Main cruncher upgraded from XPM to C2D goodness!

[Assimilator1]

Well I just had to brag a little about it! ,especially seeing as the last mbrd upgrade I did was 4yrs ago:Q ,the longest I've ever kept a mbrd for my main rig! (CPU is about 2 1/2yrs old).

Anyway ,I bought an E6420,Sycthe Katana 2 HSF,MSI P6N platinium ,2GB OCZ DDR2 800 Platinium rev2 (surprisingly cheap) & an ATI 1950 Pro

I was thinking of getting a new PSU too ,but the consensus was my old one would probably be ok ...... just ,so for now I've stuck with my Antec TPII 430.
From purely CPU loading side of things seems I had nothing to worry about , with the C2D o/c to 2.8 GHz running 2 DPAD clients it draws ~172w at the wall ,the XPM @2.5GHz drew 180w! :Q(naturally running just 1 client!) ,incredible how effiecent the C2Ds are .Though the real test for my PSU will be when I load the ATI 1950 too.

Hopefully the larger 4MB cache of the 6420 will benefit some DC projects (anyone know?) ,also I could run F@H on the 1950 Pro in the future.Is that card supported by the GPU client?

1 wierd thing though, C2Ds performance on DPAD ,at 2.5GHz a single client running 1 thread gets about 220 Kpts/s(2.8GHz= 246Kpts/s) ,the XPM did 234 Kpt/s & my Sempron @2.5GHz (S754) does 258 Kpt/s
How do C2Ds compare on other projects?

Oh as for my modest o/c so far ,that's because I haven't finished tweaking yet ,I got it up as far as 3.1 GHz but it wasn't stable.
The limiting factor is my mbrd ,for approaching 400MHz FSB I need to add a fan to the northbridge HS (it was hitting 55C as measured by my laser thermometer).I don't want to use the titchy & noisey fan supplied by MSI so I'm going to try to jury rig an AMD 60mm fan to it .............somehow!

Anyhow ,thoughts ,comments & any bets as to how far it'll overclock to? ,and IIRC I think Ive jumped 2 generations of CPUs(?)

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

I searched for the same info (how much of a difference the cache makes) but I haven't been able to find anything. If you would be willing to clock down your CPU to a freq that I can easily reach (say 2.4GHz) then I'd be glad to test my E6400 to yours. Maybe then we could reach something of a useful comparison?

 

[Philippart]

Every CPU having a cache greater than 2MB does awesome in protein crunching (mainly folding@home and rosetta@home) Here's a small chart about fah: http://forum.folding-community.org/ftopic19357.html

 

[GLeeM]

Originally posted by: Assimilator1
1 wierd thing though, C2Ds performance on DPAD ,at 2.5GHz a single client running 1 thread gets about 220 Kpts/s(2.8GHz= 246Kpts/s) ,the XPM did 234 Kpt/s & my Sempron @2.5GHz (S754) does 258 Kpt/s
How do C2Ds compare on other projects?

That is wierd! I had hoped it would do better

Well, it should do better when you get your OC tweaked up to the high end AND you will be running two DPAD clients :thumbsup:

DPAD must not need lots of L2.
Possibly, DPAD does not use lots of SSE2\3. The C2D shines on those projects that extensively use SSE2\3 because it does more instructions per cycle.

Oh, in case you didn't know: the current Beta GPU client for F@H also uses one CPU core for polling the GPU
I think they are trying to minimize the CPU use in the next version.

Nice rig

 

[Ken g6]

I hear tell that Athlon X2s do very well at DPAD. I'll be getting one soon for my Mom, so we'll see. I guess DPAD needs more than 2MB memory?

Still, when I replace my machine, I plan to make it a C2D (or C2Q!)

 

[Assimilator1]

I knew C2Ds didn't do that well at DPAD (from Amoroque experiences & the DPAD benchmarking thread) ,but I at least thought it would be faster than my old XPM clock for clock.
Btw E6420s have 4MB of cache

As far as DPAD goes it seems L2 cache size makes little or no difference judging by this DPAD graph ,that was for the previous client though & doesn't include any C2Ds.

FMC
Why not o/c yours to 2.8GHz?
But yea I could downclock mine to 2.4GHz if you like ,would be interesting to see a direct comparision.

Philippart
What's project 2610??

GleeM
Yea running 2 clients makes a big improvment over my XPM
Re F@H ,I did know that 1 CPU core is used for the GPU client too (pitty).
So can the GPU client run on 1950 Pros as well as 1900/1950 XTs?

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: Assimilator1
I knew C2Ds didn't do that well at DPAD (from Amoroque experiences & the DPAD benchmarking thread) ,but I at least thought it would be faster than my old XPM clock for clock.
Btw E6420s have 4MB of cache

As far as DPAD goes it seems L2 cache size makes little or no difference judging by this DPAD graph ,that was for the previous client though & doesn't include any C2Ds.

FMC
Why not o/c yours to 2.8GHz?
But yea I could downclock mine to 2.4GHz if you like ,would be interesting to see a direct comparision.

My machine isn't exactly OC friendly--still working on the whole temps thing. I really don't care to OC more though--the machine does the stuff I want it to just fine. I'm at stock @ 2.13GHz right now, but I can bump it up to 2.4 with no problems.

 

[RobertE]

For comparison, my 6320 o/c to 2.4 is getting about 100 +/- 10 credits for a 6 hour rosetta WU. A 330 credit einstein takes just a little over 18 hours.

This is just with a tiny bump in core voltage and stock intel hs/fan. I came *this* close to stopping and picking up a ninja this afternoon but didn't.

 

[GLeeM]

Originally posted by: Assimilator1
Philippart
What's project 2610??

GleeM
Yea running 2 clients makes a big improvment over my XPM
Re F@H ,I did know that 1 CPU core is used for the GPU client too (pitty).
So can the GPU client run on 1950 Pros as well as 1900/1950 XTs?

Project 2610 is a F@H project whose WUs finish in like half the time on a CPU with 4 MB L2. They really show the difference in PPD on C2D & C2Quad processors with the larger cache.

I think the XTs do a little better than the Pros.

 

[Allio]

Originally posted by: Assimilator1
From purely CPU loading side of things seems I had nothing to worry about , with the C2D o/c to 2.8 GHz running 2 DPAD clients it draws ~172w at the wall ,the XPM @2.5GHz drew 180w! :Q(naturally running just 1 client!) ,incredible how effiecent the C2Ds are

And when you consider that the PSU is at best about 80% efficient, the components are only pulling about 135W. Sure makes you wonder about those 1000W PSUs

 

[Assimilator1]

Yea 1KW PSUs seem pretty pointless ,except maybe if your running o/c quads along with SLI'ed 8800 GTXs....
(Alizee is very cute & gorgeous btw)

FMC
No probs ,ok I'll benchmark DPAD @2.4GHz sometime soon ,LMK your scores when you've done it.

Originally posted by: RobertE
For comparison, my 6320 o/c to 2.4 is getting about 100 +/- 10 credits for a 6 hour rosetta WU. A 330 credit einstein takes just a little over 18 hours.

How does that compare to Athlon X2s?
I assume that they are both using both cores automatically?

GleeM
Cool ,that's worth knowing
Btw re 1950 Pro ,when I said 'as well as the 19xx XTs' I didn't mean as good as but are also able to run the GPU client ,but you answered my question anyway
You see whilst the 1950 Pro is based on the 19xx GPU it is actually a different chip.

 

[waffleironhead]

The 1950 pro works fine with folding, tho the 256 models have been reported to have issues I havnt had any to report. I have a powercolor extreme edition x1950pro256(factory overclock to 594/695) that brings in 1% chunks at around 8 mins 15 seconds. Tho I dont run folding because I dislike the time limit to return units as I dont leave my pc on 24/7.

 

[mk]

Sounds like a nice build. Enjoy the extra power under the hood. :thumbsup:

Originally posted by: Assimilator1
(Alizee is very cute & gorgeous btw)

Seconded. :laugh:

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: Assimilator1
Yea 1KW PSUs seem pretty pointless ,except maybe if your running o/c quads along with SLI'ed 8800 GTXs....
(Alizee is very cute & gorgeous btw)

FMC
No probs ,ok I'll benchmark DPAD @2.4GHz sometime soon ,LMK your scores when you've done it.

Okay. How are we benching? Also, do you want to post a zip of the version & settings you are using? That way everything can for sure be as close as we can get it. Since this topic of conversation has come up, I've been playing with my machine. It's running @ 2.8GHz right now, 54 degrees C @ load, 43 degrees C @ idle. Not too bad at all. It's amazing what having a decent room with temp control can do. I might try for 3ghz here in a bit. See how that takes the temps.

 

[Assimilator1]

I now have my C2D upto 3GHz ,3.25GHz is looking likely I'll be able to get it stable

Will post about the rest tomorrow ,though I will say that I'm using the latest DPAD client v443d.

waffleironhead
Useful to know ,thanks