DC deal - 4770k Microcenter $200

[Icecold]

There is already a thread in hot deals covering this but I wanted to post it here so nobody misses it.

Microcenter has the 4770k on sale for $200. I was able to also get a $30 discount on a decent motherboard, so motherboard + cpu + tax was under $315; I just ordered it and will need to pick it up in store.

I've been wanting an Intel CPU that supported AVX for awhile now(each Primegrid race I throw like 25-30 AMD cores at the project and get beat by people with a few i7's) but haven't seen a price I felt was worth it. As more apps pick up AVX2 support it should be an even better value.

I hope this post doesn't come across as spam or anything, it just seemed very relevant to DC'ers.

 

[Sunny129]

wish we had MC here in FL...

 

[geecee]

This is a really nice deal, especially for some one putting together, say, a holiday race system. *hint* 😉

For me though, I'm not sure it's worth updating the i7 system I put together last year, as I would have to replace the mb too. Would one see a substantial ppd increase in various DC projects from Haswell?

 

[GLeeM]

Thanks Icecold!

I have one 200 miles away - I might have to make the drive 🙂

Dang, it only goes for a couple more days.

 

[ZipSpeed]

This is a really nice deal, especially for some one putting together, say, a holiday race system. *hint* 😉

For me though, I'm not sure it's worth updating the i7 system I put together last year, as I would have to replace the mb too. Would one see a substantial ppd increase in various DC projects from Haswell?

If you have an Ivy i7, I wouldn't go the upgrade route. Haswell on average is around 10-15% faster.

 

[Zargon]

people are having luck doing online chat with staples to price match it

 

[Icecold]

I just got home from Microcenter with the parts. Was about an hour drive each way, but well worth it. I will be setting it up soon.

If I already had an AVX capable Intel cpu I probably wouldn't have bothered upgrading to this, but this will be a significant upgrade for one of my slower PC's here that need to be sold / retired.

My primary machine was already plenty fast for what I use it for(FX-8350) so this was mainly a folding / crunching purchase. I may use it in my primary machine, though, I'm still not sure.

I'm excited to get this setup and see what the PPD is like.

 

[biodoc]

I've been wanting an Intel CPU that supported AVX for awhile now(each Primegrid race I throw like 25-30 AMD cores at the project and get beat by people with a few i7's) but haven't seen a price I felt was worth it.

AVX isn't the whole story. Crunching PrimeGrid 321 LLR in the last race is highly dependent on RAM bandwith and RAM speed.

In the race, My 3930K@3.2GHz, 12 logical cores (quad channel RAM; 1600 DDR3) finished 59 WUs while my 2600K@3.6GHz, 8 logical cores (dual channel RAM; 1600 DDR3) finished only 32 WUs.

Sure, the 3930K has 50% more logical cores and accounting for that:

3930k: 59 / 12= 4.9 WUs per logical core
2600K: 32 / 8 = 4 WUs per logical core

I think the 20% difference is quad channel vs dual channel RAM.

 

[xeledon20005]

you can actually get either best buy or staples to price match, I picked up a 4770k from staples because the MC near me sold out of them and i got staples to price match it.

 

[Icecold]

AVX isn't the whole story. Crunching PrimeGrid 321 LLR in the last race is highly dependent on RAM bandwith and RAM speed.

In the race, My 3930K@3.2GHz, 12 logical cores (quad channel RAM; 1600 DDR3) finished 59 WUs while my 2600K@3.6GHz, 8 logical cores (dual channel RAM; 1600 DDR3) finished only 32 WUs.

Sure, the 3930K has 50% more logical cores and accounting for that:

3930k: 59 / 12= 4.9 WUs per logical core
2600K: 32 / 8 = 4 WUs per logical core

I think the 20% difference is quad channel vs dual channel RAM.

My post wasn't necessarily directed at the Leonids Challenge as much as PrimeGrid challenges in general and overall DC performance. Several machines I have were starting to feel like they were at the end of their justifiable life for DC, so I jumped on the i7 deal and it having AVX was one thing that helped me justify it.

The Leonids Challenge definitely was very ram speed dependent. I have 2 machines here running single channel ram(one is a quad athlon running a 2gb stick of DDR2 because I don't have much DDR2 ram around, the other is an FX 8150 that I was troubleshooting a bad stick of ram and forgot to replace, so it has a single 8GB stick of DDR3 1600(I think, possibly DDR3 1333). The single channel machines were taking forever to return WU's. The FX8150 seemed to take more than twice as long per unit than my FX 8350 that has dual channel ram.

I ran the 4770k overnight(at stock speeds) running different PrimeGrid tasks, and so far am happy with the performance.

 

[biodoc]

Have fun with the new build, Icecold! :thumbsup:

It will be interesting to hear how the Haswell performs in FAH and primegrid.

 

[salvorhardin]

You can also use it on asteroids@home. The avx on haswell gets about 10% more ppd that any earlier architecture. You just have to use an app info.

 

[Icecold]

It's running at 4GHz right now in preparation for the Folding holiday race; a 7520 WU is giving it ~31,000 PPD. I may consider pushing it further, but am very happy with the performance at 4GHz, and at 4GHz it doesn't use much power or generate much heat.

Truth be told, though, it is much less responsive than my 8350 BUT only because I don't have an SSD in this build yet 😛 I threw it together with spare parts, including a pretty old 320GB hard drive.

I am going to try to keep track of different WU times on this as well as some of my other machines to try to do a sort of DC benchmark comparison. I am very interested to see how this performs vs my 8150 vs my 8350 vs Phenom II X6 vs Core2Quad etc.

 

[Bradtech519]

I like the price to performance I got out of my FX 8350 deal. I paid $304 for my FX 8350, 8GB DDR 3 2133, MSI FXA 990-GD80, and Zalman HSF. Looking at task completion times on some projects compared to I7s I can't really justify upgrading unless I got a really good deal like $200

It's running at 4GHz right now in preparation for the Folding holiday race; a 7520 WU is giving it ~31,000 PPD. I may consider pushing it further, but am very happy with the performance at 4GHz, and at 4GHz it doesn't use much power or generate much heat.

Truth be told, though, it is much less responsive than my 8350 BUT only because I don't have an SSD in this build yet 😛 I threw it together with spare parts, including a pretty old 320GB hard drive.

I am going to try to keep track of different WU times on this as well as some of my other machines to try to do a sort of DC benchmark comparison. I am very interested to see how this performs vs my 8150 vs my 8350 vs Phenom II X6 vs Core2Quad etc.