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Poor S@H performance on a PIII880 ?

H

Hawkeye_(BEL)

Banned
Hi all,

I seem to have a problem with S@H. I think it's running too slow, but I'm not sure, since I've heard they were handing out some 'difficult' WU lately.

Anyway, here are the specs of the PC :
- PIII800E@880
- Via Apollo Pro A mobo
- 128Mb PC133 Cas3 @ 110 Cas2

I'm running the winnt-cmdline 3.0 version with setispy (latest version). Now, I get WU times ranging from 7 hours to 5.45 hours, on 6 different WU's tried. I remember that the 2.x clients liked a big, fast L2 cache and a high memory bandwidth, but I don't know what the 3.x clients like.

So I tried to tweak the chipset a little (as Via chipsets are known to have poor memory performance) with WPCREDIT, and I got an increase of 100 points in the Sandra memory benchmark, but the S@H times were unchanged.

Now, setispy is reporting I've a CpF (whatever that may be) of 6.76, and that a normal PIII Coppermine should get a CpF of 5.1. Now, a friend with a CeleronII 566 does a S@H WU in the same time as I do. So there has got to be something wrong.

I don't run any virus scanners, I checked with wintop for any possible programs thay may be eating up CPU power, but I've found nothing of significance.

Can someone give me some hints on what I can try to improve performance ?

Thank you.

PS : is it better to run the CPU at 800 and the memory at 133 again for S@H ?
 
SETI is very dependent on your memory bandwidth, so you would probably get better results running your memory at 133Mhz, especially if you can run at that speed with CAS2 settings...
 
Hi Hawkeye_(BEL), If you will email your setispy.log to me I will let you know if your problem is due to the low angle-range WU's. My email ID is in my profile, one of the little Icons in the top right.


 
I've wondered as well if running the memory at +33 mhz on the via boards would help the wu times. The problem I've been told is when running the mem bus at a different speed than the fsb more latency is introduced. With s@h memory latency is very important. So the question would be if the increased memory bandwith could make up for the increased latency. I'm sure someone here has benchmarked both and can give a definite answer.🙂

If I were to just guess I'd say running your P3-800 @ 880mhz (8*110fsb) would be faster than P3-800 @ 800 (8*100mhz +33 mem bus). Especially if the ram will do cas2 @ 110mhz and only cas3 @ 133mhz.

However if it'll do cas2 with the +33mhz setting then it might be a different story.😕
 
Got it:

2/12/00 0.620 5.607 99.99%
3/12/00 0.033 6.595 99.99%
3/12/00 0.447 5.214 99.99%
3/12/00 0.651 5.548 99.99%

Only one of the angle-range entries was of the Low Angle-Range variety (<.1), I have highlighted it. That leaves 3 &quot;normal&quot; samples. Your average on those is a bit low! I have a PIII-700e on a similar type board. But, I am able to run the FSB at 130 MHz, and I am completing WU's in the low to mid 4 hour range. I have the memory set to the fastest settings to include 4-way interleave. I was really surprised at how much differce 4-way interleave made on my Mobo. I also got a boost by upgrading the BIOS. When I first got the board and started my tweaking, I was in the high 5 hour range.

You will never get as good a time as my board because of the 110 MHz FSB, but you should be able to get close. I would bet that your average could drop to about 4.75 hrs/WU.

What mobo do you have and what are your memory settings? BIOS version? Memory brand?
 
Ok, tnx for the info JWMiddleton.

Now, for my memory settings and board.

The system runs of an Aopen AX64 motherboard, with a Via Apollo Pro A chip. It has the latest BIOS, dated from March 😱 . Screw Aopen for not providing more BIOS updates. Their last one is from 10/25/00 ! :frown:

I've loaded the turbo defaults in the bios, and adjusted the memory settings with wpcredit to allow 4-way memory interleaving and cas2.
 
The best way to get more performance for seti out of your system would be to up the fsb. Your ram is PC133 and your chip would probably do more than 880mhz. So I'd say jack the fsb bus up some.🙂

BTW 10/25/00 isn't all that old for a bios.
 
blade_47,

My bios dates from March, and AOpen hasn't released a single update for ALL of their boards since 10/25/00.

My next board will certainly be an ASUS 😉
 
Hawkeye_(BEL): Looks like you have done all that you can do. I suspect the problem lies with the BIOS. I have a Cel2-600 that runs at 900 MHz, which means that it has a 100 MHz FSB. The memory is set to CAS2. With this chip on a BX based Mobo, I am getting &quot;normal&quot; WU times at just under 5 hours. Thus, your PIII-800/880 should beat that time.

<<My next board will certainly be an ASUS>>

I also have had really good luck with SoyoTech and Abit also. My Soyo 7VCA with PIII-700e/910 is turning in slightly better times than my Asus CUSL2 wtih PIII-700e/933. Could be the mix of LAR vs. HAR WU's...but, they are very close in performance. The Soyo has the Via Apollo Pro 133a chipset as does your mobo.

Well, good luck!

BTW: I think you see now that the PIII-800e is not recommended for overclockers. 🙁 It may not go any higher as others have suggested.
 
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