I just started up a new machine for testing purposes. It is built around a Z800 motherboard with 2 Xeon X5550s (4 cores, 8 threads each). The CPU benchmarks did not run and eventually timed out, at which point SETI began to run normally (default apps). Why did the benchmarks fail? Are the Xeons too old? The apps seem to be running OK (no GPU at this time).

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From the looks of that host it certainly looks like the benchmarks completed.
Measured floating point speed 2874.18 million ops/sec
Measured integer speed 8715.46 million ops/sec

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
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From the looks of that host it certainly looks like the benchmarks completed.
Measured floating point speed 2874.18 million ops/sec
Measured integer speed 8715.46 million ops/sec

Those numbers are "default values" that BOINC put there since the benchmarks did not run on initial startup. A few hours later, I forced the benchmarks to run from Advanced -> Run CPU Benchmarks, and they gave the results you now see, which are somewhat different (though pretty close, actually).

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I can't say I have ever seen BOINC have any "default values" other than 0's for the benchmarks.
With no benchmark values it does make it rather impossible to fetch work for any projects. Which I have experienced a few times setting up a new machines when forget to disable the skip benchmarks flag in my default cc_config.xml.

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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[

I can't say I have ever seen BOINC have any "default values" other than 0's for the benchmarks.
With no benchmark values it does make it rather impossible to fetch work for any projects. Which I have experienced a few times setting up a new machines when forget to disable the skip benchmarks flag in my default cc_config.xml.

I'll post the messages from BOINC when I get back to that machine shortly.

[EDIT]: Here ya go:

5/21/2015 12:51:14 PM | | Running CPU benchmarks
5/21/2015 12:51:14 PM | | Suspending computation - CPU benchmarks in progress
5/21/2015 12:56:14 PM | | [error] CPU benchmarks timed out, using default values
5/21/2015 12:56:14 PM | | Benchmark results:
5/21/2015 12:56:14 PM | | Number of CPUs: 16
5/21/2015 12:56:14 PM | | 2874 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU
5/21/2015 12:56:14 PM | | 8715 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU
5/21/2015 12:56:15 PM | | Resuming computation

[/EDIT]

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If benchmarks have never been run on a computer, the defaults are 1,000 MIPS for both integer and floating point tests:

  70 #define DEFAULT_FPOPS   1e9
  71 #define DEFAULT_IOPS    1e9

But if the benchmarks have run sometime, anytime - no matter how long ago - then the old value is preserved:

 573 // If a benchmark is nonzero, keep it.  Otherwise use default value

Line numbers are from cs_benchmark.cpp

That is truly odd, then, because this was a brand new computer based on an HP Z800 motherboard (I love *cheap* multiple threads (in this case, 16) - the whole machine (except for the video cards) cost me only about $100 net) and had never had BOINC run on it before; this was the first time BOINC was started IIRC.

In fact, I had come to the conclusion that the executables that actually run the benchmarks had not yet been downloaded (is that possible?).

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That is truly odd, then, because this was a brand new computer based on an HP Z800 motherboard (I love *cheap* multiple threads (in this case, 16) - the whole machine (except for the video cards) cost me only about $100 net) and had never had BOINC run on it before; this was the first time BOINC was started IIRC.

In fact, I had come to the conclusion that the executables that actually run the benchmarks had not yet been downloaded (is that possible?).

The benchmark is performed by BOINC not the project. So there wouldn't be anything to download.

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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[