what does it all mean
 

Im new to the actual search, but used prime95 for benchmarking. well ive had it running week or so now and prime95 may have found something. It was factoring m33493157 to 2^68 and finished and found no factor. then it did the self test and it passed. Now it is doing P-1 factoring of the same number, chance of finding a factor at 5% so it says. Does this mean that this number may be a prime, and how many other ways is it gonna use before i know. its on stage 1, whatever that means, and its taking an awefully long time even for my overclocked athlon beast.

To find out more on the subject visit [url]http://www.mersenne.org/[/url]

The math pages will give a clue, what it does.

As long as you do stage 1 or 2 give it more memory (Options->CPU). For such large exponents a lot of memory will speed it up. Just try with 160, 200 or more MB assigned memory. And don't worry - it's just needed for these 2 stages. After they have finished it will need much less (maybe 10 with your exponent).

Re: what does it all mean
 

[quote="arrruken"]its taking an awefully long time even for my overclocked athlon beast.[/quote]
Your Athlon beast has met a worthy match; it's working on a very large number. M33493157 is far, far larger than any prime number ever found by what used to be called "supercomputers" only a few years ago.

Just have patience. :)

i already gave the program 256 megs, maybe ill give it 512, i still dont notice a difference, and i only turn it off during games.

[quote="arrruken"]i already gave the program 256 megs, maybe ill give it 512, i still dont notice a difference, and i only turn it off during games.[/quote]

If you change the memory settings in the middle of a p-1 test, then it will restart the whole test again.
The more memory that you allocate then the more slowly the test will take.
Athlons are not as good at factoring as P4 because they do not use SSE2.

arrruken,

As long as you are in stage 1 of P-1 factoring, you won't see any difference in use of memory when you change the allocation, because stage 1 uses only a small amount (like 10 meg), regardless of what you allocate. Only when the P-1 factoring proceeds to its stage 2 will it use the extra memory you've allocated.

There is another type of factoring called ECM (which your system will not be doing unless you specifically set up the instructions for that), which also has two stages, like P-1 factoring. When ECM factoring is in progress, both stage 1 and stage 2 of the ECM will use the extra allocated memory you specified. But that won't happen unless you set it up (and you don't need to).

Have patience. :)

[quote="bayanne"][quote="arrruken"]i already gave the program 256 megs, maybe ill give it 512, i still dont notice a difference, and i only turn it off during games.[/quote]

If you change the memory settings in the middle of a p-1 test, then it will restart the whole test again.
The more memory that you allocate then the more slowly the test will take.
Athlons are not as good at factoring as P4 because they do not use SSE2.[/quote]

Well ... I don't know. I have a Duron 1300 at home and a P4 1800 at work. The P4 is a lot faster for LL, but for factoring and P-1 I find that the Duron does a better job. :shock: I might be wrong though. When I get a new number to test I start the LL at work and the factoring at home ... just in case.

[quote]but for factoring and P-1 I find that the Duron does a better job. I might be wrong though.[/quote]

P-1 uses SSE2 routines, just like the LL test, so it should be certainly faster than the Duron. Above 64 bits, SSE2 factoring routines kick in, and the P4 should beat the Duron there as well.