QuickPar Probs with New(er) PC's

[Beck38]

Just ran into this the other day, Quickpar doesn't work 'right' with 64bit/large memory PC's (which is just about anything these days, over 4GB+ memory or thereabouts), "Could not allocate output buffer" error.

see wiki at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickPar

Programmer says yep, it has probs, will update around the next millennium.

Now I'm wondering what folks are using as an alternative that's par2/quickpar 'compatible' out there in usenet land??

TIA

[WHiKWiRE]

If your talking about creating PAR2 than you should check out MultiPAR. Essentially it's just QuickPAR but optimized for multiple core machines. I'm unsure as to whether you'll get more success using it but it's always worth a try. If that fails par2cmdline would be my last option.

[tesco]

Well I've never had any quickpar issues and I meet your specs above ^, but I've also used multipar. It's almost the same layout which is great for someone coming from quickpar...

[Beck38]

Well I've never had any quickpar issues and I meet your specs above ^, but I've also used multipar. It's almost the same layout which is great for someone coming from quickpar...

Yep, lots of folks one way or the other on the Quickpar tech support thing, exactly why some (you) have no problem and others do is a bit q. I think it may have something to do with the way it's installed (first time). I tried installing several times, but I think something is 'stuck' in the windows innards (i.e., ... having a brain freeze....)

But I guess I'll give this multipar a try. FYI, my newest box is a Vista64 w/8GB of ram, and I just got around to 'installing' quickpar on it yesterday and ran smack into the problem.

Here's the thread on their site...
http://www.quickpar.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1042

[tesco]

Why are you running vista? You should have put windows7 on there...

[Beck38]

Why are you running vista? You should have put windows7 on there...

I spent two months (Aug/Sept) reviewing win7 both for myself and a client, and it has soooooo many problems, it's almost as bad as Vista was at the beginning, particularly in it's networking, or lack thereof, in a heterogeneous (other machines other than Win7 on the network) environment.

I came to the conclusion that, like any other Microsoft s/w product, maybe it'll be 'fixed' with the first service pack, which now looks to be due in the near future. I'll take a look at it again at that point.

Meanwhile, I installed Multipar on the V/64-6core machine and ran a race between it and a V/32-4core machine (same cpu speed), and although one could see the Multipar utilizing all the cores and a huge chunk of ram, the V/32 machine w/ Quickpar BEAT the V/64/Multipar by a fair amount of time (crunching several Gigabytes, same files).

But it does work.

[tesco]

Meanwhile, I installed Multipar on the V/64-6core machine and ran a race between it and a V/32-4core machine (same cpu speed), and although one could see the Multipar utilizing all the cores and a huge chunk of ram, the V/32 machine w/ Quickpar BEAT the V/64/Multipar by a fair amount of time (crunching several Gigabytes, same files).

What hard drives do these machines have?
I always figured hard drive speed had more to do with it anyway. Would be interested to know.

[Beck38]

Actually, the V64 machine is about 1.5+ years newer (only about 6 months old now), has twice the ram (and V32 only 'sees' 3GB of the 4GB in it of course), and has SATA3 drives and MB interface rather than the SATA2 (and drives) of the V32 machine. In short, it's leading edge for today. Both of course are AMD 'Black' series CPU's, just the older one is 4core (most available when built!) vrs. the 6core, both 3.2Ghz (again, fastest available at the time).

What was sad, was the 'new' machine was around 40% CHEAPER than the older, even though it started out with 1TB/SATA3 WD drives vrs, the V32 started out with twin 750GB Seagate SATA2's (over time got an additional twin 1.5TB SATA2 Seagates).

EDIT: forgot to add, all the drives are 'full-spec' non-'green', in fact the new WD/SATA3's are their 'black' issue high-performance type; in fact, when I built that machine, the largest available were 1TB, although 2TB has come out in the last couple months or so.

So it's a WTF deal. I'll run some more tests and try and see what gives, but I have some projects backing up 'in the Que'. It might have something to do with the MB chipset/SATA interface, although it looks like it grabs a handful of memory for most of it's crunching. We'll see.

[sandman_1]

Why are you running vista? You should have put windows7 on there...

I spent two months (Aug/Sept) reviewing win7 both for myself and a client, and it has soooooo many problems, it's almost as bad as Vista was at the beginning, particularly in it's networking, or lack thereof, in a heterogeneous (other machines other than Win7 on the network) environment.

Actually I have found quite the opposite. Windows 7 Pro 64bit is rock solid on my system and I have very few issues if any.