As a famous Canadian once said...

"Just watch me..."

Jay
Hardware/Support Moderator

Wow, a great addition.

Q6600 is definitely the best bang for the buck out there.

What is the rest of the machine composed of?


I've been tempted to grab one, but short of a fake major computer demise (BOFH style), I can't see it squeezing by the warden ahead of a new dining room table and chairs.



UncleVom
Sill trying for that million credits on Christmas day.

> Wow, a great addition.
>
> Q6600 is definitely the best bang for the buck out there.

Is it ever - about $75-$80 per CPU so-to-speak but bundled into 1. Even just 1 of those 4 CPUs by themselves is good. 4 together is absolutely awesome.

> What is the rest of the machine composed of?

2 GB OCZ RAM (DDR2 800 MHz), new ASUS mobo with ability to support the Core 2 Extreme (forget it I'm NOT spending $1,000+ in a CPU), 250 GB SATA II drive X 2 RAID 1.

> I've been tempted to grab one, but short of a fake major computer demise (BOFH
> style), I can't see it squeezing by the warden ahead of a new dining room table
> and chairs.

In my case we need a new stove & we have a dishwasher to install (along with the plumbing & refit under the counter). That on top of the recent computer purchases, the new car I now have, & everything else. Computer spending is now halted until next year. (Wait that's less than a month hmm...)

> UncleVom
> Sill trying for that million credits on Christmas day.

Just push that X2 a little harder & you might get there. 2,400 credit in 18 days so you must average about 1,333 per day. Should be close...

Jay
Hardware/Support Moderator

> > Sill trying for that million credits on Christmas day.
>
> Just push that X2 a little harder & you might get there. 2,400 credit in 18
> days so you must average about 1,333 per day. Should be close...

I think it will be really close.
I can crank up the x2 a bit more, but it's a stepping that doesn't seem to have much of a margin.

The significance of December 25th is that it is my anniversary for starting in SETI Classic in 1999 while I was killing time between too much breakfast and Christmas dinner. I thought it would be fun to coordinate that with hitting the 1,000,000 mark with SETI Boinc.


UncleVom

>
> > > Sill trying for that million credits on Christmas day.
> >
> > Just push that X2 a little harder & you might get there. 2,400 credit in 18
> > days so you must average about 1,333 per day. Should be close...
>
> I think it will be really close.
> I can crank up the x2 a bit more, but it's a stepping that doesn't seem to have
> much of a margin.
>
> The significance of December 25th is that it is my anniversary for starting in
> SETI Classic in 1999 while I was killing time between too much breakfast and
> Christmas dinner. I thought it would be fun to coordinate that with hitting the
> 1,000,000 mark with SETI Boinc.

OK that's cool! I won't hit a million until probably about the time I have to renew my car insurance LOL (that's Feb. 24, 2008).

For me, the best part is that the Quad & the Duo are under my control. (Not someone else's PC.) Out of the machines that are on & producing credit, only the Athlon X2 & the Celeron 2.2 are not mine.

Also I am going to tell a co-worker how to run SETI/BOINC join our team. We'll see if he decides to follow through. I've already told him about it & promised to send an email. Oh & BTW - he also has a Quad. ;)

Jay
Hardware/Support Moderator

> >
> > > > Sill trying for that million credits on Christmas day.
> > >
> > > Just push that X2 a little harder & you might get there. 2,400 credit in 18
> > > days so you must average about 1,333 per day. Should be close...
> >
> > I think it will be really close.
> > I can crank up the x2 a bit more, but it's a stepping that doesn't seem to
> have
> > much of a margin.
> >
> > The significance of December 25th is that it is my anniversary for starting in
> > SETI Classic in 1999 while I was killing time between too much breakfast and
> > Christmas dinner. I thought it would be fun to coordinate that with hitting
> the
> > 1,000,000 mark with SETI Boinc.
>
> OK that's cool! I won't hit a million until probably about the time I have to
> renew my car insurance LOL (that's Feb. 24, 2008).
>
> For me, the best part is that the Quad & the Duo are under my control. (Not
> someone else's PC.) Out of the machines that are on & producing credit, only
> the Athlon X2 & the Celeron 2.2 are not mine.
>
> Also I am going to tell a co-worker how to run SETI/BOINC join our team. We'll
> see if he decides to follow through. I've already told him about it & promised
> to send an email. Oh & BTW - he also has a Quad. ;)
>
>

Hopefully he decides to take part.

Anybody I have personally tried to recruit has been too scared to take part. I think their fragile eggshell minds were damaged by sci-fi movies at a young age and they think aliens are going to crawl down the pipes and get them.

All my running boxes boxes are at home in my office or in use around the house.

I have access to a fair number of computers through my work, but since I don't want to be branded a space alien/terrorist by them too, I have never attempted to enlist them.


UncleVom

>
> > > Sill trying for that million credits on Christmas day.
> >
> > Just push that X2 a little harder & you might get there. 2,400 credit in 18
> > days so you must average about 1,333 per day. Should be close...
>
> I think it will be really close.
> I can crank up the x2 a bit more, but it's a stepping that doesn't seem to have
> much of a margin.
>
> The significance of December 25th is that it is my anniversary for starting in
> SETI Classic in 1999 while I was killing time between too much breakfast and
> Christmas dinner. I thought it would be fun to coordinate that with hitting the
> 1,000,000 mark with SETI Boinc.

I happened to check in the early hours of Christmas Day (I think it was like 1 AM CST) & saw you were about 1,000,100 or so. Way to go!!!

Jay
Hardware/Support Moderator

And I hope to reach the million by the end of February (before my car insurance renewal is due on the 24th?).

Not only that, I realized something that I didn't know. For dual channel RAM to work as intended, you have to match the identical sticks to the identical COLOURS - not the same pair of slots that are physically beside each other. I wondered about it when I upgraded to the Quad. Then I finally remembered to do a little research during the holidays. So I reconfigured the RAM yesterday & the Quad seems to be working faster now.

Now I'm wondering - if you occupy more than 1/2 of the available RAM with data, does this reduce the effectiveness of dual channel RAM?

Jay
Hardware/Support Moderator

> And I hope to reach the million by the end of February (before my car insurance
> renewal is due on the 24th?).

I don't think you should have too much trouble unless you get a lot of work units ending up in "pending" waiting for the "wing man", a problem with faster computers.
>
> Not only that, I realized something that I didn't know. For dual channel RAM to
> work as intended, you have to match the identical sticks to the identical
> COLOURS - not the same pair of slots that are physically beside each other. I
> wondered about it when I upgraded to the Quad. Then I finally remembered to do
> a little research during the holidays. So I reconfigured the RAM yesterday &
> the Quad seems to be working faster now.

It should have an effect probably more so with an Intel box than an AMD, but not as much as they would like you to think.
>
> Now I'm wondering - if you occupy more than 1/2 of the available RAM with data,
> does this reduce the effectiveness of dual channel RAM?
>
A good question.
A lot probably depends on the smartness of the caching algorithm of the CPU(s)/Memory Controllers. Unless the box is memory bound under load and forced to hit the virtual memory I can't see it making a huge difference.

I have tripled the speed of my AMD K6-2 by going from 128MB of RAM to 256MB. ;-D


UncleVom

> I happened to check in the early hours of Christmas Day (I think it was like 1
> AM CST) & saw you were about 1,000,100 or so. Way to go!!!

Thanks.

It was a little tighter than I planned, a fair bit of the output from the X2 seemed to be ending up in "pending" and the Athlon 1800+ had a power supply failure a few days before and I only got around to fixing that yesterday.


UncleVom

> I have tripled the speed of my AMD K6-2 by going from 128MB of RAM to 256MB.
> ;-D

For shame. Neither my K6-2 nor my K6-III+ were ever forced to labor with anything less than 384 MB.

:^P

(Now if only I could find three sticks of 256 or 512 168 pin low density SDRAM, I'd pull it out of the closet and fire it up as a server...)

The motherboard is a modded FIC VA-503+ and has seen a long and varied life starting life with a K6-2 300 with 128MB of EDO and at it's peak it had a K6-2 550 with 512MB of CAS2 PC100 crunching for SETI. It was out on loan as an email server for a few years and was replaced when the CPU died due to dust accumulation. It was stripped of drives, memory and video card and piled in my basement.

About a year and a half ago I found it, felt sorry for it and scrounged up enough parts to put it back into service on SETI for old times sake.

The VA-503+ motherboards had a reputation for being picky about memory both EDO and SDRAM, but this one has mellowed in it's old age and is perfectly happy with the 128MB PC133 sticks that I freed from a pair of HP Vectra PII Desktops heading to the dumpster.


UncleVom

> > Not only that, I realized something that I didn't know. For dual channel RAM
> to
> > work as intended, you have to match the identical sticks to the identical
> > COLOURS - not the same pair of slots that are physically beside each other. I
> > wondered about it when I upgraded to the Quad. Then I finally remembered to
> do
> > a little research during the holidays. So I reconfigured the RAM yesterday &
> > the Quad seems to be working faster now.
>
> It should have an effect probably more so with an Intel box than an AMD, but not
> as much as they would like you to think.

I opened up my son's computer last night (24 hours or so before this post) to check a noisy fan. His board (which is actually using my old P4 Hyperthreading 3 GHz CPU) also supports dual channel & has 2 different pairs of RAM sticks. I noticed hat it too had the RAM installed with matching pairs side by side. So I swapped the sticks appropriately & now its RAM pairs match the colours. I don't know if you have to change anything in the BIOS for ASUS mobos to "activate" dual channel? Or does it take effect automatically?

Anyway his recent average credit was 362 when I did this. So let's see if it changes much going forward.

> > Now I'm wondering - if you occupy more than 1/2 of the available RAM with
> data,
> > does this reduce the effectiveness of dual channel RAM?
> >
> A good question.
> A lot probably depends on the smartness of the caching algorithm of the
> CPU(s)/Memory Controllers. Unless the box is memory bound under load and forced
> to hit the virtual memory I can't see it making a huge difference.

True but I'll try to find more info on this.

> I have tripled the speed of my AMD K6-2 by going from 128MB of RAM to 256MB.
> ;-D

Wow that box must be just flyyyyyyyyyying now!!! Its RAC must be up to like 20 now!!!

Jay
Hardware/Support Moderator

> > I have tripled the speed of my AMD K6-2 by going from 128MB of RAM to 256MB.
> > ;-D
>
> Wow that box must be just flyyyyyyyyyying now!!! Its RAC must be up to like 20
> now!!!
>
I predict it will sneak up to those heights.
I found I had shut down the switch to that part of the network and it had run out of work so it will take some time to recover. SETI in its wisdom has now allowed it 2 work units!!


UncleVom