On 18 Feb 2001, at 2:24, Shane & Amy Sanford wrote:
> I for one found my way to the Prime95 project through overclocking.
As I said, there's no such thing as _bad_ publicity! I actually came
across Prime95 whilst looking for a benchmarking program to see if my
266 MHz PII system was performing as it should be.
> In the
> OCing community Prime95 has been considered the single best stress test
> tool available for some time now (especially when used in conjunction with
> a game that makes heavy use of the 3d side of the computer). No doubt a
> high percent of these people get a exponent and then abandon it before
> completion but a few stick around and add significantly to the project.
Sure. I really don't have a problem with that. My point was simply
that if the options were set up a bit differently, more of those who
never had any intention of completing a test might not set up in a
way which causes them to actually take an assignment - which
effectively ties the assignment up for (by default) 88 days. This in
itself is not a problem, but the extra transactions on the PrimeNet
server caused by this "waste" might be, one day.
What really does hurt is people starting a test, getting a
substantial way through & then abandoning.
Another suggestion I might make is that the first assignment given to
every new user/system should be a doublecheck. (Unless they
specifically override the assignment type in the Test menu). This
would complete fast enough to encourage new users by getting their
name onto the league table, & might encourage more of the "casual"
users to stay with the project.
> If this is actually the case does it possibly indicate that it's
> getting close to time raise the mhz threshold for LL vs. double check work
> assignment again?
No doubt opinions will differ on this. If you bump the threshold then
you're signalling to a percentage of contributers that their system
is no longer "good enough" and you might lose their contribution
altogether.
My feeling is that we should be clearing LL & DC assignments at about
the same rate. If the threshold stays the same then DC assignments
will start to lag behind as new systems tend to be fast, whilst
older, slower systems are retired or upgraded. Increasing the
threshold will switch some of the slower systems from LL assignments
to DC assignments, thus restoring the balance.
Another way to look at the balance is to examine the PrimeNet status
report at 0800 UTC. There tends to be a balance of LL assignments
which were recycled at 0600 still to be reassigned, whereas all the
recycled DC assignments have usually gone by then. The indication
here is that DC work is popular - perhaps we shouldn't be too keen to
up the threshold whilst this state of affairs persists.
Yet another way is to compare the time taken for a DC assignment on a
"threshold" system to the time taken for a LL test on a "state of the
art" system. At present a typical DC assignment on a 300 MHz PII
takes about half as long to run as a typical LL assignment on a 1.2
GHz Athlon. Personally I don't feel this is unreasonable.
Regards
Brian Beesley
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