help build windows machine for running fortran simulations

[bigalt]

My buddy in the lab next door is building a new computer, which will be used almost exclusively for running some custom fortran code which plugs and chugs numbers. It's not graphically intensive.

He's got a budget of like 2 grand, so I figure one could put together a pretty special machine for the purpose.

What pieces should one look for?

Is fast memory and a fast processor all that's really important here? Do intel/AMD have a signicant difference in number-crunching abilities?

It's only a single processor program. But would a 64-bit processor help anything, unless you're dealing with numbers bigger than 32 bit?

Does the motherboard matter, as long as it supports a fast enough bus speed to keep up with the rest?

 

[Matthias99]

FORTRAN?

*FORTRAN*???

I won't ask. I don't even want to know. It has to involve the government, because nobody else uses FORTRAN anymore.

Basically, yeah, a fast processor and adequate memory for your programs and/or development environment is all you really need. An "adequate" amount of memory, however, may be anywhere from 64MB to 4+GB, depending on what kind of number-crunching you're doing. Your buddy should know that sort of stuff, though.

If you're developing on Linux/ a UNIX that supports it, and there are 64-bit FORTRAN compilers available, an A64/Opteron-based system would likely see a kick in terms of performance, if only because of the extra registers available in 64-bit mode.

Otherwise, Intel is probably better for raw computational speed, just because their processors are clocked much higher and they have more memory bandwidth available. But it's not exactly a night-and-day difference between, say, a P4C3.2 and an AthlonXP 3200+ -- maybe 10-20% at most.

Performance differences between motherboards are pretty minor, assuming they're running the same FSB speed. Go for a name-brand model that'll be stable and reliable.

 

[bigalt]

nice, thanks for your advice.

 

[jhu]

can you give more details as to the nature of the code he's running?