What's the use of a benchmark?

[[DPC]Mobster]

I read the other (long) topic and am unable to grasp the use of a benchmark. I'm going to bench a Centrino tomorrow but I think I will have no use for it.

2 random benchmarks (benched and outputted with the GUI).

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Distributed Folding Windows dfGUI v3.1 Benchmark

Current Generation: 246
Sample Size : 50 structures over 1050 seconds.
Protein Size: 64AA

Structures Per Hour : 200
Structures Per Day : 4812

OS : Windows XP MHz: 1666
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2000+
Client Switches: -qt -rt
------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------
Distributed Folding Windows dfGUI v3.1 Benchmark

Current Generation: 156
Sample Size : 45 structures over 523 seconds.
Protein Size: 64AA

Structures Per Hour : 327
Structures Per Day : 7855

OS : Windows XP MHz: 1730
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2100+
Client Switches: -qt -rt
-----------------------------------------------------------

Less than 100MHz clockspeed and over 60% more structures per day. What does this tell me? Does this tell me anything? Will it be usefull to bench a Centrino?

Thanks for your patience and answers

[tpdooley]

The exact same hardware sitting in the same exact spot would get through 250 generations in 3 days.. and then the next set of 250 generations would take 5-7 days.

So it's not useful for testing out the speed of a machine.


It'll satiate your curiousity about how many generations have been produced since the last time you looked at the machine.

If you want a repeatable benchmark - take a look at the benchmark thread, and run the DF benchmark and try and figure out what the numbers mean.. *grin*

[Digital Parasite]

The benchmark numbers in dfGUI are only useful for the particular generation you are in. So in generation 246 you were doing about 200 structures/hour. Each generation takes a different amount of time so you can't really extrapolate those values into a day, week, etc... They are sort of left over from phase I when each structure took more or less the same amount of time.

You can click on the "Run Client Bench" button in the Advanced tab of dfGUI and it will run the DF client's own internal benchmark (as tpdooley points out) for you which you can use to compare one machine against another.

[tpdooley]

Originally posted by Digital Parasite
They are sort of left over from phase II when each structure took more or less the same amount of time.

Shouldn't that be Phase I?

[Digital Parasite]

Originally posted by tpdooley Shouldn't that be Phase I?

I don't know what you are talking about...

You mean you aren't one of the l33t people running the Phase III beta right now?

[tpdooley]

*snicker*

nope.. I R not 1337 enuf, I guess.