I'm not sure that a p-III or p-4 can calculate a seti work within the deadline.

Two months ago I retired (it retired itself) and OLD PII-450 I had running for a decade. Years ago I upgraded it to the "modern" BOINC software from Seti Classic and it always made its deadlines with no errors, even AP. Admittedly it took almost two weeks to process a single AP WU and had a whopping RAC of 40, but it made it! The temperature in the room went down a couple of degrees when the poor old beast died. :-)

Is it worthwhile putting a recent GPU card into an "old clunker" to then do mainly GPU crunching?

Or would that be wasted effort for the returns?


Happy crunchin',
Martin

Even an old PC can benefit from a GPU card. Even if it doesn't have a PCIe slot, they still make cards for just the PCI that can increase your crunching significantly. A quick check at compusa shows they have a couple of 8400s, 9400s and 9500s for around 80 bucks or less in PCI. They should be fairly close in speed to their counterparts in PCIe. You may need to upgrade the power supply to run them though. My little 9500 (PCIe) is keeping up nicely with my E5400 CPUs. It runs a normal work unit in half the time one of my CPUs can.

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PROUD MEMBER OF Team Starfire World BOINC

The fastest official K6-2 ran at 550MHz. There may have been a 600MHz laptop version. 850MHz sounds like an original Athlon CPU.

Oops, brain fart. Your right, It's a Thunderbird. I have a 450 MHz K6-2 that I was thinking of putting together to run SETI on but I havn't gotten around to it yet.

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</Tazz>

The fastest official K6-2 ran at 550MHz. There may have been a 600MHz laptop version. 850MHz sounds like an original Athlon CPU.

Oops, brain fart. Your right, It's a Thunderbird. I have a 450 MHz K6-2 that I was thinking of putting together to run SETI on but I havn't gotten around to it yet.

Heh. I wish I could afford the electric bill if I put all the computers in my personal museum capable of runninng SETI online.

Heh. I wish I could afford the electric bill if I put all the computers in my personal museum capable of runninng SETI online.

That is quite a collection!

Good for home heating in the winter :-)

Happy crunchin',
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

As an example - I've got an old P4 1.8GHz machine that does not have a PCIe slot. It's average SETI "credit" is something below 200 per day. I have recently told BOINC not to get any new SETI tasks, and I will retire it from crunching for SETI.

Absolutely snap!!! I'm also thinking of retiring my dad's Celeron as tht's bn down to 88 RAC & there's too much internal heat + too much thermal cycling as it's not on 24/7.

The fastest official K6-2 ran at 550MHz. There may have been a 600MHz laptop version. 850MHz sounds like an original Athlon CPU.

Sounds more like a K6-3.

and to get more off topic i have a ati hd 4200 serie on my motherboard(msi 785GM-E51).

can i use him in a combination with a hd 5770 to compute for Collatz Conjecture.

The fastest official K6-2 ran at 550MHz. There may have been a 600MHz laptop version. 850MHz sounds like an original Athlon CPU.

Sounds more like a K6-3.

The AMD K6-III was only released in 333MHz, 400MHz, and 450MHz speeds, making it slower than the K6-II which went up to 550MHz.

It would either be a Slot A Athlon which started at 500MHz and went up to 1000MHz in 50MHz increments, or a Socket A Athlon which started at 600MHz and went up to 1.4GHz in 50MHz increments and two bus speeds: 200MHz and 266MHz.

The fastest official K6-2 ran at 550MHz. There may have been a 600MHz laptop version. 850MHz sounds like an original Athlon CPU.

Sounds more like a K6-3.

The AMD K6-III was only released in 333MHz, 400MHz, and 450MHz speeds, making it slower than the K6-II which went up to 550MHz.

It would either be a Slot A Athlon which started at 500MHz and went up to 1000MHz in 50MHz increments, or a Socket A Athlon which started at 600MHz and went up to 1.4GHz in 50MHz increments and two bus speeds: 200MHz and 266MHz.

Everybody chant it, "Thunderbird! Thunderbird!" Gah I loved those ole' chips, were heck of a performer in the day.

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

The fastest official K6-2 ran at 550MHz. There may have been a 600MHz laptop version. 850MHz sounds like an original Athlon CPU.

Sounds more like a K6-3.

The AMD K6-III was only released in 333MHz, 400MHz, and 450MHz speeds, making it slower than the K6-II which went up to 550MHz.

It would either be a Slot A Athlon which started at 500MHz and went up to 1000MHz in 50MHz increments, or a Socket A Athlon which started at 600MHz and went up to 1.4GHz in 50MHz increments and two bus speeds: 200MHz and 266MHz.

Everybody chant it, "Thunderbird! Thunderbird!" Gah I loved those ole' chips, were heck of a performer in the day.

The Thunderbird chips were actually the second revision of the K7 series. The original release, Argon, had 512KB of 1/2, 1/3, to 1/4 speed L2 cache built into the CPU cartrdige (a la Katmai Pentium II Slot 1's). The Thunderbird chips decreased the size of the L2 to 256KB but increased it to full CPU speed (a la Coppermine Pentium III).

Katmai... Thunderbird... You're bring it all back!!! I can't believe I remember it lol!!!

and to get more off topic i have a ati hd 4200 serie on my motherboard(msi 785GM-E51).

can i use him in a combination with a hd 5770 to compute for Collatz Conjecture.

You should be able too, it might take creating a cc_config.xml file to make the computer use both GPU's though.

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Boinc won't work on a cluster because of the way the memory works....As has been established.. ;)

On a side note...adding a single card to an older system can easily outclass many same era cpu machines...

My old P4 is truckin' right along, ~12k rac (stock 350w psu as well)
;)

Keep Crunching
-Brandon

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"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not Eureka! (I found it!) but rather, 'hmm... that's funny...'" -- Isaac Asimov

Thank you all.
I think here all my questions answered.

So, Basically

1. it is better to separate all nodes.
2. it is better to invest in a GPU.
3. P-III and P-4 can both get the deadline easily.

While it is possible to do clustered computing, what actually happens on a cluster computer is that BOINC runs on each CPU of a cluster separately (not each computer, each CPU - so a 4 CPU computer in a cluster would have 4 instances of BOINC running). Each instance of BOINC will run a single task for the single CPU (no multi threaded tasks need apply). When each task is complete, that instance of BOINC stops, and the cluster controller is supposed to start a new instance of BOINC.

Basically, if you have a cluster already that is mostly doing work for a clustered computing environment, BOINC can be made to cope with the environment. However, if you do not need to have a clustered environment for some other reason, BOINC works at least as well by having it stand alone.

For a while, I was running a 90MHz Pentium that was (barely) meeting all the deadlines). The deadlines have been tightened a bit since then, and I am not certain that the P-90 would still make the deadlines.

The basic idea of BOINC is to use idle CPU time of a machine that would be on anyway. I know that some people have bought expensive machines to crunch more, and some people have left machines on more than they would have if BOINC were not installed on them, but this was not the intent.

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BOINC WIKI

The basic idea of BOINC is to use idle CPU time of a machine that would be on anyway. I know that some people have bought expensive machines to crunch more, and some people have left machines on more than they would have if BOINC were not installed on them, but this was not the intent.

Yeah but once you turn from helper to hobbyist nothing gets done the way it was intended lol.

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

Thank you all.

but I just wanted my old computers for seti
and I do not think it really helps when I always miss my deadline.

So I was thinking I let them work together.
and that I get all my deadlines.

What made you think you would miss any deadlines?

What made you think you would miss any deadlines?

Exactly, with optimised apps even a PIII should do a normal work unit in a day, or 2 or 3 is it's a slower one.

I have an old dual PIII box that's still currently getting a RAC of 234. Worth the power it's using? Probably not. But it sits under my desk at the office and hums away.

I have various p3s and 4s, but I only run them when it's cold outside. 500W used by old PCs or 500w used by an electric heater? Both warm the room. Summer comes along, set "no new tasks" and turn them off.

This time of year, I just run them for an hour or so in the morning, and the machines we actually use, Core 2s and laptops get most of the crunching done.

For the OP, if you want to build a P4 space heater, go for it. Just realise that's it's main value.

Ian

i had a PII, 450 with 256 meg of ram, it meet both AP and MB deadlines...and did all of about 40-50 RAC, so i think a PIII would be able to do them....

I moved and have not set it back up yet...

Nick

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does anyone know a forum thread about what the best os for boinc?

and how to close a thread?

does anyone know a forum thread about what the best os for boinc?

and how to close a thread?

To close your thread, hit the red X and ask a moderator to lock it.

Unless there is compelling reason not to, they usually accomadate as soon as practical.

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Janice