| Index | Recent Threads | Unanswered Threads | Who's Active | Guidelines | Search |
 |
World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: BOINC Agent Support
Thread: Windows is 5 times faster than Linux running BOINC ? ? ? ? |
| No member browsing this thread |
|
Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 24
|
|
| Author |
|
|
scalewiz
Cruncher Joined: Nov 6, 2005 Post Count: 14 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
|
I posted a similar question to the forums a while back, and was given a
lame answer about how Linux benchmarks differently... I took a 2 GHz Pentium 4 and installed Xandros Linux. After running BOINC for a while, I saw that it would take 50 HOURS to complete a faah work unit. This is about the speed of an old 400 MHz I have crunching. Is there anyone who can provide a decent answer as to why Linux is so slow? Checking the usage of my processor, it is loading from 90 percent or more. P4, 2 GHz 512 MB memory 133 MHz Bus speed SIS chipset |
||
|
|
Sekerob
Ace Cruncher Joined: Jul 24, 2005 Post Count: 20043 Status: Offline |
Analogues to what just happened for the Mac when WCG created Science packages to allow the Mac to run the projects in native and do work 6/7 times faster, over the emulated mode, my guess would be that it could be similar for your OS......Linux guys might be able to give the penultimate answer.
----------------------------------------The benchmark is a different story i suppose.....FAAH on my 2.53ghz runs in about 7.5 to 8 CPU hrs.
WCG
Please help to make the Forums an enjoyable experience for All! |
||
|
|
Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
hi scalewiz,
----------------------------------------I have a few Linux boxes crunching FAAH and find that FAAH crunches just as fast on Linux as it does on Windoze. If you look around you'll find lots of crunchers on Linux. If Linux were 8-10 times slower than Windows then really, don't you think those people would just grab a Windoze XP install disc someone has tossed in the trash and install XP on their computer instead of Linux? I'm not familiar with P4 and the motherboards they run on but the 133 MHz FSB seems a litlle low to me. What is the clock multiplier set at? @Sekerob, BOINC and the science apps run native on Linux. The case with MAC was that code for PowerPC CPUs (which use different instruction set than Intel) was being run on Intel CPUs which required the code to run in an emulator (emulates PowerPC on an Intel instruction set CPU ). The emulation works but it's very slow. [Edit 2 times, last edit by Former Member at Aug 27, 2006 12:00:24 AM] |
||
|
|
Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I posted a similar question to the forums a while back, and was given a lame answer about how Linux benchmarks differently... I took a 2 GHz Pentium 4 and installed Xandros Linux. After running BOINC for a while, I saw that it would take 50 HOURS to complete a faah work unit. This is about the speed of an old 400 MHz I have crunching. G'day scalewiz Did you actually let the wu complete, or just aborted it when you saw the estimated time to completion being 50 hours? If this was your first wu then it was only an estimate, and a pretty wild one at that, BOINC needs to complete at least one wu before it can start to give accurate estimates. |
||
|
|
Sekerob
Ace Cruncher Joined: Jul 24, 2005 Post Count: 20043 Status: Offline |
hmmm yes off course, the view from down under could not obscure the answer to the answer in the
----------------------------------------arrivederla
WCG
----------------------------------------Please help to make the Forums an enjoyable experience for All! [Edit 1 times, last edit by Sekerob at Aug 27, 2006 4:30:25 AM] |
||
|
|
Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
|
||
|
|
Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
scalewiz, all the dedicated Linux users at WCG are going to disagree with you.
Your estimations are quite simply wrong. Come back with a few weeks worth of statistics, and if you can prove even a small difference I will be very surprised. Of course, it is conceivable you have simply messed up your operating system or BOINC settings. We are more than ready to help you correct any such problem, but let it run uninterrupted for a while first. |
||
|
|
scalewiz
Cruncher Joined: Nov 6, 2005 Post Count: 14 Status: Offline Project Badges:
|
First of all, thanks for all your responses. I appreciate all the help everyone is willing to provide.
I will not stop the work units, and I will allow them to run...the current work unit is now at 18 hours, and is 35 percent completed. Still seems slow. I have 4 other machines with slower processors running on 100 or 133 MHz bus, and they are all much faster. Recently I bought one of those P4 D 805 processors due to the exceptionally low price for a dual core processor. It runs on a 133 bus, and completes a work unit in about 3 hours. I'm wondering if the SIS chipset may have anything to do with it. I have searched the Xandros site for hardware compatibility, and find nothing about how Linux relates to the various chipsets. Again, thanks very much for your assistance and I will be trying to discover the reasons for this dilemma. I am running 12 machines now, 24/7 on all. Simply trying to get away from Microshaft. |
||
|
|
Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
It may simply be an unusually large work unit. FAAH sometimes has massive work units. You can't assume that any single work unit is going to behave like the average.
Is the machine you are talking about dual core? |
||
|
|
scalewiz
Cruncher Joined: Nov 6, 2005 Post Count: 14 Status: Offline Project Badges:
|
No. The machine I refer to is single core, P4 2.0 GHz.
I am going to let this machine do several work units before I make up my mind, though. If it does not seem to improve, I will reinstall Windoze XP and do an immediate comparison. I will not install Linux on any other system unless I am confident that I am able to achieve performace that is anywhere close. That especially includes my dual core system, since I have great concern about hardware compatibility between Linux and dual core, PCI express, 8-channel sound, and so on. By the way, the previous time that I tried Linux I was using Suse, and the performance seemed to suffer also. I bought Xandros hoping for some improvement, and also since they seem to have tweaked the GUI. |
||
|
|
|