Well, we got kicked out of the #5 position in team ranking by Ars Techinica Roast Beef, pushing us back down to #6 in the world. Roast Beef’s key rate is only slightly faster than ours, so if we can pour on the coal, it might be possible to catch up with them again. We should be back up at #5 in about 3 months – if we maintain our work rate and one of the slower teams maintains theirs.
I just added a couple of dual processor machines and a fast AMD box. Check out Taz (weighing in at 107 Meganodes per second!), Papasmurf, zipping along in the high 80 Meganodes/Sec, and Pepper, running about 70 Mn/Sec. Papasmurf is still being installed, so it won’t be online 24/7 for a few more days – I am not sure how fast this one is, but it may even outrun Taz.
Happy crunching!
Kevin
Kevin,
I was wondering if there is a trick to setting up dual processors. I have a Dell 2450 with two 1G chips in it. I’m running ecs Beta 3 on it. I can start the distributed.net client fine and it will recognize the two cpu’s. I see two crunchers start up and run. My problem is that after awhile the whole machine will lock up. Sometimes it will take on twenty minutes, other times it can be upto three hours. It never seems to make it more than that. Would you have any idea on what may be causing this?
Bob Bencivenga
Bob,
Make sure your CPUs aren’t overheating. The problem you describe sure sounds like an overheat problem.
You might want to shut off overclocking, if you have it turned on in BIOS.
If you aren’t overclocking, or especially if you are, fans are a fairly cheap insurance policy.
Make sure you have good ones on each CPU (and a beefy heatsink too) and an extra case fan or three on your CPU box. Most of my home made computers have 2 or 3 case fans, in addition to the one in the power supply.
When you build a new PC, make sure you put heatsink thermal compound on the top of the CPU chip, before sticking the heatsink on to it. Radio Shack sells small tubes of the stuff, or you can get a toothpaste sized tube of the stuff (a lifetime supply) at your local industrial electronics store.
Feel the CPU heat sinks when the computer hangs. Are they hot? Ground yourself to the case before touching anything inside the case, and watch out for spinning fan blades. They hurt
Last, make sure the room where the computer is located is not overly hot. I used to have thermal problems on my PCs in an upstairs office in Southern California. When it got up to 80 or 85F, bad things started to happen. CPU and case fans don’t work that great if the ambient temperature gets up too high.
If you are getting sufficient cooling, there is no reason for the box to hang like that.
I run DNET on many dual and quad processor machines without a hitch.
Kevin