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Ramping it up a little
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Shaktai
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Sep 29, 2008, 01:32 AM
 
Finally got a new computer to add to my Mac Mini (dual core 1.66) for crunching . It wasn't the MacPro that I would like to have had, but rather a 24 inch iMac 3.06 core 2 duo. Almost bought the MacPro tower, but the reason for the purchase was for my photography and wouldn't have had enough to get a decent monitor to do it right. My old 20 inch flat screen wasn't doing my photography justice as was and really looks bad sitting next to the iMac. The new iMac with the 24 inch screen is plenty fast and vastly superior to the old monitor.

Anyway, putting both boxes on SETI for a little while just to see what they can do with the Alex's optimized client. After a few days may move them over to either Einstein or Rosetta. Nice to have a little more crunch power again. The mac mini is a workhorse in its own right and has been half way around the world with me, but the big iMac is really sweet. The MacPro with 30 inch cinema display will just have to wait for a while (a long while).

Nice to be back crunching a little with the cooler weather.

Hey Reader 50, how do I change my stats sig to include SETI?
     
reader50
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Sep 30, 2008, 03:29 PM
 
With multisigs, I have to do the change. Did you want SETI to replace one of your current lines, or did you want to go to a 4-line sig?
     
Shaktai  (op)
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Sep 30, 2008, 03:43 PM
 
Originally Posted by reader50 View Post
With multisigs, I have to do the change. Did you want SETI to replace one of your current lines, or did you want to go to a 4-line sig?
Let's go to a four line. I would like to keep Climate on there. Might want to crunch it again.

Thanks.
     
Shaktai  (op)
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Dec 10, 2008, 02:31 AM
 
Well, barring any problems, I should have a new addition to help with crunching, by this weekend, after I get moved. Sadly it isn't the Mac Pro I dream of but it is still pretty darned powerful. An Intel Core i7 940, 2.93 ghz quad core (Nehalem microarchitecture). For those not familiar Intel brought back Hyperthreading (greaty improved) with it so it runs 2 threads on each core, or in other words looks like an 8 core machine.

I poured through projects looking for other i7 computers being ran now and came up with some preliminary numbers. Tried to select only core i7 920 (2.6ghz) or 940 (2.93ghz) machines that weren't overclocked. From each I pulled a sample of 20 completed work units (6 for climate) and came up with the following "potential crunching numbers, rounded down to be conservative.

SETI - 9,500
Rosetta - 3,400
Einstein - 5700
Climate - 4900

I think those are some pretty impressive numbers for a Quad core CPU running windows if my calculations are correct. There is one "Overclocked Core i7 running at 4.2ghz on SETI, currently ranked as the #2 computer. http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_...hostid=4015522. It is showing average credit right now at 11,256.03 and has been running less then a month, but I pulled a 20 unit sample on it, and calculated it may max out at more than 14,000 PPD. Of course that is whopping overclock starting with a [email protected].

I won't be overclocking mine anytime soon but will be happy with its stock performance. Hoping Apple might opt for these chips for the new iMacs. I imagine they will wait for the new Xeon equivalent for the MacPro, but just imagine what an 8 core monster that would be.

(update: Just noted that Einstein, Rosetta and Climate aren't updating on my multi project sig, but SETI is. Hmmm?)
( Last edited by Shaktai; Dec 10, 2008 at 02:38 AM. )
     
arkayn
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Dec 10, 2008, 08:32 AM
 
Helli is reusing a computer ID, so actually started around 5000 on that machine.
     
Shaktai  (op)
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Dec 10, 2008, 09:41 PM
 
Originally Posted by arkayn View Post
Helli is reusing a computer ID, so actually started around 5000 on that machine.
Yeah I knew that. I calculated his potential performance though from multiple work units that had been completed on the overclocked i7. It's pretty crazy.
     
Gareth Johnston
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Dec 10, 2008, 10:03 PM
 
So much for a huge increase in performance. Only another 10% - 15%. I guess the marketing was a load of rubbish yet again.
Mac Pro 2.8GHz x 8, 10GB, 320HDD etc.........
Saving for 32 core Mac Pro. Only £1376.93 to go.
     
Shaktai  (op)
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Dec 11, 2008, 04:23 AM
 
Originally Posted by Gareth Johnston View Post
So much for a huge increase in performance. Only another 10% - 15%. I guess the marketing was a load of rubbish yet again.
Hmm. Don't think I understand your response.

My iMac, 3.06 core 2 does about 1795 a day on Einstein. If I had two of them equalling a quad core that would be 3590 a day. The i7 quad core should do about 5700 a day if my calculations were correct, with a "slower" quad core. That is a 53% increase and is done by a 2.66 ghz quad.

On Climate, the difference is less, where my iMac,3.06 can do about 2000 ppd and would be 4000 if equivalent to a quad core. Here the i7 does 4900 ppd from a 2.93ghz quad chip. That is a 22.5 percent increase.

On Seti, running the optimized apps for Windows and Mac, the difference is even more dramatic.
The iMac 3.06 against a 2.66 core i7. iMac for 4 cores delivers, 5700ppd average, vs 9400ppd for the core i7 (2.66ghz) That's a 64% improvement.

Don't have enough data for my iMac to calculate for Rosetta, but best estimate (based upon my memory of prior performance) is still a 30+% improvement.

A big difference on all of them. Still hope the new Mac desktops see something like this in January, or better. Hard to argue against more power and improved energy efficiency, especially with the cost of energy now days.

Anyway, we'll know soon enough. The i7 is here, but won't be able to bring it online till friday at the earliest.
     
Gareth Johnston
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Dec 13, 2008, 01:48 PM
 
Shaktai, your maths is up the spout. At stock speeds the new chips are only going to give a 15% increase in performance over the penryn based systems.

This is how you work it out. We'll use Msattlers i7 as an example.

Stock speed is 3.2, he has it going at 3.84 at present. that is an overclock of 20% so his times are approx 20% quicker than a stock new i7 would give. Looking at his most recent tasks.

With a CPU time of approx 2900 seconds for 45 credits. The RAC for that chip with 8 cores running and a 20% overclock is only 13,000. Where as my mac pro, if running at 3.2 instead of 2.8 would give an RAC of 11500. Thats only an 11% increase for a 20% increase in clock.
Mac Pro 2.8GHz x 8, 10GB, 320HDD etc.........
Saving for 32 core Mac Pro. Only £1376.93 to go.
     
Shaktai  (op)
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Dec 13, 2008, 03:37 PM
 
Originally Posted by Gareth Johnston View Post
Shaktai, your maths is up the spout. At stock speeds the new chips are only going to give a 15% increase in performance over the penryn based systems.

This is how you work it out. We'll use Msattlers i7 as an example.

Stock speed is 3.2, he has it going at 3.84 at present. that is an overclock of 20% so his times are approx 20% quicker than a stock new i7 would give. Looking at his most recent tasks.

With a CPU time of approx 2900 seconds for 45 credits. The RAC for that chip with 8 cores running and a 20% overclock is only 13,000. Where as my mac pro, if running at 3.2 instead of 2.8 would give an RAC of 11500. Thats only an 11% increase for a 20% increase in clock.
Don't think I compared with msattlers, and tried to avoid comparing against overclocked i7's, but that is okay. I've got mine up and running now, though won't have a full time internet connection until Tuesday. (Have to connect right now with a wireless cell modem which can't be left on all the time). I've got it running on Climate right now, which I think is one of the lowest project differences. I should after a couple of weeks be able to compare the i7 2.93 (running stock) pretty accurately against my iMac dual core Penryn 3.06. Wont do that though until I have a full time internet connection and some "complete" work units to compare against. Later I may switch over to SETI, for a few weeks just to see what the difference is between the two there. The iMac is about 4.4 percent faster should should then see no more maybe an 11-12% difference per core after compensating for the difference in clock speed.. I'm thinking it will be more like 15-18% per core on climate. Will know in a couple of weeks if I'm right or have to eat some "humble pie".

UPDATE: Got to love/hate Vista. Already wiped out my BOINC files once as the result of a freez-up. lost all my climate work units. After that moved it all over to SETI instead of Climate, for a while just to see what it will do. Will take a few days to see any real results. Have several Astropulse workunits in effect as well and those take a few hours to complete.

Core i7 quad @2.93
http://climateapps2.oucs.ox.ac.uk/cp...?hostid=932592
iMac
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_...hostid=4594609
( Last edited by Shaktai; Dec 15, 2008 at 03:56 PM. )
     
reader50
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Dec 15, 2008, 02:36 AM
 
Originally Posted by Shaktai View Post
...
(update: Just noted that Einstein, Rosetta and Climate aren't updating on my multi project sig, but SETI is. Hmmm?)
I figured this would be easy to track down, but it was on the subtle side. The problem was your name being recorded as "Shaktai [Founder]" in the database. The sig script looks for data for a dude called "Shaktai", and shows 0 rate because that was the correct value for the last entry with that name: May 8, 2008.

I had to do a largish parser rewrite around that time, for several BOINC projects, and missed a few HTML changes. The resulting bug only affected team founders.

It's fixed on Climate, the sig entry should update within a few hours. If nothing else breaks, I'll migrate the fix to the other projects in a few days.
     
Shaktai  (op)
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Dec 15, 2008, 04:52 AM
 
Hey Thanks reader50. It wasn't a big deal, but glad you found time to look at it. Computers are that way. They only see what you tell them, not what you mean.
     
Shaktai  (op)
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Dec 18, 2008, 12:44 AM
 
Just as a note, I did discover that my Core i7 appears to do better on SETI with Hyperthreading turned off, rather then on. My estimate numbers were wrong and not nearly as good as reality. Garreth was closer to right, at least as far as SETI goes. Still it is a very good performer.

I have moved over to WCG (World Community Grid) for the long term as the team wasn't doing very well over there with Average Credit of only 1,568 cobblestones for 6 participants. Our current ranking is #320 overall, but we rank 968 on Recent average credit which of course means we are losing ground fast. I figure I might contribute an estimated 4000 BOINC PPD (based upon 24 hours validated and pending credits) with my 3 computers which would bring us up to about 5500 PPD for the team. That would be enough to stop our slide and maybe even move us up a tiny bit in the standings.

WCG has several good projects that run at once (or you can pick and choose) and I am more interested in trying to do some good then in collecting credits so decided to settle in there for the long term. It also seems to be favorable to the Core i7 (with hyperthreading) which completed 28 work units compared to 7 for my iMac 3.06 Core2 Duo. and 50% more credits per core in the first 24 hours. Won't know for a while what that will work out to long term but it looks like some of the WCG projects favor the Corei7's strong integer performance. Only time will tell though what the long term brings, as it can vary depending on what projects are actually crunched on a given day.

Current projects are: Discovering Dengue Drugs (includes dengue, hepatitis C, West Nile, and Yellow fever viruses), Fight AIDS, Conquer Cancer, Human Proteome Folding 2 (similar to Rosetta), Nutritious Rice for the World and Clean Energy Project.
     
Gareth Johnston
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Dec 18, 2008, 03:43 AM
 
Shaktai,

I would trust your figures on the other projects though. I only know my Seti figures are reasonably accurate from the months of proving that who was a blatant liar when it came to the figures he was quoting.
Mac Pro 2.8GHz x 8, 10GB, 320HDD etc.........
Saving for 32 core Mac Pro. Only £1376.93 to go.
     
Shaktai  (op)
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Dec 18, 2008, 04:57 AM
 
Originally Posted by Gareth Johnston View Post
Shaktai,

I would trust your figures on the other projects though. I only know my Seti figures are reasonably accurate from the months of proving that who was a blatant liar when it came to the figures he was quoting.
No problem. You were pretty much on target as SETI goes. I apparently gathered bad samples and not enough of them. As far as the other projects, without actually running them for a sustained period I'll assume my estimates to be unproven. Going to just focus on WCG for now to see what I can accomplish there. Will take a while to know for sure but maybe I can stop the team slide and if I'm lucky reverse it a little even. Of course if I'm really, really, lucky, maybe I'll win the Lotto and buy a small farm of MacPro's, ha ha.
     
   
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