Hello everyone, I'm fairly new here and have been reading the boards and trying to learn as much as I can.

I'm processing data using 2 old computers that are dedicated to run SETI 24/7/365 and my "main" computer that runs SETI when I'm not using it.

Question, does anyone have a slower computer than my Badfish one? The floating point is 836.54 million. So slow! It took 115 hours to process the last AstroPulse file I received. Haha! However, it keeps on trucking so I can't complain. This PC was an old one of mine and I'm going to run it into the ground.

I wanted more processing power so I recently bought my Hyper-Hoax PC off of eBay for $61. What a deal! It even came with XP on it. It has one processor but using hyper threading technology is runs as 2. Is this just an illusion? If I disable it, will it process 1 file as fast as it does 2 or is the hyper technology beneficial.

In any case, for only $61 I can't complain. I'd love to have a processing monster, but the money I spent compared to what I'm getting out of it seems like a good deal.

I just read a thread here all about cooling the processors. The machine I got on eBay has an exhaust fan and it's so loud, kind of annoying. I just got home from work and using a suggestion I read here I took off the side of the case. Boom! Within minutes the exhaust fan shut down and the whole unit is now cooler. Great success!! Much quieter.

Diesel is my main computer and I'm not willing to mess with it by Badfish & Hyper-Hoax I'll do anything to. Any suggestions?

I love tinkering with this stuff and I don't think you need to spend a lot of money to increase your processing. I'm still on the lookout for cheap-o PCs and I'm always asking family & friends for their outdated ones. A processed WU still counts no matter how long it takes to process, right?

-Kliph

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There may not be air in space but there is an Air in Space Museum.

<snip>

Question, does anyone have a slower computer than my Badfish one? The floating point is 836.54 million. So slow! It took 115 hours to process the last AstroPulse file I received. Haha! However, it keeps on trucking so I can't complain. This PC was an old one of mine and I'm going to run it into the ground.

<snip>

-Kliph

I see your 836.54 and raise (or lower) it to 828.64. http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=2413008
It's a 850 MHz Athlon Thunderbird.

If the motherboard will take it stick in an inexpensive Nvidia GPU. Even a GT240 will do wonders.
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=5542161
It's got a 2.8GHz Celeron that basically feeds the GT240 and crunches when it can.

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</Tazz>

Then try out the Lunatics apps. They will about double your output, but you have to check back with the site for updated apps, as it will no longer be automatic like it is with stock apps.

Steve

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Warning, addicted to SETI crunching!
Crunching as a member of GPU Users Group.
GPUUG Website

Just so you know. No one can see the name of your computers. Only you can see that. Some people put links in their sig with the names, but however you want to refer to you machines is fine with me.
For trouble shooting or something it is often quicker to include the ID number. I am guessing 6615613 is your Badfish one?

836?! Something must be broken. I've got an old PIII 850MHz that benches about 850. Actually doing some math and comparing your machine to other P4's I'm running. That benchmark seems to be around the right value for the speed of the CPU.

If you have fan that are running full tilt with the cover closed and then they slow down with the cover open. Then it might be a case of the airflow being stopped up with dust bunnies. You might even have a little furry mat of dust between the CPU and its fan.

Hyper-threading in P4's is generally a good thing to have enabled. There are different kinds of P4's chips and you can get different results depending on which app you run on which CPU. It looks like you probably have a Prescott P4. Which among other things had the SSE3 instruction set.

As Steve mentioned you probably will want to install the Lunatics optimized apps to get more "bang for your buck".

Then depending on what kind of motherboards you have you might be able to do a bit of overclocking on the older ones.

Even if you don't do either one of those things you can defiantly tweak the OS to shut off unneeded services and such. Which will free up what precious few processor cycles they have.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

Hyperthreading? Leave it on. Work units may take 50% longer, but you do run 2 at once. Net result is you maybe get 4 done in the time it takes to do 3 with HT off.

Optimied Apps? Real boost and the Lunatics installer makes them easy to set up. They WILL boost your throughput but a significant amount.

CUDA card? This is where you can gain the most. Spend $61 on a common variety CUDA card and you boost a machine 5 or 10X, without spending hundreds on a "bleeding edge" card. Bonus you get a boost to the machines performance as well, especially if do any gaming etc. Your $60 would get you something like a GeForce GT430 which has 96 CUDA cores, and can do some useful work.

Cooling? If you haven't already done it, clean out the heatsinks and vents on any old machine. It's also often possible to fit extra case fans. Larger, lower speed and quieter fans can still move plenty of air, and prevent the thermostatic fans having to ramp up to full power.

Lots of fun to be had tinkering with old machines, even dumspter diving dead ones (with permission of course). Get 3 dead PCs, chances are you usually can make 2 good ones.

Main problem with the old PCs is the amount of power they use, compared to RAC produced. It's winter here now so I don't mind leaving them running as a watt of heat is a watt of heat whether it comes from a PC or a space heater. But running even older PCs 24/7 will increase your power bill, even if it's only 50w load, it adds up.

Ian

Some may have followed my recent saga with my old P4. It's a real late model though (cedar mill) RAC was a steady 350 with the stock SETI apps. Went to 825 with Lunatics several months ago. I added a gt430 to it and it's now at 2300+ and sort of still climbing. $55 for the gt430. Really does pump out the heat though. I've got the usual CPU fan and I added a cheapy 80mm case fan. I can't overclock the CPU or GPU yet because of the heat. I've got an additional 120mm fan which isn't plugged in yet because there's no 4 pin connector left on the board and I haven't gone to a decent computer store yet to get an adapter. Passive cooling on the gt430 is kind of a bitch. I still am thinking about adding a second one but I will have to power up the 120mm fan for sure. The CPU can easily handle it and it doesn't seem I/O bound. A lot of fun getting these things to continue to do useful work. Or you could go crazy like Terror Australis. A true inspiration for the use of legacy hardware. Check it out. http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=5153516

Haha, ok so now I know I'm the only one that can see my computer names. Thanks for pointing that out early on for me HAL9000. Haha, my bad.

Thank you for all the advice. I find this really interesting SETI as well as the crunching side.

Steve, I dowloaded and installed the lunatic apps as well as the cpuid software on my two older computers. Great stuff. When I turned on BONIC for the first time all of my WUs errored out http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/results.php?hostid=6654307 but all seems to be working fine now. I originally had it set to SSE3 and then switched it to SSE2. I don't know what either of these mean but SSE2 didn't cause any errors so I stuck with it. How do I know wether to use SSE2 or SSE3? I felt like SSE3 was the correct decision initially, but now I don't know.

True Ian, the old PCs don't generate much credit but I kind of like the "survivalist" feel of pushing old technology to the limits. I had fun taking those old PCs and uninstalling/stripping every piece of software off of them that wasn't needed, and then tweaking all the system settings for max processing.

The units are faily dust free, thanks to copius amounts of compressed air and my wicked vacumming skills, haha! The one unit that was running hot has it's processor mounted directly under the power block (it's a tower system). Thus, the exhaust fan was always on trying to keep up. Taking off the side cover solved the problem of the noisy fan.

I don't know why this PC http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=6615613is only pushing 836.54 for a floating point speed. Maybe there are more running processes that I can disable? The only "weird" thing about this PC is that it's connected to the internet wirelessly only because I don't have a spare LAN cable. Could the wireless connnection be a processor drain?

In any case there, Tazz beats me out with his underperformer.

Good call on looking for a cheap GPU. Now that I know what models to be looking for I can keep an eye on eBay for something cheap.

Does anyone run BOINC on a laptop? A girl I work with just today offered me her laptop for SETI use when she gets a new one in the coming weeks. I feel like a laptop will run really hot, not much open space to work with in there.

Thank you for all the advice & answers everyone![/url]

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There may not be air in space but there is an Air in Space Museum.

I don't know why this PC http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=6615613is only pushing 836.54 for a floating point speed.

Those numbers are about right for an Old P4. They had smaller caches and less efficient maths co-pros than the new chips. So a later model P4 or Core 2 will perform a lot better even at a similar clock rate.

Compare with one of mine.
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=4432916

Then with a Core2 also running at 1.8ghz. Twice the benchmark, and 2 cores.
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=6583738

Laptops should run BOINC OK, as long as everything else is OK. You probably want to check the heatsink on an older unit. The small size and tiny copper fins means they clog up easily. How easy this is depends on the model. Some you pop off a cover and can see the heatsink, others are a bit more involved to get to. You can usually google repair instructions for the common ones and get some sort of instructions on how to get them apart.

Sometimes sitting the laptop on some blocks of wood can help the cooling. More space under the unit means more air into the cooling vent and better cooling.

They are more prone to heat issues, but they are generally optimised for lower power use, so can be pretty efficient crunchers power wise, maybe only drawing 30-40 watts with the screen off.

This page has some info on the CUDA cards so you can compare them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_400_Series
Look at the number of Cores, the estimated GFLops and the power use to work out what's best. The bigger cards use a lot of power, and may need a bigger PSU in the machine.

Ian

...
I don't know why this PC http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=6615613is only pushing 836.54 for a floating point speed. Maybe there are more running processes that I can disable? The only "weird" thing about this PC is that it's connected to the internet wirelessly only because I don't have a spare LAN cable. Could the wireless connnection be a processor drain?

It's a 1.6 GHz. Willamette P4, 256KB L2 cache. My system with that processor died about a year ago, but the benchmarks were about the same as yours. It had RAC somewhat over 200, running the Lunatics SSE2 application. You seem to have the plain SSE version installed, perhaps reducing productivity by 5% or so.

...
Does anyone run BOINC on a laptop? A girl I work with just today offered me her laptop for SETI use when she gets a new one in the coming weeks. I feel like a laptop will run really hot, not much open space to work with in there.

Thank you for all the advice & answers everyone!

I'm running on a Dell D600 1.4 GHz Pentium-M laptop which has decent cooling, but to save wear on the fan I've also undervolted the CPU using RM-Clock. The fan has just off, low, and high speeds. Prior to undervolting it ran at high speed almost always while crunching, with the voltage lowered from stock 1.484 to 1.212 it's usually at low speed.

Some laptops don't have very good cooling, this Dell was intended as a business system with long battery life, etc., so isn't the "hottest" in any sense of the word.

                                                                  Joe

One of my other computers is an i7 laptop with an ATI GPU. It's dangerously hot on the outside. GPU is running at 67 (centigrade) and it's 78 (Fahrenheit) in the house right now. I actually got burned by it last Summer when I was wearing shorts and had it sitting in my lap. It's at about 9800 RAC right now which is on the high side for where it's usually been. I still like my P4/gt430 desktop better. Just fired up a CoreDuo laptop a few days ago. No GPU. I don't know what kind of RAC I'll get out of that.

Doug

... Just fired up a CoreDuo laptop a few days ago. No GPU. I don't know what kind of RAC I'll get out of that...

My T7200 @ 2GHz works with settings to 85% CPU-time (keeps it cool) and opt apps at ~1300-1400 RAC. You should reach this RAC in two to four weeks 24/7 crunching.
Lately i upgraged to a T7600 @ 2.3GHz, now i am at ~1600-1700 RAC - what a performance ;-)

__W__

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Haha, ok so now I know I'm the only one that can see my computer names. Thanks for pointing that out early on for me HAL9000. Haha, my bad.

Thank you for all the advice. I find this really interesting SETI as well as the crunching side.

Steve, I dowloaded and installed the lunatic apps as well as the cpuid software on my two older computers. Great stuff. When I turned on BONIC for the first time all of my WUs errored out http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/results.php?hostid=6654307 but all seems to be working fine now. I originally had it set to SSE3 and then switched it to SSE2. I don't know what either of these mean but SSE2 didn't cause any errors so I stuck with it. How do I know wether to use SSE2 or SSE3? I felt like SSE3 was the correct decision initially, but now I don't know.

True Ian, the old PCs don't generate much credit but I kind of like the "survivalist" feel of pushing old technology to the limits. I had fun taking those old PCs and uninstalling/stripping every piece of software off of them that wasn't needed, and then tweaking all the system settings for max processing.

The units are faily dust free, thanks to copius amounts of compressed air and my wicked vacumming skills, haha! The one unit that was running hot has it's processor mounted directly under the power block (it's a tower system). Thus, the exhaust fan was always on trying to keep up. Taking off the side cover solved the problem of the noisy fan.

I don't know why this PC http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=6615613is only pushing 836.54 for a floating point speed. Maybe there are more running processes that I can disable? The only "weird" thing about this PC is that it's connected to the internet wirelessly only because I don't have a spare LAN cable. Could the wireless connnection be a processor drain?

In any case there, Tazz beats me out with his underperformer.

Good call on looking for a cheap GPU. Now that I know what models to be looking for I can keep an eye on eBay for something cheap.

Does anyone run BOINC on a laptop? A girl I work with just today offered me her laptop for SETI use when she gets a new one in the coming weeks. I feel like a laptop will run really hot, not much open space to work with in there.

Thank you for all the advice & answers everyone![/url]

I think it is included in the Lunatics readme, but in case it isn't. You can use an application such as CPUz to find the abilities of your processor.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

Hello again everyone and thanks for your help. I've sucessfully installed one GPU but am having problems with the second install. I might have gone too cheap.

I bought a Nvidia GeForce FX5500 with 256mb on Amazon.
This to be exact:http://www.amazon.com/Brand-NVIDIA-Geforce-FX5500-Graphics/dp/B001OFPM80/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1338592452&sr=8-2

It arrived today and seems a little sketchy, like it might be a refurb or knockoff. The only way I could get it to install with out getting a driver error code 10 was to use the disc it came with. It has a very old driver on it. The updated driver from the nvidia website causes it to fail.

When I run CPUID it shows:
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5500
Code Name = NV34
Revision = A2
Technology = 0.15 um
Size = 256MB

When I look at the BOINC event log it says "no usuable GPU found".

I'm trying to install it on this computer:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=6654307

What's my problem here? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again!!

(Yes I know this computer is old and yes I know the card is as low grade as I could find.)

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There may not be air in space but there is an Air in Space Museum.

I'm afraid that FX5500 predates CUDA computing, big time.

8xxx series is the first that supports CUDA.

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I got a 8800GTS 320mb crunching in a AMD Sempron 6686784, should be able to find one pretty cheap, and it crunch's pretty good.....

I just refired it back up yesterday, it's cranking fairly decent....

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I'm afraid that FX5500 predates CUDA computing, big time.

Lol. I knew there would be a catch. Thanks.

eBay, here it comes.

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There may not be air in space but there is an Air in Space Museum.

I'm afraid that FX5500 predates CUDA computing, big time.

Lol. I knew there would be a catch. Thanks.

eBay, here it comes.

Before you bid for another one, check it against the cuda gpu list