The first data unit I did, with a 200MHz Pentium II MMX, took
91 hours, 28 minutes, & 9.6 seconds with screensaver full time.
The second data unit, with the same system, took
56 hours, 6 minutes, & 43.3 seconds with screensaver blanked!
Its amazing that it took over 35 hours in data unit one to just draw
the dang display!
Do I need more graphics memory? I thought the Pentium II MMX
was supposed to be 'hot' with graphics.
I'm still going to try LINUX as it seems to be even faster!
I noticed too that the seti@home CPU time is just the elapsed time
since the seti@home program stared processing a data unit. So the
CPU Time includes user time when the screensaver is not running
(when the user is using the system).
Thanks again Dan,
Al
> Dan Kennedy wrote:
> It has been found by many users that the speed of the SETI@Home client for
> Windows can be nearly doubled by a simple settings change. I'll pass this
> along here for any users of the Windows client that want to optimize the
> execution speed.
>
> It seems that the graphics being produced take an inordinate amount of CPU
> time. If the screensaver settings are changed so that the screen goes blank,
> the processing speed doubles.
>
> To change the setting. Go to the display properties page. You can get there
> by right-clicking on the blank desktop and selecting Properties. There is a
> tab there specifically for screen savers. Make sure that SETI@Home is the
> screensaver selected and then click the Settings button. There is a check
> mark there for 'Go to blank screen'. Add that check mark. It is off by
> default. Set the minutes to some value. Less is better but you won't see the
> client running when the screen is blank.
>
> I have seven machines running the client as a screen saver. The average was
> over 50 hours before the settings change. Now it is under 30 hours.
>
> - Dan