[OldGuy]

Without starting a huge Mac/PC debate, I am just wondering if there is a utility comparable to Seti Unit Manager for the PC.

I just inherited a PC which, unfortunately , is kicking my slot-loading iMacs butt on WUs (about 3 hours faster). I guess my average time will drop

Anyway, any help?

[wlonh]

well i do not know of a comparable SETI Unit Manager for PC, maybe there is... search download.com

and it is unusual for a PC to beat a Mac crunching SETI, something is amiss here i would think...

any details you'd like to share as regards these machines... clockspeeds and tweaks, etc?

[OldGuy]

My iMac is a slotloading 350MHz running 9.0.4 and has no third party stuff installed except ram doubler. It is completing WUs in about 11.5 to 13 hours. The PC is a new eMachines 566 MHz with a Celeron processor and 128K L2 cache. I only reformated the HD and installed Seti and SC3K. It is completing work units in 9 to 10.5 hours.

I was quite surprised by the speed of this PC, too. It even runs SimCity 3000 better than my iMac.

I don't have any illusions that this PC is top of the line or anything and I certainly have no plans to covert to Wintel, but it is a heck of a WU cruncher.

[wlonh]

are you running SETI on the Mac as per the tweaks suggested on this forum?

the times you are getting are rather slow i would think... and largely due to the VM of RAMDoubler... buy more RAM! there is no subsitute for real RAM, regardless of what any may say or what you may have read...

[OoklaTheMok]

Yeah, there are a lot of PC programs like SUM. I have never tried them though so I don't know how much they suffer from confusing interface syndrome.

The only thing I have really considered using is SetiQ, which acts as its own seti Proxy server and cacheing system in one. It would be useful for the times that the seti server is down and all your clients go idle because they can't upload and get new units.

Still I haven't tried anything yet though because I am really not hypercompetitive about it, or I try not to be.

[OldGuy]

I already have 128 megs on the iMac and I am using Seti with SUM and the ram disk. I am using almost no extensions and have RamDoubler set on file mapping only. Are there any other suggestions?

[wlonh]

me neither, never tried SUM, and i am by nature not competitive...

(note that i did not say i am not opinionated, nor did i say i am not obstreperous, cantankerous, or curmudgeonly, etc., and i have earned the right in life to be as i am, you will have to take my word on this as all who know me do... i am nice to those who are nice to me and to those who 'do their homework' as i do and have, and to those who keep their eyes open and use their power of deductive reasoning and post questions in the proper forum... and these remarks are aimed at no one in particular and everyone in general and are not necessarily apropos anything in this particular thread, but should be construed as general remarks, thank you, i'm just letting off a bit of steam here... a very little bit at that)

[wlonh]

run seti in screensaver mode only, set its pref's to go to black screen after one minute, use LibMotoSh (software) and overclock your L2 cache with software, best is XLR8's Mach Speed Control for the L2 cache

all software mentioned can be found at versiontracker.com

oh and read the ReadMe that comes with seti


[This message has been edited by wlonh (edited 09-01-2000).]

13 hours seems like alot. My power mac 8500 with a 350 G3 can complete a unit in 7.5 hours. Make sure you're using it as a balnk screensaver, and have the latest version. Running it in background or not blank will add a couple hours to your time.

also strange. My friends 866 PIII takes 15 hours to finish a WU, so 10 is extremely fast for a 566 Celeron.

[OldGuy]

I've been doing everything suggested here with the iMac, except for LibMotoSh, because I never saw any real difference in time when I tried it.
However, I have noticed (from latest SUM upload) that since I am not using the iMac for anything and all it is doing is crunching units these units are running around 11 hours.
The PeeCee, though, is still chugging along at 10.5 hours. It came with Windows Me, I wonder if that has any effect?

[This message has been edited by OldGuy (edited 09-03-2000).]

[wlonh]

does the PC have a larger L2 cache than that of the Mac? this will certainly make a difference...

The cache on the intel/amd chips is on-die, as opposed to the current PowerPC chips in the G3/G4 being external. Macs have more L2 Cache, but PC's have faster L2 Cache. SETI@Home generally likes more L2 Cache then faster L2 to a certain extent.

[proux]

The reason why your iMac is slower than PowerMacs is the size of the L2 cache, 512k vs 1Meg because the whole Seti data unit fits into the PowerMac's cache.

I get only 9 hours on my 500 Mhz iMac which is slow, 13.5 on an 366 Mhz iBook SE...
Good crunching.

[drbott]

If it makes anyone feel any better, we installed Seti on the eMachines today. 3 hours later it has done 1.65%, on track for a unit in 187 hours.

Anyone know anything about PCs? I think this one might be sick.

Eric

[SkiBikeSki]

Your emachine is probably fine. It's slow since it has not only a slower Celeron than normal P3's (in terms of Mhz), but also no L2 Cache. It is doing all the work out of the little L1 cache and possibly some RAM cache. And RAM is far slower than L2.

The total probably won't be 187 hours. SETI's % per hour rate is slowest in the first 5%. I guess it will actually finish in 150 hours. So all you have to do it wait.

[OldGuy]

My eMachine is still going along at 9.5 to 10 hours per work unit, at least however my iMac is doing 11 to 11.5 hours per unit. I just wish there was a working SUM type program for it.

Of course I wish my wife would let me buy 15 or 20 G4s so I could may catch up with some of you guys too.

I use:
Athlon 650/192megs ram - 8.5-9 hours, with AOL, netscape, winamp running roughly half that time
Dell PII-333 (500) with 96 megs ram, with AOL, netscape, Word, various others running 14-16 hours, depending
G3 Desktop 233, OS 9.0.4, 96 megs, with just DragThing running, 13 some hours. (no screensaver, minimized window, screen blank 15 minutes)
After upgrading the Dell and adding the Mac to my workforce, my average times dropped from 27 hours to 15.
So I'm not complaining.
And I'm adding a G4-400 to that tonite!! :-)

------------------
--------------
Michael

[wlonh]

you should set your SETI pref's to go to blank screen at ONE minute... that is optimum

[Todd Madson]

Interestingly enough, I'm using a variety of machines to crunch blocks, my G4, my wife's iMac DV SE, an IBM Thinkpad 600E, an IBM 300GL. Oddly enough, the fastest PC I ran into with Seti was a IBM 300PL at 500 mhz - I could do a block in 6.5-7 hrs with that one, but it got allocated for a different project. The fastest machine in the collective is without a doubt the G4 - that sucker does blocks in 4.5-6 hrs depending on what's in the block.

Hey guys! In response to the threads starter, there is a great seti utility called setihide. This program will work on some win95 machines and all win98/NT machines. It can actually run entirely in the background and entirely hidden from the user. It has caching capability (up to 50 units) and it can create stats and other cool stuff. Here is the link http://www.scheit.de/seti/setihide.html

Originally posted by SkiBikeSki:
Your emachine is probably fine. It's slow since it has not only a slower Celeron than normal P3's (in terms of Mhz), but also no L2 Cache

Most celeron do have L2 cache. Only the really really ancient first celeron have no L2 cache. Even 300A celeron has 128 kb of L2 cache. Yes, larger L2 cache is very helpful to SETI, but the FSB/memory performance is also very important. It has being show in many websites (and my own personal experience) that with the coppermine CPU's the internal speed of the CPU is not that much of a factor, but rather FSB speed and memory performance will dictates how fast you can crunch a WU. A 550e @ 825 MHz and a 650e @ 975 MHz will both crunch a WU in 4.5 hrs with a FSB of 150 MHz on a mobo with the BX chipset running cli 2.4. Notice that both of the above sample have their FSB running @ 150 Mhz, and thus the RAM is also running @ 150 MHz. A older Katmai PIII with 512kb of L2 cache can never approach that kind of WU crunching speed, because Katmai PIII can't overclock to 150 MHz FSB and thus can't benefit from the increase memory bandwidth.

Originally posted by SkiBikeSki:
also strange. My friends 866 PIII takes 15 hours to finish a WU, so 10 is extremely fast for a 566 Celeron.

your friend's PIII 866 shouldn't take 15 hours to finish a WU. It should take 5 to 5.5 hrs. I would say it[list=a][*]has a crappy chipset ie. Apollo Pro 133(non-A) or worse yet a i820!!!! (re: memory performance)[*]is highly unoptimised for SETI, ie running the screensaver. No one serious about SETI@home running windows would run the screensaver. Screensaver are only run by newbies. Anyone serious about SETI@home running windows would either run the GUI in the background or the CLi 2.XX.[/list=a]

PS. My gf's 300A @ 450 MHz (a Celeron) with 128 kb of fullspeed L2 cache crunches a WU in 8.5 hrs, once again illustrating the importance of memory bandwidth/performance over internal CPU speed when dealing with less then 1 MB of L2 cache. Xeons are a whole other story.

PSS. If you have no beef about overclocking, your 566 celeron (a.k.a celly2) could possibly overclock to overclock to 850 MHz if you increase your FSB to 100 Mhz. With the beta GUI clients, I have see WU's in the sub 4 hrs range for such celly2's.

[This message has been edited by NiteOwl (edited 10-01-2000).]

[Todd Madson]

That iMac that has RamDoubler - get that thing off of there, it's partially responsible for the slowdowns you experience. Get a cache speed increaser, I'm personally using the PowerLogix cache program and no problems - it's currently at version 1.3. Install LibMoto even if you think you're not getting any benefits from it, it does appear to make a difference. Also, a big one: shut off Appletalk - it makes a large difference, at least when I left it on once I couldn't figure out why my blocks were taking so long. Also, one last bit - if you have your colors set to millions, set it to thousands just to see if it makes a difference. I've also seen that 9.04 is faster than 9.02 - more Altivec optimization I guess since I'm running a G4 for my main machine and my wifes iMac DV SE for secondary.