help with mem contribution

How would i know how many mbs I can devote to prime95? where can i find the ram mem that i have available? and how may i want to make my decision on devoting those mbs of memory?

[petrw1]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

How would i know how many mbs I can devote to prime95? where can i find the ram mem that i have available? and how may i want to make my decision on devoting those mbs of memory?

Assuming you are running Windows (if not the following is all useless to you):

Available RAM: Start / Control Panel / System

Devote to Prime95: Check out the Readme.txt that came with your download. If memory is an issue avoid P-1 assignments.

How to decide (it's really your choice but here are some things to consider):
- Lucas Lehmer (LL) tests take the longest - weeks or a month or more with the latest hardware but are the tests to find a Mersenne Prime. Low memory usage.
- Double-Check (DC) tests take about 1/4 as long as LL. They double-check previous LL tests. Low memory usage.
- Trail Factoring (TF) are the quickest and take little memory. They eliminate exponents from the LL/DC tests by finding small factors of them. Low memory usage.
- P-1 is another factoring program for larger factors to again eliminate the need for LL/DC. HIGH memory usage. At least 300MB ... 600MB is better.
- ECM is another factoring program to find larger factors of smaller exponents already LL/DC tested. Not sure of the memory usage....somewhat high, I think.