WU Crunch Time(s) Variance?

[ShaidarHaran]

I've recently overclocked my system (see specs in sig) and most WUs seem to get done in under 3 hours but the current WU I'm crunching is reported to take 4:52 minutes. I have two questions. The first is, is the under 3 hour (usually 2:52-2:55) time normal for my system? Secondly, why such a big variance? Is this due to the individual WUs or is it a Windows/Seti issue? I'm thinking perhaps Seti can't handle the system's o/c but everything is 100% stable (I can loop prime95 and 3dmark2k/2k1SE for as long as I want to with no crashes, same with all my games) so I'm not too sure about that...

thanks in advance

 

[Marrkks]

I don't think you have any thing to worry about. nice lil cruncher you have there.

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Is this due to the individual WUs or is it a Windows/Seti issue
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in a word--both. Win98 seems to take a bigger hit in VLAR WU times than XP/linux.

you could install seti spy to find out the AR of the WU.

 

[ShaidarHaran]

Thanks, I didn't think there was anything wrong with my system (other than the fact that it's Win98, lol)

 

[RaySun2Be]

If you consistently keep getting 4 minute WUs, there may be a problem.

Sometimes in extreme overclocking, SETI freaks and starts doing WUs very quickly. But if it's a stable system, and you only get them once in a great while, then those are WUs that have too much noise to analyze, so SETI basically drops them. But you still get credit for them.

Just keep an eye on it for now.

 

[ShaidarHaran]

I'm aware of the short WU time issue, and I haven't noticed any of those yet so that's why I wasn't sure if there was a problem with my system or not... I'm fine with the under 3 hour time, I just thought that was a bit fast for my specs is all. What I don't like is the almost 5 hour time of the current WU. Do you guys think that upgrading to XP would be worth it? I was going to wait until XP SE comes out later this year but I'm kind of an impulse buyer and wouldn't mind getting XP right now, if you think it'll help smooth things out.

thanks in advance

 

[Baldy18]

WUs with an Angle Range of .100 or lower take longer on a Windows 98 system than the average WU. Likewise a WU with an Angle Range of 1.200 or higher will take a shorter amount of time than the average WU. This effect is still present in Winodows NT based OSs but not nearly to the same degree (only about 10-20 mintes difference instead of the couple hours that you are seeing).

 

[ShaidarHaran]

So you're saying I should run out and grab WinXP then?

 

[lane42]

Baldy's Right, i almost never see more then a 20 min. differance from average with xp. Today i had an 0.001 AR wu on my win98 machine that took 8 Hours, that machine averages 6 hours.

 

[ShaidarHaran]

guess I'll be buying XP when I get paid next week I know the full version would be preferable to the upgrade, but I'm REALLY getting sick of reformatting my HD, reinstalling Windows, reinstalling all my apps (I've done it at least 10 times in the last 2 months due to some computer problems I was having). I suppose there's no way to get around that though, huh? Oh well, at least I'll be putting my CD-burner to good use...