emobley3

[poptom]

ZOOM!

[LT-73]

:eek:

[emobley3]

Thanks. There are some really big protiens out there now, p146 worth 6.0 points. I just got one on a 500mhz celeron that will take 67 hours to complete, almost 3 days to complete one unit, a lot slower than genoming!!

[Encnuk]

Thats pretty darn quick, considering they take me 26 hours on my P4 2Ghz.

[emobley3]

Originally posted by Encnuk
Thats pretty darn quick, considering they take me 26 hours on my P4 2Ghz.

That is crazy, that is about the same lenth of time it takes my 950 Duron to complete the same workunit (26:40), and my xp1700 oc'd to xp1900 specs does one in 15:33. I guess it is true that the AMD is faster on this type of work than Intel. I wonder why that is? Any cpu genius out there that can explain this in laymans terms? Just curious.

[Encnuk]

I think the P4 can not numbercrunch for nuts. The standard work units that give me 2.0 points take 5:50 minutes on the P4 2 GHz and they take 10:50 minutes on my P3 667.

And this is kind of sad, since the P4 runs RDRAM at 400 MHz and the P3 runs SDRAM at 133Mhz, plus the P4 has 512 kb cache supposedly running at 2Ghz as well.

In the old days, each CPU generation took less CPU cycles to do the same work, so not only did they run faster, they did a lot more as well. Upgrading my 386/25 to a 486/50, the 486 was many times faster than the 386, not just twice due to faster clock speed. These days the darn chips seem to regress rather than progress.

[emobley3]

Maybe the increase in clock speed is starting to reach the point of diminishing returns, and except when running these dc projects, heavy duty audio, video, and photo work and the new games, who really needs more than a Pentium 200mmx to finish "normal" home and office tasks such as word processing, e-mail, web-surfing etc?

[Encnuk]

Could well be. Right at this moment both machines are running p146_1L2Yunf, which is a 6.0 wu fold. The P4 2Ghz is doing them at 16:21 minutes per frame, the P3 667 is doing them at 30:30 per frame. The darn P4 is not even twice the speed. Pretty disappointing.

I am considering firing up my old Pentium 200 (no MMX) just to see if it is only marginally slower as well. This really bites.

[ScottE]

Intel CPU's have always been a little slow when it comes to straight FPU calculations. The AMD's are pretty good. But for pure FPU power I hate to say it, but the Mac is where it's at. That is the 1 thing the Mac has always been good at. That's why so many graphic designers use the Mac.

[emobley3]

Originally posted by Encnuk
Could well be. Right at this moment both machines are running p146_1L2Yunf, which is a 6.0 wu fold. The P4 2Ghz is doing them at 16:21 minutes per frame, the P3 667 is doing them at 30:30 per frame. The darn P4 is not even twice the speed. Pretty disappointing.

I am considering firing up my old Pentium 200 (no MMX) just to see if it is only marginally slower as well. This really bites.

Might as well fire it up, I am curious to see what its speed would be. My cel 500 runs that protein in 40:20 per frame. I wouldn't think the pentium would be too much slower.

[Encnuk]

I assume there is no way I can force the box to run a certain protein? I fired up the Pent 200 and the protein it got is the p145_1L2Yunf, which is a 0.6 wu protein. It is doing those frames in 15:06 minutes. I wish I could see how it handles the p146_1L2Yunf protein the other 2 boxes are running.

Not sure how linear the wu assignment is either, but if it is linear, the P4 2Ghz is 10 times as fast as the Pent 200, whereas the P6 667 is 5 times as fast as the Pent 200.

Looks like the P3 does more work per clock cycle than a Pent, but the P4 is just a rebaged original Pentium running at the same speed, just with a higher clock speed.

If I get the p146_1L2Yunf assigned to the Pent, then I can tell for sure.

[LukeMan]

You might want to check this thread out over at the Folding forum.

Speed Thread (http://forum.folding-community.org/viewtopic.php?t=90&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0)

A lot of good discussions go on over there. Worth a visit every couple of days.

[Encnuk]

After having read that thread and looked at some of the links on that thread, I am not sure why I bought a P4 and not an Athlon. Pretty depressing really.