Okay, I keep seeing references to optimized clients on various boards and have a general idea on the benefit of using them (speed/productivity), but I honestly have no clue how to go about getting/installing/using them. I've read through some of the threads on optimized clients but haven't been able to find explicit instructions. I'm running a PC and a Mac, so ideally I'd like to use on both on as many projects as possible - if versions exist for both platforms and multiple projects. I must admit I don't know all that much about the inner workings of my PC, although I have a pretty good handle on the Mac.

So, could someone who knows a lot more about all this provide some easy-to-follow instructions on how to optimize? It seems like a waste not to be cranking out WUs as fast as possible, if the optimized apps are in fact that much faster. FYI I'm running Einstein, SETI, WCG, SIMAP, LHC, Rosetta, Proteins and Malaria - and may start Spinhenge soon. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks in advance.

I believe there is only optimized apps for SETI for the *nix and windows platforms.

I heard there was one for Einstein as well???

There was a while ago, but the scientest (not the project admins) were conserened that the results may not be entierly accurate, and so there was a public saying not to use the optimized app. However, the app that was created was not truly optimized, for the persion did not have access to the sorce code. I believe they have changed the base code since then anyway.

In this thread you will find the download links for the optimized SETI@home applications. Also KWSN-Chicken of Angor has made an automated installation tool that is included in the package. So just run it and follow the instructions

Let's be clear. Optimized *applications* are project specific. For S@H:

Windows and Linux:

http://lunatics.at/

For Mac:

http://tbp.berkeley.edu/~alexkan/seti/

(P.S. The Mac applications from alexkan spank the others =;^)

"Optimized" BOINC *clients* can mean many things. One way of optimizing is to change the benchmark logic. Another is to force CPU affinity, and/or Return Results Immediately and/or be compiled for 64 bit.

Fantastic! I installed the optimized SETI app and just ran a test WU - at first glance it seems to run 2.3x-3x faster than the standard app (will have a better idea once I have more data). Will install on my Mac in the near future and see how it goes. Thanks for the guidance!

So apart from the SETI app, is there a general optimized BOINC client for Windows or Mac that would speed up crunching overall?

Right. There is no version of BOINC that actually increases the speed of the crunching, except for one. If you use a BOINC client that has "CPU affinity" enabled, and you have multiple cores that don't share their L2 cache, it will probably speed things up by a small percent.

Otherwise, it comes down to using project specific optimized applications, if they exist.

Also, some of the projects run worse on specific processors. For example, Rosetta runs pretty slowly on PPC macs, compared to comparable windows machines with intel or amd. So if you find that your machine isn't competitive on a particular project, try switching to another.

Okay, thanks for the info. That actually clears up quite a bit. Cheers.