[QUOTE=Prime95;169491]Try this. Change your local.txt to:
Memory=500 during 5:00-22:00 else 1400[/QUOTE]I (immediately after posting my previous post) just dropped the memory settings from local.txt and edited in the CPU dialog to 500/1000 and then Primenet happily gave me a P-1 assignment.

I have been delinquent while pursuing other goals. I will return shortly with at least 2 PCs.

Why can't I get < 50M?
 

The current assignment summary reports shows hundreds of P-1's in the 30-35M range. Why do I not get assigned those when I ask for a P-1 assignment? Instead I get 50M+ assignments.

[QUOTE=petrw1;170205]The current assignment summary reports shows hundreds of P-1's in the 30-35M range. Why do I not get assigned those when I ask for a P-1 assignment? Instead I get 50M+ assignments.[/QUOTE]

P-1 assignments are in the 50M+ range so that when they are finished the exponent can be handed out for its final level of trial factoring.

On my way... :spot:

1 Q9550 core starting beginning of next week.
1 PIV 3.4 starting early next week.
1 Q6600 core starting mid next week.

Possibly more to follow shortly ...

Is a PIII@1.1 GHZ with 400MB assigned (out of 512MB) powerful enough to be worth putting on P-1? It's a server box that's more or less dedicated to crunching until I have the time to make Samba work, so not very much system overhead or concern for system responsiveness.

Pentium III's efficiency seems to drop off noticably at larger FFT sizes (1024K and larger is only about 60-70% as efficient as 4K-20K). I'd expect a 400MHz P-III to throughput about 0.08GHz-days per day; a current P-1 assignment is around 4.75GHz-days (maybe a little less with 400MB RAM); therefore a current P-1 assignment would take about 60 days...

[QUOTE=James Heinrich;170694]Pentium III's efficiency seems to drop off noticably at larger FFT sizes (1024K and larger is only about 60-70% as efficient as 4K-20K). I'd expect a 400MHz P-III to throughput about 0.08GHz-days per day; a current P-1 assignment is around 4.75GHz-days (maybe a little less with 400MB RAM); therefore a current P-1 assignment would take about 60 days...[/QUOTE]

I know whatever it does, it will do it slowly. But will it be considerably less efficient at P-1 than it will be at factoring, given that we have an abundance of people doing factoring and a shortage of people doing P-1?

[quote=Kevin;170734]I know whatever it does, it will do it slowly.[/quote]... and it will, nevertheless, be valuable.

A speed of 10,001 (overall GIMPS progress-units) is greater than a speed of 10,000.

[quote]But will it be considerably less efficient at P-1 than it will be at factoring, given that we have an abundance of people doing factoring and a shortage of people doing P-1?[/quote]Seems to me that those two things (P-1 efficiency, and shortage of P-1 participants) aren't really related. A PIII will be just as efficient when lots of other systems are doing P-1 as when no other systems are doing P-1. :smile:

Your P-1 would be valuable either way. What counts more IMO is whether [I]you[/I] are happy with your participation. (Okay, you might think your happiness would be related to your system's P-1 efficiency. But it's easier for you to decide to be happy about your PIII's P-1 contribution regardless of its efficiency than it is to make your PIII run P-1 any more efficiently than it already does. Remember: a speed of 10,001 is greater than a speed of 10,000.)

OTOH, you might think your happiness is related to how much difference your choice of assignment makes to GIMPS. As this thread already shows, there [I]is[/I] a certain bottleneck (P-1 assignments) that matters only to the relative differences in progress of different GIMPS assignment types (but not to overall GIMPS progress).

Your P-1 participation, regardless of CPU comparison, would help relieve that bottleneck! That, in turn, would help GIMPS make more LL-only assignments available to those participants who prefer LL-only assignments to other types, perhaps increasing the happiness of those whose happinesses are (* alas *) dependent upon receiving LL-only assignments.

[QUOTE=cheesehead;170744]Seems to me that those two things (P-1 efficiency, and shortage of P-1 participants) aren't really related. A PIII will be just as efficient when lots of other systems are doing P-1 as when no other systems are doing P-1. :smile:[/QUOTE]

No, they're related.

Ultimately, throughput is maximized if every system does the task it's (relatively) the best at compared to other machines. If a modern computer has a ratio of 1:1 between time for a P-1 test and time for a TF test, and my computer has a ratio of 10:1, I'd be greatly under-utilizing my system by doing P-1 testing. However, since there is a shortage of P-1 testing, I'm willing to "under-utilize" my system to a reasonable degree if it puts CPU time where it's needed more. So the lack of P-1 testing is just saying that I have a looser standard for what is "considerably less" efficient.

I think what James was talking about is on the right track, and seems to be indicating I'd be better off keeping it on TF.

I'm 80% done writing a tool that should give a quick overview for expected throughput on various types of assignments (e.g. machine of type <specs> at <speed>GHz can expect to process [x]GHz-days/day at TF (to various bit levels), [x]GHz-days/day at P-1 (at various FFT sizes, [z]GHz-days/day at LL (at various FFT sizes, etc) -- overall giving you a picture of what the most efficient type of work for this particular machine is. I'm not sure that I want to get into all the ugly complexities of analyzing work mix efficient on multicore machines, but at least looking at a per-core should give some idea of what the best focus is for most efficient use of that type of machine.