Yes, if the memory allocated to Prime95 or mprime is contiguous and sequential, the accesses are smoother and the program runs a bit faster. A system restart/reload may allow memory to be more serially allocated to the first few programs that run.

On Windows systems, Brian Beesley's ReCache utility is designed to straighten out memory allocations.

Warning: ReCache makes two passes through memory. The second pass can be slow -- it may be faster to do a system reset than run ReCache.

[quote="Mersenne Digest Vol. 1 Number 652"]Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 19:23:14 +0100
From: "Brian J. Beesley" <bjb@bbhvig.u-net.com>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: ReCache for Windoze (was: mprime startup at boot-time)

On 24 Oct 99, at 18:23, Bruce A Metcalf wrote:

> Hello, I must have missed the discussion of ReCache the last time around.
> Would someone be willing to explain where this can be obtained, how to
> install, and the likely benefits to Prime95?

ftp://lettuce.edsc.ulst.ac.uk/gimps/software/ReCache.zip

To install: Unzip the file & place the executable in a directory referenced in the search path. [Or in the same directory as Prime95] Read the other file.

To run: from DOS command prompt: change directory to the folder containing Prime95 then issue the command "ReCache nn Prime95.exe" where nn is the amount of physical memory in the system in megabytes. Can easily be set up as a Windows shortcut.

Benefits: the ReCache program forces unused DLLs out to swap space & causes a general "tidy up" of the whole Windows memory space. This makes any compute-intensive program launched using it operate a little more efficiently. Speed up of 1% or 2% is usual.

> I'd also be particularly interested in an automatic routine, as my Windoze
> box crashes 3 or 4 times a day. (Yes, I know -- but I've only read through
> chapter 3 in "Linus for Dummies" so far.)

Place a shortcut to Prime95 (or to launch Prime95 using ReCache) in your startup folder, using "Start/Settings/Taskbar/Start Menu/Add"

But you probably should find out why windoze crashes so often. If you're on a busy LAN, it does help to have a full set of LAN security patches installed!

Regards
Brian Beesley
[/quote]

Home boxes usually suffer from power outage as the reason for going down. Current box has been up since late April (new build) and the rest of the crunchers for somewhat longer. Several work boxes had about 4000 hours in task manager. Unfortunately I did an office update which required a reboot.

Re: Is a reset good for you?
 

What mainboart are you using? I have a few that do that - cause is related to finishing P-1, but mine are on 98SE so I tend to blame that. Must migrate farm to w2kpro ...

Work boxes are all w2k on via chipset (AMD cpu) or intel chipset / willie cpu. Rebooting them has no effect on iteration times and these don't drift over the long haul.

[quote="kwstone"] When I rebooted into Win2k and ran Prime 95 again on the same exponent I was getting 0.097 to 0.098 iterations! And I had changed nothing in my setup.

Can a system reset actually improve times by freeing up some resources or other? or had I just frightened Windoze into trying harder in case I replaced it? :)

[/quote]

Heh, my web server runs mprime. 214 days uptime and counting.