Might be time for a new rig

joeyjojo · 15 Sep 2011 at 09:39

Hi DC forum,

My trusty 775 system has reached its fourth birthday and I'm thinking about upgrade options. As the new rig will be used most of the time for crunching I have a rather different need to most "spec me" threads in GH: "points per watt". The machine also will be used as a work machine (programming).

Obviously sandybridge is the big dog at the moment - would this forum recommend the 2600K over the 2500K for crunching?

The points per watt of GPUs is usually a few times better than CPUs right? If so are ATI or Nvidia preferred?

What about a multi-cpu machine? There are a few of you out there recently

Or wait for bulldozer? :confused:

dekez · 15 Sep 2011 at 13:26

What sort of budget do you have? 2600k would be your best bet for simple mb / cpu /ram upgrade, some of the newer sb motherboards are ready for ivybridge as well.

I don't know what is going on with bulldozer, gave up waiting for it a while ago but it's going to be released fairly soon now I think, so may be worth holding off for a few weeks just to see what that is like.

If you have the budget then multi cpu gives excellent points per watt. What will you be crunching? With folding big adv running 24hr on CPU is better for ppd/watt than gpu, but other projects are better with gpu - Seti - Nvidia, milkyway - ati I think.

Pilgrim57 · 17 Sep 2011 at 12:29

Dekez & I have touched on this before.

Mine is 3 years old & wondering what to do for the best.

I would say go for the 2500K in an Ivybridge compatible mobo so that in say 9 months/ 1 year you could swap the cpu. Will the £87 difference [here] make that much in ppd? That could get a 2 TB hdd or 64GB ssd or more ram.

I made the mistake with AMD of going near top of range for v expensive 4400 for £250+ & after less than a year was midrange due to Conroe.

What programing? If Linux you could get some USB 3.9 stick for different distros.

joeyjojo · 18 Sep 2011 at 20:08

Hi chaps,

Sensible budget really, 300-1000 I suppose depending on solution. I crunch mainly CPDN, SETI and Rosetta these days on BOINC. I believe SETI can use Nvidia or ATI (using lunatics).

Programming doesn't factor as will be running Win 7 and vmware.

The real question I suppose is Sandybridge vs. Bulldozer vs. multi-cpu. The third contender is the one I'd like some feedback on from those who've built them recently.

Will not do anything before BD though

joeyjojo · 12 Oct 2011 at 20:37

Well, now that Bulldozer is out it's a tough call.

The 8150 seems to match the 2600K on highly multi-threaded apps, but falls short single-threaded. What does this mean for BOINC? The 8-core bulldozers will crunch through twice as many work units as the 2600K at a given time, but performs 30-50% worse in single-threaded apps. If we include the greater power consumption and the fact that the dozer will have 8 apps in memory at a given time, it looks like the 2600K is the way to go...

Biffa · 12 Oct 2011 at 23:31

Well for folding bulldozer is pulling around 14K PPD at stock.

BaBa · 13 Oct 2011 at 00:15

For me its not Bulldozer performance that is the problem im sure this will improve as windows scheduler suports the architecture(probably with Win8 and sooner with linux) its the power consumption when running full bore 100W more than a 2600k is crazy :eek:

I am a AMD fan and have been for a long time, i run more AMD cores than intel at the moment but even i would struggle to recommend the FX range

joeyjojo · 13 Oct 2011 at 02:12

I agree, although anandtech make it to be 74W more at load, some 47% higher. Between this and the slower single-threaded performance, a 2600K is a probably a better choice. It's a shame really.

When I can be arsed I suppose I'll go 2600K. Or Ivy...

Biffa · 13 Oct 2011 at 08:05

BaBa said:
For me its not Bulldozer performance that is the problem im sure this will improve as windows scheduler suports the architecture(probably with Win8 and sooner with linux) its the power consumption when running full bore 100W more than a 2600k is crazy

I am a AMD fan and have been for a long time, i run more AMD cores than intel at the moment but even i would struggle to recommend the FX range

Me too, but I can't see the scheduler make that much difference, on the plus side the f@h figures are not properly done for bigadv that I can see, so its wait for proper tests to be done.