Science and Technology news... :: View topic - The annoying way that BOINC "throttles"..

~misfit~ · Guest

SETI BOINC seems to throttle on time. For instance, I>ve got my preferences
set to 75% of both CPU cores. It seems that it works on quarter-second (or
similar) chunks of time, 75% being 100% load for 3/4 of a second, then 0%
load for the other 1/4, resulting in 75% average over the whole second.

With my CPU having a variable multiplier (11x or 6x) that is decided by code
within the CPU it makes for a lot of switching of mutiplier/CPU speed. Using
the RightMark CPU Clock Utility to minitor it shows the speed of the CPU
jumping up and down like a frog on methamphetamine on a hotplate. Surely
this can>t be good for the CPU and the motherboard voltage regulators?
(vcore changes as well when multiplier does.)

Also, the temperature of my cores fluctuates by approximately 10°C each
power-cycle, roughly each second. I>m pretty sure that the constant, rapid
thermal cycling isn>t doing my CPU any favours either. Why can>t these
code-monkeys write code that simply uses 75% of the CPU constantly and
smoothly rather than just switching between 100% and 0% load?

I>m seriously considering stopping crunching, my PC is my precioussss, I
don>t mind using it to do some work for SETI but I don>t want to torture it.
What do others think?
--
TTFN

Shaun.

Patrick Vervoorn · Guest

In article <472c7025@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
~misfit~ <misfit61nz@yahooligans.co.nz> wrote:

[snip]

[quote]I>m seriously considering stopping crunching, my PC is my precioussss, I
don>t mind using it to do some work for SETI but I don>t want to torture it.
What do others think?
[/quote]
Why not just let it crunch at 100%? It>s running at a relatively low
priority as is?

I run the command line version of BOINC. It>s running at 100%. I even let
it run at 100% when I play a low-resources game (like Diablo II). When I
want to run something beefier (HL2, Crysis, Bioshock, etc), I just
Ctrl-Break in the window, and manually restart it when I stop playing.

Regards,

Patrick.

~misfit~ · Guest

Hi Patrick! Fancy seeing you here. Usenet>s a small world huh?

Somewhere on the interweb "Patrick Vervoorn" typed:
[quote]In article <472c7025@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
~misfit~ <misfit61nz@yahooligans.co.nz> wrote:

[snip]

I>m seriously considering stopping crunching, my PC is my
precioussss, I don>t mind using it to do some work for SETI but I
don>t want to torture it. What do others think?

Why not just let it crunch at 100%? It>s running at a relatively low
priority as is?
[/quote]
There>s a couple reasons I don>t want it to run at 100%. Firstly, I>m on a
very limited income and my PC is one of the biggest consumers of electricity
in my house. That>s why I stopped crunching with my Barton, it was sucking
the power (and throwing out the heat) and my electricity bills dropped heaps
when I stopped crunching.

However, with this machine, that will do five times the "work" that my
Barton did and is more efficient, (about the same power consumption as the
Barton) I figured that I could afford to dedicate a /certain amount/ of
CPU/electricity to SETI, still give more than my Barton did, and not stress
my power bill or my CPU.

The second thing is heat. I>m an overclocker. I have this E4500 running at
2.93GHz instead of it>s default 2.2GHz. (Although core voltage is till
default.) As I>m on a limited budget I>m still using the stock cooler until
I can afford something better. The CPU itself doesn>t get *too* hot, topping
out at a maximum of 60°C under full load. However, it>s not summer yet, and
my HDDs etc, are running hotter than I>d like when the CPU is pumping out
the heat. (Like I said, limited budget, can>t afford a nice new,
well-ventilated case).

[quote]I run the command line version of BOINC. It>s running at 100%. I even
let it run at 100% when I play a low-resources game (like Diablo II).
When I want to run something beefier (HL2, Crysis, Bioshock, etc), I
just Ctrl-Break in the window, and manually restart it when I stop
playing.
[/quote]
Ok. Yeah, running at 100% would be far less stressful on the system. I just
wish they>d write better code, make it easy for casual contributers like me
to be able to give a bit without having my CPU rocketing from 100% to 0%
then back to 100% every second. I mean, seriously, that can>t be good for
it, especially considering how quickly it responds thermally to those
fluctuations, going up and down over 10°C each second. How hard can it be to
write it so that it just uses a certain amount of CPU constantly? Most
programmes do just that (I run a few monitoring apps in the backgroud so I
know *exactly* what>s going on).

Anyway, as long as it>s gonna treat my CPU like this I>m thinking I>m not
going to participate anymore. Also, being completely sold on the reality of
global warming I>m not about to leave my CPU running at 100% for what is, at
best, a long-shot. I>ve been with SETI since '99 and, when PCs used far less
power and before the evidence came in for human-catalysed global warming, I
didn>t mind using 100% CPU. Now, I>d use 50% (I used 75% as an example
earlier, I>ve tried several settings) of my CPU as it doesn>t seem to impact
the heat output, (therefore the power input) much more than when the machine
is idling.

I don>t want to contribute to the death of humanity via catastrophic global
changes in weather patterns, looking for stray signs that there may be other
intelligent life forms out there, probably watching us kill ourselves on
reality TV.

Hmmm, seems I>ve digressed a little. <g>

Good to "see" you Patrick.
--
Shaun.

Patrick Vervoorn · Guest

In article <472e80ff$1@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
~misfit~ <misfit61nz@yahooligans.co.nz> wrote:
[quote]Hi Patrick! Fancy seeing you here. Usenet>s a small world huh?

Somewhere on the interweb "Patrick Vervoorn" typed:

Why not just let it crunch at 100%? It>s running at a relatively low
priority as is?

There>s a couple reasons I don>t want it to run at 100%. Firstly, I>m on a
very limited income and my PC is one of the biggest consumers of electricity
in my house. That>s why I stopped crunching with my Barton, it was sucking
the power (and throwing out the heat) and my electricity bills dropped heaps
when I stopped crunching.
[/quote]
If you can>t afford to crunch, don>t crunch, would be my advise...

[quote]However, with this machine, that will do five times the "work" that my
Barton did and is more efficient, (about the same power consumption as the
Barton) I figured that I could afford to dedicate a /certain amount/ of
CPU/electricity to SETI, still give more than my Barton did, and not stress
my power bill or my CPU.
[/quote]
It will probably consume less power at full load than the old system did?

[quote]The second thing is heat. I>m an overclocker. I have this E4500 running at
2.93GHz instead of it>s default 2.2GHz. (Although core voltage is till
default.) As I>m on a limited budget I>m still using the stock cooler until
I can afford something better. The CPU itself doesn>t get *too* hot, topping
out at a maximum of 60°C under full load. However, it>s not summer yet, and
my HDDs etc, are running hotter than I>d like when the CPU is pumping out
the heat. (Like I said, limited budget, can>t afford a nice new,
well-ventilated case).
[/quote]
Why risk a major investment of yourself to overclocking? What are the
temperatures of the rig when you>re not overclocking it?

[quote]I run the command line version of BOINC. It>s running at 100%. I even
let it run at 100% when I play a low-resources game (like Diablo II).
When I want to run something beefier (HL2, Crysis, Bioshock, etc), I
just Ctrl-Break in the window, and manually restart it when I stop
playing.

Ok. Yeah, running at 100% would be far less stressful on the system. I just
wish they>d write better code, make it easy for casual contributers like me
to be able to give a bit without having my CPU rocketing from 100% to 0%
then back to 100% every second. I mean, seriously, that can>t be good for
it, especially considering how quickly it responds thermally to those
fluctuations, going up and down over 10°C each second. How hard can it be to
write it so that it just uses a certain amount of CPU constantly? Most
programmes do just that (I run a few monitoring apps in the backgroud so I
know *exactly* what>s going on).
[/quote]
No idea if this is even possible using WinXP. I mainly thought BOINC was
meant to consume any spare CPU cycles you have left. That>s why both the
Linux as well as the Win32 version run at a relatively low priority. I>m
running it also on a few Linux boxes (even a very old P133 with 64MB), and
it doesn>t have much impact on the general responsiveness of said systems.
Same for the WinXP boxes.

Perhaps try posting your question in one of the BOINC related forums, or
mail it to one of the developers...? I don>t think WinXP has the means to
give an application 50% of the available resources. BOINC provides a
rather crude way to do it. Apparently the 'fine-grained' version operates
on a 1-second resolution.

The 'coarse-grained' variant, using a start/stop time for crunching, would
save you on the 2Hz 'speed-bumping', but while the machine is crunching it
would still be heating up and running at 100%. Perhaps a third-party
'batching' tool could do it, not sure if any are available...

What happens when you tell BOINC to only use 1 CPU as a maximum? That
would only start one setiathome process on your system, but it probably
depends on WinXP on which core the process ends up.

[quote]Anyway, as long as it>s gonna treat my CPU like this I>m thinking I>m not
going to participate anymore. Also, being completely sold on the reality of
global warming I>m not about to leave my CPU running at 100% for what is, at
best, a long-shot. I>ve been with SETI since '99 and, when PCs used far less
power and before the evidence came in for human-catalysed global warming, I
didn>t mind using 100% CPU. Now, I>d use 50% (I used 75% as an example
earlier, I>ve tried several settings) of my CPU as it doesn>t seem to impact
the heat output, (therefore the power input) much more than when the machine
is idling.

I don>t want to contribute to the death of humanity via catastrophic global
changes in weather patterns, looking for stray signs that there may be other
intelligent life forms out there, probably watching us kill ourselves on
reality TV.

Hmmm, seems I>ve digressed a little. <g
[/quote]
You did, a little bit. ;) And, err, I don>t think your system will provide
a major contribution to global warming. :)

Anyway, I don>t think my system does either (Q6600, non overlocked), so
I>ll let it crunch 24/7 at 100%. It>s probably outputting more WU>s than
all my other machines I>m running it on. ;)

I rather like BOINC, much smoother operation than the original setiathome
application, with plenty of control to at least tune the amount of work
you cache. I suppose it>s a bit of a problem if you>re trying to feed a
farm of computers which are not connected to the internet, but that>s not
something I have to deal with.

Regards, Patrick.

~misfit~ · Guest

Somewhere on the interweb "Patrick Vervoorn" typed:
[quote]In article <472e80ff$1@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
~misfit~ <misfit61nz@yahooligans.co.nz> wrote:
Hi Patrick! Fancy seeing you here. Usenet>s a small world huh?

Somewhere on the interweb "Patrick Vervoorn" typed:

Why not just let it crunch at 100%? It>s running at a relatively
low priority as is?

There>s a couple reasons I don>t want it to run at 100%. Firstly,
I>m on a very limited income and my PC is one of the biggest
consumers of electricity in my house. That>s why I stopped
crunching with my Barton, it was sucking the power (and throwing
out the heat) and my electricity bills dropped heaps when I stopped
crunching.

If you can>t afford to crunch, don>t crunch, would be my advise...
[/quote]
But that>s so black and white.. Some months I have a few dollars more and
would maybe like to crunch.

[quote]However, with this machine, that will do five times the "work" that
my Barton did and is more efficient, (about the same power
consumption as the Barton) I figured that I could afford to
dedicate a /certain amount/ of CPU/electricity to SETI, still give
more than my Barton did, and not stress my power bill or my CPU.

It will probably consume less power at full load than the old system
did?
[/quote]
About the same I think while OC>ed, although for five times the work that>s
a good deal.

[quote]The second thing is heat. I>m an overclocker. I have this E4500
running at
2.93GHz instead of it>s default 2.2GHz. (Although core voltage is
till default.) As I>m on a limited budget I>m still using the stock
cooler until I can afford something better. The CPU itself doesn>t
get *too* hot, topping out at a maximum of 60°C under full load.
However, it>s not summer yet, and my HDDs etc, are running hotter
than I>d like when the CPU is pumping out the heat. (Like I said,
limited budget, can>t afford a nice new, well-ventilated case).

Why risk a major investment of yourself to overclocking?
[/quote]
There>s no risk at all if you know what you>re doing. And I *do* know what
I>m doing. I>ve been overclocking since Pentium (1) days and have never had
an overclocking-related failure.

I overclock to get the most out of my CPU. I can>t afford a Q6600 so I do
the best I can with what I *can* afford. My NZ$220 E4500 CPU is running at
the same speed as an NZ$1,500 X6800. The only difference is the latter has
more L2 cache.

[quote]What are the
temperatures of the rig when you>re not overclocking it?
[/quote]
About 12°C less. However, I>m considering a new cooler. A Thermaltake "Big
Typhoon". It should drop it another 10°C maybe.

[quote]I run the command line version of BOINC. It>s running at 100%. I
even let it run at 100% when I play a low-resources game (like
Diablo II). When I want to run something beefier (HL2, Crysis,
Bioshock, etc), I just Ctrl-Break in the window, and manually
restart it when I stop playing.

Ok. Yeah, running at 100% would be far less stressful on the
system. I just wish they>d write better code, make it easy for
casual contributers like me to be able to give a bit without having
my CPU rocketing from 100% to 0% then back to 100% every second. I
mean, seriously, that can>t be good for it, especially considering
how quickly it responds thermally to those fluctuations, going up
and down over 10°C each second. How hard can it be to write it so
that it just uses a certain amount of CPU constantly? Most
programmes do just that (I run a few monitoring apps in the
backgroud so I know *exactly* what>s going on).

No idea if this is even possible using WinXP. I mainly thought BOINC
was meant to consume any spare CPU cycles you have left. That>s why
both the Linux as well as the Win32 version run at a relatively low
priority. I>m running it also on a few Linux boxes (even a very old
P133 with 64MB), and it doesn>t have much impact on the general
responsiveness of said systems. Same for the WinXP boxes.
[/quote]
Yes, I used to run it on multiple systems too.

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/hosts_user.php?show_all=1&sort=rpc_time

(Hmm, don>t know if that link will work. User name ~misfit~ [of course],
show all computers)

However, money...

[quote]Perhaps try posting your question in one of the BOINC related forums,
or mail it to one of the developers...? I don>t think WinXP has the
means to give an application 50% of the available resources. BOINC
provides a rather crude way to do it. Apparently the 'fine-grained'
version operates on a 1-second resolution.

The 'coarse-grained' variant, using a start/stop time for crunching,
would save you on the 2Hz 'speed-bumping', but while the machine is
crunching it would still be heating up and running at 100%. Perhaps a
third-party 'batching' tool could do it, not sure if any are
available...
[/quote]
Yeah, all too complicated. BOINC provides a way of choosing how much CPU to
dedicate to crunching, I just think that the method implimented could be
detrimental to CPUs.

[quote]What happens when you tell BOINC to only use 1 CPU as a maximum? That
would only start one setiathome process on your system, but it
probably depends on WinXP on which core the process ends up.
[/quote]
Yes, I can do that. I>ve tried it. However, I read out the temps of the two
different cores and there is such a temp gradient between the two I worry
about thermal expansion on one side of the die only. It can>t be good to
have one side of an extremely complex thing 20°C hotter than the other side
when it>s only 10mm across.

[quote]Anyway, as long as it>s gonna treat my CPU like this I>m thinking
I>m not going to participate anymore. Also, being completely sold
on the reality of global warming I>m not about to leave my CPU
running at 100% for what is, at best, a long-shot. I>ve been with
SETI since '99 and, when PCs used far less power and before the
evidence came in for human-catalysed global warming, I didn>t mind
using 100% CPU. Now, I>d use 50% (I used 75% as an example earlier,
I>ve tried several settings) of my CPU as it doesn>t seem to impact
the heat output, (therefore the power input) much more than when
the machine is idling.

I don>t want to contribute to the death of humanity via
catastrophic global changes in weather patterns, looking for stray
signs that there may be other intelligent life forms out there,
probably watching us kill ourselves on reality TV.

Hmmm, seems I>ve digressed a little. <g

You did, a little bit. ;) And, err, I don>t think your system will
provide a major contribution to global warming. :)
[/quote]
Not major, no. However, it>s all the little bits that add up.

[quote]Anyway, I don>t think my system does either (Q6600, non overlocked),
[/quote]
Nice, that>s what I would have liked. Although, of course, I>d overclock it.
<g>

[quote]so I>ll let it crunch 24/7 at 100%. It>s probably outputting more
WU>s than all my other machines I>m running it on. ;)
[/quote]
Yes, my Core2 Duo was just piling up the WUs in the week or so that I ran
it.

[quote]I rather like BOINC, much smoother operation than the original
setiathome application, with plenty of control to at least tune the
amount of work you cache. I suppose it>s a bit of a problem if you>re
trying to feed a farm of computers which are not connected to the
internet, but that>s not something I have to deal with.
[/quote]
I like BOINC too. Except for that one thing that stops me from using it.....

Regards,
--
Shaun.

Patrick Vervoorn · Guest

In article <4730688e@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
~misfit~ <misfit61nz@yahooligans.co.nz> wrote:
[quote]Somewhere on the interweb "Patrick Vervoorn" typed:

If you can>t afford to crunch, don>t crunch, would be my advise...

But that>s so black and white.. Some months I have a few dollars more and
would maybe like to crunch.
[/quote]
Sometimes things are very black and white, sometimes they>re not. ;)

[quote]Why risk a major investment of yourself to overclocking?

There>s no risk at all if you know what you>re doing. And I *do* know what
I>m doing. I>ve been overclocking since Pentium (1) days and have never had
an overclocking-related failure.
[/quote]
You>re the one complaining about heat due to overclocking, and you>re the
one contemplating it might damage your CPU. So are you really really sure
you know what you>re doing, and the risk you>re running?

I got myself a G0 Q6600, not because it can be overclocked better, but
because I read it ran cooler, and consumed less power. I>ve also seen some
overclocking results, and I don>t really think it>s worth it. For now, it
runs what I want to run, as fast as I>d like it to run. If/when it runs
out of steam, I>ll see what I can gain by overclocking it>s parts.

[quote]I overclock to get the most out of my CPU. I can>t afford a Q6600 so I do
the best I can with what I *can* afford. My NZ$220 E4500 CPU is running at
the same speed as an NZ$1,500 X6800. The only difference is the latter has
more L2 cache.
[/quote]
The Extreme series Intel CPUs are ridiculously overpriced, but then,
they>re at the top of the 80/20 or 90/10 rule...

[quote]No idea if this is even possible using WinXP. I mainly thought BOINC
was meant to consume any spare CPU cycles you have left. That>s why
both the Linux as well as the Win32 version run at a relatively low
priority. I>m running it also on a few Linux boxes (even a very old
P133 with 64MB), and it doesn>t have much impact on the general
responsiveness of said systems. Same for the WinXP boxes.

Yes, I used to run it on multiple systems too.

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/hosts_user.php?show_all=1&sort=rpc_time

(Hmm, don>t know if that link will work. User name ~misfit~ [of course],
show all computers)
[/quote]
The link didn>t work, but by searching via the 'User search' option on the
main page, I found your account. You can find mine too, using 'Patrick
Vervoorn', but I have hidden my computers, so there>s not much to see
there.

Seems you joined Setiatome Classic about half a year before I did. ;)

[quote]The 'coarse-grained' variant, using a start/stop time for crunching,
would save you on the 2Hz 'speed-bumping', but while the machine is
crunching it would still be heating up and running at 100%. Perhaps a
third-party 'batching' tool could do it, not sure if any are
available...

Yeah, all too complicated. BOINC provides a way of choosing how much CPU to
dedicate to crunching, I just think that the method implimented could be
detrimental to CPUs.
[/quote]
Perhaps they did the best they could using WinXP (Just speculation from my
side, no idea if they could>ve done it better)? What does that same option
do on a machine running Linux, for instance? You should have some spare
hardware around you could try this on, I suppose? :)

[quote]What happens when you tell BOINC to only use 1 CPU as a maximum? That
would only start one setiathome process on your system, but it
probably depends on WinXP on which core the process ends up.

Yes, I can do that. I>ve tried it. However, I read out the temps of the two
different cores and there is such a temp gradient between the two I worry
about thermal expansion on one side of the die only. It can>t be good to
have one side of an extremely complex thing 20°C hotter than the other side
when it>s only 10mm across.
[/quote]
I think it>s safe to assume Intel considered a single thread OS or just a
single-threaded application running on these CPUs, so I think you>re
worrying too much.

Of course, if these extremes are happening because you overclock, I
suppose all assumptions Intel made are out of the door. ;)

[quote]Anyway, I don>t think my system does either (Q6600, non overlocked),

Nice, that>s what I would have liked. Although, of course, I>d overclock it.
g
[/quote]
I>ve got the means to overclock it quite nicely (an nVidia 680i based
mainboard is underneath the CPU), but I have no incentive really. Same for
the graphics card (8800GTX); plenty of options to overclock it, but why
risk it?

[quote]so I>ll let it crunch 24/7 at 100%. It>s probably outputting more
WU>s than all my other machines I>m running it on. ;)

Yes, my Core2 Duo was just piling up the WUs in the week or so that I ran
it.
[/quote]
I>ve set the Q6600 system to get 5.0 days of WU>s and an additional cache
of 4.0 days (a few too many too long outages which dried up my supply in
the last several months lead me to set these perhaps a bit too high). The
Q6600 has 306 'Tasks' 'in progress'. ;)

[quote]I like BOINC too. Except for that one thing that stops me from using it.....
[/quote]
Here>s hoping you can solve it.

Regards, Patrick.

~misfit~ · Guest

Somewhere on the interweb "Patrick Vervoorn" typed:
[quote]In article <4730688e@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
~misfit~ <misfit61nz@yahooligans.co.nz> wrote:
Somewhere on the interweb "Patrick Vervoorn" typed:

If you can>t afford to crunch, don>t crunch, would be my advise...

But that>s so black and white.. Some months I have a few dollars
more and would maybe like to crunch.

Sometimes things are very black and white, sometimes they>re not. ;)
[/quote]
Indeed.

[quote]Why risk a major investment of yourself to overclocking?

There>s no risk at all if you know what you>re doing. And I *do*
know what I>m doing. I>ve been overclocking since Pentium (1) days
and have never had an overclocking-related failure.

You>re the one complaining about heat due to overclocking,
[/quote]
Ahh, but I>m not. I said that it doesn>t get *too* hot. 60°C is fine as far
as Intel are concerned. The spec on this CPU is up to 85. Once it hits 85 it
throttles itself to just over 50% speed. If it goes further, to 90, it turns
itself off. You can>t damage an Intel CPU by heat alone, they are protected.
Doubly so, TM1 and TM2 as described above.

[quote]and you>re
the one contemplating it might damage your CPU.
[/quote]
I have absolutely no fears of the overclock damaging my CPU, What concerns
me is the way SETI/BOINC keeps going from 100% to 0% and back again if set
to less than 100% in preferences (the default is 80% BTW).

[quote]So are you really
really sure you know what you>re doing, and the risk you>re running?
[/quote]
Absolutely! As I said, I monitor my CPU>s every tick. Only SETI/BOINC goes
100% - 0% in a second and causes this rapid heating/cooling behaviour. No
other programme or application behaves inthe same way, at least not that
I>ve run.

[quote]I got myself a G0 Q6600, not because it can be overclocked better, but
because I read it ran cooler, and consumed less power.
[/quote]
The G0 stepping only runs cooler and consumes less power (perhaps with 80%
of samples) when overclocked. At stock, without BIOS tweaks, it runs to the
Intel hard-coded specs which are the same for all steppings of the Q6600.
Same vcore = same heatoutput. Energy in = energy out.

[quote]I>ve also seen
some overclocking results, and I don>t really think it>s worth it.
[/quote]
Aye. OC>ing is not for everyone. However, you have a CPU that could quite
easilly run at 3.2GHz with the only added expense being a better than stock
cooler (assuming you have good case ventilation). As you>re running BOINC at
100% then you wouldn>t experience the issues that are worrying me.

[quote]For now, it runs what I want to run, as fast as I>d like it to run.
If/when it runs out of steam, I>ll see what I can gain by
overclocking it>s parts.
[/quote]
Sure, fair enough. To be honest I have no need of more power than my CPU
gave at stock speed. My main reason for OC>ing was to be able to do more
work for SETI, while still having power to spare.

[quote]I overclock to get the most out of my CPU. I can>t afford a Q6600
so I do the best I can with what I *can* afford. My NZ$220 E4500
CPU is running at the same speed as an NZ$1,500 X6800. The only
difference is the latter has more L2 cache.

The Extreme series Intel CPUs are ridiculously overpriced, but then,
they>re at the top of the 80/20 or 90/10 rule...
[/quote]
Indeed.

[quote]No idea if this is even possible using WinXP. I mainly thought
BOINC was meant to consume any spare CPU cycles you have left.
That>s why both the Linux as well as the Win32 version run at a
relatively low priority. I>m running it also on a few Linux boxes
(even a very old P133 with 64MB), and it doesn>t have much impact
on the general responsiveness of said systems. Same for the WinXP
boxes.

Yes, I used to run it on multiple systems too.

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/hosts_user.php?show_all=1&sort=rpc_time

(Hmm, don>t know if that link will work. User name ~misfit~ [of
course], show all computers)

The link didn>t work, but by searching via the 'User search' option
on the main page, I found your account.
[/quote]
Yes, after pasting the URL I realsied that it was probably using a local
cookie to take me to the page.

I started a team in my local computer usenet group which, at it>s height,
had 50+ members. However, on changing to BOINC, a lot of the folks dropped
out.

[quote]You can find mine too, using
'Patrick Vervoorn', but I have hidden my computers, so there>s not
much to see there.
[/quote]
Indeed. You>ve certainly crunched some units, with a lot of RAC. That>s a
fast machine. :-)

[quote]Seems you joined Setiatome Classic about half a year before I did. ;)
[/quote]
Yeah, within around a month of them starting up. That>s how long it took for
me to find out, via my local monthly computer magazine.

[quote]The 'coarse-grained' variant, using a start/stop time for
crunching, would save you on the 2Hz 'speed-bumping', but while
the machine is crunching it would still be heating up and running
at 100%. Perhaps a third-party 'batching' tool could do it, not
sure if any are available...

Yeah, all too complicated. BOINC provides a way of choosing how
much CPU to dedicate to crunching, I just think that the method
implimented could be detrimental to CPUs.

Perhaps they did the best they could using WinXP (Just speculation
from my side, no idea if they could>ve done it better)?
[/quote]
I have games that, when I exit them and look at the CPU usage graphs for
both cores, show fairly consistent usage of CPU, a smooth line with maybe
+/- 10% of the CPU being used. Baseline varying from game to game. Nothing
like the saw-tooth graph I see from SETI/BOINC.

[quote]What does
that same option do on a machine running Linux, for instance?
[/quote]
Other than once a few years back I>ve not tried Linux. Perhaps it>s time I
gave it another go. I keep downloading ISOs...

[quote]You
should have some spare hardware around you could try this on, I
suppose? :)
[/quote]
LOL! That>s an understatement. I have <looks around> 9 PCs in this room
alone that are ready to run. All over 1GHz CPU, a lot of them Tualatin
Celerons, others AMD Athlons. I must get around to getting rid of some. The
trouble is, nobody wants to pay any money for them, with new, low-end
HP/Compaq/Dell machines being so cheap. Yet they>re still excellent internet
appliances, in fact far more powerful than that. I hate to see good working
machines scrapped. (I built most of these from parts that my friends in IT
gave me, parts destined for the scrap-heap.)

[quote]What happens when you tell BOINC to only use 1 CPU as a maximum?
That would only start one setiathome process on your system, but
it probably depends on WinXP on which core the process ends up.

Yes, I can do that. I>ve tried it. However, I read out the temps of
the two different cores and there is such a temp gradient between
the two I worry about thermal expansion on one side of the die
only. It can>t be good to have one side of an extremely complex
thing 20°C hotter than the other side when it>s only 10mm across.

I think it>s safe to assume Intel considered a single thread OS or
just a single-threaded application running on these CPUs, so I think
you>re worrying too much.
[/quote]
That is a trait of mine. Especially when I>m not easilly able to replace the
thing about which I>m worrying.

[quote]Of course, if these extremes are happening because you overclock, I
suppose all assumptions Intel made are out of the door. ;)
[/quote]
No, I considered that and ran it back at stock speed for a while. The thing
behaved the same, albeit at slightly lower temperatures. The fluctuations,
which are my main worry, still occured at a rate I found disturbing. I
haven>t raised the core voltage at all to reach this speed so it>s not what
you>d call an extreme overclock by any means.

[quote]Anyway, I don>t think my system does either (Q6600, non
overlocked),

Nice, that>s what I would have liked. Although, of course, I>d
overclock it. <g

I>ve got the means to overclock it quite nicely (an nVidia 680i based
mainboard is underneath the CPU), but I have no incentive really.
Same for the graphics card (8800GTX); plenty of options to overclock
it, but why risk it?
[/quote]
Well, you have all the power that you could need, both CPU and graphics
already.

Coincidently, an 8800GTX is sitting on the chair next to me, in it>s box
with a NZ$920 sticker on it. I>m doing a re-build for a friend this weekend,
his system has to go into a new case as the 8800GTX is a full-length card
and won>t fit his existing case. For doing this for him he>s giving me his
"old" 7800GT (I get a lot of my hardware this way, in payment for
building/upgrading machines for gaming friends).

The 7800GT presented a problem for me, as my motherboard is AGP/DDR, not a
PCI-e slot in sight. Consequently I>ve maxed out the credit card again (just
as I was getting it down a bit) and have ordered an ASUSTek P5K-E/WiFi-AP
mobo with the P35/ICH9 chipset (should arrive today hopefully) and 2 x 1GB
DDR2 800 RAM (arrived yesterday). I guess I could have just sold the 7800GT
but it>s twice as powerful as my existing card (7600GS) and I need to take
these opportunities to upgrade when I can.

I>m confident that I can recoup more than 50% of the expenditure by selling
my "old" motherboard, 2 x 1GB DDR 400 RAM and 7600GS. My flatmate has
expressed an interest.

Gosh but I>m good at digression huh?

[quote]so I>ll let it crunch 24/7 at 100%. It>s probably outputting more
WU>s than all my other machines I>m running it on. ;)

Yes, my Core2 Duo was just piling up the WUs in the week or so that
I ran it.

I>ve set the Q6600 system to get 5.0 days of WU>s and an additional
cache of 4.0 days (a few too many too long outages which dried up my
supply in the last several months lead me to set these perhaps a bit
too high). The Q6600 has 306 'Tasks' 'in progress'. ;)
[/quote]
LOL!!! I set my E4500 to 2 days with 0.25 days cache and had more than 40
tasks in waiting (I didn>t count them). When I decided to stop (for a while
at least) I reduced it to 0/0 and allowed it to crunch all but the last one
before stopping so that they didn>t have to send them out yet again.

[quote]I like BOINC too. Except for that one thing that stops me from
using it.....

Here>s hoping you can solve it.
[/quote]
Thanks Patrick,

Cheers,
--
Shaun.

Patrick Vervoorn · Guest

In article <4730f514@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
~misfit~ <misfit61nz@yahooligans.co.nz> wrote:
[quote]Somewhere on the interweb "Patrick Vervoorn" typed:

I got myself a G0 Q6600, not because it can be overclocked better, but
because I read it ran cooler, and consumed less power.

The G0 stepping only runs cooler and consumes less power (perhaps with 80%
of samples) when overclocked. At stock, without BIOS tweaks, it runs to the
Intel hard-coded specs which are the same for all steppings of the Q6600.
Same vcore = same heatoutput. Energy in = energy out.
[/quote]
As far as I understood it, It>s apparently below the 'magic'
power-consumption threshold (so that you can put it in cheaper, less well
cooled cases), but I can>t be bothered to look up what exactly that was.
At least that>s what I read, with no overclocking in the picture.

[quote]I>ve also seen
some overclocking results, and I don>t really think it>s worth it.

Aye. OC>ing is not for everyone. However, you have a CPU that could quite
easilly run at 3.2GHz with the only added expense being a better than stock
cooler (assuming you have good case ventilation). As you>re running BOINC at
100% then you wouldn>t experience the issues that are worrying me.
[/quote]
I suppose it could, but I>ve also never seen the need to overclock my
previous machine (a P4 2.4GHz), and I also see no need to overclock this
one. As I said, perhaps if it runs out of steam, but by that time, either
a major upgrade (like perhaps an FSB1333 umpteen-Core CPU or a GeForce 9
or 10 series GPU) or a totally new system will be the better options,
instead of squeezing out a few more % of performance by overclocking some
vital parts.

[quote]For now, it runs what I want to run, as fast as I>d like it to run.
If/when it runs out of steam, I>ll see what I can gain by
overclocking it>s parts.

Sure, fair enough. To be honest I have no need of more power than my CPU
gave at stock speed. My main reason for OC>ing was to be able to do more
work for SETI, while still having power to spare.
[/quote]
While my point is that the system is doing a fine enough job for the cause
of Seti as it is now. ;)

Isn>t your system consuming less power when you don>t overclock it? How
about 'downclocking' it? Can>t you downclock it in such a way that you can
let it run SetiBOINC, at 100%, in the downclocked state, so that the
entire system performs at the percentage you want it to, and also
consuming the amount of power you want it to?

[quote]I started a team in my local computer usenet group which, at it>s height,
had 50+ members. However, on changing to BOINC, a lot of the folks dropped
out.
[/quote]
The NZ team you are a member of? the team racked up a nice amount of
credit. :)

[quote]You can find mine too, using
'Patrick Vervoorn', but I have hidden my computers, so there>s not
much to see there.

Indeed. You>ve certainly crunched some units, with a lot of RAC. That>s a
fast machine. :-)
[/quote]
Actually, the main crunchers are the Q6600 machine, my 'previous'
Game-Machine (P4-2.4GHz, 1.5GB) and a P4-2.8GHz-HT machine somewhere else.

I had a fixed amount of money reserved for the CPU; for the cost of a
Q6600 I could>ve also acquired a 3.0GHz E6850. That would>ve perhaps
served current games better than the Q6600, but I counted on engines to be
able to use more than 2 cores, and I also had SetiBOINC in the back of my
mind, knowing that would like 4 x 2.4GHz cores more than 2 x 3.0GHz.

[quote]Seems you joined Setiatome Classic about half a year before I did. ;)

Yeah, within around a month of them starting up. That>s how long it took for
me to find out, via my local monthly computer magazine.
[/quote]
I can>t really recall how and when I ran into it, but I apparently found
it cool enough to join. ;)

[quote]Perhaps they did the best they could using WinXP (Just speculation
from my side, no idea if they could>ve done it better)?

I have games that, when I exit them and look at the CPU usage graphs for
both cores, show fairly consistent usage of CPU, a smooth line with maybe
+/- 10% of the CPU being used. Baseline varying from game to game. Nothing
like the saw-tooth graph I see from SETI/BOINC.
[/quote]
But perhaps these games are limited/throttled in another way, for instance
by the amount of data they can move towards the GPU, just to give an
example? Or they are idling, waiting for the next frame to be available?
Or waiting for VSync? Those are pretty usable, fine-grained things to
synchronize with (~60-100Hz, depending on your display), so that it can
appear the game just uses 10% of your CPU. But rest assured that when the
code of these games is 'let loose' it will use, during a short burst, 100%
of both these cores.

When I monitor the behaviour during HL2: Ep2, it seems to use just a
single core (on my machine at least). Bioshock seems to limit itself to
using about 50% of all cores.

SetiBOINC isn>t limited in that way, there>s nothing it has to wait for.
Perhaps if you can write a script or something that can toggle SetiBOINC>s
status 50Hz you might see something like this...? Of course, the 'toggling
app' should be smart enough to not use all the left-over cycles. ;)

[quote]What does
that same option do on a machine running Linux, for instance?

Other than once a few years back I>ve not tried Linux. Perhaps it>s time I
gave it another go. I keep downloading ISOs...
[/quote]
I think you can download a fairly small 'Live CD' for Linux with which you
can experiment with this. Alternatively, two floppies worth of Debian
bootcode allow you to install the entire OS from the Internet (That>s how
I installed a Stable Debian on the P1-133 MHz machine). Are you still
using that monthly-limited ADSL subscription, or have things improved Down
Under? ;)

[quote]LOL! That>s an understatement. I have <looks around> 9 PCs in this room
alone that are ready to run. All over 1GHz CPU, a lot of them Tualatin
Celerons, others AMD Athlons. I must get around to getting rid of some. The
trouble is, nobody wants to pay any money for them, with new, low-end
HP/Compaq/Dell machines being so cheap. Yet they>re still excellent internet
appliances, in fact far more powerful than that. I hate to see good working
machines scrapped. (I built most of these from parts that my friends in IT
gave me, parts destined for the scrap-heap.)
[/quote]
Same here. I>m also running SetiBOINC on 2 x P3-700 machines, 1 x
AMD-1.4GHz, 1 x P4 1.7GHz, 1 x P2-400MHz and a P1-133MHz. Beyond that,
it>s also running on another AMD ~700MHz machine somewhere else, besides
the main crunchers I mentioned above. All running at ~100%.

[quote]I think it>s safe to assume Intel considered a single thread OS or
just a single-threaded application running on these CPUs, so I think
you>re worrying too much.

That is a trait of mine. Especially when I>m not easilly able to replace the
thing about which I>m worrying.
[/quote]
I>m pretty confident Intel thought this over, but if you want confirmation
of this, try it in one of the intel-groups, or perhaps something like
comp.arch (though one should perhaps be very careful treading there :))

[quote]Of course, if these extremes are happening because you overclock, I
suppose all assumptions Intel made are out of the door. ;)

No, I considered that and ran it back at stock speed for a while. The thing
behaved the same, albeit at slightly lower temperatures. The fluctuations,
which are my main worry, still occured at a rate I found disturbing. I
haven>t raised the core voltage at all to reach this speed so it>s not what
you>d call an extreme overclock by any means.
[/quote]
I do hope you are also aware you could just be observing an artifact of
the temperature sensors in the CPU? I.e. during/after the 'speed bump'
they do not report the correct temperature, and perhaps the temperature
isn>t fluctuating as quickly as you think it is? Also something to perhaps
consult the experts about; I can only speculate.

[quote]I>ve got the means to overclock it quite nicely (an nVidia 680i based
mainboard is underneath the CPU), but I have no incentive really.
Same for the graphics card (8800GTX); plenty of options to overclock
it, but why risk it?

Well, you have all the power that you could need, both CPU and graphics
already.
[/quote]
That was the main idea. ;) We>ll see how long it holds out. It does do a
nice job of the Crysis demo, although the raw frame rate isn>t to write
home about (with all settings at High, 1680x1050, I get about 30fps,
though the game does look pretty smooth due to their motion-blurring in
the engine).

[quote]Coincidently, an 8800GTX is sitting on the chair next to me, in it>s box
with a NZ$920 sticker on it. I>m doing a re-build for a friend this weekend,
his system has to go into a new case as the 8800GTX is a full-length card
and won>t fit his existing case. For doing this for him he>s giving me his
"old" 7800GT (I get a lot of my hardware this way, in payment for
building/upgrading machines for gaming friends).
[/quote]
The 8800GTX is a mother of a card to be sure. I just about managed to
squeeze it into my case, and when running a heavy application, it blows
out a LOT of heat out of the backside.

I managed to acquire a 256MB 7600GT when my 128MB 6600GT broke within
warranty, and the factory apparently didn>t have a replacement 6600GT to
ship to me, so they shipped a 256MB 7600GT instead. That card is currently
in the P4-2.4GHz machine, which is running Vista as an 'experiment'.
Before I commit anything else to it, I want to make sure it>s stable.

Anyway, congrats on the 7800GT; should be a nice card.

[quote]Gosh but I>m good at digression huh?
[/quote]
Always nice to get some background, my apologies for snipping it out
though. ;)

Regards, Patrick.

Gary Heston · Guest

In article <4730688e@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
~misfit~ <misfit61nz@yahooligans.co.nz> wrote:
[quote]Somewhere on the interweb "Patrick Vervoorn" typed:
In article <472e80ff$1@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
~misfit~ <misfit61nz@yahooligans.co.nz> wrote:
Hi Patrick! Fancy seeing you here. Usenet>s a small world huh?

Somewhere on the interweb "Patrick Vervoorn" typed:

Why not just let it crunch at 100%? It>s running at a relatively
low priority as is?

There>s a couple reasons I don>t want it to run at 100%. Firstly,
I>m on a very limited income and my PC is one of the biggest
consumers of electricity in my house. That>s why I stopped
crunching with my Barton, it was sucking the power (and throwing
out the heat) and my electricity bills dropped heaps when I stopped
crunching.
[ ... ][/quote]

You can reduce power consumption by reducing the clock rate--then run
BOINC at 100% to eliminate the temperature cycle problem you>re seeing.

Gary

--
Gary Heston gheston@hiwaay.net http://www.thebreastcancersite.com/

Yoko Onos' former driver tried to extort $2M from her, threating to
"release embarassing recordings...". What, he has a copy of her album?

~misfit~ · Guest

Sorry about the delay in replying, I>ve had trouble with my new machine, as
I>ve detailed in alt.comp.hardware.overclocking.

Patrick Vervoorn wrote:
[quote]In article <4730f514@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
~misfit~ <misfit61nz@yahooligans.co.nz> wrote:
Somewhere on the interweb "Patrick Vervoorn" typed:

I got myself a G0 Q6600, not because it can be overclocked better,
but because I read it ran cooler, and consumed less power.

The G0 stepping only runs cooler and consumes less power (perhaps
with 80% of samples) when overclocked. At stock, without BIOS
tweaks, it runs to the Intel hard-coded specs which are the same for
all steppings of the Q6600. Same vcore = same heatoutput. Energy in
= energy out.

As far as I understood it, It>s apparently below the 'magic'
power-consumption threshold (so that you can put it in cheaper, less
well cooled cases), but I can>t be bothered to look up what exactly
that was. At least that>s what I read, with no overclocking in the
picture.
[/quote]
My understanding is that both steppings have a "TDP" of 90 watts. However
the G0 stepping has more "headroom", it will reach higher speeds without
excessively increasing the core voltage, or even without increasing it at
all in some cases.

[quote]I>ve also seen
some overclocking results, and I don>t really think it>s worth it.

Aye. OC>ing is not for everyone. However, you have a CPU that could
quite easilly run at 3.2GHz with the only added expense being a
better than stock cooler (assuming you have good case ventilation).
As you>re running BOINC at 100% then you wouldn>t experience the
issues that are worrying me.

I suppose it could, but I>ve also never seen the need to overclock my
previous machine (a P4 2.4GHz), and I also see no need to overclock
this one. As I said, perhaps if it runs out of steam, but by that
time, either a major upgrade (like perhaps an FSB1333 umpteen-Core
CPU or a GeForce 9 or 10 series GPU) or a totally new system will be
the better options, instead of squeezing out a few more % of
performance by overclocking some vital parts.
[/quote]
You most certainly have a point. However, computers, and overclocking are
hobbies of mine. I don>t just do it for the performance increase (often I
don>t need it), I do it because I find it challenging and rewarding.

[quote]For now, it runs what I want to run, as fast as I>d like it to run.
If/when it runs out of steam, I>ll see what I can gain by
overclocking it>s parts.

Sure, fair enough. To be honest I have no need of more power than my
CPU gave at stock speed. My main reason for OC>ing was to be able to
do more work for SETI, while still having power to spare.

While my point is that the system is doing a fine enough job for the
cause of Seti as it is now. ;)
[/quote]
Indeed.

[quote]Isn>t your system consuming less power when you don>t overclock it?
How about 'downclocking' it? Can>t you downclock it in such a way
that you can let it run SetiBOINC, at 100%, in the downclocked state,
so that the entire system performs at the percentage you want it to,
and also consuming the amount of power you want it to?
[/quote]
I could underclock it, yes. I>ve underclocked machines before. However, then
it would be slower at everything I use it for, which defeats the purpose of
buying this CPU. I could have got a cheaper one that would use less power
and do less work.

[quote]I started a team in my local computer usenet group which, at it>s
height, had 50+ members. However, on changing to BOINC, a lot of the
folks dropped out.

The NZ team you are a member of? the team racked up a nice amount of
credit. :)
[/quote]
Yes, that>s the one. We had our hey-day. However, it>s largely inactive now.

[quote]You can find mine too, using
'Patrick Vervoorn', but I have hidden my computers, so there>s not
much to see there.

Indeed. You>ve certainly crunched some units, with a lot of RAC.
That>s a fast machine. :-)

Actually, the main crunchers are the Q6600 machine, my 'previous'
Game-Machine (P4-2.4GHz, 1.5GB) and a P4-2.8GHz-HT machine somewhere
else.

I had a fixed amount of money reserved for the CPU; for the cost of a
Q6600 I could>ve also acquired a 3.0GHz E6850. That would>ve perhaps
served current games better than the Q6600, but I counted on engines
to be able to use more than 2 cores, and I also had SetiBOINC in the
back of my mind, knowing that would like 4 x 2.4GHz cores more than 2
x 3.0GHz.
[/quote]
Well, I>m told that Crysis can use four cores. (I>m waiting for the demo to
show on a magazine cover, I can>t be bothered downloading 1.8GB.) Yes,
SeiBOINC certainly prefers your CPU to a higher-clocked dual core.

[quote]Seems you joined Setiatome Classic about half a year before I did.
;)

Yeah, within around a month of them starting up. That>s how long it
took for me to find out, via my local monthly computer magazine.

I can>t really recall how and when I ran into it, but I apparently
found it cool enough to join. ;)
[/quote]
Heh! Yep, same here.

[quote]Perhaps they did the best they could using WinXP (Just speculation
from my side, no idea if they could>ve done it better)?

I have games that, when I exit them and look at the CPU usage graphs
for both cores, show fairly consistent usage of CPU, a smooth line
with maybe +/- 10% of the CPU being used. Baseline varying from game
to game. Nothing like the saw-tooth graph I see from SETI/BOINC.

But perhaps these games are limited/throttled in another way, for
instance by the amount of data they can move towards the GPU, just to
give an example? Or they are idling, waiting for the next frame to be
available? Or waiting for VSync? Those are pretty usable,
fine-grained things to synchronize with (~60-100Hz, depending on your
display), so that it can appear the game just uses 10% of your CPU.
But rest assured that when the code of these games is 'let loose' it
will use, during a short burst, 100% of both these cores.

When I monitor the behaviour during HL2: Ep2, it seems to use just a
single core (on my machine at least). Bioshock seems to limit itself
to using about 50% of all cores.

SetiBOINC isn>t limited in that way, there>s nothing it has to wait
for. Perhaps if you can write a script or something that can toggle
SetiBOINC>s status 50Hz you might see something like this...? Of
course, the 'toggling app' should be smart enough to not use all the
left-over cycles. ;)
[/quote]
Understood. I>m not a code-monkey. <g> I couldn>t write a script to save
myself. I>m mainly hardware, I can do amazing things with hardware and am
good at trouble-shooting and/or repairing and building PCs. I leave the code
to the guys that know it. I>ve never been in a situation where it would
benefit me to learn it.

[quote]What does
that same option do on a machine running Linux, for instance?

Other than once a few years back I>ve not tried Linux. Perhaps it>s
time I gave it another go. I keep downloading ISOs...

I think you can download a fairly small 'Live CD' for Linux with
which you can experiment with this.
[/quote]
I have a couple of "live" CDs and play with them now and then.

[quote]Alternatively, two floppies worth
of Debian bootcode allow you to install the entire OS from the
Internet (That>s how I installed a Stable Debian on the P1-133 MHz
machine). Are you still using that monthly-limited ADSL subscription,
or have things improved Down Under? ;)
[/quote]
I>m still limited, although it>s daily, then it re-sets at 2am. After I hit
my limit I>m rate-limited to 64/64kbps, just above dial-up speed until 2am
rolls around. I can "buy" whatever amount of daily data I like by changing
my "plan". Anything from 70MB to 2GB with my ISP. I>m on a 1GB/day plan.

[quote]LOL! That>s an understatement. I have <looks around> 9 PCs in this
room alone that are ready to run. All over 1GHz CPU, a lot of them
Tualatin Celerons, others AMD Athlons. I must get around to getting
rid of some. The trouble is, nobody wants to pay any money for them,
with new, low-end HP/Compaq/Dell machines being so cheap. Yet
they>re still excellent internet appliances, in fact far more
powerful than that. I hate to see good working machines scrapped. (I
built most of these from parts that my friends in IT gave me, parts
destined for the scrap-heap.)

Same here. I>m also running SetiBOINC on 2 x P3-700 machines, 1 x
AMD-1.4GHz, 1 x P4 1.7GHz, 1 x P2-400MHz and a P1-133MHz. Beyond that,
it>s also running on another AMD ~700MHz machine somewhere else,
besides the main crunchers I mentioned above. All running at ~100%.
[/quote]
I had my days of running a half-dozen PCs for SETI. While I still have
around 10 machines, usually only one is going (unless I>m mule-rushing in
Lord of Destruction, I have four CD key sets).

[quote]I think it>s safe to assume Intel considered a single thread OS or
just a single-threaded application running on these CPUs, so I think
you>re worrying too much.

That is a trait of mine. Especially when I>m not easilly able to
replace the thing about which I>m worrying.

I>m pretty confident Intel thought this over, but if you want
confirmation of this, try it in one of the intel-groups, or perhaps
something like comp.arch (though one should perhaps be very careful
treading there :))
[/quote]
True.

[quote]Of course, if these extremes are happening because you overclock, I
suppose all assumptions Intel made are out of the door. ;)

No, I considered that and ran it back at stock speed for a while.
The thing behaved the same, albeit at slightly lower temperatures.
The fluctuations, which are my main worry, still occured at a rate I
found disturbing. I haven>t raised the core voltage at all to reach
this speed so it>s not what you>d call an extreme overclock by any
means.

I do hope you are also aware you could just be observing an artifact
of the temperature sensors in the CPU? I.e. during/after the 'speed
bump' they do not report the correct temperature, and perhaps the
temperature isn>t fluctuating as quickly as you think it is? Also
something to perhaps consult the experts about; I can only speculate.
[/quote]
All my experince points to well-cooled CPUs being able to heat up or cool
down at least 10°C a second. Maybe more. The folks on a.c.h.overclocking
agree.

[quote]I>ve got the means to overclock it quite nicely (an nVidia 680i
based mainboard is underneath the CPU), but I have no incentive
really. Same for the graphics card (8800GTX); plenty of options to
overclock it, but why risk it?

Well, you have all the power that you could need, both CPU and
graphics already.

That was the main idea. ;) We>ll see how long it holds out. It does
do a nice job of the Crysis demo, although the raw frame rate isn>t
to write home about (with all settings at High, 1680x1050, I get
about 30fps, though the game does look pretty smooth due to their
motion-blurring in the engine).
[/quote]
Ah, you have the demo. It was designed to run different things (A.I. etc.)
on different cores (or so I read in an interview with one of the creators).

[quote]Coincidently, an 8800GTX is sitting on the chair next to me, in it>s
box with a NZ$920 sticker on it. I>m doing a re-build for a friend
this weekend, his system has to go into a new case as the 8800GTX is
a full-length card and won>t fit his existing case. For doing this
for him he>s giving me his "old" 7800GT (I get a lot of my hardware
this way, in payment for building/upgrading machines for gaming
friends).

The 8800GTX is a mother of a card to be sure. I just about managed to
squeeze it into my case, and when running a heavy application, it
blows out a LOT of heat out of the backside.

I managed to acquire a 256MB 7600GT when my 128MB 6600GT broke within
warranty, and the factory apparently didn>t have a replacement 6600GT
to ship to me, so they shipped a 256MB 7600GT instead.
[/quote]
Nice score.

[quote]That card is
currently in the P4-2.4GHz machine, which is running Vista as an
'experiment'. Before I commit anything else to it, I want to make
sure it>s stable.

Anyway, congrats on the 7800GT; should be a nice card.
[/quote]
Yes, thanks. I>m really happy with it. However, Battle.net server lag still
reduces it to 3 or 4 fps sometimes, especially with my skellimancer. In SP
it>s very fast.

[quote]Gosh but I>m good at digression huh?

Always nice to get some background, my apologies for snipping it out
though. ;)
[/quote]
No problem. Some always needs to be snipped, although I tend to err on the
side of caution.

I>m so happy my new machine is finally running as it should. :-) Got a new
case with a 24cm fan in the side running at around 500rpm. It cools the NB,
SB and RAM quite nicely. There>s also a 12cm fan in the front to cool the
HDDs. Lots of vents in the back, a strong breeze blowing through them.

Cheers,
--
Shaun.

~misfit~ · Guest

Gary Heston wrote:
[quote]In article <4730688e@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
~misfit~ <misfit61nz@yahooligans.co.nz> wrote:
Somewhere on the interweb "Patrick Vervoorn" typed:
In article <472e80ff$1@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
~misfit~ <misfit61nz@yahooligans.co.nz> wrote:
Hi Patrick! Fancy seeing you here. Usenet>s a small world huh?

Somewhere on the interweb "Patrick Vervoorn" typed:

Why not just let it crunch at 100%? It>s running at a relatively
low priority as is?

There>s a couple reasons I don>t want it to run at 100%. Firstly,
I>m on a very limited income and my PC is one of the biggest
consumers of electricity in my house. That>s why I stopped
crunching with my Barton, it was sucking the power (and throwing
out the heat) and my electricity bills dropped heaps when I stopped
crunching.
[ ... ]

You can reduce power consumption by reducing the clock rate--then run
BOINC at 100% to eliminate the temperature cycle problem you>re
seeing.
[/quote]
True. However, I like to *overclock*, not underclock. :-)

I have another machine with one of the new Core2 Solo Celerons in it running
at 2.13GHz (overclocked from 1.6GHz) and a couple gig of RAM that uses
minimal power. I guess I could dedicate that 100% to BOINC.
--
TTFN,

Shaun.

Patrick Vervoorn · Guest

In article <4736d9ef@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
~misfit~ <misfitnz@yahoot.com.au> wrote:
[quote]Sorry about the delay in replying, I>ve had trouble with my new machine, as
I>ve detailed in alt.comp.hardware.overclocking.
[/quote]
No idea what these problems were, hopefully you solved 'em (I gather
from some text below you did).

[quote]I could underclock it, yes. I>ve underclocked machines before. However, then
it would be slower at everything I use it for, which defeats the purpose of
buying this CPU. I could have got a cheaper one that would use less power
and do less work.
[/quote]
It>s either this, or try to find out what exactly the BOINC folks had in
mind when they implemented the xx% CPU usage option.

[quote]Well, I>m told that Crysis can use four cores. (I>m waiting for the demo to
show on a magazine cover, I can>t be bothered downloading 1.8GB.) Yes,
SeiBOINC certainly prefers your CPU to a higher-clocked dual core.
[/quote]
I got the demo the minute it came out (well, minus some download time of
course ;). I haven>t really monitored CPU usage during the demo, but it in
any case detects a quad core CPU without any problems. Very impressive
game BTW, the Demo is well worth the 1.9G download.

[quote]Understood. I>m not a code-monkey. <g> I couldn>t write a script to save
myself. I>m mainly hardware, I can do amazing things with hardware and am
good at trouble-shooting and/or repairing and building PCs. I leave the code
to the guys that know it. I>ve never been in a situation where it would
benefit me to learn it.
[/quote]
You are now. ;)

[quote]I have a couple of "live" CDs and play with them now and then.
[/quote]
And?

[quote]I>m still limited, although it>s daily, then it re-sets at 2am. After I hit
my limit I>m rate-limited to 64/64kbps, just above dial-up speed until 2am
rolls around. I can "buy" whatever amount of daily data I like by changing
my "plan". Anything from 70MB to 2GB with my ISP. I>m on a 1GB/day plan.
[/quote]
I>m actually dumbfounded ADSL subscriptions are around in this day and
age. Overhere in The Netherlands, you can get a 20Mbps ADSL2+ line for
about 20 EUROs a month. 'No limits' is what they>re advertising with,
although underneath is usually some kind of 'fair use' policy.

Your ISP doesn>t have an unlimited plan? What speed are you on before
you>re rate-limited?

[quote]All my experince points to well-cooled CPUs being able to heat up or cool
down at least 10°C a second. Maybe more. The folks on a.c.h.overclocking
agree.
[/quote]
Well, if they say so, it should be true. ;)

[Crysis]

[quote]Ah, you have the demo. It was designed to run different things (A.I. etc.)
on different cores (or so I read in an interview with one of the creators).
[/quote]
Yep, very nice. A playable first level, and two benchmarks, one stressing
the GPU (fly-over of the Island), another stressing the CPU (lots of
explosions, buildings blowing up, physics, etc).

[quote]Yes, thanks. I>m really happy with it. However, Battle.net server lag still
reduces it to 3 or 4 fps sometimes, especially with my skellimancer. In SP
it>s very fast.
[/quote]
Amazingly enough, the Shenk death animation still manages to bring the
8800GTX, using a Glide Wrapper, to it>s knees. ;)

I>m a bit curious if/when we>ll ever see a GPU capable of running the
Shenk death animation without any hickups. That should be the day!

[quote]No problem. Some always needs to be snipped, although I tend to err on the
side of caution.
[/quote]
I snipped liberally. ;)

[quote]I>m so happy my new machine is finally running as it should. :-) Got a new
case with a 24cm fan in the side running at around 500rpm. It cools the NB,
SB and RAM quite nicely. There>s also a 12cm fan in the front to cool the
HDDs. Lots of vents in the back, a strong breeze blowing through them.
[/quote]
Nice. Enjoy the system, hopefully it can be put to some good use for
SetiBOINC. ;)

Regards,

Patrick.

~misfit~ · Guest

Patrick Vervoorn wrote:
[quote]In article <4736d9ef@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
~misfit~ <misfitnz@yahoot.com.au> wrote:
Sorry about the delay in replying, I>ve had trouble with my new
machine, as I>ve detailed in alt.comp.hardware.overclocking.

No idea what these problems were, hopefully you solved 'em (I gather
from some text below you did).
[/quote]
I did indeed. My new motherboard, an Asus P5K-E WiFi-AP, with the P35/ICH9
chipset, doesn>t give enough vcore. Even with the BIOS defaults set my
machine kept random rebooting or blue-screening. After much gnashing of
teeth and rending of garments (also using of monitoring apps) I discovered
that, if I increase what the BIOS tells me the vcore is by 0.15v then it>s
fine. It>s delivering 0.15v too little. Took a while to work it out as, with
any new build, any number of things could cause the symptoms I experienced.
It>s the first time I>ve struck that particular problem.

Now I>m ticking along nicely with my E4500 (Stock 2.2GHz) running at 3.2GHz
at what is actually default vcore. I>m using a Thermaltake Mini Typhoon CPU
cooler that works very well so my temperatures are well within acceptable
limits. Lower in fact than I got at stock speed with the stock heatsink.

[quote]I could underclock it, yes. I>ve underclocked machines before.
However, then it would be slower at everything I use it for, which
defeats the purpose of buying this CPU. I could have got a cheaper
one that would use less power and do less work.

It>s either this, or try to find out what exactly the BOINC folks had
in mind when they implemented the xx% CPU usage option.
[/quote]
Yeah. Or give up SETI altogether, in which case I>d have to immediately stop
reading or posting in this newsgroup. <g>

[quote]Well, I>m told that Crysis can use four cores. (I>m waiting for the
demo to show on a magazine cover, I can>t be bothered downloading
1.8GB.) Yes, SeiBOINC certainly prefers your CPU to a higher-clocked
dual core.

I got the demo the minute it came out (well, minus some download time
of course ;). I haven>t really monitored CPU usage during the demo,
but it in any case detects a quad core CPU without any problems. Very
impressive game BTW, the Demo is well worth the 1.9G download.
[/quote]
So I>m told. It>s on my download list, if I can>t find it on a cover DVD in
the next few weeks.

[quote]Understood. I>m not a code-monkey. <g> I couldn>t write a script to
save myself. I>m mainly hardware, I can do amazing things with
hardware and am good at trouble-shooting and/or repairing and
building PCs. I leave the code to the guys that know it. I>ve never
been in a situation where it would benefit me to learn it.

You are now. ;)
[/quote]
Ahh, but is the reward worth the work? Something I have to ask myself often.
;-)

[quote]I have a couple of "live" CDs and play with them now and then.

And?
[/quote]
And I think that I>m not yet ready to leave my Microsoft security blanket.

[quote]I>m still limited, although it>s daily, then it re-sets at 2am.
After I hit my limit I>m rate-limited to 64/64kbps, just above
dial-up speed until 2am rolls around. I can "buy" whatever amount of
daily data I like by changing my "plan". Anything from 70MB to 2GB
with my ISP. I>m on a 1GB/day plan.

I>m actually dumbfounded ADSL subscriptions are around in this day and
age. Overhere in The Netherlands, you can get a 20Mbps ADSL2+ line for
about 20 EUROs a month. 'No limits' is what they>re advertising with,
although underneath is usually some kind of 'fair use' policy.

Your ISP doesn>t have an unlimited plan?
[/quote]
Yes, however it>s expensive and it>s through a different, ummmm, 'pipeline'?
You>re de-priotitised, throughput decreases.

[quote]What speed are you on before
you>re rate-limited?
[/quote]
256/128kbps. Pathetic huh? I>ve just decide to pay another $10/month and am
getting upgraded to 2M/128 tomorrow.

[quote]All my experince points to well-cooled CPUs being able to heat up or
cool down at least 10°C a second. Maybe more. The folks on
a.c.h.overclocking agree.

Well, if they say so, it should be true. ;)
[/quote]
Ahh, the guys I>m talking about are the ones whom I know aren>t blowing
smoke. I>ve been part of that group since last century and have learned who
knows what they>re talking about and who doesn>t.

[quote][Crysis]

Ah, you have the demo. It was designed to run different things (A.I.
etc.) on different cores (or so I read in an interview with one of
the creators).

Yep, very nice. A playable first level, and two benchmarks, one
stressing the GPU (fly-over of the Island), another stressing the CPU
(lots of explosions, buildings blowing up, physics, etc).
[/quote]
I>m looking forward to trying it.

[quote]Yes, thanks. I>m really happy with it. However, Battle.net server
lag still reduces it to 3 or 4 fps sometimes, especially with my
skellimancer. In SP it>s very fast.

Amazingly enough, the Shenk death animation still manages to bring the
8800GTX, using a Glide Wrapper, to it>s knees. ;)

I>m a bit curious if/when we>ll ever see a GPU capable of running the
Shenk death animation without any hickups. That should be the day!
[/quote]
Amazing how such an old game can do that. It has to come down to
badly-written code IMO. There doesn>t seem to be any other reason why a game
over 5 years old can bring a graphics card 100 times as powerful as those
available in it>s time to a grinding halt.

[quote]No problem. Some always needs to be snipped, although I tend to err
on the side of caution.

I snipped liberally. ;)
[/quote]
Thank you, you saved me the job. <g>

[quote]I>m so happy my new machine is finally running as it should. :-) Got
a new case with a 24cm fan in the side running at around 500rpm. It
cools the NB, SB and RAM quite nicely. There>s also a 12cm fan in
the front to cool the HDDs. Lots of vents in the back, a strong
breeze blowing through them.

Nice. Enjoy the system, hopefully it can be put to some good use for
SetiBOINC. ;)
[/quote]
We shall see....

Cheers,
--
Shaun.


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