Joshua Zelinsky wrote on Thursday, March 08, 2001 3:38 AM
> > > I'm betting this is a rather significant penalty! You have to use the
> > > wall clock to time your iterations / minute. Prime95 will report the
> > > same time, but it is only measuring the time to do an iteration,
> > > not the additional time to write to the display.
> >
> >Still, the CPU time required to write one line to the display is
> >considerably less than that required to execute one iteration of an
> >LL test on a large exponent.
>
> I just did a test as George suggested.
Thanx, I never get around to actually testing things. I had been wondering
myself about the performance penalty.
> The average ratio for the with results at every 1 iteration came out
> to be .540 per for .487 every 100 iterations. I'm running a
> PIII 600 megahertz and I didn't realize that I had my webbrowser
> open when I ran the test which seriously invalidates the results.
That much difference -- 10 PERCENT! That's too rich for my blood.
I'll have to shtick with the standard setting.
> I might run a test again later when I get a chance...
Let us know what you come up with; I own a P3-600 myself.
By the way, I think Joshua's suggestion from Feb 12 2001 for Prime95 to have
an option for disk writes to occur based on the number of iterations, rather
than the time passed, is a sound idea.
I hope it will make it into Prime95 v21.
Brian Beesley wrote on Wed, 7 Mar 2001 20:56:12 -0000
> Don't fix what ain't broke.
Right on.
> If you must change the name [Prime95]...
Yes, if someone successfully challenges our rights to that name.
Has anyone of us bothered to register the name Prime95 as a trademark?
I sure haven't.
>..., go for PriMe.
That looks like a very modern name to Me.
By the way, a release of v21 in more than 6 months would suit me just fine.
And, George, hand-holding can be rewarding too, it just takes up sooooo much
time.
I think most people wouldn't mind the slight file size increase with
the optional screensaver part.
George's efforts to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the P4
architecture could present an opportunity for the engineers at Intel to
pitch in. It may be in the chip manufacturer's interest!
Also, on Feb 3 2001 Joshua Zelinski wrote:
>Recently people have been discussing that the long times it takes to
finish a batch of work makes GIMPS less appealing than other distributed
computing systems. What if we gave out factoring in small bunches...
Yeah, I like that idea! Giving peoply bite-sized chuncks would make them
come back, craving for more. It would make GIMPS less appalling, that is,
more appealing to the novice. Even a factoring assignment from 2^n to
2^(n+1) could theoretically be cut up into up to 16 little snack-sized
appetizers. (All this talk is starting to wet my appetite)
I'm off to lunch now, cheers.
Robert.
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