K6-2 450MHZ slower than Pentium II 300MHZ?

[Wing Chef]

Hi Folks:

I could not find anything relavent to my issue in prior postings. At any rate, I have an Amptron 598 Motherboard with an AMD k-6 450 MHZ CPU running Windows 98 and it is apparently slower. I noticed this when my SETI work units took almost twice as long to complete. On the 300, it takes about 14 hours and almost 30 on my new K-6. As a comparison, I ran a benchmark test that comes with Norton Utilities and a 300MHZ P2 is around 142, while my K6 was around 127.

Any thoughts? There must be some type of setting. I find it hard to believe that this processor is actually slower. I have been through the BIOS, even updated the BIOS. It is currently set to Auto, AMD K6, at 450MHZ.

Thank You.

Rich

[AuraEdge]

..14 hours a unit? on 300?
wow
I had a P2 350 @ 434 and that took about 19 hours for a work unit!!
either somethings real good bout that 300 or i cant quite tweak as well as i thought i could

[nimrod]

I understand that the seti program has been optimised by intel to run quicker on their chips, Amd is trying to get the ok to optimize their coding but is having problems getting the ok. apparently SETI has now got more CRUNCHERS than it needs and is sending out old data that has already been number crunched just to keep everybody happy. anyone else heard of this?

[Wing Chef]

Hi:

So, maybe there is really nothing wrong? Just the fact that the number crunching makes the K6 appear slower. Guess the microcode is not efficient.

The trick on how to maximize more time for SETI is to blank the screen saver after one minute. The painting of the graphics takes a lot of CPU time. My initial times were around 18-20 hours before I learned about this trick. To blank the screen, choose the settings button on the screen saver form.

Thanks,

Rich

[skywalker[TSG]]

why dont u just turn off the screensaver and turn your monitor off ??

[fishboy]

Forgive my ignorance, but isnt SETI that UFO\Alien searcher screensaver thing? I uninstalled it 10 minutes after I put it on

[AuraEdge]

if u didnt put the screen saver on, your processor still draws the graphics, which are then output to the turned off monitor. When u make it to go to blank, it never gets to that step, and every empty cycle is put to use. BTW my SETI scores were 19h a piece cuz i have it always on and when i play a game, it crunchs only about 1% an hour cuz all the processing power is put to the game. If i dont play a game it only takes about 10h while i do other stuff.
--EDIT
Oh yeah..SETI is that alien UFO thing. Even tho I dont believe in Aliens, it looks a hell of alot cooler than RC5. Kinda like its more user freindly. The RC5 GUI really bites, and Im not really intrested in playing a lottery for 1000 bucks with people who have networks of comps working for them, just itching to crunch 100x as fast as i can.

[This message has been edited by AuraEdge (edited 08-03-99).]

[naveed]

I dont know much about SETI, but it is possible that 1) like nimrod's already said, it's been optimised for intel chips. 2) it relies heavily on the FPU where AMD is somewhat weak.

On Norton Utilities I get a score of 155 on my AMD K6-2 350 overclocked to 400, with an EPOX MVP3G motherboard. It is probably your motherboard that is giving you the low score. Are you using PC-100 RAM at 100MHz? On the other hand I dont think that NU is such a good benchmark. WinTune and Sisoft Sandra are good fast benchmarks, and of course the defacto standard ZDBench is possibly the best if not for the long time it takes to finish.