WU taking longer?

Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Bikeman (Heinz-...
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RE: That result, and

Message 89227 in response to message 89226


Quote:
That result, and another 90+ hour result, were posted a few days ago. (I have two processors, so I take two at a time). The two I'm working on right now are predicted to come in at 86 and 88 hours, respectively.

The data demonstrates that this is not a problem with the CPU time measurement or with frequent restarts: the jobs run really really judging from the wall-clock time in the debugging output! Either your PC isn't running at design specs or it's doing so much stuff other than E@H at the same time that E@H get's expelled from cache or even swapped out of RAM frequently. Are there any other heavy computing jobs ongoing on that PC? Have you tried a benchmarking/performance analysis tool like SiSoft Sandra on this host? Might be a good idea, as it's too slow given it's specs by at least a factor of 4.

CU
Bikeman

Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
Bikeman (Heinz-...
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RE: I have both an Intel

Message 89228 in response to message 89224

Quote:

I have both an Intel P4 dual core with HT on each core and a true AMD Phenom quad core and the Intel is producing more RAC, and both are on the same Project.
Here is a link to the Intel
http://abcathome.com/show_host_detail.php?hostid=65041
The Intel is a 32.ghz

and the AMD http://abcathome.com/show_host_detail.php?hostid=65177
The AMD is a 9850

Both are running Linux and both are running the latest version of Ubuntu. Both have not been updated as often as they could be but are fairly current. They are both Boinc only machines, so they do nothing else. So don't cut the older HT Intel's too short just yet, they seem to have a bunch of life left in them.

That's an interesting result, but I think that ABC's apps are doing more integer arithmetic than floating point as is done by the E@H app, so I suspect the result would be different on E@H. Also, this demonstrates that indeed the AMD K10 CPUs are, in fact, not so hot as well, I'm afraid, compared to current state-of-the-art. Even ABC's Top 100 hosts stats list only 2 AMD boxes as far as I could see, and none in the upper third of the rankings.

CU
Bikeman

abinkow
abinkow
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Credit: 2724569
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RE: RE: That result, and

Message 89229 in response to message 89227

Quote:

Quote:
That result, and another 90+ hour result, were posted a few days ago. (I have two processors, so I take two at a time). The two I'm working on right now are predicted to come in at 86 and 88 hours, respectively.

The data demonstrates that this is not a problem with the CPU time measurement or with frequent restarts: the jobs run really really judging from the wall-clock time in the debugging output! Either your PC isn't running at design specs or it's doing so much stuff other than E@H at the same time that E@H get's expelled from cache or even swapped out of RAM frequently. Are there any other heavy computing jobs ongoing on that PC? Have you tried a benchmarking/performance analysis tool like SiSoft Sandra on this host? Might be a good idea, as it's too slow given it's specs by at least a factor of 4.

CU
Bikeman

Wait a minute, hold the phone! You can't judge CPU time used (actual work) based on calendar elapsed (duration). I do data warehousing, and occasionally I suspend projects and/or turn off BOINC altogether, because I need the maximum computing power available. But while suspending projects will increase the duration of the WU, it should not increase the processing needed. (Oh, maybe a little for bookkeeping -- save everything to disk, in a format where it can be resumed, and then restart it -- but we're talking a few seconds, not days!)

th3
th3
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Agreed, swapping and using

Agreed, swapping and using other CPU intensive apps will not increase the CPU seconds used. I have experienced WUs reporting to much time used and sorry to say, throttling was the cause, in other words overheating. Your CPU is overheating and running at a lower speed than it should. Download throttlewatch and see what it says (requires Intel chipset iirc, if your mainbaord has nvidia chipset it might not show throttling correctly.

How to fix throttling:
Pentium4s were known to overheat, remove the heatsink and apply new thermal paste and/or clean the heatsink. If cleaning is enough then no need to remount it.

In my case it was with a serious overclocked Wolfdale CPU, it was set in Bios to throttle at 85c, when i discovered it wasnt performing at full i raised that value to 100c, which by the way is the correct value according to Intel. Somewhat different for Pentium4, theres no on-die temp sensor so i suspect the throttling limit is kind of hardcoded into the CPU but check your bios settings anyway (85c should be the correct limit for prescott (500 and 600 series).

abinkow
abinkow
Joined: 21 Feb 05
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RAC: 0

RE: Agreed, swapping and

Message 89231 in response to message 89230

Quote:

Agreed, swapping and using other CPU intensive apps will not increase the CPU seconds used. I have experienced WUs reporting to much time used and sorry to say, throttling was the cause, in other words overheating. Your CPU is overheating and running at a lower speed than it should. Download throttlewatch and see what it says (requires Intel chipset iirc, if your mainbaord has nvidia chipset it might not show throttling correctly.

How to fix throttling:
Pentium4s were known to overheat, remove the heatsink and apply new thermal paste and/or clean the heatsink. If cleaning is enough then no need to remount it.

In my case it was with a serious overclocked Wolfdale CPU, it was set in Bios to throttle at 85c, when i discovered it wasnt performing at full i raised that value to 100c, which by the way is the correct value according to Intel. Somewhat different for Pentium4, theres no on-die temp sensor so i suspect the throttling limit is kind of hardcoded into the CPU but check your bios settings anyway (85c should be the correct limit for prescott (500 and 600 series).

That's a decent idea; the problem is this is a laptop. It's not that easy to clean anything -- if it is at all possible. It's also NVIDIA chipset, so the throttling monitor program you suggested won't work. Anyone know of an NVIDIA chipset equivalent?

mikey
mikey
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RE: RE: Agreed, swapping

Message 89232 in response to message 89231

Quote:
Quote:

Agreed, swapping and using other CPU intensive apps will not increase the CPU seconds used. I have experienced WUs reporting to much time used and sorry to say, throttling was the cause, in other words overheating. Your CPU is overheating and running at a lower speed than it should. Download throttlewatch and see what it says (requires Intel chipset iirc, if your mainbaord has nvidia chipset it might not show throttling correctly.

How to fix throttling:
Pentium4s were known to overheat, remove the heatsink and apply new thermal paste and/or clean the heatsink. If cleaning is enough then no need to remount it.

In my case it was with a serious overclocked Wolfdale CPU, it was set in Bios to throttle at 85c, when i discovered it wasnt performing at full i raised that value to 100c, which by the way is the correct value according to Intel. Somewhat different for Pentium4, theres no on-die temp sensor so i suspect the throttling limit is kind of hardcoded into the CPU but check your bios settings anyway (85c should be the correct limit for prescott (500 and 600 series).

That's a decent idea; the problem is this is a laptop. It's not that easy to clean anything -- if it is at all possible. It's also NVIDIA chipset, so the throttling monitor program you suggested won't work. Anyone know of an NVIDIA chipset equivalent?

I use a program called Everest that will show you the temps of the different parts of your pc that have a sensor. For instance this laptop I am typing on right now is running at 60c for each of its dual cores. Boinc is only running on one core, seems to keep my wife happier that way. Everest works on both Intel and AMD cpus, it gives a ton of other info too.

th3
th3
Joined: 24 Aug 06
Posts: 208
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RAC: 0

If its a laptop it could be

If its a laptop it could be the power saving features reducing the performance. I know nothing about P4-based laptops, hopefully someone here does, untill then i can only suggest you look for the power saving stuff in Windows and deactivate it while testing performance.

Cleaning laptops, hope you can find something useful in this thread:
http://einsteinathome.org/node/193961

abinkow
abinkow
Joined: 21 Feb 05
Posts: 38
Credit: 2724569
RAC: 0

RE: If its a laptop it

Message 89234 in response to message 89233

Quote:

If its a laptop it could be the power saving features reducing the performance. I know nothing about P4-based laptops, hopefully someone here does, untill then i can only suggest you look for the power saving stuff in Windows and deactivate it while testing performance.

Cleaning laptops, hope you can find something useful in this thread:
http://einsteinathome.org/node/193961

Can't be power-saving; all of that is turned off -- and nothing has changed in that regard for years.

I will check out the cleaning item, though. Thanks.

Bernt
Bernt
Joined: 29 Dec 06
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Guys, It looks to me that

Guys,

It looks to me that I have more or less the same problem as Abinkow.

Can anyone of you bright guys please help to make me understand if something is wrong with my PC. Taskid 112264815 112264774 112264743 112264700 and 112264576

Any help appreciated.

Bernt

DanNeely
DanNeely
Joined: 4 Sep 05
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to clean a laptop get a can

to clean a laptop get a can of air and start blasting into every exposed vent. At leadt one of them should result in a cloud of dust being expelled from another vent hole.

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