my lil cluster project

[Montrey]

I already posted something about this in the motherboards forum, but I was wondering if you guys could give me some advice too, as I want to use this for SETI. There is a deal going on eBay right now for a lot of 5 Socket 370 NLX-factor motherboards, I contacted the company, and can probably get as many of these things as I want, with riser cards. Specs are: i815E chipset, onboard sound, video, 10/100 LAN, supports up to PIII or Celeron 933 at 133mhz FSB, and up to 512 megs of pc133. I want to buy some boards and build small cluster in my apartment, nothing major, just a project to tinker with. What do you guys think? Would these be worth a damn for SETI, if I were running, say, 8 of them? Any recommendations for parts to put in, I.E. PIII vs Celeron, memory needed (how much does one *really* need for SETI?) All of these will use diskless booting (I hope), and have nothing more than a floppy and network cables attached. Thanks in advance

 

[Montrey]

I keep forgetting stuff when I post More detailed specs are here.

 

[Soggysocks]

Both my 1gigs do 3.3 per day, so you should be in the ballpark @ 933. 8 times 3 = 24 per day....not too shabby. But, I'm sure others have advise to improve that estimated output.
I would have to say, if you are getting them for free..............go for it. Otherwise, 1 P4 @ 2.4gig will do double the work of 2 p3's @ 1gig. Look at the cost vs production. a 3-P4 cluster will out do any 8-P3 cluster. It's not just the size ....it's the cost to power it.

Good luck on the endeavor :beer:

 

[Smoke]

Sounds like you have a very neat project.

PIIIs thrump Celerons in SETI.

 

[Montrey]

Well, not quite free, but dirt cheap. Computer Surplus Outlet has 800 mhz S370 Celerons for 39 bucks each, and with riser card and shipping these motherboards come out to about 15 dollars apiece. Any P4 is gonna run 100+, and at least 30 for the board, so... *shrug* Utility costs for an 8 board Celeron rack will be higher than the equally performing 3 board P4 rack, but part of the fun is being able to show the thing off to friends I'm considering even getting some flashing LEDs and making them look important. One important thing I need to consider is how much memory each machine really needs. 64megs are really cheap, but I don't want the amount of memory to be a bottleneck. Would 128 be enough, or would 256 be a significant performance boost?

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: Montrey
Would 128 be enough, or would 256 be a significant performance boost?

I wouldn't recommend 64MB, as that's a little limiting. 128MB should be fine unless you plan to run lots of other stuff along with SETI.

 

[Mardeth]

Nice idea. 8 does a lot more better than 3 eventhou thew performance isnt as good.

 

[Montrey]

Well, good thing I haven't bought anything yet, because now I'm lusting over Epox 8KHA+ boards, they go for around 15 on eBay. One of the best KT266A boards, according to articles here on AnandTech And for being close to the same price, a nice 1800+ Palomino is much more appealing than an 850 Celeron. 128 megs of PC2100 isn't bad either, bout 20, bringing the mb+cpu+memory to around 70 or 80 per system with shipping figured. Not bad for 1.53 ghz apiece, before overclocking.