Gentlemen; Thank you for your help. My P4 is successfully working on its second 15,000,000 range number. The first number was found to be not prime in about three months full time. It should have taken a month, hence this discussion.
WCPUID recognizes my P4 and its having SSE and SSE2 instructions. Prime95V22.3 doesn't. My next step is to upgrade to Windows98 then Linux unless a better idea comes along Steve; >Could the CPU be overheating? This is a good idea to pursue. Brian P.; Thanks for the tip. WCPUID was helpful. George; >I'm pretty sure that Windows 95 does not support SSE and SSE2 (because the >OS does not save the XMM registers on a task swap?) >Get yourself Windows 98 - .... did that, now to install it without clobbering my other stuff. Brian B.; >Win95 unless another SSE/SSE2 ... timesharing Good point >Surely the problem is that a system with extra registers will use more stack >when the "save all registers" opcode is executed. If so, the OS need not >support SSE/SSE2 directly - but there might be a problem with crashing >through the stack base. .... hummmmm the error was "illegal instruction" >.... probably unusable without breaking the Microsoft >licence. Remember that several "PC recycling" projects have run foul of this; >even though the system was bought with a Windows licence, passing the system >to a third party with Windows still installed is taken as a breach of the >EULA. .............. That is a good argument for ABMS (anything but Microsoft) ............. I recently bought a new license for Win98. >Why not try linux instead? There are definitely no problems supporting P4 >processors on any reasonably recent linux distribution, and there will >definitely not be any licensing problems. .......... That needs to move to the front burner John P >or the freeware Motherboard Monitor from http://mbm.livewiredev.com/ ........ got it, thanks -----Original Message----- From: Brian J. Beesley [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2002 11:35 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Fwd: Re: Mersenne: Slow Pentium 4 question ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: Re: Mersenne: Slow Pentium 4 question Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 18:05:24 +0000 From: Brian J. Beesley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], George Woltman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> On Thursday 13 June 2002 03:40, you wrote: > At 04:53 PM 6/12/2002 -0700, Bockhorst, Roland P HQISEC wrote: > >I think my P4 is running like a P III, at one third speed doing Mersenne > >Prime testing. > > > >When I run Prime95v22 it reports my P4 as .... CPU features: RDTSC, CMOV, > >PREFETCH, MMX That's very odd. Did you try Sandra? That Windows utility will identify the processor and other system components. The restricted functionality freeware version is sufficient to be very useful. The crash when you enable SSE2 manually suggests that your processor really is not capable of executing SSE2 opcodes - which would be very odd if you really have a P4. I wonder if you have a processor which has a broken SSE unit. However the only processors which (should) have that combination of attributes are Athlon ("classic" and Thunderbird variants only; XP have SSE but not SSE2) and Duron processors - which have 64KB of L1 cache and are not available with rated speeds above 1400 MHz. > I'm pretty sure that Windows 95 does not support SSE and SSE2 (because the > OS does not save the XMM registers on a task swap?) This should not be too much of a problem, unless another SSE/SSE2 program is timesharing with Prime95. If register corruption due to bad task swap code was occurring, Prime95 should be reporting a large number of errors. Surely the problem is that a system with extra registers will use more stack when the "save all registers" opcode is executed. If so, the OS need not support SSE/SSE2 directly - but there might be a problem with crashing through the stack base. > Get yourself Windows 98 - someone probably has an old copy lying around you > can get free or cheap. 1) Does Win98 support SSE2 any more than Win95 does? I recently bought Win 98. I wanted to make sure the hardware worked properly. It does except for this SSE@ snag. 2) That "old copy" is probably unusable without breaking the Microsoft licence. Remember that several "PC recycling" projects have run foul of this; even though the system was bought with a Windows licence, passing the system to a third party with Windows still installed is taken as a breach of the EULA. Why not try linux instead? Regards Brian Beesley ------------------------------------------------------- _________________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
