Screen saver and Average CPU time per work unit

[Yonux]

Hi Everyone, hope you had a good New Years last night =)

now to my question, I am currently running Windows XP Pro and wanted to enable a password on my screensaver. When I first started running SETI (about a week ago) I was seeing my average CPU time per work unit hover around 5 hrs 40 mins this was with no screen saver enabled.

After setting my screen saver to (Blank screen) with password on resume, my average time has gone to over 6 hours. I was wondering if this is normal or if it is something else?

Yonux

 

[htmlmasterdave]

I would run the command line version... visit here for info on how to set that up... it's right on the front page, so it's hard to miss

 

[Baldy18]

Screen saver version is about 50% slower than the commandline version. Also if you use a screensaver when using the commandline version that will slow down the sommandline version.

Can you lock the desktop in Win XP like you can in 2K? Thought you could but now I'm not sure. That could help you password protect your computer without using a screensaver. Plus if you require a logon password people can't restart your computer to get around the password.

 

[BadThad]

Use the CLI version with SETI driver then set the screensaver to blank screen with password. Works perfectly. If XP doesn't have the blankscreen.scr, you can copy it from an NT 4.0 machine. I use the NT scr on all my Win2k machines.

 

[Engineer]

Welcome to the TeAm...

Guys, it would appear that he is already running CLI and wants to know why it slows down when he runs a "regular" blank screen saver?!? (If I read this right?)...

It could be several factors....I'm not sure how XP handles it's screensavers, maybe it uses a little more CPU load even on Blank versions. It could also be that the particular batch of WU's you are crunching have a bad angle and it just takes a little more time to crunch them...

It's hard to tell on screensavers as you can't monitor their usage (that I know of) because you have to clear them to look at CPU load

 

[Wiz]

I use blank screen saver on all my machines and notice no difference (but I am running 2K and 98SE - no XP)

 

[Yonux]

oops, I should have been more specific. I am running the command line SETI, I was just wondering why my WUs seemed to be taking longer. I guess it may be the WU themselves as Engineer had said, but the more I think about it a blank screensaver shouldnt make that much of a difference.

Yonux

 

[ViRGE]

You might want to activate the monitor power-down feature to go along with the screen saver. I think XP kills the screensaver once the monitor is powered down, so if there is a performace penelty, that should correct some of it.