SETI@Home

[wee96]

I was just wondering about something. I've currently got two computers scanning away at the data in seti@home. First box is an amd k6-2 266@366 with 64mb ram. Second box is a 300A@450, with 196mb ram. The AMD box seems to crunch ALOT slower than my celeron. Is this caused by the slow fpu's in the AMD chips or what? The clock difference is about 100mhz (366 to 450) but it doesnt seem like it should be this extreme. Any ideas?

[grizco]

I think its probably the the fpu. What is SETI@Home. I have it on a Maximum PC Cdrom but haven't loaded it on the system. To busy trying to get my AMD 300 3D to overclock past 337 mhz.

[bkehoe]

Hi,
I'm no expert at what SETI@Home uses, but I don't think it is the FPU.

Its the same problem in RC5: a P6 core processor will crack approx. 40% faster than a K6 core processor.

This is due to the chip core: the K6 is a RISC processor, which just happens to be slower at RC5 than a P6 core. However the K6 cores are better at DES than a P66 core.

Brendan

[Virus]

SETI@Home is more optimised for Intel chips. Now Intel is even going out of there way to make it fully optimised. With the help of 3DNOW and MMX, the AMD chips should come close doing the same as the Intel chips. Put that's in a perfect world.


[This message has been edited by Virus (edited 07-25-99).]

[farweb]

I could be wrong but it also seems like the time required to finish a block isn't consistent even on a single machine.
I've had blocks finish in 10-11 hours and others take a day on the same machine.

Thats even without running foreground tasks which really affect the time.

In the case above though, the FPU is probably the difference.