Seti slower than dirt on my new T-bird?

[XMan]

I went from a 700 Athlon Classic doing about a unit every 8 hours, to a 900 T-bird, and it's taken 15 hours for 60% of my first unit!!! That's the only thing that's changed in the system, except for the RAM, which has gone from 100MHz to 133MHz on the new motherboard.

Using 3.03 SETI, which I thought had been optimized for Athlons. Any ideas?

 

[JWMiddleton]

Hi Xerox Man,

Yep, your time is slow! There has been a lot of info on version 3.0.3 in this forum. It is much slower as it does a lot more checking (better science). But, you time is still off.

Start by letting us know which version of 3.0.3 you are running: gui or cli? What are you runnng as a screen saver? With this info we can better help you.

 

[Michael]

You can't really tell from just one work unit. WU times do vary quite a bit, and 3.03 adds quite a bit of science as well.

Is it set to run 100% of the time or screensaver only? Are the graphics turned off? Are you running any other backgorund processes that may be stealing CPU cycles?

Michael

 

[networkman]

While it's possible that the 3.03 client has been optimized for Athlons, as JW and Michael have both mentioned there is quite a bit more "science" being done in the 3.03 client as compared to the 3.0 client.

Another thing to check would be the CAS settings in your Bios.. it's possible that they were set to "2" at the 100FSB and got changed to "3" when you made the switch to a 133 FSB - try changing it back to "2".

 

[XMan]

Memory is running at CAS3. It supports CAS2 but my motherboard won't let me run CAS2 at 133.

It runs 100% of the time, it is GUI, but the screen blanks after 10 minutes.

Should I slow my memory down and run it at CAS 2? Is 100/2 faster than 133/3?

 

[SilverBack]

No CAS2 100 is not faster tha CAS3 133, but the gain is only marginal.
A 900 MHz TBird "should" be getting done in roughly 5 to 5.5 hours. ( 3.03 client )
I would assume that you don't have the VIA 4-1 drivers installed correctly and the DMA for your drives is turned off causing system stress that your cpu is handling.

What do you have running in the background?
Check your settings for your screen saver and turn off all energy saving functions, this could do it to if inadvertantly enabled.

They should be put to "never" If your disk is being accessed and it has been in sleep mode it takes time to get it going again.

 

[XMan]

What is the "right" way to install the VIA drivers? I click on setup, the program runs, and it's done. I tell it to enable DMA mode and install AGP drivers in Turbo mode.

The power saver settings were set to turn hard disks off after one hour. I turned it to never.

 

[Assimilator1]

Xerox Man

V3.03 is MUCH slower than older the clients ,early testing by some show it to be about twice as slow as the v3.0 client where you would be doing WU's in about 6.25 hrs for the Athlon 700.

SB
A 900 MHz TBird "should" be getting done in roughly 5 to 5.5 hours. ( 3.03 client )
Don't you mean the v3.0 client?

 

[XMan]

Hmm.

Well, I'm still only about 10% done on a work unit my PC has been chugging away at for 3 hours. That's about 30 hours, which the previous unit took.

So obviously something is not kosher with my system.

Anyone have any ideas? Should I uninstall the VIA 4-in-1s and go with something else, or what? I'm running 4.26 right now.

 

[Assimilator1]

Use this task manager to see if SETI is getting around 98% of cpu time 1st (when doing little else).
Ref the VIA DMA drivers these should only really be installed for Win 95a ,all latter MS OS's have a faster DMA support already built in.

VIA DMA FAQ

 

[cory]

i have a 1.1 tbird that while running 3.0 of seti
will do a wu in about 4 hours.

running 3.03 it takes around 8 hours.

and if it is one of the slow ones in will be even longer.

but 15 hours for 60% is not very good.
see what happens with the next wu

 

[SilverBack]

Assimilator1
That's incorrect about the VIA drivers, the latest and greatest are indeed faster than the Win98 default install drivers. The link to the faq you provided is over a year old now and in need of an update.
The newest support ATA66 and ATA100(VIA chipset only for ATA100 ). The 98 drivers don't, they do ATA33 only. There are very good speed increases from the AGP miniport driver in the last 3 revisions.

Here is a list of the updated drivers and what they bring to the table:
4-1 VIA driver comparrisons and information.



<< The VIA 4-in-1 is updated regularly, as bugs are found and performance is tweaked. It is recommended you install the latest 4-in-1, unless you are experiencing problems. Also, keep in mind that individually downloaded drivers may be newer, as we tend to get updated drivers before they are integrated into the 4-in-1. >>

 

[Assimilator1]

Doh! ,I guess I haven't been keeping up lately! ,looks like my fathers Athlon will be having new VIA drivers soon! .
So much for the VIA FAQ! :|

 

[Jalapeno]

I went from 8 hrs to 4 hours after Assimilator helped me setting up 3.0 command line version

Thanks again!

 

[Assimilator1]

No worries ,enjoy the fast times while it lasts!