Speeding UP WU's

[B^S] madmac
[B^S] madmac
Joined: 19 Jul 05
Posts: 32
Credit: 759,460
RAC: 0
Topic 219098

Is there any way I can get my Wu's to run faster?  I know it is an old machine but the WU's are taking around 61 hours to do each one as So I was wondering is there anyway of getting them to run quicker?

mikey
mikey
Joined: 22 Jan 05
Posts: 12,622
Credit: 1,839,007,974
RAC: 6,697

How many workunits are you

How many workunits are you running at one time? If 4 try running only 2 or even 1 at a time and see if that helps, you only have 4gb of ram in that machine and you could be running out.

Gary Roberts
Gary Roberts
Moderator
Joined: 9 Feb 05
Posts: 5,870
Credit: 116,772,637,246
RAC: 36,385,736

{B^S} madmac wrote:... is

{B^S} madmac wrote:
... is there anyway of getting them to run quicker?


Yes, find whatever it is that is making it run slowly and nuke it :-).  Sorry, I couldn't resist :-).

I have a number of Q8400 based machines, some with only 3GB RAM.  Your CPU speed is listed as 2.5 GHz.  Mine is 2.66GHz.  I'm not processing current GW CPU tasks but have done so many times in the past.  They used to take (from memory) something like 40-50Ksecs so your 200K+ times seem way too long.

When was the last time you gave the machine a good clean?  The most obvious thing to check for is thermal throttling.  Have you checked CPU temperatures, both when at idle and when running full steam?  Check internally to see if the CPU fan is running freely and if the heat sink fins are clogged with dust/fluff.

Your CPU times and elapsed times are different but not markedly so.  If your elapsed times were markedly larger than CPU times, I would suspect some other process competing for CPU resources.  Maybe there's a bit of that going on, but that's not the main issue.

Another thing you should investigate is memory speed.  Your machine likely has DDR2 800 RAM.  You have 4GB so I presume 2x2GB sticks, dual channel.  I know that is sufficient from personal experience.  Some of mine run fine with only 3GB.  Are you sure the memory is running at the correct speed?  Are you sure the memory settings are optimal?  You should be able to see the default settings in the BIOS and you should run a utility to see what they are showing while the machine is working.  I don't run Windows and don't know what utility would be best to use - something like CPU-Z I imagine (if I remember that right).

There is definitely something misconfigured or some hardware issue for you to find.  Good luck with finding it!

Cheers,
Gary.

JP
JP
Joined: 14 Aug 10
Posts: 1
Credit: 1,119,372
RAC: 129

[quote=Gary

Gary Roberts wrote:
{B^S} madmac wrote:
... is there anyway of getting them to run quicker?

Yes, find whatever it is that is making it run slowly and nuke it :-).  Sorry, I couldn't resist :-).

I have a number of Q8400 based machines, some with only 3GB RAM.  Your CPU speed is listed as 2.5 GHz.  Mine is 2.66GHz.  I'm not processing current GW CPU tasks but have done so many times in the past.  They used to take (from memory) something like 40-50Ksecs so your 200K+ times seem way too long.


Some new GW tasks really have a higher processing time.
On my old AMD Athlon II X3 435 with 2.9GHz / 4GB RAM they need around 110Ksecs - so your machine needs the double time. Normally I would expect a more comparable performance of both CPUs, with your CPU a bit slower due to frequency.

Gary Roberts wrote:


Another thing you should investigate is memory speed.  Your machine likely has DDR2 800 RAM.  You have 4GB so I presume 2x2GB sticks, dual channel.  I know that is sufficient from personal experience.  Some of mine run fine with only 3GB.  Are you sure the memory is running at the correct speed?  Are you sure the memory settings are optimal?  You should be able to see the default settings in the BIOS and you should run a utility to see what they are showing while the machine is working.  I don't run Windows and don't know what utility would be best to use - something like CPU-Z I imagine (if I remember that right).

There is definitely something misconfigured or some hardware issue for you to find.  Good luck with finding it!


Definitely wrong I would not say.
The question is, if your machine was running better before and if you have changed something.
In general RAM speed has much smaller influence than CPU speed. So even slow RAM cannot explain a much lower performance - only if something is configured completely wrong.

But I agree, checking your settings with CPU-Z and the CPU temperatures (e.g. with CoreTemp or HWMonitor) should give you first indications.

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.