How is SETI with the Centrino laptop?

[IsOs]

Has anyone tried running SETI in a Centrino type laptop? Would you recommend a Centrino or the regular Pentium 4 Laptop?

Any info is highly appreciated.

 

[lane42]

I Think there are 2 on the ars Benchmark Page in 11th and 14th place. I think they are centrino's.

 

[JWMiddleton]

Lane42 is correct, those two are Pentium-M Banias or Centrino based notebooks. There has been a bit of discussion here previously that they are excellent SETI crunchers due to the 1MB Cache and more efficient CPU architecture (vs. the P4.) I am amazed to see that the 1500 crunched the ARS WU in 2:19! :Q

 

[titanmiller]

Definantly go with the Pentium-M, I believe shimmishim has one if you want an opinion from somebody that has one. If I remember correctly his runs at 1.4Ghz while the top model runs at 1.7. If you are in the mood for a laptop I would recommend the Pentium-M over the Pentium 4 anytime, not only do you get excelent performance but you also get insane battery life.

 

[Smoke]

Just copied this from "The TeAm's Setiqueue":

2003 Jul 29 06:27am 10.704,11.57 10.074 Shimmishim's Intel Centrino 1.4GHz Laptop 1:51

2003 Jul 29 04:35am 22.208,18.08 0.426 Shimmishim's Intel Centrino 1.4GHz Laptop 2:29

2003 Jul 29 02:05am 12.046,10.59 0.441 Shimmishim's Intel Centrino 1.4GHz Laptop 2:31

2003 Jul 28 06:46pm 4.126,23.83 1.797 Shimmishim's Intel Centrino 1.4GHz Laptop 1:56

2003 Jul 28 04:48pm 23.569,18.72 7.821 Shimmishim's Intel Centrino 1.4GHz Laptop 1:52

2003 Jul 28 02:55pm 0.569,25.98 2.949 Shimmishim's Intel Centrino 1.4GHz Laptop 1:52

 

[IsOs]

Originally posted by: Smokeball
Just copied this from "The TeAm's Setiqueue":

2003 Jul 29 06:27am 10.704,11.57 10.074 Shimmishim's Intel Centrino 1.4GHz Laptop 1:51

2003 Jul 29 04:35am 22.208,18.08 0.426 Shimmishim's Intel Centrino 1.4GHz Laptop 2:29

2003 Jul 29 02:05am 12.046,10.59 0.441 Shimmishim's Intel Centrino 1.4GHz Laptop 2:31

2003 Jul 28 06:46pm 4.126,23.83 1.797 Shimmishim's Intel Centrino 1.4GHz Laptop 1:56

2003 Jul 28 04:48pm 23.569,18.72 7.821 Shimmishim's Intel Centrino 1.4GHz Laptop 1:52

2003 Jul 28 02:55pm 0.569,25.98 2.949 Shimmishim's Intel Centrino 1.4GHz Laptop 1:52

This is at stock speed, right? Or has he found a way to overclock a laptop?

Thank you everyone for the replies. Now I need to figure out how I can afford to buy one

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: IsOs

Originally posted by: Smokeball
Just copied this from "The TeAm's Setiqueue":

2003 Jul 29 06:27am 10.704,11.57 10.074 Shimmishim's Intel Centrino 1.4GHz Laptop 1:51

2003 Jul 29 04:35am 22.208,18.08 0.426 Shimmishim's Intel Centrino 1.4GHz Laptop 2:29

2003 Jul 29 02:05am 12.046,10.59 0.441 Shimmishim's Intel Centrino 1.4GHz Laptop 2:31

2003 Jul 28 06:46pm 4.126,23.83 1.797 Shimmishim's Intel Centrino 1.4GHz Laptop 1:56

2003 Jul 28 04:48pm 23.569,18.72 7.821 Shimmishim's Intel Centrino 1.4GHz Laptop 1:52

2003 Jul 28 02:55pm 0.569,25.98 2.949 Shimmishim's Intel Centrino 1.4GHz Laptop 1:52

This is at stock speed, right? Or has he found a way to overclock a laptop?

Thank you everyone for the replies. Now I need to figure out how I can afford to buy one

Dasm....that's around 12 WU's a day from a 1.4GHz Laptop! :Q

My co-worker has one of those....maybe I can talk him into running SETI....

WOW!

 

[Baldy18]

Check out my post about my new laptop.

 

[titanmiller]

Originally posted by: Smokeball
Just copied this from "The TeAm's Setiqueue":

2003 Jul 29 06:27am 10.704,11.57 10.074 Shimmishim's Intel Centrino 1.4GHz Laptop 1:51

2003 Jul 29 04:35am 22.208,18.08 0.426 Shimmishim's Intel Centrino 1.4GHz Laptop 2:29

2003 Jul 29 02:05am 12.046,10.59 0.441 Shimmishim's Intel Centrino 1.4GHz Laptop 2:31

2003 Jul 28 06:46pm 4.126,23.83 1.797 Shimmishim's Intel Centrino 1.4GHz Laptop 1:56

2003 Jul 28 04:48pm 23.569,18.72 7.821 Shimmishim's Intel Centrino 1.4GHz Laptop 1:52

2003 Jul 28 02:55pm 0.569,25.98 2.949 Shimmishim's Intel Centrino 1.4GHz Laptop 1:52

Not saying that 2:31 is bad, but it appears as if the Pentium-M is excelent at HAR WUs and only good at average AR WUs.
But anyway you look at it, the Pentium-M does alot with a clock cycle.

 

[lane42]

IsOs,
You can allways buy Barebones and build it little by little.

 

[ericlp]

What I don't understand is how a friggen 1.4Ghz laptop can out do a 2.6Ghz desktop running a 533FSB with fast 512Megs of ram I don't even get those results. I mean I get to about that... 2.5 hour per WU. Is eveyone buying centrino chips to run seti on now? I don't get it.

 

[Baldy18]

Originally posted by: ericlp
What I don't understand is how a friggen 1.4Ghz laptop can out do a 2.6Ghz desktop running a 533FSB with fast 512Megs of ram I don't even get those results. I mean I get to about that... 2.5 hour per WU. Is eveyone buying centrino chips to run seti on now? I don't get it.

You didn't get all the AMD propoganda? Its all about IPC (instrictions per clock-cycle) baby!

Basically the Pentium-M is a more efficient processor than the Pentium 4 and SETI just happens to be one application where the differences are tailor made for the application. It has been proven before by using XEONs with different amounts of L2 cache that L2 cache can have a big impact on SETI speeds and 1MB is the sweet spot which just happens to be what the Pentium M has (comepaired to the 512KB the Pentium 4 has). That is just one example of differences between the two that while they may not make too much difference in other applications they can mean a big advantage in SETI. Pentium M also has a 400MHz FSB so there isn't a big difference there between the two chips.

 

[ericlp]

That just tells me that who ever wrote the SETI software didn't optimize it for faster chips...

If the Centrino chips were truly "FAST" yeah they are fast but you don't see intel promoting 3GHZ Centrino's... Yeah, I know all abou the AMD IPC ... but this isn't even AMD... It's Intel. I just think the software obviously has some flaws that haven't been ironed out to take advantage of the raw speed of mainstream desktops...

It's kinda dispointing that a laptop can beat a faster desktop. I guess everyone should start buying P4 2Ghz Mobile chips.. Anyone know if you can drop a P4M in a regular DeskTop motherboard? I know of a place that sells Laptop MoBo... Hmmm, Intersting tho...

Not only that but probably wouldn't have too many heat issues with a P4M CPU.

 

[lobadobadingdong]

even intel knows the hype, that's why the never advertise the Pentium-M's clock speed. think about this, I have a 933 P3 that runs rings around a 1.6 pentium 4 dell box.(neither are oc'd and have similar configurations eccept mobo and vid) on seti and video games.

 

[titanmiller]

Originally posted by: ericlp
That just tells me that who ever wrote the SETI software didn't optimize it for faster chips...

If the Centrino chips were truly "FAST" yeah they are fast but you don't see intel promoting 3GHZ Centrino's... Yeah, I know all abou the AMD IPC ... but this isn't even AMD... It's Intel. I just think the software obviously has some flaws that haven't been ironed out to take advantage of the raw speed of mainstream desktops...

It's kinda dispointing that a laptop can beat a faster desktop. I guess everyone should start buying P4 2Ghz Mobile chips.. Anyone know if you can drop a P4M in a regular DeskTop motherboard? I know of a place that sells Laptop MoBo... Hmmm, Intersting tho...

Not only that but probably wouldn't have too many heat issues with a P4M CPU.

I dont believe that it is a software problem. The Pentium-M can process one floating point operation in approxementaly 3 clock cycles while the Pentium 4 generaly takes around 6 cycles. Therefore 1,700,000,000 cycles per second divided by 3 cycles per flop for the 1.7ghz Pentium-M =~ 566mFlops, while the Pentium 4 running at 3,000,000,000 cycles per second and 6 cycles per flop =~ 500mFlops. Of course these are theoretical maximums and there will always be some overhead involved, but once again how much overhead, acctualy how little, will make a faster processor because the acctual performance will be closer to the theoretical.
In my opinion the Bannias core is very well designed, I hope the Pentium 5 truns out as well.

 

[Shimmishim]

yay!!! discussion about my laptop!!!

AND NO IT'S NOT OVERCLOCKED!!!



if i could find a way, you know i would

but i think for me, my laptop is more about stability than anything else...

it's hard working and does its job like it's supposed to... so i can't complain about that...

11-12 wu's from a 1.4 ghz laptop ain't too bad...

so yeah...

someone was saying somehting about a 3 ghz centrino processor...

i believe the prescott is supposed to launch at 3.6 ghz and have the 1 meg L2 cache that the centrino processor has right now.... YUMMY....

 

[ericlp]

Yeah that new chip will be nice when it is released.

Nice and spendy too.

But, I guess I shouldn't feel too bad. I suppose that you can buy the laptop for about 1100-1800 depending on what cpu you get. But for a grand spending and saving a few 100 bucks... Requires more electricity I can get about 100WU. So that's about hmmm 88 more then a laptop can pump out.

 

[IsOs]

Originally posted by: lane42
IsOs,
You can allways buy Barebones and build it little by little.

It would be really fun if the BIOS gives ability to overclock

 

[lane42]

There's CPUFSB. Never used it so ia'm not sure how it works.

 

[Smoke]

How much are the 1.7GHz Centrinos?

Newegg only shows a 1.6Ghz at $435.

I started to order a 1.7 Centrino Notebook about three weeks ago. Best deal I could find was around $2,500. Like others have said, you can build a lot of fast Desktops for that kind of money. :Q

 

[Shimmishim]

that's why i went with the 1.4 ghz... my laptop was 1,449 before taxes and shipping... and a lil less than 1600 after taxes and shipping...

i dn't think 200 mhz makes a HUGE performance difference... and for what i need, 1.4 ghz was just fine...

 

[Baldy18]

I don't think the 1.7GHz version is out yet. I think right now they just range from 1.3-1.6.

l got my 1.5GHz off ebay for $1666.63 shipping included and the list price for it from IBM is $2250 plus tax and shipping. Depending on what other options the laptop has IBM has Pentium-M laptop that top out at around $4000.

I'll tell you though I really love the freedom and convience of the laptop and I bought this one as a desktop replacement. My brother has a P4 laptop and I have an old P3 laptop and the PM is far and away much more enjoyable to use. I love that fact that even though I'm running SETI on it I can still get over three hours of use with it before the battery needs to be charged.

 

[Robor]

A consultant in my office right now has a P4m in his laptop. Man, I'd love to slip SETI on it but I don't have the stones to ask and I'm sure not going to put it on without his knowledge.

 

[Confused]

Originally posted by: Robor
A consultant in my office right now has a P4m in his laptop. Man, I'd love to slip SETI on it but I don't have the stones to ask and I'm sure not going to put it on without his knowledge.

P4m or P-M?

The P4m is a lower power desktop P4 processor, so it'll be the same speed as a normal Northwood P4 at that speed


Garry

 

[Engineer]

Compaq Pentium-M 1.3 with 15.4...around $1000...(not sure if still alive though) !

Another thread about it here...lists $950 ish...after all the coupons, MIR, etc.