Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

brock76 · Feb 24, 2001, 03:21 AM

Hello MacNNers, Bockie asked about RC5 and I think a good Mac Team like MacNN should know as well. I posted this over at MacAddict's board as well.

I am currently running RC5 on my macs, and if anyone here doesn't know, G4's really kick butt at RC5.

Truthfully, all Macs really kick butt at RC5, but the client is Altivec enhansed. My G4 will out perform many mid-high end chips, but the Tbirds really hold their ground against it.

I guess the reason im posting this is, a mac team in RC5 would really kick some major butt with a whole slu of macs using RC5's (crunch-vec), it wouldn't take long for you guys to move up. Unlike S@H, RC5's processing is all done in the processor. L2 and additional RAM really don't have any play on the client.

RC5's site is www.distributed.net.

just a thought for my fellow Macheads.

I'm hoping you guys have some questions over RC5.

brock

crunch away!!!

OoklaTheMok · Feb 24, 2001, 09:07 AM

I started about a month ago with 14 dual g4/500s, and now I'm up to 17. At this rate I'm catching people who have been crunching for almost 4 years.

DocWest · Feb 25, 2001, 09:43 PM

Okay. a couple questions.

Do they have "work units" like in seti? I'm guessing they do.

How long does one take to crunch, on average? like say, on a G4/500 machine.

because man, ookla's 14 dual g4/500's for a month and only 17 done. and still catching people.
these things must take yonks.

Scotttheking · Feb 25, 2001, 11:55 PM

Maybe he means 17th place.

brock76 · Feb 26, 2001, 12:09 AM

To answer your questions Doc.

1) Yes you are correct about Work Units and RC5. This answer will lead into your second question. Work Units come in packets. Packets contain either 1,2,3,4,8 WUs in them. You get credit for every WU you do regardless of the size of the packet. So.....

2) All WUs are 2^28 keys. A work unit on my G4/350 is just over a minute at 1m:15s. So a packet of 4*2^28 is about 5 minutes and you'll get credit for 4 WUs. You can substitute 4 with 1,2,3,4,8 and get credit accordingly.

The set up of the client is all text. If anyone needs help, OoklatheMok or I will be glad to help.

brock

brock76 · Feb 26, 2001, 12:11 AM

I forgot, another great feature about the d.net client is that it has built in buffering. This comes in nice if you are on Dial-up.

brock

Bockie · Feb 26, 2001, 07:39 AM

Hmmm...Sounds interesting. So can there be multiple clients of the text compiler open, or just one? Also, by buffering, do you mean caching like SUM? Final stupid question...can I use SETI as my screensaver and run RC5 at the same time, or would that be processor over-kill?

------------------
"Life cannot be contained...Life finds a way."
-Ian Malcom, Jurassic Park (movie version)

brock76 · Feb 26, 2001, 09:43 AM

Bockie, there is really no reason to run mutliple clients. The client will automatically pick up MP machines. I use to run it on a Dual G4/500. The client is pretty intelligent. You'll see that it will pick up G3s(750), G4(7400), and (604e...down to 601s)

Secondly, yes, the buffering in RC5 works like SUM, but it doesn't rip you off like SUM does. You get credit for all you do.

No, I tried running S@H in the background over night, and it went no where. RC5 will suck down your processor.

brock

brock76 · Feb 26, 2001, 07:36 PM

This page is nicely laid out to show how to set up the RC5 client on a Mac.
http://www.macevangelist.com/NewSite...ientcatio.html

brock

Bockie · Feb 26, 2001, 11:32 PM

Are there any other Team MacNNers interested? Is it worth having two clients/teams for MacNN?

------------------
"Life cannot be contained...Life finds a way."
-Ian Malcom, Jurassic Park (movie version)

keyser_soze · Feb 28, 2001, 02:19 PM

Misha, make an RC5 team. Worst case scenario, no one joins. Seti makes my iMac seem like a relic. It sucks seeing the same wu on my screen for 2 days. If an RC5 team is made, I for one will join.

Bockie · Feb 28, 2001, 02:29 PM

If Misha doesn't have a team created by 15:00 EST tomorrow, I will make one for us!

The people at Berkeley have convinced me that it's worth the effort!

Who's ready to join?

------------------
"Life cannot be contained...Life finds a way."
-Ian Malcom, Jurassic Park (movie version)

DocWest · Mar 1, 2001, 07:54 AM

Umm, yeah I'll join.

I just joined that big mac team. (mmmm, bigmac

) Team EvangeLista.

But I'll join a MacNN team if one is made.

druber · Mar 1, 2001, 09:57 AM

yep, count me in, too. not as cool to watch periods appear as a percent-done bar, but i've had my fill of seti.

brock76 · Mar 1, 2001, 04:33 PM

thats what i mean keyser, I hated to watcht the S@H progress bar slowly creep upwards for 16 hours on my G4, though i think you have an iMac though, I can't remember. Anyways, so i looked around, and wanted to find a project that better suited my G4. since F@H and G@H do not have a mac client as of yet, I tried RC5. I fired it up, and loe and behold, it said "Altivec Assemby written by Dan Oetting". I'm like WOW, a distributed client written for Altivec. It even has enhancements for the 604e, though Im not sure what arcitecture it uses. Anyways, I watched my fellow teammate PC users just cry when they saw what the Altivec Engine could do. So i know that you guys could really kick some butt in RC5. MacNN is a pretty resourceful team, and I use to be on your seti team way back when wlohn started it up, or shortly after.

All i can say, now that S@H is down, give it a try. I will never do S@H on my G4 again. I feel that I'll leave alot of it's power slip between the cracks.

brock

Bockie · Mar 1, 2001, 07:33 PM

I looked, but no Team MacNN, so I'm off to create a team!

Stand by.

------------------
"Life cannot be contained...Life finds a way."
-Ian Malcom, Jurassic Park (movie version)

monte · Mar 1, 2001, 08:38 PM

Well I guess I'm a little confused here, maybe I'm an idiot I guess, but I dunno..

I have completed 2 'packets' and have flushed my buffer, so they were sent and in the window it said received, then well over 24hrs later I still can't find myself anywhere on the site... I haven't received an e-mail either containing my password and I cannot find a section or link that guides me to that area..

I figured I would ask here before I send off a stupid e-mail to them.. Yeah yeah, I'm a newbie to this one

Bockie · Mar 1, 2001, 09:27 PM

monte,

I understand your frustration. I have created Team MacNN for us on the d.net servers, but because they haven't sent me my user password, I can't join the team! Also, Team MacNN will not show up until I join...but I CANNOT until I have my user password!!!

As soon as I get the Team MacNN to a point of functionality, I will let everyone know!

------------------
"Life cannot be contained...Life finds a way."
-Ian Malcom, Jurassic Park (movie version)

Scotttheking · Mar 1, 2001, 11:00 PM

I joined and am running it, along with SETI and popular power.
It is really funny watching them fight over processor time.

How do I check stats and stuff?

monte · Mar 2, 2001, 12:05 AM

Thanks Bockie, now I don't feel so bad

But checking stats, you have to click on Statistics and work it from there, but that only works for your individual stats provided that- you have the password as your e-mail is your ID... You can't join any teams without that PW either....

Well, time for an e-mail then.

Scotttheking · Mar 2, 2001, 12:12 AM

Do I want to run that OGR thing, or just RC5?

brock76 · Mar 2, 2001, 03:09 AM

Bockie, you'll have to wait til d.net runs the next stat run. They run stats every day at 23:59UTC. (14:59 EST) The stats run takes about 6 hours to completey run through its cycle. Once it runs through its cycle, then you can have it send your password to you.

Scott, you wan to receive RC5 not ORG packets, to do this:

2) Buffer....
9) Load Work.....

Then type this:

DES=0,CSC=0,OGR=0,RC5

This will tell the client to just request RC5 packets.

any more questions, just post them.

brock

DocWest · Mar 4, 2001, 05:31 PM

Hey, is the team up yet?

Grrr, we had a brief power outtage this morning and I lost 12 hours worth of units. goddamn it.

when I run at full power on my G3/400 I can get 1.31 MKeys/sec. How much is everyone else getting? I'm just interested, that's all.

Bockie · Mar 4, 2001, 06:26 PM

Not yet...grrr

I'm still waiting on my user password.

------------------
"Life cannot be contained...Life finds a way."
-Ian Malcom, Jurassic Park (movie version)

DocWest · Mar 4, 2001, 11:55 PM

Hurry up man.

I was going to create the team myself, but I don't want the responsibility

So, yeah, HURRY UP

here's the link for the Team MacNN badge: http://team.macnn.com/images/TeamMacNN.jpg

(this is me helping out)

[This message has been edited by DocWest (edited 03-05-2001).]

monte · Mar 5, 2001, 08:05 AM

I still haven't showed up in the search engine there so I can't even request my password

Bright side is Wed. will make it a week so far

?

druber · Mar 5, 2001, 01:41 PM

just reporting my experience here, in case it's helpful.

after downloading the client, i hadn't followed brock's instructions, so i was crunching ogr units at first. then changed settings and started in on rc5 units. my impression is that you'll probably show up as a participant ~24 hours after you first return completed blocks. also, since my home computer's on a modem, it would try to automatically connect (unsuccessfully, since i don't have it set to allow apps to open a tcpip connection). when i'd dial-in, it still wouldn't be able to send back any units unless i'd quit and restart the client. okay, no big deal.

so today i went to the rc5 stats page and searched for the email addy i'd entered in the client. voila, there i was. oo, and i'd jumped 13k places in the standings, too.

at the bottom of the page was a submit button to click if you wanted to have your password emailed to you. i clicked, it sent me to a page saying the pass should arrive in less than 10 minutes. checked my mail and there it was.

so i'm all signed up and crunching away. is there a team macnn yet? searches haven't uncovered anything..

Joe Cool · Mar 5, 2001, 02:54 PM

What does every one get for benchmarks?
I get around 4,050,000 keys/sec.

brock76 · Mar 5, 2001, 07:55 PM

Sounds like some of you are finally getting stats back.

GREAT!!

You'll notice that some PC users will B!tch about the G4 being so fast and all. They just don't realize what it can really do!!

All i have to say is, if you have any more questions, just ask. Stats are started at 23:59 UTC (18:59EST) and takes about 7 hours to complete. So if you returned any WUs before 6:59 EST, then you'll be on the stats when the run is over. Hope this clears things up about stats.

take care MacNNers

brock

Todd Madson · Mar 6, 2001, 10:57 AM

Yeah, I've been running RC5 for almost four years now and for years I was using 603ev/604 machines and barely did 200 units a day. Now with my G4 running about 4 million kkeys it's no problem to do a thousand work units a day. If I had more than one G4 I'd be styling for sure.

Just to give you an idea: the 800 MHZ PIII laptop I've got here at work
with 265 megs of ram and DVD only gets 2.14 M keys per sec, the G4 400
with the L2 cache accelerated will do in the high 3 millions low four
millions (if I'm not doing anything else).

It rocks!

DocWest · Mar 6, 2001, 11:23 PM

I get 1.31 Mkeys/sec on my G3/400.
My mums one (350Mhz) goes at like 1.1 or something. I haven't really checked.

I am using MacDim to use the client as a screensaver. Handy.

SkiBikeSki · Mar 8, 2001, 05:01 PM

My PM8500 with a 350Mhz G4 upgrade can pull about 2.95 MKeys/sec. I am about to set up my old 200Mhz 603, and a PIII 733. I'll report on the specs later.

PS The PIII isn't mine. I'd only use macs.

druber · Mar 9, 2001, 09:08 AM

B&W 300 pulls about .95Mkey's/sec
604e-233 about .55Mkey's/sec

not too bad, but altivec just goes crazy on this. do we have a team yet?

Bockie · Mar 9, 2001, 03:25 PM

No...When I created the team, I saved the password screen using Apple's web-archive format. When I tried to access that page offline, it says that I am trying to create a team with a name that is already in use!!!

So I email them for help because I didn't write down the information on paper.

I may just make a new team with a different name variant if I don't get an answer by Tuesday. I will keep everyone informed; keep crunching...when you join all your W/U will be forwarded to our team.

p.s. Since I crunch RC5 units while working on my Rev B, I only get about 1.8-2.2 Mkeys/sec. For personal interest I ran RC5 while my iMac was idle (and SETI not running) and I got around 3.8 Mkeys/sec.

p.s.s. I haven't had much time to work on the project because I have been promoted out of Marketing and into IS!

WooHoo!

------------------
"Life cannot be contained...Life finds a way."
-Ian Malcom, Jurassic Park (movie version)

OoklaTheMok · Mar 9, 2001, 04:22 PM

what I meant to say before is that I started with 14 dual g4/500s and now I have 17 dual g4/500s.

I'm ranging in the top 100-200 daily.a

monte · Mar 9, 2001, 08:52 PM

Well using a G4 450, I seem to avg anything from 3.6Mkeys/sec to 4.1 pending on what I do. I haven't messed with the faceless client yet to validate it's results. It also seems to me that you can trim the MacOS down to the TCP level and the thing gets quicker. Anyone else experience this?

Since I've been crushin seti units for the past 2 days, I'll have to go mess with the faceless client and see what happens for a day.

DocWest · Mar 9, 2001, 10:46 PM

Originally posted by Bockie:
Since I crunch RC5 units while working on my Rev B, I only get about 1.8-2.2 Mkeys/sec. For personal interest I ran RC5 while my iMac was idle (and SETI not running) and I got around 3.8 Mkeys/sec.

you're getting 3Mkey's on your iMac??
Do you have a G4 upgrade card or something?

SkiBikeSki · Mar 10, 2001, 03:57 PM

Anyone have an UMA-1.5 Power Mac(466,533,2x533,667,733)? I'm sure everyone here would love to hear your RC5 stats and rates!

zac4mac · Mar 11, 2001, 10:32 AM

What's the deal with the RC5 progress(client) window? It says something like 4,963,183.26 keys/sec, then a summary says 9.51 Mkeys/sec.
Will sign up here as soon as I get a password and all that rot.

G4 DP 550 (OC'd 500 Gigabit)

jeffreyloaf · Mar 11, 2001, 12:15 PM

I started running it last week and it took awhile to get my password.

zac4mac each of you processors is doing 4.9 million each or 9.5 total. I think that is right, anyway.

I get 4.5 running it by itself. My machine is B&W G3 upgraded to a G4 450 and overclocked to 550.

Question? is there a way to keep a log of work done.

And I will join the team as soon as the info gets posted.

DocWest · Mar 11, 2001, 05:41 PM

Yes, you can keep a log.
go to configure (command-k)
and option 4 is logging options.
there are a few different things you can do in there.

Bockie · Mar 11, 2001, 11:19 PM

Rev B iMac (Bondi

)
Newer Tech 433 G4
256M RAM (VM off)
Western Digital 40.5G 7200RPM HD
other mods...but they don't add to the speed.

------------------
"Life cannot be contained...Life finds a way."
-Ian Malcom, Jurassic Park (movie version)

Bockie · Apr 3, 2001, 10:14 AM

To resurrect this thread, I'm reposting.

Now that we have more than two members...What are are your benchmarks? I cranked the priority to 9 and quit all other apps except Finder and maxed out at 3.76 Mkeys/sec on my Rev B. Anyone new have benchmarks to add?

------------------
"Life cannot be contained...Life finds a way."
-Ian Malcom, Jurassic Park (movie version)

GK · Apr 4, 2001, 11:44 AM

Hi,

I'd liketo join the team as well. I have a Ti G4 400Mhz. Any info
how to join ??
thanks

GK

zac4mac · Apr 5, 2001, 07:05 AM

Bockie - I let my DP run for a couple of days set on priority 9 . Best day was 22mar01, 3659 blocks at 11,368 KKeys/sec.

GK - After you've signed up with distributed.net, go here http://stats.distributed.net/rc5-64/...team=865184860 and do a search for your login name up at the top. When you find your stats, check the box at the bottom requesting your password. When you have that, come back to this page and clik the "I wanna join this tean" box and you're on the way.

Z

SkiBikeSki · Apr 6, 2001, 02:18 PM

Good news. Judging by timing and money I save from scholarships, I may be able to afford the Quad 1GHZ Power Mac that will hopefully be out in July. I'd be churning about 35 MKeys/s. Can't wait.

Anyone else planning on getting a new mac in the summer?

[This message has been edited by SkiBikeSki (edited 04-06-2001).]

Scotttheking · Apr 6, 2001, 06:32 PM

I'm most likely getting a dual 733 if they come out in a few weeks.
I'm getting the top of the line Ti book this summer, and probably a quad this summer too.
Current top machine is a B&W G3-400

------------------
G3 400, 384, 12 + 75 GB
PM 8500 - 150, 48, 1 GB
PM 7100 - 66, 32, 700 MB
PM 6100 - 66, 40, 4.5 GB

chris v · Apr 11, 2001, 05:53 PM

It's been interesting watching the processor speeds with this thing over the last few days. My G4 450's run SETI about five times as fast as my 604e 150. BUT they run RC5 about 22 times as fast! Raw processor speed would lead one to believe that a 450 would be 3 times as fast as a 150. The difference is obviously the bus speed, and other motherboard-type enhancements (L2 cache?). The 22 time speed increase really shows what Altivec can do, I guess.

That old Power Computing machine was just about the fastest desktop machine on
Earth when I bought it..... in 1995.

CV

hypercool · Apr 11, 2001, 06:24 PM

just in case you haven't tried it, the distributed.net client runs Really fast on OSX, the OS is much better about giving it spare cycles than 9 was. I do OGR, unfortunately, which is also accelerated pretty well on the G4 by altivec.

cschmelz · Apr 12, 2001, 01:08 AM

Originally posted by hypercool:
just in case you haven't tried it, the distributed.net client runs Really fast on OSX, the OS is much better about giving it spare cycles than 9 was. I do OGR, unfortunately, which is also accelerated pretty well on the G4 by altivec.

How the hell do you get the X client to run? I just get a couple worthless files when I download the X client.