>All this talk about PC's running 24/7 has convinced me of the
>reliability of processors. It's been my thoughts that if your computer
>is on, it's always running at full speed, whether or not you're running
>Prime95.
>I've always left my computers on all the time, and never had a problem.
>This reliability got me thinking about any other appliances that have
>the same level of reliability.
I've had many machines running NTPrime for years now... Sometimes those NT
servers are so rock solid they'll run for months at a time between reboots and
I've had nary a problem.
>For example, I remember reading an article about light bulbs which said
>that if you leave a light bulb on continuously, it will last much longer
>due to the fact that the the filament doesn't contract when it gets
>cold.
That's true...but only as far as total number of hours of life. There's a
reason that light bulbs almost always burn out right when you turn them
on...only VERY rarely will they burn out while already on. Just that having a
cold filament which suddenly gets really hot...it can put alot of stress on
that poor thing...
But of course, you're much better off turning on a light when you need it
because *you* will get more use out of it that way than if you just left your
lights on all day, all night, all the time. :)
I mean, you might get the full 3000 hours out of a bulb if you left it on all
the time...but that's only 125 days. Now...take that same bulb and then think
that you maybe turn it off and on 3-4 times a day for a grand total of maybe 5
hours a day. Okay... 5 hours a day would normally be 600 days, but the
cycling of it will probably reduce it's life by nearly half, but you still get
300 days worth of use out of it.
Okay, so I'm definitely over analyzing it...
Of course, alot of people leave their computers on all the time because
they're not as fast as a light bulb when it comes to turning it on (not
usually anyway)... And some businesses need to leave them on all the time for
doing software distributions during off hours. So, with that being said, you
gotta figure hey...we're wasting all that electricity anyway, let's at least
*do* something with it!
Sigh...even if a company used the Prime95 time of day stuff to only let it run
during certain hours, that'd be a big plus...oh well.
I don't suppose George could just program something into the code to have it
check for the user being idle (like the screen saver check does, but
independent of the system screen saver routines) such that if the user doesn't
hit a key or move the mouse for xx minutes, it would begin it's calculations
(still at whatever priority you set it to...idle by default), but when the
user is hitting keys or moving the mouse, it'll stop calculations altogether?
That may allay the (unfounded) fears of some that Prime95 somehow steals
cycles from other running programs.
Just some thoughts...
Oh, and while I'm at it...running Prime95 does put a heavier load on a CPU
than if you just let it sit there doing nothing while powered on...merely
because the FPU is churning away whereas normally it doesn't do much. That'll
increase the heat output some, draw a bit more power... But the CPU's are
made to take it, so might as well. And, like we've all been saying, we've had
CPU's running Prime95 for years straight with no ill effects.
>From my US WEST experience on a nice sample of thousands of machines, I saw
that if a CPU was bad at all, it would show up as errors in the prime.log
within an hour. If it could make it past that, that CPU is good! :)
Aaron
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