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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: BOINC Agent Support
Thread: Performance upgrade? Complete |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 7
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I am thinking of adding more memory to my system.
----------------------------------------I just have the one computer at home and I am not a tech. I was wondering what sort of performance upgrade I would see if it changed my existing system From: Pentium 4 CPU 3.00GHz 2.99 GHz 512 MB of RAM To: Pentium 4 CPU 3.00 GHz 2.99 GHz 2 GB of RAM Right now on BOINC I average about 10 hrs / WU. Would WU completion times get better if I upgrade and about by how much? Thank You in advance. [Edit 1 times, last edit by Former Member at Jun 12, 2007 9:57:55 AM] |
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Sekerob
Ace Cruncher Joined: Jul 24, 2005 Post Count: 20043 Status: Offline |
I fear not a whole lot in crunching terms, but certainly the user experience could substantially improve as the Windows OS (you dont tell which), will need to do very little memory swapping particular if large science models are running whilst you are actually using the computer.... RAM is presently so cheap, go for it, max out and make sure to get the right type
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WCG
----------------------------------------Please help to make the Forums an enjoyable experience for All! [Edit 1 times, last edit by Sekerob at Jun 3, 2007 2:45:07 PM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Thank you for reply.
I am on Windows XP and my grid shows ave time 10:40 / WU but this includes GC WU's. I think for my actual ave time for both FAAH and HPF2 it would be any where between 11 and 16 hours. |
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Sek knows about the WCG agents and system configs so can't add anything there.
----------------------------------------I think you'll be very happy with the improvement in performance if you quadruple your memory. However the system will be limited by the slowest chips you use, so you may want to discard the memory in there now altogether. If you know for a fact what speed the chips are (DDR 400, DDR2 800, etc.) then you can probably keep the existing chips. But even then, the timings (minimum number of motherboard clock cycles for different types of operations) may not match and system will default to slower timings. Don't know how tech savvy you are so I'll stop here - and it's not like I'm an expert on the subject anyway. Please post again if you need more info.   |
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Sekerob
Ace Cruncher Joined: Jul 24, 2005 Post Count: 20043 Status: Offline |
The Useful Utilities post in the Start Here forum makes mention of CPU-Z. This free software, now version 1.40, will tell what's already there (Memory and SPD tabs).
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WCG
Please help to make the Forums an enjoyable experience for All! |
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JmBoullier
Former Community Advisor Normandy - France Joined: Jan 26, 2007 Post Count: 3716 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Since the time displayed by BOINC is true CPU time that should not change much. But the elapsed time (i.e. wall-clock time) it takes to process a WU should decrease considerably, in particular when you process a FAAH or a HPF2 WU if you also use your system for your personal use at the same time. Because today the OS is certainly doing a lot of memory swapping in these circumstances, and with 2 GB memory swapping should become exceptional. Not mentioning the comfort you will experience.
----------------------------------------And if future projects require 1 GB of RAM again you will be able to run them and still be comfortable. |
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olympic
Senior Cruncher Joined: Jun 12, 2005 Post Count: 156 Status: Offline |
512MB is simply not enough for a Windows based machine, especially if yours is a dual core or has hyper-threading. Check your task manager, I bet the RAM is maxed out and the remainder is being handled by the swap file on the hard drive. This will greatly slow down your crunching and make the computer very sluggish to use. Upgrading to 2x1GB sticks of RAM will be a very noticeable improvement.
----------------------------------------I recommend a 2x1GB matched pair because not all motherboards work well with 4x512MB, plus mixing different brands/types/speeds of memory can cause problems as well. If your machine uses DDR2, it's at it's cheapest point in history right now so upgrade as quickly as you can. Prices will start to rise very soon. You don't mention what part of the world you are from but here in Canada and the USA, 2GB of DDR2 can be purchased for less than $60.  |
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