Overclocking and Seti Times

[Alpha_7]

Is there truth in the observation that Seti runs slower on overclocked machines ??? And if so why ?

I've observed this on both my machine.. a Duron

and so has one of my lanning friends... who I believe had a Intel..


If I remember correctly I was getting far fast times overclocking FSB, then using the mulitplier.... this i thought could be the increase ram speed = more memory bandwidth for seti..

if this is true o'c with FSB to 920 from 800 is better then
o'c with mulitplier to 1000 from 800.


if anyone can make sense of this, please post below. :)

[mr_mann]

SETI likes memory :D
but it should run faster on OC'ed machines :\

[NeonBlack[JSI]]

the seti client has a steady memory usage of ~15Mb so adding more memory shouldn't really affect performance. this is assuming that the memory overhead for the os and other apps is not an issue.

so the big difference is memory bandwidth. i think that a faster fsb would make seti times faster as it can store and access the memory that it is using faster. fast fourier transforms do require a lot of fetching and storing (alpha and i did them for half a semester).

that's my take on it anyway. feel free to correct me.

adios

Neon

[Larry Loen]

The Team Lamb Chop Site (http://www.teamlambchop.com) has extensive benchmarking information about SETI, including many overclocked examples. I give the base link; rumage around and you'll see the benchmarking page pretty quick.

One should not have to guess about this one. The information has been collected for a couple of years now.

[Alpha_7]

OK Cheers, :)
When I have my thinking cap on, I'll check it out :)

[rosyboa]

I was running SETI on a P-933 with 1-gig RAM and XP pro.
My results were from 8 to 10 hours (idle).

I'm now running a single SETI on a dual P-933, same RAM
and OS. My results are from 6.5 to 8 hours (idle).

Running dual sessions of SETI results in 8 to 10 hours (idle).

It seems that RAM isn't as much an issue as CPU.


NT Client
SETI Driver
SETI Spy
RAMDiskNT

------<"

[ColinT]

Seti runs best with a fast FSB and a LARGE L2 cache. 512MB L2 is enought to get the entire dataset into L2. That really helps.

It's why Xeons always ran well.

To sum it up: Overclock the piss out of that box. Go for a 3 hour WU.

[Jammy]

OS Name Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
Version 5.0.2195 Service Pack 2 Build 2195
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name XP
System Manufacturer VIA Technologies, Inc.
System Model VT8366-8233
System Type X86-based PC
Processor x86 Family 6 Model 6 Stepping 2 AuthenticAMD ~1600 Mhz
BIOS Version Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG
Windows Directory C:\WINNT
System Directory C:\WINNT\System32
Boot Device \Device\Harddisk0\Partition1
Locale United States
User Name XP\Linda Hall
Time Zone Pacific Standard Time
Total Physical Memory 523,760 KB
Available Physical Memory 362,692 KB
Total Virtual Memory 1,801,412 KB
Available Virtual Memory 1,484,592 KB
Page File Space 1,277,652 KB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys


SETI@home client: Version 3.03 (text version)
Folder: C:\Program Files\Seti
Operating system: Windows 2000 (5.0) (Service Pack 2)
Physical memory size: 523,760 kB

CPU type: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1900+
CPU speed: 1600 MHz
L1 cache: 128 kB (64 kB code + 64 kB data)
L2 cache: 256 kB on CPU or CPU module


Jammy

BTW >>> how do I OC this thing?



Originally posted by ColinT
Seti runs best with a fast FSB and a LARGE L2 cache. 512MB L2 is enought to get the entire dataset into L2. That really helps.

It's why Xeons always ran well.

To sum it up: Overclock the piss out of that box. Go for a 3 hour WU.

[IronBits]

Jamilla

AMDs XP processors have a combined total of 384kb cache. You should really read the differences between the processors to understand the different architectures.

Was there a particular point that I missed besides the cache comment you were trying to make, by pasting all of that superfluous information along with it?

[ColinT]

Seti runs best with a fast FSB and a LARGE L2 cache. 512MB L2 is enought to get the entire dataset into L2. That really helps.

Make that KB, not MB

[IronBits]

Eagle eyes! :D