Adding To The Folding Farm :-)

Yeggstry said:
If you're worrying about the electricity bill, have a look at the new penryns....

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Taken from http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/intel-wolfdale.html
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magic stuff and have you seen the clocks they are reaching!!!:eek::eek::eek:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/intel-wolfdale_12.html#sect0
 
KE1HA said:
All in all, life is expensive., as is folding :D both in HW and operations costs, but it's something I enjoy doing.
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Too true mate, most hobbies come at a cost. And to be honest, if the research even saves one life it would be worth it. :)

As a mainly laptop user, those new penryns are looking pretty sweet. More performance, more battery life and less heat. I'm not in the market for a new one at the moment but if Apple pull something special out of their asses this year I might be tempted.
 
I'm in a bit of a quandary. I had a recent windfall and can't make up my mind what to do with it.

I'm looking to spend around a grand on PC stuff. I can't make up my mind whether to do similar to KE1HA and beef up my gaming rig or buy a couple of quad folding rigs.

I've specced out budget quad rigs at under £400 a pop so I could get two of them and a couple of bits to get the E6300 running as a fileserver (found an excellent noobs guide to building a fileserver using Kubuntu).

Alternatively, I could beef up my gaming rig. It's already quite good.
Spec:
MB - ASUS P5N32-E SLI
CPU - Intel Q6600 Clocked to 2.70Ghz
Cooler - Scythe Ninja
RAM - 2Gb Team Extreem PC2-8000
GPU - BFG 8800GTX OC2
KB - Enermax Aurora
MS - Logitech G5
Sound - M-Audio Revolution 5.1 (had problems with the x-fi extreme gamer)
PSU - Tagan 600W (I think)
Drives - 2x 320GB Samsung Spinpoints

Possible upgrades
CPU - Intel QX9650
RAM - G.Skill 4GB DDR2 PK PC2-6400C4
GPU - Add second BFG OC2 in SLI
PSU - OCZ ModXStream 900w Silent SLI Ready ATX2 Power Supply
Drives - Keep spinpoints but RAID0 them

The above will cost me about £1250.

Doing the gaming upgrade will give me a Q6600 I can use in the fileserver instead of the E6300 and I can use the old RAM and PSU. I already have a mobo, so all I'd need to buy would be some high capacity HDDs and a case (approx £200s worth).

This would take the total cost to closer to £1500 but I'd have an extreme gaming rig which would eat SMP WUs for breakfast and a quad core fileserver.

The first option would be about £1000 and would give me more ppd.
If I got another Q6600 instead of the QX9650 and hope I get a better clocker than last time, I could cut the cost of the second option back down closer to the grand mark but part of me wants the bestest CPU on the market at the moment and I've heard of people getting silly clocks on these.

I don't know what to do, both options are highly desirable :(

It'll be a while before I can do any of this as I had to get my card stopped due to a couple of dodgy transactions which the bank are investigating. I won't get anything sorted until tomorrow and it'll probably be at least a week (probably more) before I get a new card.
 
45nm cruncher - job done

Your'll not notice significant differance with SLI yet (give it 6 months them maybe)
But personally I'd max out mine/wifes isa and wait for the E8500's but that's me ;)

Edit: you could alway buy 10 quads - select the best ones and 'lend' us regulars the rest ;)
 
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would say that upgrading your gaming system is a bit pointless as it's fairly beefy just now. Agreed that sli'ing 8800GTX would be pointless just now as that card should murder everything anyway!

I would suggest waiting for the new E8500's also - they look amazing value for the potential clocks that can be had.
 
Can I ask why you are only clocking to 2.7Ghz in that quad spec? you should get aleast 3-3.2ghz off the stock cooler and with a 1/2 reasonable aftermarket cooler 3.5/3.6 :)
 
That has been answered before. :)

Because that particularly Q6600 refuses to clock any higher. It should, but it doesn't.

Haven't tried pushing mine beyond 2.7 either tbh.
 
Berserker said:
That has been answered before. :)

Because that particularly Q6600 refuses to clock any higher. It should, but it doesn't.
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Correct. I must have one of the few dud G0s :( I've tried it in two different boards with the same result - no problem up to 2.7 but any further is not on.

I agree about the gaming upgrade by the way, I just fancied having a mega gaming rig but agree it's pretty much a waste of money.

I'll probably get a couple of Q6600s and stick the dud one in one of the mATX mobos with limited clocking capabilities and hope the two new ones will clock properly in the good boards.

By the time I'm finished, I should have 4 quads and possibly 1 duo on the go instead of the current 2 quads and 1 duo. That should help things along a bit :D
 
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