[jbenton1]

Hello I am interested on some info about whether the mac processes the seti program info faster and better than a pc. I have a Gateway Pent 2 400 mhz Performance and after a while my computer will be sluggish. Any way the processing of the info seems slow to me. I was wondering how an imac or ibook processes. How long does it take to process the chunk they send you. I am wanting info on models between 233 mhz to 600 mhz imacs and ibooks. Also for you mac users check out this website United Devices http://www.ud.com/home.htm. They said they will have the medical program for macs also in the future but not now , so don't download it. Thank you John

[Todd Madson]

Essentially, under Seti v2.04 it was faster on the Mac than on the PC. Then, with the release of v3.03 of Setiathome the reliance on the L2
cache became less and thus sheer clock speed became a dominating factor.

I know that the program runs faster on a G4 than a G3 since I have both
400 mhz G4 and 400 mhz G3 in my home, however, if you want better speed
you need to shut the graphics part of the screensaver off - in other
words - run the text client under OS X for best performance.

Now, the interesting thing is that at work I have an 800 mhz PIII
laptop and it now is the big star in my Seti search. I stopped
running the G4 on the Seti search because I've been running RC5
and RC5 screams on the G4 since the client is Altivec optimized.
I get a work unit every few minutes on that one.

[jbenton1]

I thank you for your feed back. I am a little confused on lingo though. You said you run the program on a RC5 and it screams. I don't know what an RC5 is but I think your saying it is fast. Are you talking about the mac or the laptop? By the way do you have any extra macs around the house that you want to sell? Thank you John

Originally posted by Todd Madson:
Essentially, under Seti v2.04 it was faster on the Mac than on the PC. Then, with the release of v3.03 of Setiathome the reliance on the L2
cache became less and thus sheer clock speed became a dominating factor.

I know that the program runs faster on a G4 than a G3 since I have both
400 mhz G4 and 400 mhz G3 in my home, however, if you want better speed
you need to shut the graphics part of the screensaver off - in other
words - run the text client under OS X for best performance.

Now, the interesting thing is that at work I have an 800 mhz PIII
laptop and it now is the big star in my Seti search. I stopped
running the G4 on the Seti search because I've been running RC5
and RC5 screams on the G4 since the client is Altivec optimized.
I get a work unit every few minutes on that one.

[Scotttheking]

RC5 is another distributed computing program.
It is G4 optimized.
Very very fast.

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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

[SkiBikeSki]

SETI@Home 2.0.4 was the fastest version of SETI for Macs. It relied heavily on the amount of L2 cache on the processor. Since most modern macs have 512K or 1MB of cahe it was able to produce results far better than a PC of the same MHz. But when 3.0 came all that changed. The L2 cache programming was removed and the speed was based solely on the MHz. So then Macs fell behind in WU times. Bekeley also added subroutines to search for pulses and tripelets than ran very quickly in a PIII but poorly on a G3 or G4. So now Pentiums are better SETI machines. And that's the cold truth.

What Todd Madson mentioned was a completely different distributed computing project called RC5. It is run by distributed.net. This program tries to decrept the latest RSA encryption through sheer trial and error. This requires alot of processing speed so they enlisted the help of 250,000 volunteers. Each workunit takes only about one minutes to crunch, so users download thousands at a time and sent in the results daily. The best part of RC5 is that it is Alti-Vec and multi-processor aware, and Macs crunch data 5 times faster than a PC of the same MHz. It is a great way to show off the speed of your CPU. Also distibuted.net offers a $1,000 prize to the lucky person who's client is able to decrypt the message. And that person's team gets to share $1,000. You can find more information about RC5 at www.distributed.net or in the forum RC5 and MAC POWER.

[Vsx1]

my iMac 350, OS 9.1, 128 MB RAM, VM off, SETI 3.03, graphics off @ 1 min. it takes about 20 hours for SETI to complete 1 work unit. i got similar results on G3 powermacs w/ same specs.

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Vsx1
[email protected]
[email protected]
http://sites.netscape.net/vsxi/

I have data for two Mac systems:
an iMac 233 with 160Meg RAM, minimal virtual memory, graphics off @ 2 minutes, SETI 3.03, and it averages just over 29 hours per unit,

and a 333MHz portable with 90Meg ram, minimal virtual memory, graphics off @ 2 minutes, SETI 3.03, it averages just over 20 hours per unit.

Most of the units are done with no other applications running.