Improve performance thread
 

I think there are so many good tips on how to make prime95 work more efficiently on their computers that we should start this Improve performance thread.

To start it off:

Especially (but not exclusively) if you use Win:sleep: doze:

:furious: Don't have things you don't need start automatically at bootup. They really slow down your computer.

:coffee: We love to multitask, but don't keep that news article you read 6 hours ago open.

:alien: Try raising Prime95 priority. Maybe raise it by 1 every day until it slows down your computer. Then bring it back down. Also, try priority 8. (Randomly works for me).

:shock: Unless you have a reason not to, like overheating, etc, run Prime95 24/7/365.

:yawn: REALLY GOOD ONE: Even if you turn your monitor off before bed, go to your display settings. In the screen saver tab, change your POWER OPTIONS to turn your monitor off when your computer has been idle for a reasonable amount of time. (I used to have 2 hours, now I have 15 minutes.) This is a REALLY GOOD ONE because your computer runs display-related processes even when you manually turn your monitor off. It stops these processes only when it thinks it turned the monitor off itself. I get a 5-7% improvement, i.e. way over a day every month.

:bounce: If you don't mind the lack of aesthetic pleasure, use a less complicated screen saver.

:banana: If you're going away for a few days, some computers (including mine) run Prime95 faster when they are in safe mode. Do the banana dance. Then go to safe mode, put the monitor on the lowest resolution, and MAKE SURE your screensaver is off. My computer doesn't automatically turn off my monitor if it's in safe mode. I get another 2% improvement that way, making it worth it only if I leave it in safe mode for at least 11 hours.

:w00t: If you're doing LL testing, it's worth doing that pre-trial factoring (at least according to probability). It's also worth doing P-1 testing. Don't skip them. even if you only do a little. Don't confuse yourself by noting that the probability of finding a factor goes down as the size of the trial factors goes up. Althought that is true, doing less trial factoring will increase the probability that, over the short term (like your first few LL tests), you will do more unnecessary LL tests. Plus, I hear finding a factor feels good, though I haven't found one yet.

:innocent: I like knowing how fast Prime95 is going, down to the microsecond. You can know this by putting the line TimingOutput=4 in the last line of prime.ini. (This doesn't improve performance, but I put it in anyway.)

Sorry about the animated bullets...they were "necessary".

You may be a fanatic of distributed computing, so maybe you have many projects running: check that they do not conflict with one another for CPU and memory resources (two programs using SSE2 on a single processor Hyperthreaded machine tend to slow MORE than 50% due to constraints).

If you have a single processor PC, always choose two distributed projects that use different resources (like either CPU or RAM) and you'll see an improvement of about 10%-15% on both.

Never disable hard disks in energy saving options: that not only slows your program during disk writes, but also tends to wear your hard disk.

If your PC is dedicated to number crunching, use the lowest possible graphic resolution, and avoid where possible graphic cards embedded into the motherboard.

Check that your program memory usage lets at least 128 MB of free RAM on your machine, avoiding thrashing and swapping.

If you work using a graphic environment, choose your program folder at root level: this prevents you from clicking into deep level trees (each click comports scanning and animations...)

Luigi

Raise the number of iterations between outputs to the display to at least 50000 if not 100000. This allows reduces the number of times that P95 must do the work to make the display change.

Avoid dancing bananas and other animated graphics.

Try running with NumLock turned off, you may gain a bit.

Turn off the packet writing software for your CD-RW drive, if you don't use it as a floppy.

Use a real modem not a Winmodem.

Go off line.

[QUOTE=dominicanpapi82]If you're doing LL testing, it's worth doing that pre-trial factoring (at least according to probability). It's also worth doing P-1 testing. Don't skip them.[/QUOTE]

This is a very important one. Factoring to the limits that are set up increases the thoroughput of the project.

On the otherhand, if you don't care about the thoroughput of the project and are only just trying to get your own stats up, I would still strongly suggest doing the factoring. If you don't do it, someone else will do it at a later date (like mersenne-aries) and if a factor is found at a later date, you lose your LL credit.

It may boost you for a little while, but it will catch back up with you.

Set your homepage to a locally stored simple html file. No graphics.

Turn graphics off in your browser as a mater of routine.

If you use recent versions of Mozilla Firefox you can press Esc to stop the bananas dancing and you can set your home page as about:blank.

[QUOTE=Uncwilly]Raise the number of iterations between outputs to the display to at least 50000 if not 100000. This allows reduces the number of times that P95 must do the work to make the display change.[/QUOTE]

If you update every 100,000 iterations in ECM instead of every iteration it makes it go 10 times faster.

By the way, how do you switch to safe mode?

Windows Safe mode can be gotten into one of 2 ways.
1) While your machine is starting, after the intial RAM check press F5 repeatedly. You may here the machine beep or make other noise if you have pressed it way too many times. Windows will enter safe mode. You will have to manually start P95.
2) While your machine is starting, after the intial RAM check press F8 repeatedly. This should take you to the boot menu. Select safe mode.

[QUOTE=ET_]If you have a single processor PC, always choose two distributed projects that use different resources (like either CPU or RAM) and you'll see an improvement of about 10%-15% on both.[/QUOTE] In the windows version, if you are LL testing at that moment, copy and paste the entire Prime95 folder somewhere else. In the new folder, add the line SequentialWorkToDo=0 to the last line of prime.ini. Then start Prime95 from that folder by clicking on the icon. You might be able to get the original copy to skip both trial factoring and P-1 factoring and let the second copy do both, but I don't know how.

[QUOTE=Uncwilly]Windows Safe mode can be gotten into one of 2 ways.
1) While your machine is starting, after the intial RAM check press F5 repeatedly. ...
2) While your machine is starting, after the intial RAM check press F8 repeatedly. ...[/QUOTE]

Pressing F8 works for me, but F5 doesn't. If you try it, you can let us know if it worked in the thread [url="http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=2668"]http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=2668[/url]

On some machines, ctrl works too.

If you're using your computer to listen to music and aren't sitting right in front of it, you might be able to put Prime95s priority to 10 without making your music manager skip. This improves my iteration time 10-30%.