seti hardware...

ericlp

Diamond Member
Dec 24, 2000
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Hmmm I was thinking of building a couple of new boxes. Getting back into the game.

I am wondering what is the best bang for the dollar out there? I don't really want to go NOVA Fast.

I'm looking at a 250.00 per board chip/ram Range. What should I go with? I am sure this topic has come up before?

This will be used to crunch 24/7. No Games.. No nothing... Thanks for your comments! :)




Goal... Spend 200-250.00 per system Or CHEAPER... And get 6-8 WU Per Day. That's basically around 3 - 4 hours per WU.
I guess I was thinking of a Barton Chipset and a 400MHZ FSB SIS 748 chipset with maybe some PC 2700 DDR from Crucial? And I nice big Heat Sink/CPU fan.

Thanks for all your help guys!

BTW... I got my ECS K7S5A MoBo to boot off a floppy using the SIS 900 Chipset Lan driver. If anyone wants to know how to it just ask. Only problem is it's taking almost 6-7 hours to finish one WU. Tho, it has a 2200+ with Mushkin 2100DDR ram. I haven't tried tweaking any bios settings but I thought it was running a bit slow for 65.00 fry's speacial I was hoping for better results but, I heard that the k7S5A PRO is kind of weak in the bios settings. I can only get 133 FSB out of it. I know if I had faster ram it would probably take an hour??? or so off the time? Is there really that much of a diffrence going from 2100 to say 2700?

 

Confused

Elite Member
Nov 13, 2000
14,166
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Cheapest nForce2 board with a Barton 2500+ and 256mb PC2700/3200 DDR, and whack the FSB right up :)

That will probably be the fastest per $ :)


Confused
 

lane42

Diamond Member
Sep 3, 2000
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Have a look Here Looks like for about 123.00 you can be cranking out 9 or 10 workunits a day :D
 

OhioDude

Diamond Member
Apr 23, 2001
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BTW... I got my ECS K7S5A MoBo to boot off a floppy using the SIS 900 Chipset Lan driver. If anyone wants to know how to it just ask. Only problem is it's taking almost 6-7 hours to finish one WU. Tho, it has a 2200+ with Mushkin 2100DDR ram.
Something's certainly not right here. I have 2 XP1600's on K7S5A's with generic 2100 DDR RAM running at stock speeds that are averaging around 3:50 per wu.
 

GtPrOjEcTX

Lifer
Jul 3, 2001
10,784
6
81
Originally posted by: OhioDude
BTW... I got my ECS K7S5A MoBo to boot off a floppy using the SIS 900 Chipset Lan driver. If anyone wants to know how to it just ask. Only problem is it's taking almost 6-7 hours to finish one WU. Tho, it has a 2200+ with Mushkin 2100DDR ram.
Something's certainly not right here. I have 2 XP1600's on K7S5A's with generic 2100 DDR RAM running at stock speeds that are averaging around 3:50 per wu.
is it possible that there could be some I/O necessary with the floppy? that would definately cause a slowdown.
 

BadThad

Lifer
Feb 22, 2000
12,100
49
91
I have a nice little nForce2 system that was dirt cheap and crunches SETI with an avg of 3:01/wu.

System Link

The mobo is more than I need because this system is purely a cruncher. But I picked it up in the for sale forum on Overclockers, brand new, for $70. I had an XP 1600+ and 2 sticks of Micron PC2100 lying around...so it made for a super cheap cruncher. :)
 

networkman

Lifer
Apr 23, 2000
10,436
1
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Originally posted by: OhioDude
BTW... I got my ECS K7S5A MoBo to boot off a floppy using the SIS 900 Chipset Lan driver. If anyone wants to know how to it just ask. Only problem is it's taking almost 6-7 hours to finish one WU. Tho, it has a 2200+ with Mushkin 2100DDR ram.
Something's certainly not right here. I have 2 XP1600's on K7S5A's with generic 2100 DDR RAM running at stock speeds that are averaging around 3:50 per wu.

Yeah, OhioDude is right. I've got also got a K7S5A with a XP2000 and 256meg generic pc2100 DDR at stock speeds averaging around 3:35 per WU. :) I'm thinking get rid of the that floppy and hook up a real small hard drive with Win98 or something - you should be able to cut your times nearly in half. ;)

 

BadThad

Lifer
Feb 22, 2000
12,100
49
91
Originally posted by: networkman
Originally posted by: OhioDude
BTW... I got my ECS K7S5A MoBo to boot off a floppy using the SIS 900 Chipset Lan driver. If anyone wants to know how to it just ask. Only problem is it's taking almost 6-7 hours to finish one WU. Tho, it has a 2200+ with Mushkin 2100DDR ram.
Something's certainly not right here. I have 2 XP1600's on K7S5A's with generic 2100 DDR RAM running at stock speeds that are averaging around 3:50 per wu.

Yeah, OhioDude is right. I've got also got a K7S5A with a XP2000 and 256meg generic pc2100 DDR at stock speeds averaging around 3:35 per WU. :) I'm thinking get rid of the that floppy and hook up a real small hard drive with Win98 or something - you should be able to cut your times nearly in half. ;)

Either that or he can take chances with a ram drive.
 

ericlp

Diamond Member
Dec 24, 2000
6,137
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106
Originally posted by: Assimilator1
ericlp
Are you running the CLi vertsion of SETI?

Well, dunno using I686glibc1 SETI client... Do they make the CLi for linux? Dman, I'm not very up on this...

Maybe that is my problem?



 

Robor

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
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I'm with networkman... Get a small hard drive and load Windows on it. I'd use Win2K just because it handles the nasty WU's better than Win98. :)
 

Assimilator1

Elite Member
Nov 4, 1999
24,152
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And I believe Linux handles them even better! ;)

ericlp
Didn't realise you were on Linux ,in which case there is only the CLi ;)
Incciently it has been discovered that running the Windows v3.03 CLi in WINE is the fastest way to run SETI on Linux!:confused:
 

ericlp

Diamond Member
Dec 24, 2000
6,137
225
106
Originally posted by: Assimilator1
And I believe Linux handles them even better! ;)

ericlp
Didn't realise you were on Linux ,in which case there is only the CLi ;)
Incciently it has been discovered that running the Windows v3.03 CLi in WINE is the fastest way to run SETI on Linux!:confused:

CLi... What the hell? What ever happend to the command prompt? I guess now that we have a GUI we now need to have a CLi? What's up with the small i?
Wine? Want some cheese with that wine?

Well, I am gonna go home and tweak out the bios. Flash it, and bump it up a bit. See if I can't eek out a few more WU a day. I guess I am getting about 7 right now with a 2200+... I turned off the -verbose ... Nice is set to 1 do you think that is ok? Any other tips from Linux pro's?

Thanks!

 

ProviaFan

Lifer
Mar 17, 2001
14,993
1
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CLi... What the hell? What ever happend to the command prompt? I guess now that we have a GUI we now need to have a CLi? What's up with the small i?
Wine? Want some cheese with that wine?

Well, I am gonna go home and tweak out the bios. Flash it, and bump it up a bit. See if I can't eek out a few more WU a day. I guess I am getting about 7 right now with a 2200+... I turned off the -verbose ... Nice is set to 1 do you think that is ok? Any other tips from Linux pro's?

Thanks!
Methinks somebody just let up on the SHIFt key too soon. ;)

CLI == Command Line Interface

Windows DC programs running faster in Linux under WINE seems to be more normal than one might think. Folding@Home shows similar results (Windows CLI under Wine is faster than Linux CLI native). To me, it's not worth the hassle, but if you have enough RAM and the time to experiment, it's certainly worth a try. I'm not sure how it would work with VMWare (but that would be more bloated, because you have to allocate memory and disk space for a whole OS, as opposed to a few DLLs and such with WINE).