KWSN Orbiting Fortress

[Concrete-mixing Moose]

From a post on the eOn forum
" I have a Windows machine and an Ubuntu machine, and I'd rather not have to install this project under an Ubuntu virtual machine just to speed of computations. I've had this argument with Folding@home and some other projects doing this same hideous mistake. You should want to get the most out of all your resources available, not cripple a good percentage of your resources. Having to install this on an Ubuntu virtual machine under Windows as a workaround just because I use AMD processors is not a good workaround. Under Ubuntu a task completes in ~200 seconds per core, but in Windows it completes in ~1600 seconds."

Anybody found this out for other projects, for future reference?
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[Putting_things_on_top]

I don't doubt the claim (that AMD runs slower on Windows), but this may apply to Intel also.

Windows 7 is still a general-purpose OS, so it adds a lot of extra overhead in an attempt to be "helpful".

With Ubuntu (or Mint, or various other Linux distros) there is more emphasis placed on efficiency than on "helpfulness".

Running Ubuntu virtualized within Windows won't really provide any significant benefits.

BTW: There is a known issue with AMD FX (6 and 8 core ) processors in Win7.
Something related to thread-scheduling.
There are some not-too-widely publicized KB bug-fixes that purport to help (but only nominally).
AMD and Microsoft are still hashing it out.
Windows 7 favors Intel CPUs & its hyper-threading technology (double execution 'threads' per core).
Windows 7 will need a significant amount of work to fully enable AMD's Bulldozer line of CPUS (FX, Opteron, etc).

A quad-core Intel CPU with hyper-threading will "appear" to Win7 as an 8-core processor.
An octo-core AMD CPU (sans hyper-threading) "appears" as an 8-core processor (under device manager), but Win7 recognizes only the first 4 until the two patches are applied.

I went thru this debacle just about a week ago, replacing one of my PhenoM II X4 965 BE's with an FX-8120.
You have to coerce/finesse the BIOS first, then apply the patches.

I will re-edit this post to include a link to a helpful page (if I can remember where !!)
Here it is: http://www.techpowerup.com/158534/New-Windows-7-Bulldozer-Patches-Available.html

But, I would recommend using native Ubuntu (if you're technically comfortable/happy with it) instead of a virtualized environment within a bloated host-OS.
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[Putting_things_on_top]

Another thought.

Many of the geeky sites are speculating that the Bulldozer problem may not truly get 'fixed' in Win7 (just patched).
Some of these sites are speculating that Win8 might incorporate AMD CPUs better.
Dunno!!!

There seems to be a lot of wailing & gnashing-of-teeth with regard to Win8.

A number of highly-vocal über-geeks are encouraging/advising people to go to Linux (instead of Win8) when Win7 reaches end-of-life.

I admit, all my shrubbers are currently running Win7.
But with a not-so-trivial number of über-geeks openly declaring their disdain for Win8, there's got to be something awry.

We'll have a few years of life from Win7, yet. Just look at how long XP hung around!!!

For me, personally, I have decided to go the Linux route when Win7 becomes "inviable".
Now, it's just a matter of choosing which one. Ubuntu, Mint, Red-Hat, SuSE...
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Click here for...KWSN F@H team summary at EOC

Or here for...KWSN F@H team overtake at EOC