Hey all fellow crunchers!

OK, my G4 400 (gigabit) is a very old dog, but I am really largely dissappointed about the crunch time (around 13 hs). I have seen some discussions about optimized clients and been linked to the download pages at Team MacNN.

But so far it is all looking very confusing to me: is there really a performance increase using these clients? Do they work with Boinc 4.25 or 4.35? Or do I need some other apps to control them? There is almost no documentation or installation help available either.

I have been trying to scroll the forums forth and back, but it is very hard to get some comprehensive information. I would be glad about any help!

Thank you very much!

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Look here for the optimized clients. Then check this forum for more info about optimizing Macs.

C

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Yes, the optimized worker from Team MacNN boost computations :-)

Now some explanations:

there are two pieces doing the job on your computer: a boinc client and a project worker.

The boinc client manages communication and computation scheduling. There is no any use to tune it for CPU speed.
A project worker actually does the computations. AltiVec support makes it work faster.
The worker is a project specific executable. It is downloaded automatically by the boinc client when you attach to a project. But you can have a custom worker like the one from Team MacNN. Unfortunately, there is some problem with downoading optimized file from their web site :-(

If you had one, all you have to do is to download optimized worker for your CPU, unarchive it, make sure you have TWO files: an executable and app_info.xml description file. Put these files into your (boinc root)/projects/setiathome.berkeley.edu folder.
Next time you start the boinc client it will detect the decription file and switch to your custom worker. If not, delete the original setiathome worker.

The (boinc root) is a folder your boinc client has it's data. If you don't know where it is, do search for "client_state.xml" (without quotes). The file is in the boinc root directory.

You may also check Boinc Stat Viewer: http://www.boinc.dk/index.php?page=mirror_download_file&id=139
It will not make things any faster but let you take a look on what goes on :)

ALX

<blockquote>
If you had one, all you have to do is to download optimized worker for your CPU, unarchive it, make sure you have TWO files: an executable and app_info.xml description file. Put these files into your (boinc root)/projects/setiathome.berkeley.edu folder.
Next time you start the boinc client it will detect the decription file and switch to your custom worker. If not, delete the original setiathome worker.

The (boinc root) is a folder your boinc client has it's data. If you don't know where it is, do search for "client_state.xml" (without quotes). The file is in the boinc root directory.

</blockquote>

Thank you very much, Aleksander!

Your instruction worked very fine for me, with one exeption: I waited for finishing the current WU. Problem was, my cached WUs haven't been accepted by the new client. So BOINC 4.35 sends a long list of error messages first, and it clears the cache. Looks like these WU's are not reported as Client error, so they will all fail the deadline without notice :(.

With next launch Boinc accepted the client and got new DLs for it. So it seems to be a very good idea to switch clients with an empty cache.

I hope there will be some performance increase as compensation now ;)

Kind Regards, Matthias

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oops,

forgot to tell you: all workunits used by the old worker will be lost - just like a project reset. That's the price you pay for switching to other worker. You can't do anything about it (or maybe you could but it's painful). But don't worry about it - new units should go better :-)

ALX

Update:

Just to avoid frustration and a waste of CPU time: the Team MacNN client for G4 7400 (I could not check the other ones) will not work well with the advanced GUI, it will even slow down compared to the standard client.

But it does give improved results if you are running it with command line BOINC or with the simple GUI Menubar.

hope that helps!

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[quote]Update:

Just to avoid frustration and a waste of CPU time: the Team MacNN client for G4 7400 (I could not check the other ones) will not work well with the advanced GUI, it will even slow down compared to the standard client.

You should be using the 7450 client or the standard issue one. I searched for quite a while and finally found a reference (don't remember where, now) that indicated the 7400 was for old machines. If I remember correctly, the 7450 speeded up my G4 PowerBook a little bit. The optimized BOINC client speeded things up a bit also, but significantly increased the Benchmark results. I had been claiming around 20 credits per WU, and after installing the BOINC optimized client, I began claiming around 32 credits per WU, which was closer to what all the PCs were claiming.

C

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