[MacCheetah3]

Hi
Very interesting. It didn't seem that fast when I compared it to my Ti, 333MHz Lombard, and 400MHz Sawtooth. My Dell is a Dimension 4100 with a P3. SDRAM. That really doesn't seem right. The Lombard gets them done in about thirty-five hours and the Sawtooth about twenty-three hours. I guess, if you do doubt it I could take a screen shot. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif So, how in the heck did you get your Mac to go so fast? My PC also runs Kazaa almost 24/7 downloading TV series episodes. Again...very interesting. I don't know if I can answer that. I use the latest GUI version on all machines just running the app and no SETI screensaver, if that matters.
P.S. And I thought I was one of the fewer to have the worst luck with M$ products. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
MacCheetah3
"And he's hairier than his uncle's monkey"

[Grant_G]

Taking my figures from above, I average just over 12 hours per unit. I'm running SETI v.3.05 in screensaver mode exclusively on a G4/450 Cube DVD-ROM (original configuration) upgraded to 448 MB RAM and running Mac OS X 10.2.6, and have used all iterations of X since 10.1.
G

[itou]

i do one unit in 12 hours on the G4 (867)... calculated it last night.. averaged out three units..
and i get 32 hours on the P4 (1.7ghz).
my dell is piss slow.

[Grant_G]

Okay, I'm up to 996 now with 12069 hours. Meaning the last 5 were done in 67 hours, or an average of 13 hrs 24 minutes each. Sounds about right, as they take longer than they used to; apparently more sophisticated crunching being done than 4-5 years ago. On my old blue & white, I used to do them between 6-7 hours.
G

[digedit]

Yeah, somethings not right with that Dell. My 1.8Ghz P4 does 1 unit in a tad over 5 hours under XP pro. The key is to let it run as a screen saver and go to a black screen. Running it in the background or in graphical mode slows things down quite a bit ( but not as bad as your Dell !) As a reference my B&W G3 350 takes about 23 hours to do 1 unit in OS X. I don't believe there is a command line version or a blank screen option for OS X so I've just run it in graphical mode so far. I've got an 800Mhz G4 running OS 9 but it's too busy doing my own work so I haven't tried running SETI@home on there. By the way I'm a proud member of the planetary society so if you like projects like SETI, why not look into joining !

[GlennBlaylock]

Just as another reference, my 400 MHz B/W G3 averages about 29:38:11 per data unit.

[Grant_G]

The preferences pane in the OS X version [SETI@HOME>Preferences...>Enable ScreenSaver] is identical to the OS 9 one. In other words, when in screen saver mode you can revert to black screen at any set time. I go to screen saver after 10 minutes of inactivity, black screen 10 minutes later. A shake of the mouse or the tap of a key brings it back.
G

[digedit]

Oh yes, you are correct sir. I just downloaded the OS X version awhile back and never really looked at it I guess. Thanks for the correction and the update. We'll see if my performance improves !

[VeggieBeefcake]

MY AMD XP box completes each data unit in 2 hours and 45 minutess. I have it working all the time (rather than just with the screensaver). In windows, the screensave slows down the process by HUGE amounts. You can see the choppiness for yourself just by looking at the screensaver....if you keep seti in the background (on a windows machine at least) the dtat units ar eprocessed much faster. There's something in the readme about the windows version being slower when it comes to drawing the graphics....

[sportymonk]

Ok I bite. I kep seeing this thread and wnat to know - What is the Seti@home Project? From the posting it seems ot be using some kind of server or other os. WHat is it? How do I get in? Why would I wnat to get into it? /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[GlennBlaylock]

SETI stands for Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. It is a project that uses radio telescopes to scan the heavens for radio signals that are of an artificial origin (i.e. being broadcast by extraterrestrial life). The problem with doing this is that such signals, if they exist, would be swamped by all of the wholy natural radio sources in the universe. So, separating out potential artificial signals would require a whole lot of computer time even on something like a Cray.
So, enter people like us. Some of the people at SETI wrote a program (SETI@home) that allows the work to be split into more manageable segments and sent out to volunteers who then process them on their personal computers. The program can work either in the back ground or as a screen saver to take advantage of the time that the computer is not doing anything else. Thus, SETI gets the equivalent of many super computers working on the data without the expense.
This is not the only project that uses such a system. I have also heard of some commercial venture that does something similar to help businesses with their research. The difference being that the commercial one is in it to make money whereas SETI is in it more for the scientific research. I considered signing up for the other group, but they also expect their participants to just volunteer their computer time. I figured that if they are going to make money off of my computer time, then I aught to get a cut of it. Since I wouldn't, I decided to stick with the non-profit research group.