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Should I switch this boxen to big packets?

I

Imitation

2[H]4U
Joined
Jun 18, 2004
Messages
2,536
I've got the following boxen folding pretty much 24/7 right now.

1.4 tbird athlon
512 megs of PC2100
stock hsf, runs HOT, around 60 loaded with folding

It only has XP and norton to compete for cpu cycles right now, and its running regular, no pref work units. Should I switch it to big packets or will i run the risk of not getting some of the 600 point gromacs done on time?
 
I'll let the AMD crowd take this one. If it was a Intel chip, then YES would be the answer. Big point boost, but most if not all big WU's really only scream on Intel chips. I think the 241 pointer normal WU's are the good ones for the AMD crowd, with the PPD getting closest between the AMD/Intel camp.

Big WU's can slow down a machine some, during games are about it from what I've noticed. Major memory usage/memory bandwidth usage even with the core program freeing up it's used CPU cycles.
 
With a 1.4 I would avoid big units, not enough CPU speed to gain you much.

Those temps are a bit high, I’d think about a better HSF, staying under, well under 50 should be more your norm, unless you have no case airflow at all.

If you decide to go AMD 64 bit then you can crush on big units. I have a 3200 at 2.2 that kills my Intel at 3.2 on big units. 58 hours on the Intel, 24 hours on the AMD.

Get that CPU cooler and fold on my friend.
 
I had a few 900 t-bird boxes cranking out 241-pointers once a week. 600s would likely take about 3 weeks on those, so maybe 2 on these?

I'd stick with small WUs; then if you happen to lose a WU it isn't all that much work down the drain.
 
I don't know. If it's a dedicated folding box, it might be worth a shot. My Barton boxen fly through 600 pointers, but I'm not sure how a t-bird would react. I have a P3-850 that gets big units in on time though, so I would guess it should be ok.
 
The 600 pointers are a bit relentless and take a long time on an older processor. You can probably do them but as I said before I’d want to cool that CPU first.

Nothing more disappointing then hitting something like 599 and having the WU go bust on you. Things like that have been known to make people say bad words ;)


 
That T-Bird should have no trouble finishing the 600 pointers on time. It will take a good while for them to crunch them, though. The main reason being that it doesn't have SSE. That wasn't introduced until the XP line for the the Athlons and the Morgan core for the Durons. I have a Morgan core 1 Ghz Duron that spits out 600 pointers in about a weeks time 24/7.

I can't say whether or not to run them. You might try setting it for bigpackets and see what it will do with a 600 pointer. I'd use EMIII to see what kind of PPD it current puts out on Tinkers and regular Gromacs. Then I would switch it and see what it will do with 600 pointers. That's about the best advice I can give on this. If the machine is getting mainly Tinkers, then you should probably just stick with that since T-Birds will crunch them without a problem. I'd hate to see what Gromacs would do on it. They need the SSE instructions to run decent.

Thinking about what my 1 Ghz Duron can do, I doubt it would be worth running the 600 pointers on the T-Bird. It doesn't do all that much better with the 600 point Gromacs than it does with the 241 point Tinkers and it does have SSE.

 
Yeah I think I'm going to leave it where it is, working normal packets for now. When my XP-M is running at 1.6ghz to keep my room cooler, it still runs circles around the T-bird on gromacs, probly cause of the SSE and extra cache. It does pick up mostly regular gromacs, I don't think its had more than a couple tinkers since I started folding back in late may. Looking at my stats page, my XP-M can finish a 600 pointer faster than my T-bird can finish a 241 pointer, by about 18 hours! Course the XP has all the advantages, SSE, 200fsb, and most importantly it runs at 2.2ghz over the 1.4. Lastly BillR I've not had any stability issues with this compy since i built it using the stock hsf back in the summer of '01. When/if i ever jump into water cooling, which i've been researching off and on, I'll put my volcano9 on the t-bird. Thanks for weighing in guys.

 
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