Folding slows way down after a while w/o rebooting on an AMD duron system

yaggayagga Havn't you heard? ... New
edited June 2007 in Folding@Home
Folding works fine, as good as it's gonna get when I start it up, but after a while, which varies, the folding slows WAY down. The AMD Duron 1.35ghz running chip takes about 2 hours 10 minutes per step on one of the current 100 step gromacs, and then all of a sudden took 19 hours and 30 minutes and looks to be continuing at this speed. I had noticed this to happen when I was fully into folding about a year and more ago and it irritated me then. Anyway, I decided to get going again a little, and am noticing this. I think it has something to do with the cpu instruction sets, like 3dnow. Anyone know the answer? I ONLY run the "no nonsense text only" version.

Comments

  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited June 2007
    That's weird. Can you do a prime95 stability test and pass 100% ok?
  • yaggayagga Havn't you heard? ... New
    edited June 2007
    To be honest I've never run prime95. I suppose I could, but it's late right now, so later maybe. This is a secondary computer that I last reformatted about 3 years ago. It's been rock solid all this time without a hiccup, blue screen, glitch, trace of spyware, one single piece of pr0n, etc... I don't even remember the last pop up. It has been truly good to me in every way. I used to run folding all the time and don't recall this problem always being there. Maybe, just maybe this started happening after I swapped cpus out, but I'm not sure. I had cracked the 1.3ghz and replaced it with a 1.8ghz, which automatically gets clocked down to 1.35 because it's an old Compaq motherboard. I doubt this physical change caused it, and again I'm not quite sure when it started or if it has been present longer than I believe, since I used to always leave folding be as a service and hardly touch the machine.
  • OrianeOriane Turn around.
    edited June 2007
    It sounds like a pretty old motherboard- maybe the BIOS is getting reset. System battery dying? Check your settings.
  • yaggayagga Havn't you heard? ... New
    edited June 2007
    Oriane wrote:
    It sounds like a pretty old motherboard- maybe the BIOS is getting reset. System battery dying? Check your settings.

    That's forsure. This thing originally had Windows ME. :eek: Take your age guess, I'm positive you'll guess within +/- 3 months of the age. :bigggrin::D

    I don't understand how the button battery could cause this. It's not like the computer loses power while running. And unfortunately just about the only settings I have in the bios (I assume you mean bios) are: Bootup Device, Save and Exit, and Exit without Save. It's astonishingly simple.
  • OrianeOriane Turn around.
    edited June 2007
    OK- it sounds like a proprietary BIOS. I don’t know a lot about those but, you should still be able to check the system battery by checking the date and time in the BIOS. If it looks weird, the battery may be bad. You can check by putting in the current date and time. Save. Now power down for a while (I’d go an hour) and then turn on and check the date and time again. If it’s changed (as in WAY off) from your setting, your battery is probably dead.

    Also- if the BIOS reset, it may reset to a minimum system speed- slower than that rated for the CPU and memory.

    However- with a system that old, you might also need to check your capacitors to see if any are burst or leaning over. Another thing that might slow it down is overheating- maybe dead fan- need cleaning?
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