Credits are unreasonable

Richard Haselgrove
Richard Haselgrove
Joined: 10 Dec 05
Posts: 2,143
Credit: 2,945,140,886
RAC: 694,126

RE: RE: RE: RE: Here

Message 78578 in response to message 78575

Quote:
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Here is a SETI page for this computer as requested: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=4161455

There is only a single SETI completed result on display there at the moment.

It shows that a result with angle range .008595 reported taking 16186 CPU seconds.
...

This is all very strange since when I display host performance I show that the SETI project has received over 400 credits on this system (that looks like about 5 completed work units, no?):


Unfortunately, that's normal for SETI. All BOINC projects (including Einstein) purge completed results from the database driving the visible webpages after a period of time has elapsed, to save storage space and help the servers run efficiently. (The credit totals are preserved, and the valid scientific results are copied to another database, so nothing is actually thrown away). SETI just happens to have the greatest number of users, and the least well-funded servers, so they are particularly aggressive about removing results from the viewable record after just 24 hours.

Also, there is a much greater variability in the amount of credit per WU (and a related variation in runtime), so you can't simply equate 450 credits to five tasks - looking at the jumps in your graph, I'd say that you got some of the smaller WUs, too.

jamesdavis
jamesdavis
Joined: 9 Feb 05
Posts: 14
Credit: 822,778
RAC: 0

Ah well, the indications are

Message 78579 in response to message 78578

Ah well, the indications are now persuasive that my longhorn system is faulty or that there is a fundamental incompatability with BOINC. The SETI work unit I just completed took 514,000 CPU seconds and was awarded 63+ credits while the same work unit, on a dual processor 3 GHz system took only 16,000 cpu seconds.

No error indications whatever on my system or in my logs.

Per SETI: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/workunit.php?wuid=211858775

I just remembered that I have Vista Ultimate available to me and it is the 64 bit version. Since I have not yet put this system into production I will get rid of longhorn and install Vista Ultimate, then see how that performs. I will return here with the results.

Thanks guys for your feedback.

Jord
Joined: 26 Jan 05
Posts: 2,952
Credit: 5,893,653
RAC: 450

You are running without the

Message 78580 in response to message 78579

You are running without the screen saver, yes?

Could you please register at the BOINC Dev forums and post in the Longhorn thread that it looks like you have problems with BOINC 5.10 and Windows Server 2008.

I will tell Rom about it as well. It'll be something they will want to fix.

jamesdavis
jamesdavis
Joined: 9 Feb 05
Posts: 14
Credit: 822,778
RAC: 0

RE: You are running without

Message 78581 in response to message 78580

Quote:

You are running without the screen saver, yes?

Could you please register at the BOINC Dev forums and post in the Longhorn thread that it looks like you have problems with BOINC 5.10 and Windows Server 2008.

I will tell Rom about it as well. It'll be something they will want to fix.

I never use the screesaver.

So, you would prefer that I wait to install Vista Ultimate and see if I can help with the longhorn issue?

Jord
Joined: 26 Jan 05
Posts: 2,952
Credit: 5,893,653
RAC: 450

RE: So, you would prefer

Message 78582 in response to message 78581

Quote:
So, you would prefer that I wait to install Vista Ultimate and see if I can help with the longhorn issue?


Yes please, if you don't mind.

It's easier for the developers to have multiple people with the OS and possible problems to help them along. Easier and cheaper than for them to find a computer with your specs and install the OS on it. BOINC isn't exactly a big corporate developing agency with lots of money and all the hardware you can think of. ;)

Vista and BOINC have their own troubles that are been outlined in a lot of threads already. The fix for most of those problems will come in BOINC 6.2

jamesdavis
jamesdavis
Joined: 9 Feb 05
Posts: 14
Credit: 822,778
RAC: 0

I have registered and joined

Message 78583 in response to message 78582

I have registered and joined that forum per your suggestion.

Peter Ingham
Peter Ingham
Joined: 22 Jan 05
Posts: 4
Credit: 77,153,714
RAC: 50

This may or may not be

Message 78584 in response to message 78583

This may or may not be relevant to this discussion.

I also have some q6600's that are giving lower credit than expected.

Some people are reporting RAC of ~1400 for a stock 2.4 Q6600 (and up to 2000 for overclocked to 3GHz).

I am seeing RAC's of around 700 for the Q6600's in my care (4GB Win XP Pro 32
bit).

One thing to watch out for is speedstep. This will definitely drop your crunching speed. Look for EIST in the BIOS settings and disable. Use CPU-Z to verify the current cpu speed, it will drop to 1500GHz if speedstep kicks in.

Even with this fixed, I'm seeing poor rates. Once of my current WU's (785.75 S5R2) has completed 2.6% after 56hours CPU.

jamesdavis
jamesdavis
Joined: 9 Feb 05
Posts: 14
Credit: 822,778
RAC: 0

Having complied and joined

Having complied and joined the DEV forum, and sent an E-mail as suggested, it turns out that two weeks have elapsed and neither is there any interest in that forum, nor was there the courtesy of a reply to the e-mail.

I am taking down the 64 bit version of Windows 2008 for BOINC.

Richard Haselgrove
Richard Haselgrove
Joined: 10 Dec 05
Posts: 2,143
Credit: 2,945,140,886
RAC: 694,126

RE: Having complied and

Message 78586 in response to message 78585

Quote:

Having complied and joined the DEV forum, and sent an E-mail as suggested, it turns out that two weeks have elapsed and neither is there any interest in that forum, nor was there the courtesy of a reply to the e-mail.

I am taking down the 64 bit version of Windows 2008 for BOINC.


You have my sympathy.

I, too, have started message board threads, and opened trac tickets (yet another separate registration required), to report and document visible bugs. Sometimes somebody replies, sometimes they get fixed (somestimes even both!), but often enough the result - like yours - is total silence.

Sometimes I think the BOINC development team live in a world of their own - probably orditing Alpha Centauri.

But thanks for trying, anyway.

Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Bikeman (Heinz-...
Moderator
Joined: 28 Aug 06
Posts: 3,522
Credit: 703,375,006
RAC: 458,658

RE: This may or may not be

Message 78587 in response to message 78584

Quote:

This may or may not be relevant to this discussion.

I also have some q6600's that are giving lower credit than expected.

Some people are reporting RAC of ~1400 for a stock 2.4 Q6600 (and up to 2000 for overclocked to 3GHz).

I am seeing RAC's of around 700 for the Q6600's in my care (4GB Win XP Pro 32
bit).

One thing to watch out for is speedstep. This will definitely drop your crunching speed. Look for EIST in the BIOS settings and disable. Use CPU-Z to verify the current cpu speed, it will drop to 1500GHz if speedstep kicks in.

Even with this fixed, I'm seeing poor rates. Once of my current WU's (785.75 S5R2) has completed 2.6% after 56hours CPU.

Hi!

You will probably have checked this already, but just for the sake of completeness, there are two more things to check when you encounter a problem like this:
1) In your preferences settings, the setting

On multiprocessors, use at most X processors

should be set to X=4 if you want to use all four cores on a quadcore, obviously. Note that the default is X=2.

2) Also in the preferences, the setting

Use at most XXX percent of CPU time

should be set to XXX=100 for max performance. It has been reported that any other settings can slow down the app far more than intended by the given percentage value, possibly by causing frequent restarts of the app. This is discussed here.

And last but not least, for maximum performance you can try the SSE optimized Windows app that is discussed here.

Happy crunching
Bikeman

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