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rambo47 · Feb 21, 2002, 04:20 PM

I have SETI@home running on my Ti Book, PowerMac G4 500 MHz, and on a lowly Sony Vaio (foisted upon me at work). The Sony just completed its first WU in 84 hours 55 minutes. Woohoo! What a miserable piece of crap.

On a related note, has anyone checked out the RC5 stats for the speeds of different processors over at http://n0cgi.distributed.net/speed/ ? Are these speeds for real?!! The dual processor Macs kick the crap out of everything else. Hoo-ah!!

Scotttheking · Feb 21, 2002, 04:50 PM

Are you running the command line one?
If not, you should be.
I'll post info on how to later today.

[APi]TheMan · Feb 21, 2002, 07:35 PM

Originally posted by Scotttheking:
Are you running the command line one?
If not, you should be.
I'll post info on how to later today.

Scott, does the command line SETI application get noticeable performance gains when compared to the GUI client as Ubero does? Just curious..

gumby5647 · Feb 21, 2002, 07:46 PM

yeah the PII is GREAT at crunching seti

Scotttheking · Feb 21, 2002, 09:03 PM

Originally posted by [APi]TheMan:


Scott, does the command line SETI application get noticeable performance gains when compared to the GUI client as Ubero does? Just curious..

Yes.
Command line SETI gets a major boost.
Especially in windows, for some reason.

rambo47 · Feb 21, 2002, 09:35 PM

My Vaio is running Windows98 2nd ed. Does it even have a command line?

Scotttheking · Feb 21, 2002, 10:57 PM

Originally posted by rambo47:
My Vaio is running Windows98 2nd ed. Does it even have a command line?

LOL, yes.

SkiBikeSki · Feb 24, 2002, 02:20 AM

Since windows is built off of DOS, every version has a command line. You can find Micro$oft's termial app in the accories folder in the start menu. DOS commands are kinda like *nix commands, the biggest exception is ls in DOS is dir.

Scotttheking · Feb 24, 2002, 04:04 AM

Ok, here's the instructions.

Go here, and follow them

http://www.wakeassoc.com/setidriver/

or, if you'd prefer it hidden, this app is a little harder to use, but works well. http://www.scheit.de/seti/setihide.html

Don't forget to put in the proxy field 'seti.macnn.com' port '5517'

--Scott

rambo47 · Feb 24, 2002, 11:10 PM

WOW! Running SETI Driver in the command line has increased the speed from 86 hrs per WU down to only about 25 hrs per WU. Oh, and it's not a PII like I frist said. It's really a PIII-450 MHz.

I installed SETI Driver as well some other program, i386-winnt-cmdline. Am I now running two different SETI crunchers? Looks like it to me, but I really can't be sure. SETIspy seems to work with the winnt-cmdline app.

Will I notice any significant speed boost on my Macs if I run the CLI version for OS X? My limited understanding is that once the screen saver is running it takes cpu power to redraw the pretty screen. Once the screen shuts off as a function of power management the SETI program gets full use of the cpu. My only concern is in using unix commands in the terminal. All this unix stuff makes a really neat "wooshing" sound as it goes flying over my head. "Unix idiot" does not even begin to describe me.

I knuckled under and bought a Wintel box on eBay this weekend. I got an Athlon XP1800 box with a Western Digital 40GB 7200rpm Hard Drive and 128mb PC2100 266MHz DDR ram, plus a DVD drive and Windows 2000 Pro, all for under $600 delivered. The eBay auction link is here. I picked up the Win2K Pro separately for $50. This should be good for a few WU's, no?

[ 02-25-2002: Message edited by: rambo47 ]

Scotttheking · Feb 24, 2002, 11:41 PM

Originally posted by rambo47:
WOW! Running SETI Driver in the command line has increased the speed from 86 hrs per WU down to only about 25 hrs per WU. Oh, and it's not a PII like I frist said. It's really a PIII-450 MHz.

I installed SETI Driver as well some other program, i386-winnt-cmdline. Am I now running two different SETI crunchers? Looks like it to me, but I really can't be sure. SETIspy seems to work with the winnt-cmdline app.

Will I notice any significant speed boost on my Macs if I run the CLI version for OS X? My limited understanding is that once the screen saver is running it takes cpu power to redraw the pretty screen. Once the screen shuts off as a function of power management the SETI program gets full use of the cpu. My only concern is in using unix commands in the terminal. All this unix stuff makes a really neat "wooshing" sound as it goes flying over my head. "Unix idiot" does not even begin to describe me.

I knuckled under and bought a Wintel box on eBay this weekend. I got an Athlon XP1800 box with a Western Digital 40GB 7200rpm Hard Drive and 128mb PC2100 266MHz DDR ram, plus a DVD drive and Windows 2000 Pro, all for under $600 delivered. The eBay auction link is here. I picked up the Win2K Pro separately for $50. This should be good for a few WU's, no?

[ 02-25-2002: Message edited by: rambo47 ]

Yes, the CLI is faster, on any OS.
We'll have a OSX config app that's gui, but doesn't all the command line stuff, and hopefully soon, if you want to wait.

The athlon should do between 7 and 8 per day, assuming the motherboard is good, although it does need a bit more ram

rambo47 · Feb 24, 2002, 11:47 PM

Cool, I'll wait for something more "rambo-friendly". As for the Athlon box the mobo supports up to 1 GB of PC-2100 RAM, which I intend to max out asap.

TNproud2b · Feb 27, 2002, 06:35 PM

Originally posted by rambo47:
Cool, I'll wait for something more "rambo-friendly". As for the Athlon box the mobo supports up to 1 GB of PC-2100 RAM, which I intend to max out asap.

An Athlon 1800 will OWN at SETI.

You won't need more than 256MB of RAM to run SETI on WinXP (XP uses about 110MB in a normal install). If you plan on doing more than running th SETI client, then by all means load up on RAM.

ericdelangen · Feb 28, 2002, 10:50 PM

so here's a question... I installed the CLI seti thingie and there's now a msdos prompt dealie in the menu bar on the bottom of my screen... (win Me), that's supposed to be there, right? I take it I have to install that other program for it to run completely in the background? am I correct in assuming this?

Scotttheking · Mar 1, 2002, 12:07 AM

Originally posted by ericdelangen:
so here's a question... I installed the CLI seti thingie and there's now a msdos prompt dealie in the menu bar on the bottom of my screen... (win Me), that's supposed to be there, right? I take it I have to install that other program for it to run completely in the background? am I correct in assuming this?

Hmm, should be an option to hide that.
Mess around and check, I'm not sure where it is, but it didn't do that when I used it.
Seti Hide works fine too, so you could also try that if you want.

--Scott

SkiBikeSki · Mar 2, 2002, 12:47 AM

I have an Athlon XP 1700+ (1.466GHz) running SETI under Mandrake Linux, and it owns it! I haven't seen anyother computer go through the FFT's so fast, not even my PowerMac witht the CLI. Normally PPC processors have an advantage when it comes to FFT's due to their huge amount of cache, but that doesn't seem to matter anymore. I'm gonna let this puppy run all night, and re-direct it's screen output to a file, and see how many units it can do. I report back the results in the morning.

Scotttheking · Mar 2, 2002, 12:58 AM

Originally posted by SkiBikeSki:
I have an Athlon XP 1700+ (1.466GHz) running SETI under Mandrake Linux, and it owns it! I haven't seen anyother computer go through the FFT's so fast, not even my PowerMac witht the CLI. Normally PPC processors have an advantage when it comes to FFT's due to their huge amount of cache, but that doesn't seem to matter anymore. I'm gonna let this puppy run all night, and re-direct it's screen output to a file, and see how many units it can do. I report back the results in the morning.

6-7 per day

SkiBikeSki · Mar 2, 2002, 01:13 PM

In a 12 hour span it cranked out 3 work units, but the time for each unit to finish varied by 30 minutes or more. I guess Scott is right and it'll crank out 6-7 per day.

ericdelangen · Mar 2, 2002, 03:37 PM

i've got it running on an athlon 1600+ that I use for gaming... it takes about 4-5 hours per WU.

ism · Mar 13, 2002, 06:02 PM

Hey didn't want to start a new topic, so thought I'd let you know I've now got a P4 1.8Ghz on the seti case at work (which should help no end, well me anyway - new computer no less) and thanks to this thread have got it sorted.

Cool

Mac Zealot · Mar 27, 2002, 08:17 PM

For raw processing work, the x86 platform is far superior to any PPC in existence.

For general home use, Windows XP is far superior to Mac OS X in usage.

For professional work with no hassling Mac OS X is far superior to any OS ever designed since you don't have to configure anything, you don't have to go through any mind-destructing wizards, and you can just get down to work

Admitting it though, x86 processors are far superior to PPCs, but they still need to go a little bit of a ways in cooling efficiency

Shaktai · Mar 27, 2002, 08:55 PM

Originally posted by Mac Zealot:
For raw processing work, the x86 platform is far superior to any PPC in existence.

For general home use, Windows XP is far superior to Mac OS X in usage.

For professional work with no hassling Mac OS X is far superior to any OS ever designed since you don't have to configure anything, you don't have to go through any mind-destructing wizards, and you can just get down to work

Admitting it though, x86 processors are far superior to PPCs, but they still need to go a little bit of a ways in cooling efficiency

Except when their not. I.E. RC-5, Photoshop, etc.... Every platform has it's area of excellence.