S@H running while gaming?

[Nighthawk69]

Hey all-

I was wondering what most people do: Do you run run SETI@Home while gaming? it seems to really kill your avg. WU times...

Thought?

Thanks!

 

[office boy]

Yeah it could, but for how long do you game at a time?
I leave it running just so I don't forget to turn it back on after. (besides it really doesn't affect my gameplay at all anyway)

 

[Fardringle]

Most games will take 100% of the CPU time, so SETI will not be allowed to use any cycles, but it will sit patiently in the background until you close the game, and then continue processing normally. This has the potential to dramatically increase the time for the Work Unit, but won't have any other effect on the system.

 

[Nighthawk69]

Fardringle: That's what I've found -- guess it's a matter of whether you care about avg. WU times or not...

 

[danzigrules]

hell I just played 10 mins of UT and it took my w/u time up to 17 hours...lol


back to normal now though

 

[ElFenix]

are yall talking processing time or real time? i've noticed that setispy says the processing time is about the same, game no game, but the real time is what changes.

 

[BadThad]

This got my curiousity, so I test it...LOL.

Q3 Arena 1024x768

SETI Driver@Low Priority: 73.5 fps
NO SETI: 75.5 fps

...it seems to make a 2 fps difference.

I always turn it off anyway. I'm a pretty serious Q3 player and I don't want to take any performance chances. Could be the diff between being the Fragger or the Fragee.

 

[Nighthawk69]

Thanks for the replies people!

 

[networkman]

I'm thinking that the amount of ram that you have in the machine also makes a difference... I have the 3.0 CLI running on my Athlon900(oc'd 700) with 256 meg of ram. This past Sunday, I was playing Counterstrike online for about 7 hours, and a work unit finished and flushed while I was playing.. the time went from around a typical 4.7 hours to 7.3 hours but it did continue to process in the background. I just let it run 24/7, and game when I feel like it.

 

[Stallion]

I leave mine runnin when I play HL and it might add about 30 minutes to the WU time for about an hours worth of play time.

If I'm about to over take someone in the WU standings I might not play for a week just so I can get the maximum ammount of units done but it's hard to stay away from my HL.

 

[Sukhoi]

I have a C433, P133, and (soon) a 486 DX4-100 working for me, so my average WU times are horrible.

 

[Assimilator1]

I turn SETI off whilst playing games ,(except old ones) .Like FD says playing modern games takes alot of cpu power ,so for my Cel 366 @ 550 there wouldn't be much left for SETI.If I left it running I would gain little in the amount of work done & it would hurt my av CPU time ,which I do care about abit .
NWM brings up a good point about RAM ,if you had less than 128Mb of RAM I would definatley turn SETI off when running games.