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Well, your opinion is pretty bloody obvious.

I don't think we need to make anybody bugger off, primarily because it's the project that's important, not the computers themselves, and for whatever reason, these individuals have seen fit to contribute to Team MA. I see no reason to look a gift horse in the mouth.

1) People with 10-30 PCs in one spot are usually lab admins or something - I know SETI and Folding@Home both ran on various labs of machines I used in college, although I wasn't admining any of them. If they're MacAddicts, so be it - you can't always control what your work buys, after all. Somebody who's running SETI on 30 PCs and 1 Mac is probably a mac user who tells 30 PCs what to do when (s)he's at work.

2) I am one of those Wintel folks - having run SETI@Home for several years exclusively on PC hardware. Not because I like them better than macs, but because that's what I can afford. I bought one of the last PPC Mac Minis available at the Rosedale, MN Apple Store, but haven't installed BOINC on it. Why? Because it's still not as powerful as my PC, and I don't like leaving two computers on all the time.

3) If you're a mac user who feels a need to contribute to SETI in a big way, using x86 equipment to build your SETI farm is the only sensible course. You can rack mount a couple mATX integrated motherboards, overclock the hell out of a couple old Athlon XPs, drop in some ram left over from upgrading your eMac, and be pushing 140 RAC, no problem. And if you are careful where you buy your parts, it'll probably cost less than $200.

FWIW, 80-300 RAC per machine would be some pretty hefty iron. I only get 60. (2 GHZ Athlon XP, 400Mhz FSB.) Since SETI scales pretty much with FPU performance (well, it used to) I would think over 200 RAC would scream Athlon 64 X2. *drool*

Are you using that Altivec optimised client?

http://writhe.org.uk/seti@home/

Most people never bother doing any optimisations at all - that includes downloading specialized builds of their software. Plug & Chug, as it were.

I don't run the Altivec versions.
I tried to install the MacNN version once and could not figure any of it out... Did not really bother to spend time doing/understanding it all.
So just running basic BOINC 5.4.9 and Seti enhanced 5.13
I thought my little powerbook at 70 RAC is TERRIBLY slow, but now I'm quite proud of its 'power'

Does the Altivec version make a big difference? Before seti-enhanced and different sized work units I was crunching 4 workunits (1 per CPU) in 2 hours on the G5 Quad. I was told that it would drop down to 1 hour with the Altivec. That true? How does it affect the credit?

arkayn wrote:

The optimized builds are a little further along than what is on that page, Alex Kan posts the more updated ones on the MacNN forums.

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php? … mp;page=10

Cool, thanks!

Foolish me, I kept checking the MacNN "download page" for updated workers.    Oh well, at least now I'm back with an Altivec-optimized sah worker.