A Conversation for The SETI@home project

How to up those Stats!

Post 1

zb

1) Find a PC that doesn't get used much (i.e. not your own)
2) Make sure it's OK to leave it on 24 hours a day
3) Install SETI
4) Make ensure the preferences are set to run ALL the time
NB it doesn't have to have 64MB RAM unless you're going to use it
5) This is the important bit:
Make sure there is no screen saver activated
(or a blank screen only)

A friend and myself set up seti on some PC's, and left them running. The spec's ranged from a P90 to P6333's, and the time they took to do a unit was from 160 hours to about 60. Then one day I turned the screen saver off (which seti sets-up by default) and one of them finished in under 15hours.

In short - though it looks very prety, the cpu used to redraw the meaningless graphical interface means your units take up to 4 times as long to complete.

A Pentium III 500 running NT will complete a unit in under 8 hours.
And I'm sure someone will tell me how fast a unix box would do it, but I don't have one.

smiley - fish zb.


How to up those Stats!

Post 2

The Mummy, administrator of the SETI@home Project (A193231) and The Reluctant Dead on the FFFF (A254314)

Hi zb,

Thanx for your input. Luckily I, and several others of us, already know that, and if you hadn't written it, I would have added a message of this nature myself. Just didn't find the time to get it up yet.

So, again THANX!

btw: why don't you join us? smiley - winkeye


How to up those Stats!

Post 3

Spirit of Olias (occasional spectre)

Would anyone else find it interesting to know what spec machines people are running to produce their results? I have a P266 with 192Mb of RAM processing units at an average of 13hours.

Dave


How to up those Stats!

Post 4

The Mummy, administrator of the SETI@home Project (A193231) and The Reluctant Dead on the FFFF (A254314)

It might be interesting to some, but others might get frustrated with the info of what others use.smiley - smiley

Your machine is possibly running some X-style OS? For a P266 13 hours is very fast after all. I'm wondering though... If a packet is done in 13 hours, how come you only get three packets through in a week?
If the system were running fulltime, you could make about 13 packets per week smiley - winkeye (13 x 13 = 169 hours, a week has 7 x 24 = 168 hours)

Oh, and since we're giving details about hardware anyway... I'm using an AMD K6-II @400MHz with 128MB of RAM, and the SETI-software runs under Win98SE, processing one packet roughly every 20 hours.


How to up those Stats!

Post 5

zb

Hmmm. Decisions, decisions. I'm currently lying in 4th position in the group I'm currently in at work (RM), but since there's absolutely no way I can get to the top (861 units so far and averageing 50 new units per week) I might pop over to join the h2g2 researchers instead.


How to up those Stats!

Post 6

The Mummy, administrator of the SETI@home Project (A193231) and The Reluctant Dead on the FFFF (A254314)

Ah, you're in a group already. In that case I wouldn't wanna force you out of it.

The packets you've processed so far would stay with them, and you'd start at 0 for our group, though your own personal statistics wouldn't change. No, I don't think it would be right to desert your colleagues. I shouldn't have asked.


How to up those Stats!

Post 7

Spirit of Olias (occasional spectre)

Okay, so the truth about my system is a little more sinister......
For some reason about the first 70 packets i got through were completing after between 2 hours and 21 hours, it was averaging to about 11 hours. I thought this was normal but for some reason when i updated my BIOS 3 weeks ago they've been taking a consistant 21ish hours. Which isn't too bad for for my machine, which also runs Win98SE. So most of my results are a bit dodgy to say the least, but hey, they all count for this group!
So given i have my machine on for around 10 hours a day i get through about 3.5 a week.


How to up those Stats!

Post 8

The Mummy, administrator of the SETI@home Project (A193231) and The Reluctant Dead on the FFFF (A254314)

Weird thing, packets completing with such difference in duration.
21 hours on average as it is now, is indeed VERY good, taking into account the kind of hardware you're using.
At first my system needed 56 hours on av. to complete a packet, but since I switched of the screen saver, I'm now doing 20 hours, which is quite similar to yours. The difference is, that I keep my system runing 24/7 just for the SETI program smiley - winkeye


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