folding troubles.... maybe?

inteljunky · Post by **inteljunky** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 10:18 pm

My machine is spitting out little WUs at about 9min/frame but i just noticed that i had not forced sse optimization or some other things, and it is using the 65.exe core and not the 78 core....is there a performance boost there? I just switched flags mid WU and ill check to see how it finished this WU tomarrow afternoon, but I wondered if there is anything that I should do to really churn out the points on this beast of a machine. (intel P4)

Ladd · Post by **Ladd** » Thu Mar 25, 2004 12:38 am

The 65 core is a tinker core and unfortunatly the tinker core doesnt use sse assembly options. Dont worry about it, you just picked up a tinker. It'll finish up and download a new work unit, hopefully a gromac (78 core) and continue along with the see boost.

Southwind25 · Post by **Southwind25** » Thu Mar 25, 2004 2:29 am

The SSE boost is going to make a large difference on Gromac WU's. In my case it was over a 30% increase. I know some people say they're still getting Tinkers with the -advmethods flag installed but I haven't gotten one in months running it on 8 instances on 4 machines. Some people like Tinkers and say somebody has to run them but I don't see any sense in grinding them out if you don't have to. I paid my dues.

len444 · Post by **len444** » Thu Mar 25, 2004 3:34 am

tinker WU's can tolerate a higher overclock, so they might be a good option for those that do so.

at this point, with the ending of the [email protected] home (GAH) project, the GAH WU preference will return 11XX series tinkers exclusively. they are without a deadline currently, and can be queue'd up to 8 WU's. i think this would be best with a fast machine with a sporadic internet connection (dial-up, or some manual lan connection situation, ect...).

My machine is spitting out little WUs at about 9min/frame but i just noticed that i had not forced sse optimization or some other things, and it is using the 65.exe core and not the 78 core....

are they 11xx series Tinkers? there is also a newer Tinker core that will get downloaded for these WU's.

Tinker's, as they say doesn't use sse optimizations. sse does speed up the processing of Gromacs WU's. they say about 20% speed boost. drop the -forceSSE flag w/ an athlon xp cpu, and you'll see 3dnow!+ assembly opts. 3dnow!+ gives a speed boost over that of what the Tinker is processed at. it might be ~5% speed boost, but don't quote me on it. also, i'm really just loosely quoting what others have stated at FAH forums, so there might be a variance for actual performance gained.

a simple experiment would be to drop sse, and run w/ 3dnow!+. write down the frame rates with, and without sse, and calculate the percentage difference. add roughly 5% to the result, and that is an approximate speed boost for using sse.

inteljunky · Post by **inteljunky** » Thu Mar 25, 2004 1:01 pm

thanks for the help..... i just started the -advmethods flag so hopefully i get a good one next time. as for my other comp ill keep it on the grunt work, its not that fast, so i am happy with it turning stuff out about every other day and a half