-advmethods (ie. beating a dead horse)

i think i'm just looking for a little reassurance here, but don't worry, i won't hold anyone responsible for anything :

my dad's business has expanded recently in that he has hired many new employees. and with new employees came new machines.

now, i used to have one or two comps there running FAH, but i didn't have them running as a service and i wasn't trying to "maintain" them. for a brief time i had more WU's pumping out, but i didn't bother making sure they stayed coming out.

so about 2 months ago i went by the office on a sunday night and took the time to get pretty much all comps (i think 8, maybe 9) running FAH as a service. all but one were XP, so it was no problem, and the 98 machine i used a combo of "run at startup" and hide the sucker in the tray.

NOW, since i've done that, as you can imagine, my WU's have greatly increased. but i keep reading that the points earned per WU is raised considerably with GROMACS (-advmethods).

i think roughly half of the machines are some form of PIV and the other half are Cellys. all greater than 1GHZ. None of the machines are overclocked, and i'd say the most intense CPU work done is scrolling a browser window up and down.

SO....should i add the -advmethods flag to those machines? are the only problems encountered with GROMACs due to overclocked machines? is there any risk of bascially ruining a day's work at my dad's office because of my attempt to get more points?

any advice based on relevant experiences would be greatly appreciated.

Yes, the P4s will greatly benefit from the advmethods flag.

Go for it

-advmethods -forceasm will make your production skyrocket. You should do it.

Yes, install it on ALL of the computers, not just the P4s. If it is anything above a P2, do it.

No, if the computers are not overclocked you should not have any stability problems.

Welcome to the fasttrack Kajj. We need every point we can possibly get at this juncture so its great that you're doing this.

if you do run into stability problems, remove the -forceasm switch.

Hey brother,

I think the stability problems we've been seeing are 100% due
to some sort of memory leaks with IE, coupled directly to
OVERCLOCKING.

I was crashing 3 times a day (or whenver I was hitting New Egg)
and all that went away when I "stock clocked" my T-Bred.
Right now I'm running at "only" 166X11 and it's been rock solid.

I'm using KILLER hardware on all my machines...I'm talking 500watt
Power Supplies, Corsair XMS, ABIT, ASUS, and Chaintech
motherboards, with high end steel braded shielding rounded
cables, WD SE 80 and 120 drives, and each machine has at least
an Abit or Asus GF3 or maybe even a GF4.

I'm was truely hoping it was a Gromacs issue since that could
be easily fixed with an update, but my "stock clocking" and mild
overclocking seems to have proved that wrong.

I would go ahead and do it, and help your stats, and the team
out with the couple extra points a day you'll get!

Yup, even the Celey's will gain a slight edge in production if they start churning out Grommies. I've even added the flags to some PIII's that are only 667Mhz. Add the flags.

Wedo

it's unanimous!

thanks for the input guys. i'll probably drive over to the office tomorrow night and "flip the switch" on all of 'em. thanks again.

kajj said:

it's unanimous!

thanks for the input guys. i'll probably drive over to the office tomorrow night and "flip the switch" on all of 'em. thanks again.

Click to expand...

Alright! We look forward to having the extra production for the team