Processing with lots of layers, I have seen my usage go close to 1 GB, and I like lots of elbow room.

I don't think I would gain anything by going to XP-64. Do BOINC apps generally run faster?

PS. I'll do a short story on building this rig, with photos, and post it in Hardware.

[em99010pepe]

Paratima,

I would like to know your opinion about ProShow Producer. Is it a good software for making DVD slideshows or you recommend another? Sorry for the off-topic.

Carlos

[Paratima]

Very few threads stay on topic around here! :jester: Doesn't bother me. But I do love the smiley for uptight people: :|ot|:

I made a set of photos a few months ago for a local (large) car dealer. Their ad director asked me to put together a presentation in slide-show format. I said, great, how about ProShow? He said, no, just use Adobe's slide presenter. Oh well! I tried. :looney: IMHO, it didn't work anywhere near as smoothly as it would with Photodex.

Would love to do one professionally; haven't had the chance. I think it's a great tool.

[em99010pepe]

I have here a legal copy (:bs: ) and I've been playing around with it but it has so many details to study and understand!!!

Carlos

[IronBits]

Not accepting any new users on this project. :( :cry:

[LAURENU2]

Really They closed the door to new participants:bang:

[LAURENU2]

Helix_Von_Smelix said
and how do we get an invitation code?

Is there a way to get a few more Free=DC members in:bathroom:

[Paratima]

Not accepting any new users on this project. :( :cry:

How do we know this? Symptoms, please. I will rattle the cage bars again.

[LAURENU2]

It will say so when you try to Attach to the project Try it
I Guess one way around it would be to share a account like
Free-DC Mercenaries
At least Free-DC and the stat sever would benefit

[em99010pepe]

Lauren,

I didn't create there an account for Free-DC Mercenaries but despite that I think sub-teams doesn't work well under BOINC. Everyone would have access to the account and the probability to hijack it would be enormous!!!

Carlos

[Bok]

Actually they have said it's ok to share the invitation code with team members, so anyone who wants it, just PM me..

But please don't post it on the forum.

Bok :cheers:

[Paratima]

As far as I have been able to determine, they're all in favor of more crunchers at this time. Since they're very strict about the homogeneous redundancy thing, the wider variety of boxen they get, the better for all the users. That's what started this thread. I need folks with the same CPU/OS combination to cross-verify my results and vice versa.

The current major problem, AFAIK, is that they're having to use longer WU's to get better precision and there's no checkpointing. We had this problem early on with FAD, as some may remember. If you need to reboot (or get rebooted) you lose your current progress. WU's run 2-6 hours, give or take, depending on your horsepower. They're having major grief from the compilers and libraries they have to use.

Really, we'd love to have you in. PM Bok for the invite code and that should do it. If you get the code and it still won't play ball, let us know!

[IronBits]

Thanks Bok! I'm all in. :smoking:

I noticed the Eon clients seem to hog up the NIC which makes Boinc think the network is down, so I halved the amount of clients on each computer.

[alpha]

The current major problem, AFAIK, is that they're having to use longer WU's to get better precision and there's no checkpointing. We had this problem early on with FAD, as some may remember. If you need to reboot (or get rebooted) you lose your current progress.
No! Checkpointing works fine. It is just the progress indicator which is broken.

It doesn't matter that the CPU time resets each time you start/stop a WU, it is still resuming from the last checkpoint.

[Paratima]

Interesting! I sit corrected. :D

It's really hard to tell from the discussions on their forum. So much stuff gets tossed around, more or less at random. There are at least six threads for every potential problem, general lack of organization and several Ultimate Authorities. :looney: Oh well, long as it works.