Hi all,
I think my requirements are finally driving me towards a fairly considerable upgrade. The last 4 months of my masters course are dedicated to a research project using a newly parallelised flood inundation model capable of running on up to 8 cores. Simulation times are quite long (dependent on model domain resolution, extent, etc.) but we're talking ~1-10 hours running across 2x 2.8 GHz Intel Xeon E5462 with 8gb RAM (1Gb/core).
For larger runs I will use the university HPCs but my access to these is limited; I will be wanting to run plenty of simulations at home when working on new ideas, trialling alterations etc. Obviously, the quicker I can get through this kind of work the better.
My current system is now over 3 years old and has served my brilliantly:
Asus P5B deluxe
e6300 core2d @ 3.4ghz (air)
4GB DDR2
The model performance jumps a lot between 2-4 cores (with diminishing returns to 8 cores). Thus an upgrade to a quad core would be beneficial. However, I've been told that the P965 chip used on my trusty old P5B isn't great for OC'ing quads, suggesting that I should move to a new architecture. Is this true? I have also heard that the new intel i7 offers considerably more computing power per mhz. Again, is this really the case, or only true for applications that have been tuned to the new architecture?
I don't mind investing in a new architecture as aside from a new HD I haven't had to spend a penny on my pc in over 3 years. My budget is ~£400 for CPU, MB, RAM, cooler. I'll keep all of my other old components. I will be running 64bit windows 7.
If it is the case that an i7 system is likely to significantly outperform a Q9550 on my current board (which would only cost me £170...), both for pure number crunching problems like the flood model as well as general PC use, then please recommend me some new kit! Should note that I will be overclocking where possible.
Cheers all (and sorry for the long post
)
Sampo
I think my requirements are finally driving me towards a fairly considerable upgrade. The last 4 months of my masters course are dedicated to a research project using a newly parallelised flood inundation model capable of running on up to 8 cores. Simulation times are quite long (dependent on model domain resolution, extent, etc.) but we're talking ~1-10 hours running across 2x 2.8 GHz Intel Xeon E5462 with 8gb RAM (1Gb/core).
For larger runs I will use the university HPCs but my access to these is limited; I will be wanting to run plenty of simulations at home when working on new ideas, trialling alterations etc. Obviously, the quicker I can get through this kind of work the better.
My current system is now over 3 years old and has served my brilliantly:
Asus P5B deluxe
e6300 core2d @ 3.4ghz (air)
4GB DDR2
The model performance jumps a lot between 2-4 cores (with diminishing returns to 8 cores). Thus an upgrade to a quad core would be beneficial. However, I've been told that the P965 chip used on my trusty old P5B isn't great for OC'ing quads, suggesting that I should move to a new architecture. Is this true? I have also heard that the new intel i7 offers considerably more computing power per mhz. Again, is this really the case, or only true for applications that have been tuned to the new architecture?
I don't mind investing in a new architecture as aside from a new HD I haven't had to spend a penny on my pc in over 3 years. My budget is ~£400 for CPU, MB, RAM, cooler. I'll keep all of my other old components. I will be running 64bit windows 7.
If it is the case that an i7 system is likely to significantly outperform a Q9550 on my current board (which would only cost me £170...), both for pure number crunching problems like the flood model as well as general PC use, then please recommend me some new kit! Should note that I will be overclocking where possible.
Cheers all (and sorry for the long post
)Sampo
