Hi gordoncarruthers,

....it's simply, that the new default (2 or 3 months so) is to only 'steal' 60% of the idle time instead of 100%. There is a throttle tool to bring it back up to whatever level u like.... Throttle, but would the majority know.....there was no real pro-active add campaign on it.....been discussed elsewhere ad nauseam.... thus 60% of 366 would have returned a WU probably too late.......well i think its still 3 weeks Wall Clock and 2 weeks CPU time.

Lets see what WCG got to say...if there is anything to add.

ciao

Link for those that dont know: System Requirements

Dagorath,

My point is that a threshold has been set which in some respcts has no validity as to the reasoning behind it. Due to the 60% throttling, WCG have effectively set the bar of a machine being regarded "useful" at 330 MHz and not the 550MHz claimed.

By allowing 366MHz machines at 100%, I would not by extension say that 266MHz machines should be allowed as they are faster than a 366MHz machine at 60% as that is below 330MHz.

I would have thought that there was a way to use the processor speed and the throttling value to determine whther or not a machine could take part in a project when the client connects by comparing this to the threshold vale. There again, processor speed is only part of the "equation", becuase then there is the question of whether machines run 24/7 or not.

It all comes down to the fact I suppose that a line has to be drawn somewhere even if it does create some anomalous situations. WCG would need more sophisticated software to take all the variations into account. I suppose you could even design and write the software to put client PCs on "probation" as to which projects they could work on until a picture of the pattern of usage had been built up with WCG, which then farmed out the most appropriate work for them to do (until the dropped completely off the "usefulness scale").

Just find it interesting that with the throttling control, I can set my 3.4GHz processor to 10% and still do valuable crunching even although this machine would be contributing less !

On with the quest !

Gordon.

Viktors,

Thanks for that update.

Hopefully my print server machine will become "active" at some point in the future again. I'll keep an eye on announcements and force it to reconnect as appropriate. Given the low price of memory I may even upgrade it to allow processing on Cancer in the emantime (didn't want to do that initially as knowing my luck thought the work would run out or the threshold for subsequent projects would be higher !).

Despite being part of the "greater good" for over a year that was my first post. I must say that having come from "another place" the professionalism and responsiveness of those running and administering the projects here is impressive !

Gordon.