A question about Setibuffer

[Lou Natic]

I did a search of the forums and didn't find this question, so I thought I'd ask you guys.

I decided to switch seti@home clients on a whim last night, going from the screensaver to Setibuffer using the SetiNT client. I thought I would gain alittle speed by using the command line client, and I think I shaved about a hour off my WU times. Setibuffer doesn't seem to want to give me accurate times though, and it takes alittle digging to find out an actual time for the WUs.

Setibuffer is telling me it takes on average around 4.3 hours to do a WU on my Athlon XP 1900+, which is what I was doing with the screensaver. But when I look in SetiWatch, it's telling me I'm doing my WUs in about 3 hours and 20 minutes. I'm guessing that these times are accurate, but why would Setibuffer be so inconsistant with the times? Is there anyway to get a more accurate reading, or should I just be happy with my 3 hour WUs?

 

[Mictlan]

I haven't heard about the SETIbuffer program before, but as seen in the SETISpy FAQ, the clc reports with lots of errors how fast its crunching a WU:

FAQ 3.3: I am getting inaccurate cycles / FLOP values or MegaFLOP / second values when I start the SETI@home client, but then it improved . Is something wrong?

No, nothing is wrong. SETI@home reports the completed percentage rather inaccurately at the start of the work unit, and therefore I cannot accurately calculate the cycles / FLOP and other values. Starting with SETI Spy 3.0.3, you can calibrate the client completion percentage by clicking the Calibrate button on the Setup Client page. Depending on your processor, enter the values on the appropriate table, depending on your processor.

If you are not using SETISpy (just SETIDriver or SETIWatch), you can see that the estimated time of finishing varies a lot in the beggining of the WU, sometimes it will report high times, some times a little faster.....as with SETIWatch you'll have to live with it.

If you want to know how fast you did crunch the WU, check it in SETIWatch. This shows exactly what has been uploaded to the berkeley server. Even when SETISpy miswrites some information into the SETISpy.log, the WU finished is writen into the SETILog.csv file correctly.

 

[Lou Natic]

Alright, that sounds reasonable. I'm still happy that I've shaved over a hour (1:20 on average) using the commandline client instead of the screensaver. I'm spitting out WUs anywhere from 3 hours to 3 hours and 20 minutes. Maybe I should do alittle o/c and see what I can do then...

I wonder if I should join a team or something.

 

[Basher]

Alright, that sounds reasonable. I'm still happy that I've shaved over a hour (1:20 on average) using the commandline client instead of the screensaver. I'm spitting out WUs anywhere from 3 hours to 3 hours and 20 minutes. Maybe I should do alittle o/c and see what I can do then...

I wonder if I should join a team or something.

I think there is a pretty good team somewhere near

 

[Mictlan]

If you want, you can roam aorund this forums and see by yourself what nice guys we are .....we will be very happy to welcome to the team......!!!!!

Anyway, welcome to one of the greatest forums over the 'Net.