OK, I picked up an Athalon 1800+ (which is about 1.5GHz clock speed) and a decent motherboard (though now I wish my FSB was faster, but whatever). I started running Set at Home again after I basically forgot about it on my last machine.
So it was going pretty slow. With 512 MB ram and that processor I figured it should go pretty quick, and at first it did. But after a few data sets the time it took to complete a unit was approaching 11 to 12 hours.
Then I found Progress Quest and started running seven different characters. Basically, seven characters leaves me with about 12-16% system resources available, enough for a few browser windows, which is all I really need most of the time.
Thinking that this would actually harm seti at home performance, I contemplated giving up on the game (there isn’t anything to do in it anyway). But a peak at SAH revealed that it is now taking something like 6 hours a set.
WTF? Does this program run better under worse conditions or what? I am totally mystified. Is there some possible explanation for this?
Not that I’m TRYING to be an nitpicky anal SOB, but it’s Athlon, not Athalon.
What OS are you running? XP claims to adapt to the way a user works within the OS, I think it’s called prefetch or something like that, so that may account for, over time, an increase in your computer’s speed.
Abel, running a Steely Vorpal Athlon 900 mHz with +512 Banded Custom SDRAM.
Hmm, yeah, I’m running 98… you know, a thought struck me. I have it constantly running in the background, but what I’ve done is turn off the screen saver functionality of SAH. Perhaps that had something to do with it…
Athlon, huh? Well, I’ll call their names right when they tell me what “1800+” has to do with 1534. (Sheesh, I even built the computer myself. That is a somewhat embarassing mistake!)
Honestly, I don’t understand why they started with the whole 1800+ business, but they claim it’s because of the actual ability of the processor. If you take a 1.8 mHz Pentium 4 and put it up against a 1800+ Athlon, they’ll perform very similarly, even though the Athlon is actually just in the 1500s. In some tests the Athlon actually performed better, so I guess they’re trying to say that clock speed isn’t the only indicator of performance oin CPUs. I suppose they’re trying to raise public awareness of that issue.
Here’s a link that shows some of the different Athlon models tested against Pentium 4s…
(Sheesh, I even built the computer myself. That is a somewhat embarassing mistake!)